“Capital of Silicon Valley”
Mayor Tom McEnery  1988

San José was the first capital of the State of California. Sacramento has held this honor since 1854. In 1988, however, due to San José’s innovation, cultural diversity, affluence, and pleasing Mediterranean climate, as well as its connection to the booming high tech industry, San José Mayor Tom McEnery adopted the motto “Capital of Silicon Valley.”

San José is Northern California’s largest city by population. It also boasts the largest concentration of technology expertise in the world, hosting over 6,600 companies.

I moved to San José in August 1972. My impressions of the city at that time were mixed. I loved the weather. Having grown up in the Sunset District in San Francisco, I appreciated the warmer climate. On the other hand, the Santa Clara Valley, also affectionately known as The Valley of Heart’s Delight, featured countless orchards of apricots, prunes, peaches, plums, cherries, nectarines, apples, figs, grapes, and persimmons. This was quite a difference from the more urban environment of my childhood in San Francisco.

In reality, the development of Silicon Valley started before I was born. The Hewlett-Packard Company was founded in the garage of a Palo Alto home in 1939. During World War II, the area became a center for radio and electronics research. Varian Associates was founded in 1953, followed by Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 and Intel in 1968. Then, in the ’70’s, the boom began with the founding of Atari, Apple Computer, and Oracle, followed by Adobe Systems Sun Microsystems, and Cisco Systems in the 1980’s. In the 1990’s, other high tech companies came into existence, including Netscape, Yahoo!, and Google.

Facebook joined the party in 2004, followed by the proliferation of cloud computing services in 2012, led by companies such as Amazon Web Services.

Within half a century, some of the most fertile farmland in California had been replaced with business parks, office buildings, single-family homes, shopping malls, restaurants, new schools, condominium complexes, and apartment buildings. 

So here’s the question: Is San José a good place to live? The answer is complicated.

In February 2024, PODS.com posed the same question. Their response was fairly straightforward: “If you’ve always wanted to live in a thriving city with plenty of job opportunities, amazing weather, and lots of cultural events, then moving to San José might be the right decision for you. San José is ranked as the 2nd happiest city in the U.S. — and for good reason.”

In March 2024, U.S. News and World Report put San José in the #4 spot for the 25 best places to live in the U.S. 

U.S. News Real Estate wrote this on their website: “Cradled by the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains and Diablo Range, San José offers a prime environment for outdoorsy residents, with its proximity to the ocean, the Sierra Nevada, and vineyards — not to mention about 300 sunny days a year.” 

This is all well and good, but there’s another side to the coin. An April 2025 analysis by financial technology company SmartAsset found that the median household income in San José was $136,229. While that may seem impressive, the income required for a single adult to live comfortably in San José is $147,430. A family of four requires an annual income of $371,571.

According to Apartments.com, the cost of living in San José is 77.6% higher than the national average. Housing in San José is 222.3% more expensive than the national average. It was also cited that San José residents could expect to pay 15% more for groceries, 46.7% more for utilities, and 38.2% more for transportation.

Realtor.com reported in February 2025 that the median sale price for a home in San José was $1.5 million. In August 2024, CNBC reported that a household needs to earn $463,887 to afford a median-priced home in San José, making it the most expensive of the fifty largest cities in the United States. 

So is San Jose a good place to live in 2025? The answer depends upon many factors. The most obvious, I would think, is when you moved here. Kathy and I purchased our San José home in 1986 — a 3-bedroom, 2-bath, 1,417 square foot condominium with an in-unit laundry room and large 2-car garage — for $140,000. According to Redfin.com, the estimated sale price today is a relatively affordable $1,004.753. So for us, since we’re not planning to relocate, San José is a good place to live. I like my neighborhood. I like the ethnic and cultural diversity of the city. I appreciate the entertainment options available to us here. I’m grateful for reliable public transportation and availability of medical services in the area.

For younger individuals or couples starting out, unless they are employed in the lucrative high tech industry or have high-paying jobs in some other sector, San José is simply not affordable. For such individuals to make a living here, one needs to find below market value housing and spend conscientiously to protect their limited financial resources.  

The sad truth is that multiple sources have claimed in recent years that an annual salary below $100,000 is considered “low income” in San José. And we wonder why so many people are moving out of the area.