We don't see any worse then Raffi on Earth or most of the 'modern' Federation. Raffi chose to live that way. I guess all the people that choose to live in "small" deluxe apartments might be "less" then Raffi's trailer.

A lot of space stations, like Jupiter Station, many space Starbases, and nearly all Starships don't have that much 'space'. So if you choose to live on one, you just get small luxury quarters. People like Mr.Mot the Barber or the servers in Ten Forward on the Enterprise-D chose to live there

A lot of the Colony worlds choose a Simple Life, where they do nearly everything the old fashioned way.....but even then they still have all the 24th comforts, they just choose not to do it. And I'm sure that growing some food is "fun", but that they still call out to the replcator for food. And sure you can 'make' charcoal...or you can just say 'a five pound bag of charcoal".

There are a bunch of ship prefixes in Star Trek for ship..."We" just mostly see Starfleet Ships. In the OS the first season had a bunch

I'd guess the United Space Ship Iowa was a "Residential ship": A ship for families to live on. Though it could also be a cargo ship, like the ones seen in ENT.

The whole "River of Time" and "Set Events" and "Destiny" in Time Travel goes back to..well forever. And it has already been part of Star Trek from TNG on.

In universe....I don't think he does. "We" just don't see it. A LOT of episodes have a line where some characters are TALKING about Odo shapeshifting "Oh he caught the Nassican Smugglers by turning into a three headed Karmdozian razor hawk".

Out of Universe...sure the cost was a factor. Plus a lot of it looked bad...the horrible 90 computer animation.

*Though the BIG problem is: Odo is a Demigod. Just like Data. So the Writers have to forget about him. Odo is immune to physical weapons, so they need to forget that. Odo can't be knocked out with the 'magic TV off button'....but he, of course is..wink wink. Odo can escape and spy easy. And win every fight. And Remember Odo can shape change PERFECTLY into anything except a humanoid.....