The Bay Area and the whole Silicon Valley area has crazy jobs, but good luck finding a park bench to sleep on for less than $3k/month. Portland isn't too far behind with new fancy buildings going up at $3800 for 800sqft. But there is plenty of suburbia here still and traffic isn't awful. But there are a ton of the jobs in IT (especially software).Dude... you're in the wrong part of the country, then. Have you thought about the Bay area or perhaps even the Denver area?
Being you're East Coast, the traffic probably wouldn't even bother you.