This is literally how gentrification starts.

How is East Palo Alto doing? Serious question, when I was still in SFBA I think the houses there were 2 times cheaper than across the highway and the joke was the weather forecast goes "Palo Alto sunny, East Palo Alto sunny, stray bullets". I was wondering if I should buy a rental house then (~2013)...

East Palo Alto is minimum $1mm homes now. Unaffordable to anyone not in tech.

While the cost of rent is certainly one aspect of where people choose to live, it certainly isn't the only aspect. Tons of people choose to pay more to live in more expensive areas because they find them nicer to live in.

And people who want to retire early or buy rather than rent but still live in a nice area will flock to low income areas now that they don’t have to commute into the office.

Isn't that already the case regardless of remote work? You get paid more in expensive areas, and want to minimize your costs.

Yep, adjusted for local taxes.

Best strategy is to find a high CoL area with a low taxes and low CoL subregions.