18 U.S. Cities Where the Middle Class Can No Longer Afford Housing

1. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA

• Cost-burdened middle-class households: 61.9%
• Median home value: $900,000
• Median household income: $117,474
• Homeownership rate: 57.2%

The San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara covers much of California’s Silicon Valley region, an area characterized by its high-paying tech industry. Living in one of the wealthiest parts of the country, the typical metro area household earns $117,474 a year, and over one-quarter of households earn at least $200,000 a year.

The area’s high incomes have driven up property values, making it difficult for those like teachers, service workers, and firefighters, who earn incomes that fall in the middle-class range on a national scale, to afford housing. Of area households earning between $45,000 and $74,999 annually, 61.9% spend over 30% of their income on housing, making it more difficult to afford other necessities.

The area’s booming tech industry helped create the housing crisis, and now many of those same companies are taking measures to solve it. For example, Google recently pledged $1 billion for a housing initiative. The plan includes allocating $250 million in incentives for developers to build 5,000 affordable housing units and $50 million to nonprofits that help the homeless find shelter.