Thanks. So there are no common bad or commonly regretted decisions, ways people commonly get exploited, factors people commonly neglect or anything of that sort? (Also, do I really have that many degrees of freedom at ~$1000 a month?)
If so, that's good to know, but I'm still not sure how to actually do it. Is there a centralized list of housing providers, possibly one that can be automatically ranked by relevant criteria? Amazon pretends to do that with computers, but (last I checked) many if not most models don't have the relevant fields entered and so don't show up.
So there's no quantitative approach? If you've done it, could you elaborate on how you did it?
About $1000 a month. Not sure what you mean by abilities.
Given a low (I think) fixed income and no particular local commitments (apart from citizenship in the USA) (edit: and being currently located), how do I identify a good place to live?
On further thought, since I'm in a low-density area, rather than looking for a place first it might be better to first improve my local mobility by getting a bicycle. Then I could see what possibilities it opens up, and either look for housing next or upgrade to a moped, motorcycle or car. I still don't really know where to start, though.
Edit: I tried looking for relevant ebooks on Amazon. I've found three, and from the reviews, none of them have what I'm looking for; not The Complete Idiot's Guide to Cycling (1999), Bicycling Magazine's New Cyclist Handbook (2005) or The Big Book of Bicycling (2010).
Edit 2: Every Woman's Guide to Cycling seems to have decent reviews; maybe I'll try it.