Even with a family income of nearly $60,000 and 17 years of steady employment, it took a five-year search for Manuel Navarro, his wife and three children to find a safe, affordable and clean apartment in San Jose.

The $1,300 rent in the new Gish Apartments, a subsidized complex with chic, futuristic architecture, has allowed the 47-year-old electronics assembler a more comfortable life. Still, he's tapping his 401(k) account to pay off old bills.

"I don't really care about retirement," he said. "I know if I keep doing things the right way, I'm going to be OK. . . . I'm always going to be poor."

Under the nation's standard definition of poverty, Navarro and his wife aren't poor at all - they earn more than double the U.S. poverty threshold. But for many middle-class people, prosperous economic times are increasingly tough times, amid Silicon Valley's stratospheric housing costs, experts say.

A new study on the cost of living in the Bay Area and the rest of California says that a family of four in Santa Clara County and the other nine greater Bay Area counties now needs an annual income of $77,069 - nearly quadruple the federal poverty threshold of $20,444 for a family that size - to afford housing and other basic needs.

A single-parent family needs to earn $65,864 to afford housing and utilities, food, child care, health care and transportation, according to the California Budget Project report, "Making Ends

Even with a family income of nearly $60,000 and 17 years of steady employment, it took a five-year search for Manuel Navarro, his wife and three children to find a safe, affordable and clean apartment in San Jose.

The $1,300 rent in the new Gish Apartments, a subsidized complex with chic, futuristic architecture, has allowed the 47-year-old electronics assembler a more comfortable life. Still, he's tapping his 401(k) account to pay off old bills.

"I don't really care about retirement," he said. "I know if I keep doing things the right way, I'm going to be OK. . . . I'm always going to be poor."

Under the nation's standard definition of poverty, Navarro and his wife aren't poor at all - they earn more than double the U.S. poverty threshold. But for many middle-class people, prosperous economic times are increasingly tough times, amid Silicon Valley's stratospheric housing costs, experts say.

A new study on the cost of living in the Bay Area and the rest of California says that a family of four in Santa Clara County and the other nine greater Bay Area counties now needs an annual income of $77,069 - nearly quadruple the federal poverty threshold of $20,444 for a family that size - to afford housing and other basic needs.

A single-parent family needs to earn $65,864 to afford housing and utilities, food, child care, health care and transportation, according to the California Budget Project report, "Making Ends