California just redefined “low income” and it no longer means what people think it does. A single person earning $111,700 in Santa Clara County now qualifies. In San Francisco, Marin, and San Mateo counties, the line is set at $109,700. These are the official income limits for 2025, released by the Department of Housing and Community Development. The state claims this represents 80% of median income, adjusted for cost of living. But in San Francisco, the median income in 2023 was only $69,000. The math collapses under inspection. The majority of full-time workers now fall under the low-income threshold by default.
Median home prices paint the rest. San Francisco sits at $1.5 million. San Jose at $1.4 million. Mortgage rates hit 6.84% in May. To buy anything, a person needs to earn between $200,000 and $370,000. These are not typos. These are entry points. Mid-level engineers, ICU nurses, credentialed teachers are now eligible for subsidized housing. The state calls it an affordability adjustment. On the ground, it’s just arithmetic. People are doing what they can to avoid collapse.
Retail and food service workers are not adjusting. They’re vanishing. Average retail pay in the Bay Area is below $42,000. Food workers bring in closer to $39,000. At these incomes, market housing is a fiction. What’s available is priced for people who don’t live there. They’re not priced out. They’re pushed out. The term crisis undersells it. This is a mass clearance.
In Solano County, the low-income mark is now $76,950. Sonoma jumped to $84,650. Napa rose from $60,100 to $89,750 in under 5 years. Construction hasn’t followed. Building permits are down. Regional Measure 4, a $20 billion plan, was scrapped in 2024 after repayment projections collapsed. There’s no alternate plan on the table.
This is no longer theoretical. A San Jose teacher making $102,000 lives in a converted garage with her children. A healthcare worker in Marin earning $108,000 applied for housing assistance after her rent crossed $3,400. These aren’t edge cases. These are normal.
The federal poverty line for a family of four is $31,200. But in the Bay Area, it takes $134,211 just to cover necessities. That doesn’t count debt, savings, or surprise bills. More than 670,000 households don’t hit the number. That’s over one in four. The state calls them the working poor. The market doesn’t call them anything at all.
Income no longer signals class. It signals whether someone can hang on another year. The numbers are public. The fallout is private.
https://patch.com/california/san-francisco/100k-low-income-these-ca-counties-state-says
https://chpc.net/news/in-these-4-bay-area-counties-being-low-income-means-earning-100k-a-year
https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/low-income-6-figures-wealthy-bay-area-counties-20307089.php