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Ask HN: Where are the cheapest places to live in the Bay Area without a car?

6 points by jmau5 ↗ HN
I'll be headed out west to go to school for the Fall 2012 semester and I really want to be in the Bay Area, but it's an expensive place.

Where are the cheapest places to live in the Bay Area? I won't have a car (I might invest in a road bike), so San Francisco is appealing to me, but it's one of the most expensive cities in the country, I hear.

4 comments

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rmk
San Jose downtown has decent light-rail and bus connections to most places. But, public transportation is PAINFULLY slow (e.g.,: it will take you at least 1-1.5 hrs to get to Mountain View from San Jose if you take light rail / bus, and upto 1.5 hours to get to SF via Caltrain). Otherwise, it's quite good. Milpitas, CA is also an OK place --- cheaper than most of the Peninsula and SF --- with good connections to most parts of the bay (east, peninsula, south).
jmau5
One of my biggest reasons for moving to the valley is so I can throw myself into the software and startup scenes. Is San Jose a good place to do this or would I be better off some place else? All I've heard is that there are a ridiculous amount of software companies in the Bay Area, but that comprises a lot of land area.
rmk
No, not if you want to bump into hackers or throw yourself into the startup scene. To do that, you should choose Palo Alto / Mountain View. If you have cash to spare, work at Hacker Dojo, but live in an inexpensive area (see above). You can commute using light rail to Mountain View downtown, and take a short walk to Hacker Dojo from there. Castro St. (downtown Mountain View) has great food options.

Palo Alto is more expensive --- forget about living there! Also, fewer spots where you can camp out. There is a Starbucks and a great cafe called Coupa Cafe, but both places are now too noisy and not ideal to get any work done.

jmau5
Unfortunately I doubt I'll have that much money to spare on a monthly basis. Unless I can come up with a solid job, I don't think I'd be able to do it.

Mountain View sounds like a decent place and there was a post on the front page last night that said it's one of the cheaper places to live and a car isn't necessary, so that's good. Also, there's Foothill college that's a half hour bike ride away from the center of Mountain View.