Ha! The one person I know who works at Apple lives almost exactly 90 mins away from work. Think they paid just over $2 mil for their IMO pretty average house! 
It would be helpful to know what line of work you’re in to roughly gauge out the expected income trajectory as you gain more experience. There’s a hell of a difference between moving to Cupertino for a tech job which you only have to endure 70K for 2 years before rising to 150 - 200K vs moving to Cupertino to work at a non-profit where you’re lucky to be making 90K after 5 years at the same place.
Mr. brown is just retired from Apple. It’s true we bought our home here twenty miles south of San Jose more than twenty years ago, but it’s worth about half of that and it’s a nice attached home in a nice neighborhood. We commuted to Silicon Valley for twenty-three years from here, and most employers from Sunnyvale on south are quite doable. I think his commute was about 45 minutes. In addition, Apple has dedicated employee shuttle buses which, depending on the location of your office (Apple has gobs of buildings), you can board directly at our local train station. I recommend our town as a commuter/bedroom community for Apple employees. It’s still not cheap, but it’s lots cheaper than further north up the Peninsula.
Sadly, I’ll be doing administrative work at a public school. So I don’t expect any doubling of my salary like I would at a FAANG tech job, I’d be surprised if I even get 5-7% annual raises.
Well, the weather is nice, and there is a highly diverse food scene. There is lots to do in the region, and most stuff is fairly accessible if you have a car. If you are an outdoorsy person the Santa Cruz Mountains are right there for hiking, biking, and mtn biking - lots of trails. The beaches are about 45 min to an hour away. It’s good living in the area, but you wont save much money.
Given that, you may benefit from a county affordable housing project. “On March 14, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors approved the acquisition of a site in Cupertino for affordable housing for teachers and other school staff.” (Cite.) Obviously, it won’t be ready immediately and there will be many who apply but it might be an option longer term.
That’s silly. Housing is obviously the biggest expense. $1000-1500 will get you a perfectly fine bedroom in a shared house. Having roommates is hardly “not living”.
Other things can be expensive here also, but not by the same factor. Cars, phones, computers, games, bicycles, etc. cost the same here as anywhere. There’s plenty of free nature stuff to do. You can eat out and have other basic luxuries in $70k, including some saving (particularly if the school has 401k matching or anything).
No, you can’t raise a family here on $70k, at least not without an enormous commute, but for a single person with a modestly low-consumption lifestyle, it’s totally fine.
IMHO, don’t do it.
You might be able to find some kind of housing situation that fits within your budget parameters. The problem is, that situation will always be tenuous and there’s not enough liquidity in the market that if your housing situation ends, you’ll have confidence in being able to find something comparable.
Here’s a story of a SF teacher who was making $65,000 a year in 2017 who still ended up becoming homeless and living in shelters because her housing situation abruptly ended. It’s only gotten worse since then.
There’s something to be said for the Bay Area to be a “tour of service” where you live like crap for 3 - 5 years and bank up a large nest egg that serves you well for eventually moving to a LCOL area which makes putting up with the indignities of the region much easier to bear but if you’re not making enough for this to be realistic, then at the end of that time, you’ve really got not much to show for what you went through and you’re now trapped there because your connections and social network is all there.
Coupled with this, is that a significant chunk of teachers/nurses/non-profit workers in the region have a spouse who has a high paying job which significantly relieves the financial pressure and allows them a modicum of a reasonable lifestyle but that means that there’s not the same upward pressure on wages in the region, despite the lack of competitiveness of the offered wage.
I don’t know what your relationship status/goals are but I’d say the only slight tenuous path that makes this an OK move is one where you have an aspiration to partner up with someone making an income that makes living in that region bearable. The one good thing about Cupertino is that there are plenty of wonderful, dorky, lonely people who are seeking relationships with fundamentally nice, interesting people irrespective of income (both men and women although you still are going to have an easier time of it if you’re into men) and there’s a chance of landing into a significantly higher income bracket via partnership than almost anywhere else in the US.
Apart from that, there’s not much to recommend about taking a public school job in the Bay Area, which is why people have been leaving the region in droves of the last decade and the horror stories are real and depressing.
Here’s one data point for comparison. My daughter makes ~$80k as a City of San Jose employee and is able to afford a one bedroom apartment on the border of Campbell. She’s never going to get rich or buy a house in the area, but she’s comfortable.
Thank you all for correcting my misperception based on my ignorance and a single data point.
With training and expanding your skill set you could, in a few years, leverage your experience and training into obtaining a position with a tech company. Try to get one in a larger company. There, making friends and learning the products and processes, you could then move into a more techie type of position and increase your salary significantly.
I know I’m talking about years down the road, but it’s a trajectory you could aim for.
I once switched positions and while interviewing and while working at an underpaid job, I dodged the “how much are you currently making?” question. When I signed on, the new job paid me 40% more than the last one. The job market here (I live near Cuptertino) is pretty diverse and there are a fair amount of opportunities.
FYI, if your search extends to San Jose, note that San Jose has a rent control ordinance for apartments that limits yearly increases to 5% in buildings built before 1979. I’ve lived in an older complex in Willow Glen for 17 years and am paying substantially below market rate.