I make six figures and can afford only a modest 1-bedroom in a rural area well outside of an east coast university town. I will probably not be able to afford a house without parental help.
It's an indictment of any system that people making twice the median household income cannot afford to buy housing within a reasonable distance of wherever their labor generates that income. It's a terrible situation - communities in which at least half of the necessary jobs do not pay enough for the people who do those jobs to live in the community - and it isn't good for anyone in or around those communities, and probably not for the nation as a whole.
The fact that, yes, yes of course there are other communities where the economics are different doesn't in any way mitigate the fucked-up ness of the situation the GP is describing.
The only homes I've seen for $200k need to basically be torn down and are too small for a family.
That's much less true of most metros. Even a fairly expensive city like Boston, while there are expensive suburban towns, an hour drive gets you to some small cities, exurbs, and other suburbs where housing prices are--if not cheap--pretty reasonable (e.g. $300-400K for midrange houses--though prices may have risen). And a lot of the professional jobs are well outside the city anyway.
An hour or so commute each way sucks, but if you can get a Bay Area job that is either fully WFH or that only requires you to come into the office once a week being an hour away wouldn't be too bad, especially if you can arrange the hours on that one day a week you come in so that you are't driving during the most congested times.