For $1000 you can find a small studio, but also consider the advice to look for places in the peninsula (Mountain View, Menlo Park, Palo Alto) and East bay (Oak

For $1000 you can find a small studio, but also consider the advice to look for places in the peninsula (Mountain View, Menlo Park, Palo Alto) and East bay (Oakland, etc) As a rule of the thumb, the places north in the city (nob hill, south beach, marina, etc) tend to be upscale. Downtown is not so bad, but I'd stay away from tenderloin. I don't particularly like the Mission and SOMA, but it seems a good number of startups have offices there, so YMMV. Northwest (close to the Golden Gate Park) have nice places, but seems to be worse if you don't have a car. You'll see that sometimes a neighborhood is perfectly fine and safe and you walk two blocks down and it feels sketchy and unsafe. That's why I recommend you walk around.