Jobs’ modest family home, where he and Woz started Apple in the garage, now is a kind of shrine to techies and in 2013 was designated a historical site by the Los Altos Historical Commission. (Picture above.)

California, especially Silicon Valley, has become so expensive the middle class is being squeezed out. KQED reported:

The nonprofit Joint Venture Silicon Valley has tracked local economic trends for the last 20 years. This year’s Silicon Valley Index reported the income gap is wider than ever, and wider in Silicon Valley than elsewhere in the San Francisco Bay Area or California.

Joint Venture divides the workforce into three different “tiers.” For high-skilled, high-wage jobs, Tier 1 in Silicon Valley, the median wage is $119,000 a year. For low-skilled, low-wage jobs, or Tier 3, the median is $27,000.

“Thirty percent of our population is living below the self-sufficiency standard,” says Joint Venture Vice President Rachel Massaro. “That means they can’t survive without public or informal private assistance.”

The main problem is that state policies severely restrict building adequate new housing. It’s simple supply and demand: Demand rises faster than supply, so prices go up.

In particular, the California Coastal Commission now limits construction in coastal areas, which has a ripple effect inland for at least 50 miles, raising the price of everything.

Then there are the LAFCOs: local area formation commissions, that also limit construction.

The latest crisis to hit California is that its massively high cost of living is pushing seniors out onto the streets. Social Security checks, small pensions and food stamps might cut it in Michigan, but not in California.

The Contra Costa Times reports:

OAKLAND — Yolande Cole played by all the rules.

She always worked, as a temp doing administrative work and later as a caregiver for the elderly. She didn’t drink or do drugs and paid her bills.

Yet in the 68th year of her life — a time Cole had long looked forward to finally slow down — she found herself homeless after a live-work situation in San Francisco didn’t pan out.

In one moment, Cole lost not only her job, but also a roof over her head. She moved in with friends, but after several months of couch surfing, she found herself filling out an application at a homeless shelter in West Oakland.

“I felt like I was stepping off a cliff, like there was no bottom,” recalled Cole, who grew up in New York City and attended San Francisco State University at one point.

The culprits:

Skyrocketing housing prices, together with cuts to food stamps and other programs as well as increased longevity, have resulted in more seniors becoming homeless, said local advocates.

In Alameda County, 9 percent of people older than 65 live on less than $12,000 a year, the federal threshold for poverty, according to the latest figures from the U.S. census. Calculating the number of homeless is more difficult, because many without permanent shelter stay with friends or significant others, while others are simply not located.

As I’ve mentioned before, the main causes are the California Coastal Commission, the Soviet-style bureau that severely restricts housing construction along the coasts, with a massive ripple effect flowing inland at least 50 miles.

And LAFCOs — Local Area Formation Commissions, which also severely restrict construction.

So people like Yolanda Cole built this country, and state — but now are forced by bad policies to live out on the street.

Los Angeles County is the second-least affordable housing market in the country for a middle-class family….

That’s according to a new report out Tuesday from real estate website Trulia, which found that a household earning the median income of $54,000 can afford just 22% of homes in L.A. County on 31% of their income or less. Only in San Francisco, at 15%, can fewer middle-class families afford to buy. Six of the seven least-affordable markets in the nation are in California, including San Diego (25%), Orange County (26%) and Ventura County (33%).

Why is this? A couple of reasons.

First, the California Coastal Commission wields dictatorial powers over coastal building, severely restricting new housing. This ripples inland at least 30 miles. This year, the Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown gave the CCC the power to assess fines itself, something that in free societies is carried out by court actions (except for such relatively minor matters as traffic violations).

Second, local restrictions are repressive. According to a CATO Institute study:

In the 1960s, California was growing much faster than it is today, yet housing was no more expensive than in most other parts of the country. California was growing so fast that cities often competed with one another over which would get to annex (and collect taxes on) land suitable for development.

To minimize such competition, in 1963 the California Legislature created a local area formation commission (LAFCO) for each county. These commissions could approve or veto the formation of new cities or special service districts and annexations to those cities or districts. Most commissions were dominated by representatives of the city councils in each county.

The cities soon realized they could use LAFCOs to keep most taxpayers within their boundaries. No longer could a developer build houses on vacant land outside of a city’s limits and incorporate a new city or service district to provide the water, sewer and other infrastructure needs for those homes.

After eliminating the competition from such developments, cities could impose costly and time-consuming planning restrictions that further drove up housing costs. What was portrayed in public as a war on sprawl was, in reality, a war on taxpayers seeking to escape the high tax rates imposed by cities.

Third, California’s high-tax and anti-business environment keeps down wage increases that would allow regular folks to afford the high-cost housing.

None of this is likely to change.

It’s simple Econ. 101: Restrict supply and the supply rises.

If you’re in the middle class — and didn’t buy your house in California before about 2002 — the only way to find affordable housing is to leave.