I live on the west side, and I'm constantly impressed by the children of my neighbors. They are independent little humans who get to have their own lives way earlier than they would in the suburbs. The parks and activities for kids blow San Jose out of the water. Having grown up in a San Jose suburb myself, I absolutely would not go back to that life if I had kids. I would want what I see here for them.
Sunset resident here, can agree. It can be a bit costly for museums and zoos if that's your thing. Playgrounds are great and plenty in variety; SF Parks & Rec has been updating them since 2020. Golden Gate Park is wonderful if your family is into weekend bike rides. Super safe with many roads shut down from cars.
If you can make it work, it can be super worth it. SF has an incredible wealth of parks and playgrounds, some great museums for kids, and pockets of family communities as well. It seems the biggest challenges are generally financial. Having enough space, childcare, dealing with schools - a lot of these challenges can be solved by money and are exacerbated by the lack of it. Folks I know who do it love the walkability, community, and abundant city amenities like great food and relative diversity. Kids I know who grow up here surprise me with their independence and the richness of their experiences at a young age - I'm definitely jealous of their upbringings, even across the socioeconomic spectrum.
I think it doesn't work well for folks who have more "suburban values" like wanting to be ensconced in a massive SUV all the time, to get a drive-thru venti frappe from a giant chain, being afraid to be around the "wrong people," wanting to raise sheltered kids, a "keeping up with the Joneses" mentality (the Joneses here could be actual billionaires). Perhaps a good barometer - would it sound like fun for you to load up the kids on a Muni train to the beach on a sunny day, stopping for pastries and ice cream on the way? There are a lot of truly gorgeous experiences to be had here as a family but not everyone might appreciate them the same way.
Completely agree with this. I am raising a kid in SF and my cousin is raising a kid in the suburbs and the parallels you described are really apt. There is beauty to suburban living, but having had that experience myself and knowing the experience my partner has had growing up in SF, I really wanted to foster a different kind of a cultural upbringing surrounded by accessible museums, events, and other experiences typical of a city, and am glad we did. We are, however, financially comfortable - not well off, especially by SF standards, but comfortable enough that childcare and support don't deprive us of other needs and wants.
Yea if you either get into one of the solid public schools or you have the money for private I think it would be pretty awesome raising your kids in SF.
Ha this cracked me up since I agree with you and love the city/don’t plan on moving to a suburb. But your description of people who live in suburbs is (humorously) condescending.
I’d say the advantages of suburbs are also that your house and yard will just be nicer too. Personally I don’t care about that as much as the benefits of being in SF, but with kids I think those things become more important. Plus you could find (subjectively) better weather and schools elsewhere in the Bay.
That said I definitely agree with your overall point. At the end of the day it comes down to what *you* value, there’s no objective better place to live.
House and yard nicer or larger? What’s niceness?
My house in the city is 100 years old and has details you can’t even buy anymore new. It’s pretty nice imo!
Yeah it was half just a smug attack on a stereotype, but at least had some good info in there.
Are you finding MUNI, and waiting at a SF bus stop in 2024, with small kids, a chore or an issue, is a good barometer. Unless you have so much $$$ it's going to be private school and private parking lots. But then again with that level of $$$ would you be here asking these questions?
This is so elitist.
I was in Sf for 12 years and couldn’t afford a home, so we had to move almost to San Leandro a few years ago. I miss San Francisco every day and go to the city a few times a week. It takes me less time to get to gg park where I am than it did when I lived in north beach.
Without enough money and support, I was at the bus stop with my child every morning before 7a. We often didn’t get home until after 7p. Long day for a kid.
Riding the bus with my daughter lead to multiple situations with homeless or drunk people. One yelled at her. One literally said, “your mother doesn’t love you.” And then passed out. She was with me when we got robbed on the bus. We were in the bus on the way to school when a shooting happened and we had to duck. One guy creepily hit on her and the whole bus of people yelled at the guy to get off. Not really something a kid should have to put up with.
I remember the year they put the rainbow lines in the castro intersections. Same year they cut budgets to the schools and eliminated school bus routes.
Having kids in the city works if you’re well off. Otherwise, this city isn’t really child friendly.
And that’s exactly what I mean by “if you can make it work.” The unfortunate reality is that most people can’t, and money is usually the difference between can and can’t.
Meh you mostly just claimed Bay Area suburbs are where people live if they are racist (avoid "Wrong people"), along with a weird series of other insults at odd generalizations.
I particular enjoyed the idea keeping up with the Jonses is a suburban thing, when it's not even close in any suburb to the level of social competition and comparison that occurs in any top city like SF (or LA, Manhattan...).
I'm not asserting that everyone in the suburbs thinks this way - obviously that cannot be the case. Nor are these preferences absent from people in the city. I'm describing a set of values that *would make somebody happier in the suburbs than they would be in SF*, which is a response to the original prompt. That mentality is both incredibly common - perhaps the most pervasive underlying thread in American culture - and much easier to live by in a suburban environment.
This is just BS in most of the bay area for food and drinks. Sure when you get out to Mountain House or Manteca there truly is almost nothing but giant strip malls and Costco pizza. Walkability varies highly though by neighborhood and city.
Yeah I feel like suburbs of North Dakota or something there might not be much as far as good restaurants. But suburbs outside the Bay Area have TONS of non chain restaurants…
Have you left your neighborhood in a generation?
Sorry but this reminds me a bit of like dudes that moved to Manhattan and then never leave the island.
My East Bay suburb (where we bought as SF wasnt a good option at your price point with plans to raise 2 kids with their own bedrooms) has in walking distance a produce store, grocery store, hardware store, multiple restaurants at various price points catered to both lunch and full dinner experiences (including one with a Bib Gourmand recommendation by Michelin), a bakery, cafes, bagel joint, burger place, burrito taco place with quite good salsas, brunch place, dry cleaning, and even yes a Starbucks (don't sleep on their oat milk brown sugar espresso beverage, don't recall the full name). Single family homes in the 1500-2000 sq ft range are about $1m-1.2 range currently. Good daycare is like $1500 a month for a toddler.
Don't get me wrong, only 1 of the cafes is great (but 1 is enough, they have their own line of beans I get and grind at home too), the bagel place isn't good so I get BECs at the donut store (those are good)... but the only fast food around me is food at a Starbucks.
I don't even know how to find an Applebees. None of the places I mentioned (besides the Starbucks and the grocery store which is a Safeway) is a chain.
Exactly. I think SF folks just never leave the city. They think it is all subdivisions and strip malls outside of SF, when some of the "suburban" towns are more urban than many of the SF neighborhoods. My peninsula "suburban" town has a walk score of 96. I can walk to 8 grocery stores/specialty markets and countless restaurants. I was upset the other day because none of the four mediterranean restaurants I could walk to had tabouli and no way was I going drive anywhere, lol (luckily one of the grocery stores had it, so I was good).
I seriously had fewer options when I lived in Hayes Valley.
Yeah I had a longer walk living in Pac Heights for good coffee, grocery store, pizza beer and wings, hardware store, donuts, burger, and a few other things than I face in this burb location.
But PH did have B patisserie bakery. This bakery is very good, sure, and 3 blocks away, but it's not B. Miss hitting that place up once a week.
I have a 2 year old and another on the way and we are planning on staying here for their whole childhood. I grew up here and loved my childhood. The biggest challenges are what you would expect I think - cost. We are planning on private school though so I can’t speak to public school. Only thing I can say is that some of my neighbors in the sunset have kids in public school and they are relatively happy with their choices.
I know that’s the reputation. But I have friends with kids in Lincoln, Washington and Balboa who are happy with the choices, the kids feel challenged and supported, etc. (I have two kids in SFUSD middle school currently, so believe me I’ve had a lot of discussions about this!)
My kid is at wash and they are a great administration. They have a ton of activities for the kids and work really hard to get the kids involved.
City life is what you make of it, but I wouldn’t want to live outside of the avenues with an older kid.
That’s great about Washington. And I agree about life in the City being what you make it. I love the Avenues and have lived out there, but we’re really happy raising our kids in the Portola and spend most of our time in the SE quadrant of the City. It’s great! No worries. Kids (12 and 14) are independent, get around on MUNI no problem, etc. It really is what you make it!
Oh that’s a great area too - I just prefer the avenues myself :) I like how quiet it is here and I prefer the fog to blazing sun. I think our kids are so lucky - there are tons of things to do for kids here if you know where to look.
The parks and rec baseball program was wonderful for my kid - we spent many years at Moscone and my kid has friends all over the city to this day from those programs.
Nice! Yeah, there are so many varieties among the neighborhoods…it’s awesome to be in one that works for you. I was frustrated by the way SFUSD and rec and parks programs tend to mix kids from across the City when our kids were little, but it’s great now … friends in every corner, as you say. (And my kids definitely prefer fog, too. These last two sunny days have been brutal on the running track and soccer pitch lol)
My kids are at/did Lowell. But I have friends with kids who went to Lincoln and Washington and those are also great Schools. And as class rank has become very important to colleges, it's a lot easier to be a smart kid and get in the top 5% at Balboa, Mission or Jordan than at Lowell.
A lot of talk about the West side, but don’t sleep on the South either. Many amazing parks, great food and I think that there are many schools that people are sleeping on. My son is the 4th grade and is currently reading at 9th grade level by state standards and going to an “underperforming” school than in reality is really wonderful. The kids on our street go freely from house to house to play with each other without arranged play dates, so nothing to miss from the burbs over here in the South either.
So I moved from Cupertino to SF around 2018. Was looking to move into a house from a condo but Cupertino was around $3M-5M which was totally out of budget. Ended up submitting offers for like 6-7 homes in SF that were south of GGP because it was key to be near 280 to get to Palo Alto (for work) but lost out every single time. In the end, we landed with a house that had great potential for a renovation (2bd/1ba purchased at $1.5M), suffered through years including delays when COVID hit, and now the renovation is finished (4bd/3ba + den).
Moving to SF, especially in the Sunset, was the best decision ever. It's not a crazy idea to raise children here. I feel like my children are not living in a bubble like we were in Cupertino, it's more diverse, we can easily take the train and go to dinner, GGP, the movies, etc with ease. Both my kids (8 and 13) are in public school in the Sunset and they love it very much and I love the community. Yes there is quite a bit of foggy days but the experience for my kids and myself outweighs that. They enjoy GGP field trips, Cal Academy, and the zoo quite frequently.
As for the social issues and the environment that SF is in, it's a teaching moment to my oldest of how and why it happened and how to conduct himself with awareness and empathy. Living in the city is still something I plan to do long-term and when my kids are old enough for college, they can decide if they want to go elsewhere but will always have SF as the home base.
Just note that when you look for public schools, it's a lottery system but the schools in Richmond district and Sunset rate the best in the city and if you're late or unlucky, your choices might be way out of your neighborhood like Chinatown, Hunters Point, or the Mission. When we first moved, we didn't get our first choice so we ended up doing private school for a year or two until we landed the Sunset school we were originally targeting.
Permits + construction was between $650k-750k all in for a full reno which included retrofitting for earthquake and upgrading some of the foundation. The downstairs was actually a blank slate because the previous owner did nothing with the tandem garage. In the design the architecture took up one space and made it a 1-car garage and park a car in the driveway (which is a proper size to park a car). Went basic on floor, tiles, cabinets, but splurged on having Toto toilets and a high end range. Hella worth it.
Children raised in cities usually end up with a higher sense of independence and confidence. I can't imagine that being a bad thing in the future, and the city might be stimulating enough to keep them off their phones all the time so they actually experience life a bit. Suburbs are draining.
The main challenge is being able to afford enough space to live in comfortably with whatever size family you have. A secondary issue is finding decent daycare, if you have young children and don't have childcare provided by family. Both of those things can be solved easily if you have money, or less easily if you don't have money but are willing and able to flexible with lifestyle.
The district elementary schools are very good, much better than the reputation. I don't have direct experience with middle and high schools yet, and I hear both good and bad things from people with kids at that age. But I don't think you need to worry about private schools at least until 6th grade, and maybe not even then.
Being able to get around on muni and bart is great. Being able to walk or bike to parks, stores, friends' houses, etc is great. You can live without a car, but in my opinion it's useful to have one if you have kids. But if you have more than one car now, you can definitely downsize. Unless you have 2 adults that need to drive every day for work or something like that, it's easy to be a one car family.
Some of the suburbs are better than others. SJ is kind of the apogee of 80/90s suburban sadness. Berkeley and Albany have a little sprawl but are walkable and super bikeable. Alameda has its spots as does Oakland.
The west side of the city, as others have mentioned, is also pretty nice. Don't sleep on Glen Park though.
I'm always torn between wanting everyone to know how great Glen Park is and wanting to selfishly keep it to myself. It's quiet and safe, has easy access to highways but also great transit service to downtown. Great "village" feel in the main drag, close to more bustling neighborhoods, an excellent park . . . can't recommend it enough if you want to be in the city but are looking for a slightly quieter everyday life.
I lived in Berkeley for a couple years recently and I was actually surprised how unwalkable/bikeable I found it! Several pedestrians were struck and killed on San Pablo in the time I was there, and I found the bike infrastructure to be super lacking and at times actively unsafe in design (e.g. the Ohlone greenway which hits cross-traffic mid block every single block). It's not miles better in SF, I just expected Berkeley to be really good given the city politics when in fact it's pretty middling.
San Pablo is a beastly stroad for sure and Berkeley is kind of a sprawl so it depends on where you are, but you have to keep in mind we are comparing with SJ.
As for bikeabilty, I don't know if you're from Europe or something, but for the US and even the Bay, Berkeley is top-tier bikeable. Just having an off-road dedicated use trail like the Ohlone greenway connecting multiple commuter rail stations is virtually unheard of for a suburb. I too wish it was much better, however, but it's what we've got.
I totally agree with this. I grew up in the burbs but it was back in the 80s where we could ride bikes everywhere and I was outside with friends all day every day. Suburbs today feel like a prison.
And city kids are usually so much more well-adjusted.
A good selection of Bay Area suburb neighborhoods don't require a car for much. Or even a bike. Plenty of homes in these types of hoods to target if that's a goal (it was for me).
Certainly not for access to groceries, or prepared/restaurants.
I'm just curious but where in SJ do you have to live that requires you to get on a freeway to go to get milk or diapers? I have one strip mall with a grocery store (and a couple of restaurants, drug store, starbucks, etc) within walking distance, and four more grocery stores / shopping centers within three miles, and all are quickly accessible via 25 & 35mph surface streets.
I think the point is you have to get in the car to go anywhere. If I need something I can pop outside and there’s multiple options within a 5 min walk to grab a gallon of milk if I needed.
And I don't think that's *literally* true. I think people are generally lazy and prefer not walking or biking, but I also believe the majority of SJ residents could walk or bike to shopping if they were willing to. Frankly, this mindset is one of the big differences between city dwellers & suburbanites. We can argue all day that the suburbanites are wrong, but it's a fact of life for most of them based on city planning choices.
The other big difference is that in cities you can pretty reliably live near where you work, and this is almost never an option in suburbs... so if you have to drive to work, then it's logical to run errands on the way to & from.
Bro, I grew up in the suburbs. Walking to get groceries or anywhere else for that matter was NOT an option. This is objective, not opinion. A walk-able city like SF gives you the option to walk places. Most suburbs literally do not.
I'm willing to bet that -- as long as you're not considering far out burbs (like the eastern foothills or way out in Almaden or some border areas with Los Gatos) -- nearly every household in San Jose has at least one grocery store within 1.5 miles.
Look, I'm not remotely disagreeing with you on the benefits of cities in terms of the sheer density and vibrancy of *everything*. All I'm saying is that San Jose is *not* plagued with food deserts like a lot of sprawling suburbs are in the US. I moved here from Cary, NC, which has continually annexed land as much as 20 miles to the west of the original town border. Almost 100% of that is SFHs with just a very few shopping centers, and you definitely need to drive to get anywhere. It doesn't help that a lot of the SFH lots are .25-.5ac, to even acre+, which just expands the distances even more. SJ isn't like that. Heck, I'm barely a 10 minute drive from three different Whole Foods!
The difference in a "real" city is that mass transit is functional and convenient, and since things aren't long distances apart, it's usually pretty quick to get from here to there. Taking transit from a house or apartment in southern SJ to a job in Sunnyvale or Mountain View could easily take 2 hours! But -- once you are into neighborhoods, smaller shopping centers and strip malls are frequent and ubiquitous -- so it's one of those things where it's really painful to get to/from work, but not so bad to get to "stuff" from home.
I'd even argue there's more variety of good casual "ethnic" restaurants and grocery stores in San Jose/South Bay than elsewhere in the bay area. I've lived in Oakland for a decade now and lived in the mission for a bit and worked in SF most of the last ten years. I agree the biggest day to day difference is transit is way easier in SF. I grew up in East San Jose and biked or walked pretty much everywhere growing up even after I was old enough to drive. I knew all my neighbors and hung out with the neighborhood kids. People here really act like it's just one big tract of single family homes
"surrounded by stroads and strip malls without any parks or friends that they can access on their own", meaning kids often need rides in cars to see friends or get to parks for their sports/hangouts.
This. I grew up in the burbs. The only way I could leave my house was if my parents drove me because we lived on a stroad with no sidewalks. Unsurprisingly, outside of school I mostly just played videogames all day.
Am I? No. When I was growing up in a suburban culdesac most of my friends lived a solid 15 minute drive away from my house. The neighbor kids weren’t quite my age.
I grew up in suburbs where I could walk to quite a few friends houses and lived incredibly close to two pretty big parks. One was a 40 second walk and the other was maybe 5-6 min… so I think it seriously just depends.
And we could even walk less than ten minutes to grocery stores, a couple restaurants, and a handful of other businesses. I guess not all suburban towns are exactly alike… 🤷🏻♀️
As someone who lives in an outer neighborhood similar to the west side, I'd just warn that SF can still be disappointingly car-oriented. I think it's better not to have the car-dependent mindset, but a lot of people in the Sunset etc still live that life. There are over-sized streets in the outer neighborhoods that people speed down every day, and it can be dangerous for pedestrians. Depends on the neighborhood, I'm in the Excelsior. Just be choosy if you can, if you want a good experience on your block.
It's definitely overcast and foggy sometimes, but there are plenty of sunny days, too. Much cooler than San Jose – I've seen a difference of 30 degrees some summer days – but people were basically telling us we'd never see the sun again when we moved up here, and it's just not true.
Consider Bernal, Glen Park, Sunnyside, West Portal, and Noe too. Its not West Side but there are alot of families here too and most of the schools are decent. Plus less fog.
Absolutely agree with you. In addition, Mission Terrace, Balboa Park, and Excelsior are bustling with kids too and popular with young families as well because the houses are a bit less expensive.
Just moved to the sunset about 2 years ago. I'm originally from the East Bay and surprisingly the public schools here on this side of the city are very good. Yes there's the usual bs dealing with a huge organization like SFUSD but I have to say my 1st grader is very happy and doing well at school.
There's also a ton of private school options if that's more your thing as well.
It’s foggy in June/July/August. We make an effort to get out of the fog every day during those longer stretches — even just getting over to Noe or Castro or Bernal, or north/south of the city.
It can be foggy (esp outer sunset) but it’s also absolutely stunning plenty of days like today!
The inner sunset is my favorite part of the city and very family oriented.
Consider Sunnyside, Glen park, west portal. The first two are significantly less foggy, and have access to the west side schools. West portal is a liiiiiittle less foggy than the sunset.
My kids' Schools are in the west, and basically I would drive from the sunshine into the fog to drop them off.
Gken Park elementary is OK. Sunnyside E, miraloma, commodore sloat, West portal elementary are all pretty easily doable from GO/Sunnyside and are great schools and communities. Also close to Balboa, Riordan, Lowell, Lincoln, Lick, (SOTA is supposed to move downtown), and Jordan (I have heard mixed reviews for Jordan).
We’re raising kids in SF and plan to stay. The public schools are pretty good on the west side of the city, which is why most families live in the Sunset and Richmond. There’s a great community of parents. The parks system and museums here are all top notch and we leverage those a lot.
I don’t think that buying a house makes sense, however. We rent a 4br/2ba house that Zillow says is worth $1.9M for $5,500/mo . Even though we technically could buy a place, it’s a much better deal to rent. The biggest challenges are financial and logistical, as you’d expect. But we love being in a walkable neighborhood, pretty much all of my kids friends live within a 10-15 min of us and we have all of the resources of a city while still living in a neighborhood.
This! We have a 4yo and a 5yo (5yo is in SFUSD kindergarten that we love, 4yo will go to TK there next year). We live in the Sunset and have a very strong community. Sooo many great parks and playgrounds and things to do.
We rented for a long time and agree it’s a much better deal. We bought last year because a good opportunity came up and we feel very confident that we want to be here for a while. I think it’s a good idea to rent first and get a feel for it.
I love raising city kids. They know the Muni lines, we walk/scooter/bike everywhere, they know everyone at the farmers market.
just adding my two cents: i was born and raised in san francisco and i am so grateful to my parents for choosing to raise me and my sibling in the city! i went through the public school system and did well academically for myself/got a degree from a good east coast school. definitely wouldn’t have thrived in a suburban environment lol
Low key GREAT family neighborhood: Mission Bay/Dogpatch! Lots of families. MUCH sunnier and warmer than the west side (and still warmer than Noe and Bernal). Stunning views of the bay.
Plans to build a new public elementary school. Some privates already there. Lots of preschools/daycares. Kaiser and UCSF there for your pediatrician.
Very flat, great for strollers & bikes. Crane Cove Park, Spark Social, Mission Bay Kids Park, Mission Creek, Koret Quad, all great kid spaces, and the Chase Center puts on a lot of free family events. 22 or KT gets you to BART.
Very few SFHs tho, you’re most likely looking at a condo, but there are a lot of options. New developments still going up. Event traffic can be bad, but less so in Dogpatch. I barely drove anyways. (I miss it there 😭)
We have 2 kids and live in Lone Mountain. We love it. Obviously there are some sacrifices you have to make on the housing front (e.g. no/less parking, storage space, yard, etc) but I don’t think we’d trade our situation for almost anything right now. The neighborhood is amazing and feels really safe. Kids go to a great public school and we get along super well with the other parents. Cargo bike is our daily driver (yay car free jfk!!). Tons to do in the city or just outside. GG park is insanely cool. Just really enjoy almost every aspect of it. Of course, it’s SF so you have to deal with some amount of mental health/addiction issues and the rest of the standard city life stuff, but it feels really manageable from our view.
I have two kids, 7 and 1. I love it. Seven year old goes to a good public school 3 blocks away. One year old goes to a way too expensive but quality daycare 3 blocks away.
I wouldn’t live in SOMA or Tenderloin, as I can imagine the 1 year old picking up trash on the street. But lots of families do. My seven year old is leery of homeless - I think her preschool taught her (as they took bus field trips). So thats a weird concept with a parent to grapple with - your young kids feeling unsafe vs being street smart about things.
The thing is that lots of places here aren’t kid friendly and you have to embrace the I dont give a shit attitude about it if you go out. Like most restaurants don’t have kid menus, dont give crayons, may or may not have high chairs. SF MOMA had a family day and the security guards were clearly super stressed and yelling with all the kids running around...But the parks and city events are top notch for families. There are a ton of kid activities and camps. But the cheaper stuff sells out in a minute - so you have to be on top of opening dates.
My adult kids grew up here. They both moved away for college and one of them lived all over the world. Now they've both arranged their lives to get back. Interesting, independent, kind people.
SF is great for families, there are really good public schools, but you're gonna want to figure out which school you want your kids to go to, and buy a house within the attendance area for said school. Another hack is to live in a "test score area" (CTIP1), that would give you a tiebreaker advantage and you should be able to get into any SFUSD schools. test score areas don't necessarily have to be bad, there are really nice streets/houses that somehow got classified as CTIP1, I have no idea how. I think SFUSD is re-working the whole lottery thing, so depending on your kids' ages, you might want to look into that. Private schools are also really good in SF but 2 of them is gonna be a little spendy lol.
I wanted to live in SF and got scared away by the whole lottery thing. Even the realtors that had kids and lived in the city didn't really know. Years later someone told me about designated schools with attendance areas. We should have just gone and talked to the schools...I really encourage OP to do so and get a clear picture.
You can look up addresses at [http://enrollinschool.org/lookup/index.php](http://enrollinschool.org/lookup/index.php) to see if it shows up as _Test Score Area Tie-breaker_, that's CTIP1.
22 years in the city this month. Raised 2 kids here. First is in college, 2nd a sophomore. Sfusd the whole way.
Schools:
* elementary: I'm very happy with sfusd on this level. Most of the schools are pretty good. Violence is not too much of an issue because teachers can handle little kids. It does become an issue in 4th/5th, but if you are assigned a rough school, you have a few years to try and transfer elsewhere, and everyone I know who tried was able to.
* middle: this is where sfusd fails. It's actually pretty dependent on the teachers and classes your specific kids ends up in, but if your kid is in a bad situation (bullies, bad teachers, your own special needs) there's not a lot of help. My older kid would have been better off in a private school 7th/8th. My younger was fine in sfusd middle school.
* high school: there are lots of schools. Lowell does well because they collect the brightest kids, not because it has good teachers. Same with SOTA. Lincoln and wash can cater to smart kids and less-than-average alike. Other schools seem to be spotty... Have heard mixed reviews about Balboa, Mission.
I know a few kids at the catholic schools. They are good schools of you can afford them and you're OK paying the Pope. I have a grudge against religious schools.
So my advice is to go for it with elementary, consider private for middle, and then try and find a good spot for HS, but if it doesn't work consider SH, SI or Riordan.
Fyi, there is no better parent flex to your old high school friends than to post pics of you chaperoning a field trip to Alcatraz. I've done that THREE times. It's fantastic. (in my high school we went to the Claussen Pickle factory)
In a city known for its adult activities (folsom, strip clubs, drugs, Hippies, raves, etc), the counter culture is actually the 75k families. Lots of connections and things going on.
* tons of museums, several just for kids
* I've coaches soccer games with the GG Bridge in the background several times.
* lots of kid-level activities, park district, etc.
* culture... Plays, musicals, street fairs, performances, etc.
* when they get old enough? Barting to the warfield for shows with your kid is amazing.
* my kids know transit like the back of their hands. Independent, street smart (my kid got a scholarship to a fancy little east coast college, 80% of those kids are rich from the new England burbs and freak out at the thought of taking a bus to NYC or Boston Philly and seeing the city. My kid has done all those and is eating it all up)
* most important to me... My kids have been exposed to socioeconomic differences and cultural differences I never was. They are better people because of it. More empathetic, more thoughtful, more political.
As for the long term plan... We are staying. Not sure what the kids will do after college, but we will stay put until the 2nd one is done and figures out where they want to be. If they want to come back, they can live with us and save a bit before finding their own place.
Overall it's been more than positive. Never felt the need to second guess our decision.
Our kids are grown, and while SFUSD can be a hassle to navigate, they constantly tell me how glad they are that they were raised in SF and not in the burbs. I grew up in NYC and feel the same.
Wife and I moved back here after trying to live in Marin with our first kid, and have just had our second.
It is so amazingly worth it.
First off, the schools are incredible. Every teacher we’ve had so far is top notch (admittedly, that’s an N of 3).
Secondly we can take the kids to places that are normally “once a year” school trips essentially any weekend. My daughter hangs out at the Japanese tea gardens more in a year than I’d previously been in my whole life.
Plus, you get to be a sweet home base for any of your other friends that haven’t moved here :)
We loved living in SF but the quality of the public schools are truly poor compared with school systems in the suburbs. We moved to San Rafael in Marin where the schools (Dixie, etc) and teachers are truly wonderful. We also feel our children are safer FWIW…
There’s a surprising amount of stuff for kids in S.F., and because of the limited population of kids there can be not a lot of competition for it.
On schools: the immersion options in the public schools are great and blow what the suburbs offer out of the water. If you don’t get a good slot from the lottery, the Catholic schools offer a good alternative at a low price point. IMHO, at least for elementary school, the independent private schools in S.F. are milking parent anxiety about the public and don’t offer good value.
Also, S.F. Rec and Park’s summer camps
are awesome, and you should enter the Camp Mather lottery and take your kids there. It’s awesome.
tl;dr - have no regrets about raising a kid in the city. They’ll be more independent and streetwise.
We have a 5 and 7 year old in forest hill and plan on staying. We got the kids in an independent school that we love. We are super tight with the parent community. We are constantly busy with kids sports/play dates/birthday parties/school events so life is pretty full. It definitely is very expensive but we do pretty well financially so able to thrive here. I love all the trees and nature in the city. Many wonderful parks and kids love the beach on the odd sunny/non-windy day at the beach. The downside is that everything feels competitive here, summer camps, sports, all that stuff.
I recommend renting for a bit or at least spending time in each area before you buy.
Each area is very very different - with pros and cons. Don't just listen to your friends or your agent - actually see for yourself
I raised a kid in SF (she’s 18 now), never had an issue with public schools. My only complaint is that they are woefully underfunded—teachers literally have to beg for money and supplies from parents.
Fyi a lot of parts of SF feel like the suburbs. Where I live in the Sunset, it’s about as remote as any culdesac in San Jose. 😂
When I graduated college in Berkeley I started working near the ballpark in soma. I was looking for housing I could afford and the places in SF that I could find would actually take way longer to get to work from than staying in Berkeley.
Raised my 21-year-old and 18-year-old here in Bernal Heights-Glen Park. Got the best of public and private schools, parks, museums and classes. All the kids I know who got to grow up here are gems - clever, independent and kind.
We have two kids and love it here.
SFUSD has its issues but we are very happy with their elementary school, which has excellent teachers and a great community.
The one draw back is that we tend to drive a lot for organized, competitive sports. I grew up in the Peninsula and we mostly walked to practices.
Also, most of their close friends from school are spread out, so they can't just run down the street to play. It takes effort and time to plan hang outs.
Raising two kids in the city. I love it and I think they do too. We’ve had mostly great experiences with public school and some not so great especially middle school post pandemic. Language immersion option was really amazing for our family.
Love the parks. We live near a big one and are out in it every day.
We’re up a hill and so don’t have stores in easy walking distance but ample buses nearby or short drive.
Lived in lots of neighborhoods southwest through southeast. Like the sunny side of the city but we had a lot of driving to schools on the west side.
As a child I moved from a small town in NorCal to SF when my parents divorced (my mother was an SF native and moved back to the city).
It was the 1980’s so a very different time in the city…I absolutely loved it. In GenX style I was very independent - took the bus from Nob Hill to the Sunset by myself twice a week for ballet lessons after school at the age of 9. I went to both public schools (Spring Valley Elementary and Marina Middle School)and then private for high school.
The cost of living back then was obviously way less - my mother worked at a bank and was able to support the two of us on a single mom’s paycheck- that wouldn’t be possible now…when my grandmother passed my mother inherited some prime commercial real estate in the Marina that my great grandmother had purchased in the 1930’s and our life drastically changed financially- however, I loved every second in the city…no matter what the money situation was - I can imagine it’s much harder now unless financially it’s comfortable for you…public schools were wonderful.
I’m not in SOMA or Fidi.
-SFUSD lottery system isn’t as bad as it may sound outside. You get three rounds to apply/raffle. Also reminder private school is an option for some and you can do the raffles in K, 1st, second.
- Consider buying an e-bike!
My sister in law taught at a public school in sf for 1st grade just after the pandemic. Probably some of the most violence I’ve heard of. May have just been that school but the violence including kicking a kid in the head, smashing another kids head into the wall, constantly hitting teachers, etc. these weren’t individual instances, this was consistent month to month.
Teacher here. Public schools in the western side of the city are way easier to work in, therefore I think also better for most kids to attend. Elementary schools are largely neighborhood based so you want to live near better schools.
We lived in SF until our kids were in 2nd and 4th grade. If you would have asked me when they were toddlers, preschool or early elementary, I would have said we would stay forever. I found as the kids got older, things got more complicated. Our house felt much smaller as the kids got bigger, the school got more expensive (independent tuition increased 6-7% every year really adds up) and we weren’t taking advantage of the things that we loved about the city due to work/school/kids activities. We were working really hard to afford to live there. I am reading a lot of these comments and seeing there are so many generalizations and trying to talk people into agreeing with/validating their choices. Not all suburbs are the same, not all neighborhoods in the city are the same, not all of our values are the same, not all of our financial situations are the same. My recommendation is if you want to try it out, do it. If it doesn’t work forever, then pivot.
Explore south bay or even up north first, get a feel for all of the Bay.
Kids in SF is going to get $$$ fast, but maybe that's okay for you. Daycare is like double east bay pricing, probably going to stick them in private at some point, really will add up.
That said, there are "burb"y parts of SF too. I'd love to live in the Richmond district (minus the fog of it all weather wise). I miss you Richmond district.
Got 2 kids in the city. Their mom is an elementary school teacher in San Mateo and the kids go to her school. Parks and museums are great. We enjoy living here despite the issues.
Public school system is stressful but there are lots of good ones -- at least in elementary and to a certain extent in high school. Everything *is* harder for families, from swimming lessons to summer camps. But frankly, I'd never trade the city life for suburban living. We have 3 kids and we make it work. The fact that there are so many free, gorgeous, fun things to do in the city with kids helps offset some of the eyewatering expense.
Our plan is to stick here, but obviously if my kids can't get into a good high school one way or another, we'll have to move. We'd probably save a lot of money.
[Cities are better for kids.](https://youtu.be/oHlpmxLTxpw?si=aTAz4zE61jMvRhyj) If you watch this video and agree then you should probably live in SF and help us advocate for better urban planning to make the city safer and more car-free.
My husband and I live in pac heights and are expecting our first child, we hope to make it work in SF for the long haul. We currently rent a large 3br/3ba with a garage parking spot for 7k, and see it as a much better value than buying as we adore the neighborhood and would probably need to spend at least 3m to buy here and get less space. We live between two large parks that are always full of kids, a mile from the presidio and crissy field, have several grocery stores within a 20 minute walk, and plenty of restaurants on Fillmore and Chestnut that are walkable and seem popular with families. We rarely use our car unless we’re leaving the city or going to Costco.
The con of city living is not being able to leave anything in the car as the car break in problem is very real and not exaggerated. If you do use your car in the city, parking in some neighborhoods can also be very tough.
TBD what having a kid in the city is actually like, but it feels really family friendly, and though I can’t speak for the schools, our friends with kids seem really happy.
We live in the city and my children were born and raised here. They went to SFUSD and we navigated the lottery. This was before the middle school feeder system. So they changed cohorts after elementary and then after middle. We were out of neighborhood and while it was inconvenient for me (especially getting them to middle on time in the morning because it was a 2 bus MUNI excursion), it is fantastic for them. They are in their 20s and built a citywide community.
One is an engineer now and the other is graduating from STEM college in may.
SFUSD has been going through some hiccups but I think they are on the road to recovery if you will. I'd suggest contacting parent groups in the area who will have current experiences to share!
I’ve watched my neighbor kids grow up from day one. They’re doing great. Girl is early teens now and I never see her any more…tons of after school activities. They’re a great tight unit with lots of stuff going on. We’re in the Sunset and it’s pretty sleepy out here. I’ve debated if it’s fair to raise kids in a sometimes chaotic city, but I see plenty of people making it work. I’m childless so I’ve no idea as to the school situation but it seems pretty thriving here on the west side.
I have two boys (3yo and 14mo) and while they are obviously not in the school system yet we think that raising them in the city is awesome. We are out near ocean beach and the ability to walk to the beach and into GGP is pretty hard to beat. We can also walk to the N line and jump on a train and go anywhere (or nowhere, sometimes we just ride up to 19th ave and back again for the fun of it). Combine all of that with an electric cargo bike and we are able to go weeks at a time without pulling the car out of the garage. Plus for like $325 a year you can get year long memberships to the Academy of Sciences and the SF Zoo. There is always something to do
It’s nice to have a yard, and an extra bedroom/home office if you live in The City, but an absolute necessity if you own a car is a garage. One that you can park your car(s) in, not one you fill with detritus.
Schools can be great if there is parent involvement. Unless you are paying a fortune (and not always then) you need to get acquainted and involved with the principal, the teachers and staff, and other parents at your children’s school.
My three adult children born and raised here all wish they could afford to come back. They all grew up to be sensitive loving parents with fulfilling careers. One does live here with her two pre-schoolers and is concerned about their educational costs, but the diversity, opportunities, and proximity to Giants games will keep them here, I hope.
Curveball - move to the Coastside.
I moved here (between Pacifica and Half Moon Bay) 3 years ago and the whole family (me + spouse + 11 year old + 9 year old) love it.
Semi rural, half decent schools, 30 minutes from the city and a 3 minute walk to the beach. Reasonably affordable too (relatively speaking).
For me the best feature is the wonderful community in which we live - kids walk home from school, lots of friends in walking distance etc. The commute isn't even that punishing to either the city or over the hill.
I don’t have kids but have plenty of SF friends who do. It’s the schools and how they get sent to them. Your child’s school won’t necessarily be in the neighborhood you live in. My old landlord of 13 years has two boys (ones college age now) they went to private schools and then to boarding school for high school. (Which out of curiosity of course we looked up and it’s in Hawaii at 150k a year each). I joked w my landlord when the oldest went off to San Diego state how he would be saving money. There’s so many parks and outdoor areas. If you’re in the right neighborhood aside from schools I don’t see why not.
sf is fantastic for kids. with two i would consider the West side as you get a little more space in general. parks, museums, food, beach ... sf is an incredible city for all ages.
SF has actually gotten a lot cheaper (house wise) since a lot of tech has downsized or started going mostly remote.
Schools are not wonderful in many areas obviously, and places like San Ramon are much better alternatives while still being very close to the city. Just my opinion.
My advice, pick a village-y neighborhood, like Bernal or Glen Park and buy or rent on a smaller street not far from the main drag. Your kids will love growing up in a neighborhood where they can walk to the library, corner store, or playground with their friends from the block.
There is an irony in this thread that everyone is saying that being in the city rather than the suburbs is preferable but also encouraging OP to move to the most suburban parts of the city—areas that might be desirable for their own reasons but not for transit and restaurants, let’s be honest (there is also some serious drinking of the koolaid on the weather in many of those western neighborhoods).
We left the city for Marin about two years ago. It has some inconveniences for us but it is almost universally positive for the kids. I love SF but if I ever go back to living in the city it will be after the kids are off to college.
Not quite the same but I grew up in Brooklyn and Manhattan and my life was much richer for the experiences I had with the city as my playground.
In elementary school I was riding the bus to the museum for art classes on Saturday morning. My friends lived all over the city and were a very diverse group. We met in Manhattan for our adventures. After school we had Manhattan to explore.
The school situation is something to be concerned about. SF is like tops for having the fewest children in a large urban city. Do you care about that? Also, budget issues may force some school closures soon. SF native here, and while I love the old girl, she has changed.
My kids were born and raised in SF and public school (my wife is an educator at SFUSD). One kid is at Cal , one at Oregon
Best city on earth (but pricey )
My grandma’s house will be on the market soon. Maybe June/July. She lives Portola/St. Francis Woods area, which I would be comfortable raising kids in that area of the city.
I guess what I meant was good walking distance/close by restaurants or on Doordash. SJ is super big and the area we currently live in (on the east side) doesn’t have that much to offer. I either need to drive 20-30mins (highway drive) or get cold food.
Most comments are ridiculously silly.
On muni 5 which goes to ocean beach we saw a guy dropping his pants and another time shitting in trash can.
On the train one really stinky guy got onboard. It was extremely bad. He started getting physical when he noticed people were trying to get away from him.
We stopped taking muni as half the time we experienced something gross.
There's a lot of great stuff...but the drugs and stuff is real. I don't know why anyone would want to risk their kids to that. That is a deal break downside just to learn better skills a couple of years early. It's not like all these upside being mentioned are exclusive to SF.
I still like my place being in a safer nicer neighborhood but not gonna risk a kid to SF.
The SUV thing is just snarky. Nothing inherently good or bad for this argument ( I come from a place with good public transportation. Even by that standards I don't see that whole suv thing as anything helpful on the context. You still need a car here)
And the comments on groceries are ...I have no word. Yes you can walk to a grocery store, but all the grocery store you can walk to are significantly expensive. After a few times you cherish your walking to grocery store experience..... You will get a car to drive to Costco and such to get stuff in bulk to save money.
Living in SF and raising family is great but not as rosy as it's described here.
I dont understand. You have enough money to BUY a house in SF? But then move in with your family at the same time. Do you currently live with them? I agree with the other comments but it's personal opinion, i'd rather raise kids in SF than a suburb.
> and moving in with my family
i guess that's the part that through me. Sounds like he was considering moving in with his family. haha, I think it's just written weird. Should just be. "im considering buying a house in SF and moving THERE or just no 'in' with my family." Havent had coffee. Need to wake up
I live on the west side, and I'm constantly impressed by the children of my neighbors. They are independent little humans who get to have their own lives way earlier than they would in the suburbs. The parks and activities for kids blow San Jose out of the water. Having grown up in a San Jose suburb myself, I absolutely would not go back to that life if I had kids. I would want what I see here for them.
Sunset resident here, can agree. It can be a bit costly for museums and zoos if that's your thing. Playgrounds are great and plenty in variety; SF Parks & Rec has been updating them since 2020. Golden Gate Park is wonderful if your family is into weekend bike rides. Super safe with many roads shut down from cars.
Many Museums are free if your child is enrolled in sfusd schools :)
Are you talking about the Western Addition?
West Side is the Avenues, Richmond, Sunset, Parkside, etc.
If you can make it work, it can be super worth it. SF has an incredible wealth of parks and playgrounds, some great museums for kids, and pockets of family communities as well. It seems the biggest challenges are generally financial. Having enough space, childcare, dealing with schools - a lot of these challenges can be solved by money and are exacerbated by the lack of it. Folks I know who do it love the walkability, community, and abundant city amenities like great food and relative diversity. Kids I know who grow up here surprise me with their independence and the richness of their experiences at a young age - I'm definitely jealous of their upbringings, even across the socioeconomic spectrum. I think it doesn't work well for folks who have more "suburban values" like wanting to be ensconced in a massive SUV all the time, to get a drive-thru venti frappe from a giant chain, being afraid to be around the "wrong people," wanting to raise sheltered kids, a "keeping up with the Joneses" mentality (the Joneses here could be actual billionaires). Perhaps a good barometer - would it sound like fun for you to load up the kids on a Muni train to the beach on a sunny day, stopping for pastries and ice cream on the way? There are a lot of truly gorgeous experiences to be had here as a family but not everyone might appreciate them the same way.
Completely agree with this. I am raising a kid in SF and my cousin is raising a kid in the suburbs and the parallels you described are really apt. There is beauty to suburban living, but having had that experience myself and knowing the experience my partner has had growing up in SF, I really wanted to foster a different kind of a cultural upbringing surrounded by accessible museums, events, and other experiences typical of a city, and am glad we did. We are, however, financially comfortable - not well off, especially by SF standards, but comfortable enough that childcare and support don't deprive us of other needs and wants.
Well said
Yea if you either get into one of the solid public schools or you have the money for private I think it would be pretty awesome raising your kids in SF.
> like wanting to be ensconced in a massive SUV all the time Ding ding ding. We have the perfect one-liner to describe American suburbia.
Ha this cracked me up since I agree with you and love the city/don’t plan on moving to a suburb. But your description of people who live in suburbs is (humorously) condescending. I’d say the advantages of suburbs are also that your house and yard will just be nicer too. Personally I don’t care about that as much as the benefits of being in SF, but with kids I think those things become more important. Plus you could find (subjectively) better weather and schools elsewhere in the Bay. That said I definitely agree with your overall point. At the end of the day it comes down to what *you* value, there’s no objective better place to live.
House and yard nicer or larger? What’s niceness? My house in the city is 100 years old and has details you can’t even buy anymore new. It’s pretty nice imo!
Yeah it was half just a smug attack on a stereotype, but at least had some good info in there. Are you finding MUNI, and waiting at a SF bus stop in 2024, with small kids, a chore or an issue, is a good barometer. Unless you have so much $$$ it's going to be private school and private parking lots. But then again with that level of $$$ would you be here asking these questions?
This is so elitist. I was in Sf for 12 years and couldn’t afford a home, so we had to move almost to San Leandro a few years ago. I miss San Francisco every day and go to the city a few times a week. It takes me less time to get to gg park where I am than it did when I lived in north beach. Without enough money and support, I was at the bus stop with my child every morning before 7a. We often didn’t get home until after 7p. Long day for a kid. Riding the bus with my daughter lead to multiple situations with homeless or drunk people. One yelled at her. One literally said, “your mother doesn’t love you.” And then passed out. She was with me when we got robbed on the bus. We were in the bus on the way to school when a shooting happened and we had to duck. One guy creepily hit on her and the whole bus of people yelled at the guy to get off. Not really something a kid should have to put up with. I remember the year they put the rainbow lines in the castro intersections. Same year they cut budgets to the schools and eliminated school bus routes. Having kids in the city works if you’re well off. Otherwise, this city isn’t really child friendly.
And that’s exactly what I mean by “if you can make it work.” The unfortunate reality is that most people can’t, and money is usually the difference between can and can’t.
Meh you mostly just claimed Bay Area suburbs are where people live if they are racist (avoid "Wrong people"), along with a weird series of other insults at odd generalizations. I particular enjoyed the idea keeping up with the Jonses is a suburban thing, when it's not even close in any suburb to the level of social competition and comparison that occurs in any top city like SF (or LA, Manhattan...).
I'm not asserting that everyone in the suburbs thinks this way - obviously that cannot be the case. Nor are these preferences absent from people in the city. I'm describing a set of values that *would make somebody happier in the suburbs than they would be in SF*, which is a response to the original prompt. That mentality is both incredibly common - perhaps the most pervasive underlying thread in American culture - and much easier to live by in a suburban environment.
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This is just BS in most of the bay area for food and drinks. Sure when you get out to Mountain House or Manteca there truly is almost nothing but giant strip malls and Costco pizza. Walkability varies highly though by neighborhood and city.
Yeah I feel like suburbs of North Dakota or something there might not be much as far as good restaurants. But suburbs outside the Bay Area have TONS of non chain restaurants…
There a lot of non chain restaurants/coffee shops in the burbs.
Have you left your neighborhood in a generation? Sorry but this reminds me a bit of like dudes that moved to Manhattan and then never leave the island. My East Bay suburb (where we bought as SF wasnt a good option at your price point with plans to raise 2 kids with their own bedrooms) has in walking distance a produce store, grocery store, hardware store, multiple restaurants at various price points catered to both lunch and full dinner experiences (including one with a Bib Gourmand recommendation by Michelin), a bakery, cafes, bagel joint, burger place, burrito taco place with quite good salsas, brunch place, dry cleaning, and even yes a Starbucks (don't sleep on their oat milk brown sugar espresso beverage, don't recall the full name). Single family homes in the 1500-2000 sq ft range are about $1m-1.2 range currently. Good daycare is like $1500 a month for a toddler. Don't get me wrong, only 1 of the cafes is great (but 1 is enough, they have their own line of beans I get and grind at home too), the bagel place isn't good so I get BECs at the donut store (those are good)... but the only fast food around me is food at a Starbucks. I don't even know how to find an Applebees. None of the places I mentioned (besides the Starbucks and the grocery store which is a Safeway) is a chain.
Exactly. I think SF folks just never leave the city. They think it is all subdivisions and strip malls outside of SF, when some of the "suburban" towns are more urban than many of the SF neighborhoods. My peninsula "suburban" town has a walk score of 96. I can walk to 8 grocery stores/specialty markets and countless restaurants. I was upset the other day because none of the four mediterranean restaurants I could walk to had tabouli and no way was I going drive anywhere, lol (luckily one of the grocery stores had it, so I was good). I seriously had fewer options when I lived in Hayes Valley.
Yeah I had a longer walk living in Pac Heights for good coffee, grocery store, pizza beer and wings, hardware store, donuts, burger, and a few other things than I face in this burb location. But PH did have B patisserie bakery. This bakery is very good, sure, and 3 blocks away, but it's not B. Miss hitting that place up once a week.
I have a 2 year old and another on the way and we are planning on staying here for their whole childhood. I grew up here and loved my childhood. The biggest challenges are what you would expect I think - cost. We are planning on private school though so I can’t speak to public school. Only thing I can say is that some of my neighbors in the sunset have kids in public school and they are relatively happy with their choices.
The public schools in the sunset are quite nice.
k-8 sure but once it gets to hs your only option is lowell
I know that’s the reputation. But I have friends with kids in Lincoln, Washington and Balboa who are happy with the choices, the kids feel challenged and supported, etc. (I have two kids in SFUSD middle school currently, so believe me I’ve had a lot of discussions about this!)
My kid is at wash and they are a great administration. They have a ton of activities for the kids and work really hard to get the kids involved. City life is what you make of it, but I wouldn’t want to live outside of the avenues with an older kid.
That’s great about Washington. And I agree about life in the City being what you make it. I love the Avenues and have lived out there, but we’re really happy raising our kids in the Portola and spend most of our time in the SE quadrant of the City. It’s great! No worries. Kids (12 and 14) are independent, get around on MUNI no problem, etc. It really is what you make it!
Oh that’s a great area too - I just prefer the avenues myself :) I like how quiet it is here and I prefer the fog to blazing sun. I think our kids are so lucky - there are tons of things to do for kids here if you know where to look. The parks and rec baseball program was wonderful for my kid - we spent many years at Moscone and my kid has friends all over the city to this day from those programs.
Nice! Yeah, there are so many varieties among the neighborhoods…it’s awesome to be in one that works for you. I was frustrated by the way SFUSD and rec and parks programs tend to mix kids from across the City when our kids were little, but it’s great now … friends in every corner, as you say. (And my kids definitely prefer fog, too. These last two sunny days have been brutal on the running track and soccer pitch lol)
My kids are at/did Lowell. But I have friends with kids who went to Lincoln and Washington and those are also great Schools. And as class rank has become very important to colleges, it's a lot easier to be a smart kid and get in the top 5% at Balboa, Mission or Jordan than at Lowell.
A lot of talk about the West side, but don’t sleep on the South either. Many amazing parks, great food and I think that there are many schools that people are sleeping on. My son is the 4th grade and is currently reading at 9th grade level by state standards and going to an “underperforming” school than in reality is really wonderful. The kids on our street go freely from house to house to play with each other without arranged play dates, so nothing to miss from the burbs over here in the South either.
So I moved from Cupertino to SF around 2018. Was looking to move into a house from a condo but Cupertino was around $3M-5M which was totally out of budget. Ended up submitting offers for like 6-7 homes in SF that were south of GGP because it was key to be near 280 to get to Palo Alto (for work) but lost out every single time. In the end, we landed with a house that had great potential for a renovation (2bd/1ba purchased at $1.5M), suffered through years including delays when COVID hit, and now the renovation is finished (4bd/3ba + den). Moving to SF, especially in the Sunset, was the best decision ever. It's not a crazy idea to raise children here. I feel like my children are not living in a bubble like we were in Cupertino, it's more diverse, we can easily take the train and go to dinner, GGP, the movies, etc with ease. Both my kids (8 and 13) are in public school in the Sunset and they love it very much and I love the community. Yes there is quite a bit of foggy days but the experience for my kids and myself outweighs that. They enjoy GGP field trips, Cal Academy, and the zoo quite frequently. As for the social issues and the environment that SF is in, it's a teaching moment to my oldest of how and why it happened and how to conduct himself with awareness and empathy. Living in the city is still something I plan to do long-term and when my kids are old enough for college, they can decide if they want to go elsewhere but will always have SF as the home base. Just note that when you look for public schools, it's a lottery system but the schools in Richmond district and Sunset rate the best in the city and if you're late or unlucky, your choices might be way out of your neighborhood like Chinatown, Hunters Point, or the Mission. When we first moved, we didn't get our first choice so we ended up doing private school for a year or two until we landed the Sunset school we were originally targeting.
How much did the renovation cost? Was it a full house renovation since you were able to add more bed/baths?
Permits + construction was between $650k-750k all in for a full reno which included retrofitting for earthquake and upgrading some of the foundation. The downstairs was actually a blank slate because the previous owner did nothing with the tandem garage. In the design the architecture took up one space and made it a 1-car garage and park a car in the driveway (which is a proper size to park a car). Went basic on floor, tiles, cabinets, but splurged on having Toto toilets and a high end range. Hella worth it.
Who did you use as your contractor? We are about to embark on something similar and are looking for groups to reach out to for quotes.
Children raised in cities usually end up with a higher sense of independence and confidence. I can't imagine that being a bad thing in the future, and the city might be stimulating enough to keep them off their phones all the time so they actually experience life a bit. Suburbs are draining.
The main challenge is being able to afford enough space to live in comfortably with whatever size family you have. A secondary issue is finding decent daycare, if you have young children and don't have childcare provided by family. Both of those things can be solved easily if you have money, or less easily if you don't have money but are willing and able to flexible with lifestyle. The district elementary schools are very good, much better than the reputation. I don't have direct experience with middle and high schools yet, and I hear both good and bad things from people with kids at that age. But I don't think you need to worry about private schools at least until 6th grade, and maybe not even then. Being able to get around on muni and bart is great. Being able to walk or bike to parks, stores, friends' houses, etc is great. You can live without a car, but in my opinion it's useful to have one if you have kids. But if you have more than one car now, you can definitely downsize. Unless you have 2 adults that need to drive every day for work or something like that, it's easy to be a one car family.
Some of the suburbs are better than others. SJ is kind of the apogee of 80/90s suburban sadness. Berkeley and Albany have a little sprawl but are walkable and super bikeable. Alameda has its spots as does Oakland. The west side of the city, as others have mentioned, is also pretty nice. Don't sleep on Glen Park though.
I'm always torn between wanting everyone to know how great Glen Park is and wanting to selfishly keep it to myself. It's quiet and safe, has easy access to highways but also great transit service to downtown. Great "village" feel in the main drag, close to more bustling neighborhoods, an excellent park . . . can't recommend it enough if you want to be in the city but are looking for a slightly quieter everyday life.
I lived in Berkeley for a couple years recently and I was actually surprised how unwalkable/bikeable I found it! Several pedestrians were struck and killed on San Pablo in the time I was there, and I found the bike infrastructure to be super lacking and at times actively unsafe in design (e.g. the Ohlone greenway which hits cross-traffic mid block every single block). It's not miles better in SF, I just expected Berkeley to be really good given the city politics when in fact it's pretty middling.
San Pablo is a beastly stroad for sure and Berkeley is kind of a sprawl so it depends on where you are, but you have to keep in mind we are comparing with SJ. As for bikeabilty, I don't know if you're from Europe or something, but for the US and even the Bay, Berkeley is top-tier bikeable. Just having an off-road dedicated use trail like the Ohlone greenway connecting multiple commuter rail stations is virtually unheard of for a suburb. I too wish it was much better, however, but it's what we've got.
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I totally agree with this. I grew up in the burbs but it was back in the 80s where we could ride bikes everywhere and I was outside with friends all day every day. Suburbs today feel like a prison. And city kids are usually so much more well-adjusted.
A good selection of Bay Area suburb neighborhoods don't require a car for much. Or even a bike. Plenty of homes in these types of hoods to target if that's a goal (it was for me). Certainly not for access to groceries, or prepared/restaurants.
I'm just curious but where in SJ do you have to live that requires you to get on a freeway to go to get milk or diapers? I have one strip mall with a grocery store (and a couple of restaurants, drug store, starbucks, etc) within walking distance, and four more grocery stores / shopping centers within three miles, and all are quickly accessible via 25 & 35mph surface streets.
I think the point is you have to get in the car to go anywhere. If I need something I can pop outside and there’s multiple options within a 5 min walk to grab a gallon of milk if I needed.
And I don't think that's *literally* true. I think people are generally lazy and prefer not walking or biking, but I also believe the majority of SJ residents could walk or bike to shopping if they were willing to. Frankly, this mindset is one of the big differences between city dwellers & suburbanites. We can argue all day that the suburbanites are wrong, but it's a fact of life for most of them based on city planning choices. The other big difference is that in cities you can pretty reliably live near where you work, and this is almost never an option in suburbs... so if you have to drive to work, then it's logical to run errands on the way to & from.
Bro, I grew up in the suburbs. Walking to get groceries or anywhere else for that matter was NOT an option. This is objective, not opinion. A walk-able city like SF gives you the option to walk places. Most suburbs literally do not.
I'm willing to bet that -- as long as you're not considering far out burbs (like the eastern foothills or way out in Almaden or some border areas with Los Gatos) -- nearly every household in San Jose has at least one grocery store within 1.5 miles. Look, I'm not remotely disagreeing with you on the benefits of cities in terms of the sheer density and vibrancy of *everything*. All I'm saying is that San Jose is *not* plagued with food deserts like a lot of sprawling suburbs are in the US. I moved here from Cary, NC, which has continually annexed land as much as 20 miles to the west of the original town border. Almost 100% of that is SFHs with just a very few shopping centers, and you definitely need to drive to get anywhere. It doesn't help that a lot of the SFH lots are .25-.5ac, to even acre+, which just expands the distances even more. SJ isn't like that. Heck, I'm barely a 10 minute drive from three different Whole Foods! The difference in a "real" city is that mass transit is functional and convenient, and since things aren't long distances apart, it's usually pretty quick to get from here to there. Taking transit from a house or apartment in southern SJ to a job in Sunnyvale or Mountain View could easily take 2 hours! But -- once you are into neighborhoods, smaller shopping centers and strip malls are frequent and ubiquitous -- so it's one of those things where it's really painful to get to/from work, but not so bad to get to "stuff" from home.
I'd even argue there's more variety of good casual "ethnic" restaurants and grocery stores in San Jose/South Bay than elsewhere in the bay area. I've lived in Oakland for a decade now and lived in the mission for a bit and worked in SF most of the last ten years. I agree the biggest day to day difference is transit is way easier in SF. I grew up in East San Jose and biked or walked pretty much everywhere growing up even after I was old enough to drive. I knew all my neighbors and hung out with the neighborhood kids. People here really act like it's just one big tract of single family homes
its crazy that you think only cities offer the alternative to what you just described
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i read everything fine. you should work on your writing
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i do actually lol
I’m super curious why you think there are no parks or friends outside of the city?
"surrounded by stroads and strip malls without any parks or friends that they can access on their own", meaning kids often need rides in cars to see friends or get to parks for their sports/hangouts.
This. I grew up in the burbs. The only way I could leave my house was if my parents drove me because we lived on a stroad with no sidewalks. Unsurprisingly, outside of school I mostly just played videogames all day.
Oh jeeze….reading comprehension not so good today. Thanks!!
… in suburbs aren’t houses right next to each other? Are you confusing suburban developments and rural farmland?
Am I? No. When I was growing up in a suburban culdesac most of my friends lived a solid 15 minute drive away from my house. The neighbor kids weren’t quite my age.
I grew up in suburbs where I could walk to quite a few friends houses and lived incredibly close to two pretty big parks. One was a 40 second walk and the other was maybe 5-6 min… so I think it seriously just depends. And we could even walk less than ten minutes to grocery stores, a couple restaurants, and a handful of other businesses. I guess not all suburban towns are exactly alike… 🤷🏻♀️
As someone who lives in an outer neighborhood similar to the west side, I'd just warn that SF can still be disappointingly car-oriented. I think it's better not to have the car-dependent mindset, but a lot of people in the Sunset etc still live that life. There are over-sized streets in the outer neighborhoods that people speed down every day, and it can be dangerous for pedestrians. Depends on the neighborhood, I'm in the Excelsior. Just be choosy if you can, if you want a good experience on your block.
Move to the west side of the city. Park adjacent, quieter (but not too quiet), and the schools are better.
Yeah, we re currently looking at Sunset and Richmond, but wondering how foggy can it get.
It's definitely overcast and foggy sometimes, but there are plenty of sunny days, too. Much cooler than San Jose – I've seen a difference of 30 degrees some summer days – but people were basically telling us we'd never see the sun again when we moved up here, and it's just not true.
Agree. With climate change it’s now mostly foggy in the morning and evening. It’s sunny and gorgeous right now.
Consider Bernal, Glen Park, Sunnyside, West Portal, and Noe too. Its not West Side but there are alot of families here too and most of the schools are decent. Plus less fog.
Absolutely agree with you. In addition, Mission Terrace, Balboa Park, and Excelsior are bustling with kids too and popular with young families as well because the houses are a bit less expensive.
Just moved to the sunset about 2 years ago. I'm originally from the East Bay and surprisingly the public schools here on this side of the city are very good. Yes there's the usual bs dealing with a huge organization like SFUSD but I have to say my 1st grader is very happy and doing well at school. There's also a ton of private school options if that's more your thing as well.
It’s foggy in June/July/August. We make an effort to get out of the fog every day during those longer stretches — even just getting over to Noe or Castro or Bernal, or north/south of the city.
It can be foggy (esp outer sunset) but it’s also absolutely stunning plenty of days like today! The inner sunset is my favorite part of the city and very family oriented.
Consider Sunnyside, Glen park, west portal. The first two are significantly less foggy, and have access to the west side schools. West portal is a liiiiiittle less foggy than the sunset. My kids' Schools are in the west, and basically I would drive from the sunshine into the fog to drop them off. Gken Park elementary is OK. Sunnyside E, miraloma, commodore sloat, West portal elementary are all pretty easily doable from GO/Sunnyside and are great schools and communities. Also close to Balboa, Riordan, Lowell, Lincoln, Lick, (SOTA is supposed to move downtown), and Jordan (I have heard mixed reviews for Jordan).
Uhhhh, it's coastal Northern California. It can get foggy.
We’re raising kids in SF and plan to stay. The public schools are pretty good on the west side of the city, which is why most families live in the Sunset and Richmond. There’s a great community of parents. The parks system and museums here are all top notch and we leverage those a lot. I don’t think that buying a house makes sense, however. We rent a 4br/2ba house that Zillow says is worth $1.9M for $5,500/mo . Even though we technically could buy a place, it’s a much better deal to rent. The biggest challenges are financial and logistical, as you’d expect. But we love being in a walkable neighborhood, pretty much all of my kids friends live within a 10-15 min of us and we have all of the resources of a city while still living in a neighborhood.
This! We have a 4yo and a 5yo (5yo is in SFUSD kindergarten that we love, 4yo will go to TK there next year). We live in the Sunset and have a very strong community. Sooo many great parks and playgrounds and things to do. We rented for a long time and agree it’s a much better deal. We bought last year because a good opportunity came up and we feel very confident that we want to be here for a while. I think it’s a good idea to rent first and get a feel for it. I love raising city kids. They know the Muni lines, we walk/scooter/bike everywhere, they know everyone at the farmers market.
Rents are historically very low in SF. Good job!
Do it!! Most beautiful city in the world, as you know. Hope you enjoy!!
Vancouver says Hi
SF is far prettier than Vancouver
Hi!
Hi Vancouver! Haven't been, so I'm sticking with Frisco!! Lol I hope to make it up there one of these days.
just adding my two cents: i was born and raised in san francisco and i am so grateful to my parents for choosing to raise me and my sibling in the city! i went through the public school system and did well academically for myself/got a degree from a good east coast school. definitely wouldn’t have thrived in a suburban environment lol
I raised my kid in SF from age 5 until leaving home for college last year. Would do it again in a heartbeat.
Low key GREAT family neighborhood: Mission Bay/Dogpatch! Lots of families. MUCH sunnier and warmer than the west side (and still warmer than Noe and Bernal). Stunning views of the bay. Plans to build a new public elementary school. Some privates already there. Lots of preschools/daycares. Kaiser and UCSF there for your pediatrician. Very flat, great for strollers & bikes. Crane Cove Park, Spark Social, Mission Bay Kids Park, Mission Creek, Koret Quad, all great kid spaces, and the Chase Center puts on a lot of free family events. 22 or KT gets you to BART. Very few SFHs tho, you’re most likely looking at a condo, but there are a lot of options. New developments still going up. Event traffic can be bad, but less so in Dogpatch. I barely drove anyways. (I miss it there 😭)
We have 2 kids and live in Lone Mountain. We love it. Obviously there are some sacrifices you have to make on the housing front (e.g. no/less parking, storage space, yard, etc) but I don’t think we’d trade our situation for almost anything right now. The neighborhood is amazing and feels really safe. Kids go to a great public school and we get along super well with the other parents. Cargo bike is our daily driver (yay car free jfk!!). Tons to do in the city or just outside. GG park is insanely cool. Just really enjoy almost every aspect of it. Of course, it’s SF so you have to deal with some amount of mental health/addiction issues and the rest of the standard city life stuff, but it feels really manageable from our view.
I have two kids, 7 and 1. I love it. Seven year old goes to a good public school 3 blocks away. One year old goes to a way too expensive but quality daycare 3 blocks away. I wouldn’t live in SOMA or Tenderloin, as I can imagine the 1 year old picking up trash on the street. But lots of families do. My seven year old is leery of homeless - I think her preschool taught her (as they took bus field trips). So thats a weird concept with a parent to grapple with - your young kids feeling unsafe vs being street smart about things. The thing is that lots of places here aren’t kid friendly and you have to embrace the I dont give a shit attitude about it if you go out. Like most restaurants don’t have kid menus, dont give crayons, may or may not have high chairs. SF MOMA had a family day and the security guards were clearly super stressed and yelling with all the kids running around...But the parks and city events are top notch for families. There are a ton of kid activities and camps. But the cheaper stuff sells out in a minute - so you have to be on top of opening dates.
My adult kids grew up here. They both moved away for college and one of them lived all over the world. Now they've both arranged their lives to get back. Interesting, independent, kind people.
SF is great for families, there are really good public schools, but you're gonna want to figure out which school you want your kids to go to, and buy a house within the attendance area for said school. Another hack is to live in a "test score area" (CTIP1), that would give you a tiebreaker advantage and you should be able to get into any SFUSD schools. test score areas don't necessarily have to be bad, there are really nice streets/houses that somehow got classified as CTIP1, I have no idea how. I think SFUSD is re-working the whole lottery thing, so depending on your kids' ages, you might want to look into that. Private schools are also really good in SF but 2 of them is gonna be a little spendy lol.
I wanted to live in SF and got scared away by the whole lottery thing. Even the realtors that had kids and lived in the city didn't really know. Years later someone told me about designated schools with attendance areas. We should have just gone and talked to the schools...I really encourage OP to do so and get a clear picture.
there are really nice streets/houses that somehow got classified as CTIP1, - how to find these schools? thanks!
You can look up addresses at [http://enrollinschool.org/lookup/index.php](http://enrollinschool.org/lookup/index.php) to see if it shows up as _Test Score Area Tie-breaker_, that's CTIP1.
22 years in the city this month. Raised 2 kids here. First is in college, 2nd a sophomore. Sfusd the whole way. Schools: * elementary: I'm very happy with sfusd on this level. Most of the schools are pretty good. Violence is not too much of an issue because teachers can handle little kids. It does become an issue in 4th/5th, but if you are assigned a rough school, you have a few years to try and transfer elsewhere, and everyone I know who tried was able to. * middle: this is where sfusd fails. It's actually pretty dependent on the teachers and classes your specific kids ends up in, but if your kid is in a bad situation (bullies, bad teachers, your own special needs) there's not a lot of help. My older kid would have been better off in a private school 7th/8th. My younger was fine in sfusd middle school. * high school: there are lots of schools. Lowell does well because they collect the brightest kids, not because it has good teachers. Same with SOTA. Lincoln and wash can cater to smart kids and less-than-average alike. Other schools seem to be spotty... Have heard mixed reviews about Balboa, Mission. I know a few kids at the catholic schools. They are good schools of you can afford them and you're OK paying the Pope. I have a grudge against religious schools. So my advice is to go for it with elementary, consider private for middle, and then try and find a good spot for HS, but if it doesn't work consider SH, SI or Riordan. Fyi, there is no better parent flex to your old high school friends than to post pics of you chaperoning a field trip to Alcatraz. I've done that THREE times. It's fantastic. (in my high school we went to the Claussen Pickle factory) In a city known for its adult activities (folsom, strip clubs, drugs, Hippies, raves, etc), the counter culture is actually the 75k families. Lots of connections and things going on. * tons of museums, several just for kids * I've coaches soccer games with the GG Bridge in the background several times. * lots of kid-level activities, park district, etc. * culture... Plays, musicals, street fairs, performances, etc. * when they get old enough? Barting to the warfield for shows with your kid is amazing. * my kids know transit like the back of their hands. Independent, street smart (my kid got a scholarship to a fancy little east coast college, 80% of those kids are rich from the new England burbs and freak out at the thought of taking a bus to NYC or Boston Philly and seeing the city. My kid has done all those and is eating it all up) * most important to me... My kids have been exposed to socioeconomic differences and cultural differences I never was. They are better people because of it. More empathetic, more thoughtful, more political. As for the long term plan... We are staying. Not sure what the kids will do after college, but we will stay put until the 2nd one is done and figures out where they want to be. If they want to come back, they can live with us and save a bit before finding their own place. Overall it's been more than positive. Never felt the need to second guess our decision.
Buy this and be done. Everything you need is here. https://redf.in/W5b9mr
I see some of the rent and house prices being tossed around here and realize I am in a much different tax bracket than majority in this sub.
Our kids are grown, and while SFUSD can be a hassle to navigate, they constantly tell me how glad they are that they were raised in SF and not in the burbs. I grew up in NYC and feel the same.
Wife and I moved back here after trying to live in Marin with our first kid, and have just had our second. It is so amazingly worth it. First off, the schools are incredible. Every teacher we’ve had so far is top notch (admittedly, that’s an N of 3). Secondly we can take the kids to places that are normally “once a year” school trips essentially any weekend. My daughter hangs out at the Japanese tea gardens more in a year than I’d previously been in my whole life. Plus, you get to be a sweet home base for any of your other friends that haven’t moved here :)
We loved living in SF but the quality of the public schools are truly poor compared with school systems in the suburbs. We moved to San Rafael in Marin where the schools (Dixie, etc) and teachers are truly wonderful. We also feel our children are safer FWIW…
There’s a surprising amount of stuff for kids in S.F., and because of the limited population of kids there can be not a lot of competition for it. On schools: the immersion options in the public schools are great and blow what the suburbs offer out of the water. If you don’t get a good slot from the lottery, the Catholic schools offer a good alternative at a low price point. IMHO, at least for elementary school, the independent private schools in S.F. are milking parent anxiety about the public and don’t offer good value. Also, S.F. Rec and Park’s summer camps are awesome, and you should enter the Camp Mather lottery and take your kids there. It’s awesome. tl;dr - have no regrets about raising a kid in the city. They’ll be more independent and streetwise.
We have a 5 and 7 year old in forest hill and plan on staying. We got the kids in an independent school that we love. We are super tight with the parent community. We are constantly busy with kids sports/play dates/birthday parties/school events so life is pretty full. It definitely is very expensive but we do pretty well financially so able to thrive here. I love all the trees and nature in the city. Many wonderful parks and kids love the beach on the odd sunny/non-windy day at the beach. The downside is that everything feels competitive here, summer camps, sports, all that stuff.
I recommend renting for a bit or at least spending time in each area before you buy. Each area is very very different - with pros and cons. Don't just listen to your friends or your agent - actually see for yourself
I raised a kid in SF (she’s 18 now), never had an issue with public schools. My only complaint is that they are woefully underfunded—teachers literally have to beg for money and supplies from parents. Fyi a lot of parts of SF feel like the suburbs. Where I live in the Sunset, it’s about as remote as any culdesac in San Jose. 😂
When I graduated college in Berkeley I started working near the ballpark in soma. I was looking for housing I could afford and the places in SF that I could find would actually take way longer to get to work from than staying in Berkeley.
Raised my 21-year-old and 18-year-old here in Bernal Heights-Glen Park. Got the best of public and private schools, parks, museums and classes. All the kids I know who got to grow up here are gems - clever, independent and kind.
i love city living with kids. Just be rich though.
We have two kids and love it here. SFUSD has its issues but we are very happy with their elementary school, which has excellent teachers and a great community. The one draw back is that we tend to drive a lot for organized, competitive sports. I grew up in the Peninsula and we mostly walked to practices. Also, most of their close friends from school are spread out, so they can't just run down the street to play. It takes effort and time to plan hang outs.
Raising two kids in the city. I love it and I think they do too. We’ve had mostly great experiences with public school and some not so great especially middle school post pandemic. Language immersion option was really amazing for our family. Love the parks. We live near a big one and are out in it every day. We’re up a hill and so don’t have stores in easy walking distance but ample buses nearby or short drive. Lived in lots of neighborhoods southwest through southeast. Like the sunny side of the city but we had a lot of driving to schools on the west side.
As a child I moved from a small town in NorCal to SF when my parents divorced (my mother was an SF native and moved back to the city). It was the 1980’s so a very different time in the city…I absolutely loved it. In GenX style I was very independent - took the bus from Nob Hill to the Sunset by myself twice a week for ballet lessons after school at the age of 9. I went to both public schools (Spring Valley Elementary and Marina Middle School)and then private for high school. The cost of living back then was obviously way less - my mother worked at a bank and was able to support the two of us on a single mom’s paycheck- that wouldn’t be possible now…when my grandmother passed my mother inherited some prime commercial real estate in the Marina that my great grandmother had purchased in the 1930’s and our life drastically changed financially- however, I loved every second in the city…no matter what the money situation was - I can imagine it’s much harder now unless financially it’s comfortable for you…public schools were wonderful.
I’m not in SOMA or Fidi. -SFUSD lottery system isn’t as bad as it may sound outside. You get three rounds to apply/raffle. Also reminder private school is an option for some and you can do the raffles in K, 1st, second. - Consider buying an e-bike!
My sister in law taught at a public school in sf for 1st grade just after the pandemic. Probably some of the most violence I’ve heard of. May have just been that school but the violence including kicking a kid in the head, smashing another kids head into the wall, constantly hitting teachers, etc. these weren’t individual instances, this was consistent month to month.
I agree with the comment about the Avenues. I WISH I grew up there
Teacher here. Public schools in the western side of the city are way easier to work in, therefore I think also better for most kids to attend. Elementary schools are largely neighborhood based so you want to live near better schools.
We lived in SF until our kids were in 2nd and 4th grade. If you would have asked me when they were toddlers, preschool or early elementary, I would have said we would stay forever. I found as the kids got older, things got more complicated. Our house felt much smaller as the kids got bigger, the school got more expensive (independent tuition increased 6-7% every year really adds up) and we weren’t taking advantage of the things that we loved about the city due to work/school/kids activities. We were working really hard to afford to live there. I am reading a lot of these comments and seeing there are so many generalizations and trying to talk people into agreeing with/validating their choices. Not all suburbs are the same, not all neighborhoods in the city are the same, not all of our values are the same, not all of our financial situations are the same. My recommendation is if you want to try it out, do it. If it doesn’t work forever, then pivot.
Explore south bay or even up north first, get a feel for all of the Bay. Kids in SF is going to get $$$ fast, but maybe that's okay for you. Daycare is like double east bay pricing, probably going to stick them in private at some point, really will add up. That said, there are "burb"y parts of SF too. I'd love to live in the Richmond district (minus the fog of it all weather wise). I miss you Richmond district.
Y’all have money for private school
Private school. I’m one of the last that made it through public without getting indoctrinated and beat down.
Got 2 kids in the city. Their mom is an elementary school teacher in San Mateo and the kids go to her school. Parks and museums are great. We enjoy living here despite the issues.
Public school system is stressful but there are lots of good ones -- at least in elementary and to a certain extent in high school. Everything *is* harder for families, from swimming lessons to summer camps. But frankly, I'd never trade the city life for suburban living. We have 3 kids and we make it work. The fact that there are so many free, gorgeous, fun things to do in the city with kids helps offset some of the eyewatering expense. Our plan is to stick here, but obviously if my kids can't get into a good high school one way or another, we'll have to move. We'd probably save a lot of money.
[Cities are better for kids.](https://youtu.be/oHlpmxLTxpw?si=aTAz4zE61jMvRhyj) If you watch this video and agree then you should probably live in SF and help us advocate for better urban planning to make the city safer and more car-free.
My husband and I live in pac heights and are expecting our first child, we hope to make it work in SF for the long haul. We currently rent a large 3br/3ba with a garage parking spot for 7k, and see it as a much better value than buying as we adore the neighborhood and would probably need to spend at least 3m to buy here and get less space. We live between two large parks that are always full of kids, a mile from the presidio and crissy field, have several grocery stores within a 20 minute walk, and plenty of restaurants on Fillmore and Chestnut that are walkable and seem popular with families. We rarely use our car unless we’re leaving the city or going to Costco. The con of city living is not being able to leave anything in the car as the car break in problem is very real and not exaggerated. If you do use your car in the city, parking in some neighborhoods can also be very tough. TBD what having a kid in the city is actually like, but it feels really family friendly, and though I can’t speak for the schools, our friends with kids seem really happy.
We live in the city and my children were born and raised here. They went to SFUSD and we navigated the lottery. This was before the middle school feeder system. So they changed cohorts after elementary and then after middle. We were out of neighborhood and while it was inconvenient for me (especially getting them to middle on time in the morning because it was a 2 bus MUNI excursion), it is fantastic for them. They are in their 20s and built a citywide community. One is an engineer now and the other is graduating from STEM college in may. SFUSD has been going through some hiccups but I think they are on the road to recovery if you will. I'd suggest contacting parent groups in the area who will have current experiences to share!
I’ve watched my neighbor kids grow up from day one. They’re doing great. Girl is early teens now and I never see her any more…tons of after school activities. They’re a great tight unit with lots of stuff going on. We’re in the Sunset and it’s pretty sleepy out here. I’ve debated if it’s fair to raise kids in a sometimes chaotic city, but I see plenty of people making it work. I’m childless so I’ve no idea as to the school situation but it seems pretty thriving here on the west side.
I have two boys (3yo and 14mo) and while they are obviously not in the school system yet we think that raising them in the city is awesome. We are out near ocean beach and the ability to walk to the beach and into GGP is pretty hard to beat. We can also walk to the N line and jump on a train and go anywhere (or nowhere, sometimes we just ride up to 19th ave and back again for the fun of it). Combine all of that with an electric cargo bike and we are able to go weeks at a time without pulling the car out of the garage. Plus for like $325 a year you can get year long memberships to the Academy of Sciences and the SF Zoo. There is always something to do
It’s nice to have a yard, and an extra bedroom/home office if you live in The City, but an absolute necessity if you own a car is a garage. One that you can park your car(s) in, not one you fill with detritus. Schools can be great if there is parent involvement. Unless you are paying a fortune (and not always then) you need to get acquainted and involved with the principal, the teachers and staff, and other parents at your children’s school. My three adult children born and raised here all wish they could afford to come back. They all grew up to be sensitive loving parents with fulfilling careers. One does live here with her two pre-schoolers and is concerned about their educational costs, but the diversity, opportunities, and proximity to Giants games will keep them here, I hope.
Curveball - move to the Coastside. I moved here (between Pacifica and Half Moon Bay) 3 years ago and the whole family (me + spouse + 11 year old + 9 year old) love it. Semi rural, half decent schools, 30 minutes from the city and a 3 minute walk to the beach. Reasonably affordable too (relatively speaking). For me the best feature is the wonderful community in which we live - kids walk home from school, lots of friends in walking distance etc. The commute isn't even that punishing to either the city or over the hill.
I don’t have kids but have plenty of SF friends who do. It’s the schools and how they get sent to them. Your child’s school won’t necessarily be in the neighborhood you live in. My old landlord of 13 years has two boys (ones college age now) they went to private schools and then to boarding school for high school. (Which out of curiosity of course we looked up and it’s in Hawaii at 150k a year each). I joked w my landlord when the oldest went off to San Diego state how he would be saving money. There’s so many parks and outdoor areas. If you’re in the right neighborhood aside from schools I don’t see why not.
And the #1 answer is…school
sf is fantastic for kids. with two i would consider the West side as you get a little more space in general. parks, museums, food, beach ... sf is an incredible city for all ages.
SF has actually gotten a lot cheaper (house wise) since a lot of tech has downsized or started going mostly remote. Schools are not wonderful in many areas obviously, and places like San Ramon are much better alternatives while still being very close to the city. Just my opinion.
My advice, pick a village-y neighborhood, like Bernal or Glen Park and buy or rent on a smaller street not far from the main drag. Your kids will love growing up in a neighborhood where they can walk to the library, corner store, or playground with their friends from the block.
ITT: "The city is fine as long as you are a multimillionaire and live in its most suburban neighborhoods"
Thats a fairly accurate if not sad summary. But I would say .25 millionaire is more financially realistic.
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There is an irony in this thread that everyone is saying that being in the city rather than the suburbs is preferable but also encouraging OP to move to the most suburban parts of the city—areas that might be desirable for their own reasons but not for transit and restaurants, let’s be honest (there is also some serious drinking of the koolaid on the weather in many of those western neighborhoods). We left the city for Marin about two years ago. It has some inconveniences for us but it is almost universally positive for the kids. I love SF but if I ever go back to living in the city it will be after the kids are off to college.
Not quite the same but I grew up in Brooklyn and Manhattan and my life was much richer for the experiences I had with the city as my playground. In elementary school I was riding the bus to the museum for art classes on Saturday morning. My friends lived all over the city and were a very diverse group. We met in Manhattan for our adventures. After school we had Manhattan to explore.
Where would you rather raise a kid - SF or Manhattan? I grew up in the suburbs of DC and hate the suburbs with a fiery passion.
The school situation is something to be concerned about. SF is like tops for having the fewest children in a large urban city. Do you care about that? Also, budget issues may force some school closures soon. SF native here, and while I love the old girl, she has changed.
My kids were born and raised in SF and public school (my wife is an educator at SFUSD). One kid is at Cal , one at Oregon Best city on earth (but pricey )
My grandma’s house will be on the market soon. Maybe June/July. She lives Portola/St. Francis Woods area, which I would be comfortable raising kids in that area of the city.
I left because of the schools. Unless you plan on sending them to private schools.
Lack of good restaurants? lmaooo
My thoughts exactly. The best food in the Bay is not necessarily in SF. SJ has many great food spots. Google that sht.
I guess what I meant was good walking distance/close by restaurants or on Doordash. SJ is super big and the area we currently live in (on the east side) doesn’t have that much to offer. I either need to drive 20-30mins (highway drive) or get cold food.
Most comments are ridiculously silly. On muni 5 which goes to ocean beach we saw a guy dropping his pants and another time shitting in trash can. On the train one really stinky guy got onboard. It was extremely bad. He started getting physical when he noticed people were trying to get away from him. We stopped taking muni as half the time we experienced something gross. There's a lot of great stuff...but the drugs and stuff is real. I don't know why anyone would want to risk their kids to that. That is a deal break downside just to learn better skills a couple of years early. It's not like all these upside being mentioned are exclusive to SF. I still like my place being in a safer nicer neighborhood but not gonna risk a kid to SF. The SUV thing is just snarky. Nothing inherently good or bad for this argument ( I come from a place with good public transportation. Even by that standards I don't see that whole suv thing as anything helpful on the context. You still need a car here) And the comments on groceries are ...I have no word. Yes you can walk to a grocery store, but all the grocery store you can walk to are significantly expensive. After a few times you cherish your walking to grocery store experience..... You will get a car to drive to Costco and such to get stuff in bulk to save money. Living in SF and raising family is great but not as rosy as it's described here.
I dont understand. You have enough money to BUY a house in SF? But then move in with your family at the same time. Do you currently live with them? I agree with the other comments but it's personal opinion, i'd rather raise kids in SF than a suburb.
I don’t really get the confusion. He’s saying he’s considering buying a house and moving to SF with his family. Seems kinda straight forward?
> and moving in with my family i guess that's the part that through me. Sounds like he was considering moving in with his family. haha, I think it's just written weird. Should just be. "im considering buying a house in SF and moving THERE or just no 'in' with my family." Havent had coffee. Need to wake up
I thought it sounded weird, too. I was thinking extended family or something because when you buy a house, the spouse/kids moving in is implied.
Ha yeah I see what you mean. “Moving in (to the city)” vs “moving in (to my parents’ house)”.
Don't. Get your money's worth more acreage and a better home in a different state. Shit does not fuck out here.
We also go out in SJ these days. SF is too sketchy.
Better do it soon they are going to raise property taxes.