If you're willing to include the kind of 60-minute commutes that New Yorkers living in outlying areas have, you can live in all sorts of cheap satellites of SV too, depending on where in the valley your job is. For example, if you work in Cupertino, you can live in Gilroy; for other parts of the valley, you can live in Livermore. There are also cheap parts of the southern East Bay that are pretty nearby.

Even the central part of SV is quite cheap compared to NY for some living profiles. Buying a house is expensive, but renting one is relatively cheap. Going rate for a 2-bedroom house in a tract development in Santa Clara is maybe $1500/mo, while even out in Queens you're not going to find a house at $1500/mo.

I'm not sure where they got the $2250/mo average apartment price from; that seems high. Perhaps it's skewed as a mean, by a few really high-end apartments? It'd be interesting to see how the median compares.