South bay from? My summer gig is in downtown Mountain View and I stay really close to San Jose Diridon station. Looking at the schedule, the train ride can be as short as 15 minutes (SJ to MTV) and the rents here are ~$3K/mo for a 2 bedroom apartment.
One case where HTML won't work as a TeX replacement is when you have to think in terms on a page. For example, if you're making a resume and don't want it go over one page, it becomes a tedious process to "change CCS, Print preview, repeat".