Often, Silicon Valley is highly idealized and made out to be a haven for young techies and engineers. While this is true to a large extent, one often forgets that the area is home not only to the highly paid budding software and hardware geeks, but also a plethora of maintenance workers and service personnel who don't function on the same premium income levels.

According to a study by the online residential real estate site, Trulia, the median home value within Silicon Valley (Alameda, Santa Clara, and San Mateo counties) has soared from $535,614 in 2012 to $888,444 in 2016.

Thus, the advent of the Silicon Valley housing crisis: sky-rocketing rents and house prices as supply is limited and demand is rapidly increasing, is something that needs to be promptly addressed. Tech behemoth Google (GOOG  ) has taken this initiative, signing a deal with modular-home startup Factory OS to build 300 apartment units in Silicon Valley to serve as temporary housing for Google employees. The deal is valued at around $30 million.

© Martin Varsavsky / Flickr.com

Instead of building a home or apartment unit from scratch, modular home companies put together fragments of buildings in a factory and then ship those pieces to their final destination. They are designed to lower construction costs. However, procuring regulatory approval to build them have proven to be slow in states like California.

In 2015, Facebook (FB  ) funneled $18.5 million into creating a fund to research and plan solutions to the housing problem. Last year, Facebook added another 1.1 million square feet to its offices. Part of that plan was to also to build 1,500 new housing units, with 15% of those units designated for low and middle-income residents. Facebook engineers reportedly asked Mark Zuckerberg for help paying rent, some Twitter employees earning $160,000 feel like they're barely scraping by, and even some residents making six-figures can qualify as "low-income" and receive subsidies. So much so that Facebook provides housing for its interns and offers free shuttle transportation to and from work. Some of the perks include free internet, maid service and built-in social network.

© Anthony Quintano / Flickr.com

The latest effort to emerge is the TECH Fund, an innovative affordable housing initiative from Housing Trust Silicon Valley. Inspired by work by the Sobrato Family Foundation several years ago, the TECH Fund zeroes in on a single leverage point: early-stage capital for affordable housing projects.

Raising startup capital may be a key part of rebuilding the affordable housing ecosystem in Santa Clara County, which includes some of the priciest communities in Silicon Valley. That's the position of Kevin Zwick, Housing Trust Silicon Valley's CEO. According to Zwick, "The market, if allowed to function, will produce housing for middle- and upper-income families. But housing for low-income people isn't getting built."

Either way, one thing is clear: with all its inhabitants largely working in the tertiary and quaternary sectors, there is little room for others, even those performing menial labor. Yet, in order to survive, an area cannot solely function on gizmos and gadgets: the techies need someone to service the elevators of their dazzling offices, to fix the air conditioners of their expansive rooms. This seems a difficult prospect given the pricy housing market.