In other parts of the country, the kind of money the author is paying in rent on a studio will pay the mortgage on a 2500 sqft house, in an upper-middle class neighborhood.

In an age of high-speed internet, it's ridiculous that we insist software engineers be jammed into dense, expensive globs. Working remotely with Skype calls/IM/screensharing is a better experience, all around, than trying to collaborate in the same office, at least in my experience. You do have to have employees that will actually work, though.