Living in Pinole

I like to tell parents the best determining factor for a child's success has little to do with the school they attend and more to do with the family environment they come from. Parents (caregivers) who care and are involved in their child's education both at school and at home make the difference no matter where their child attends school. They also make the difference at the schools their children attend. Schools with not-great test scores but great parent involvement should not be ruled out. We attend a fantastic school in Pinole (Ellerhorst) after moving here two years ago. It is very diverse in every way you can imagine- we have socioeconomic diversity, cultural diversity, ability diversity (we have 3 classrooms for severely and non-severely handicapped children) and political diversity. We have a strong and committed PTA and a very active Dads Club. I'm so happy to be part of this community. Some other pluses of this particular area (Pinole Valley-the community that begins at the east side of the freeway off the Pinole Valley Road exit) are the lush rolling hills with hiking trails, the wildlife, the better summer weather and safety. My big kid can ride his bike freely throughout the valley with the other neighborhood kids. But hurry before home prices get crazy- prices here are starting to take off! 

Loving Pinole

I'd second previous poster's glowing recommendations of Pinole. I can't speak personally to the experience of LGBT families, but can say that there does appear to be a lot of diversity here (ethnic, economic, generational, etc). My 20-month daughter and I go to our local playground almost every day and see kids there from all different backgrounds. Our neighborhood has a lot of empty-nesters but also a LOT of new families moving in. We're probably going to send our daughter to the East Bay Waldorf School for at least her preschool education, which would not be everyone's choice, but have also heard wonderful things about Ellerhorst and are still thinking seriously about going the public route for grade school. I'm happy to talk in more detail if it would help -- feel free to PM me :)

I can highly recommend Pinole.  I have heard very good things about the Cameron School, in El Cerrito, which offers speech therapy and preschool style classes for students who qualify in WCCUSD.  If you choose the back part of Pinole Valley, you get to send your daughter to Ellerhorst, which is a very good school.  I think you are priced out of El Cerrito if you want to keep it under $700k, but should be able to get something nice in Pinole if you move quickly when you see a house you like.  Pinole Valley is safe, family-friendly, and diverse.  You can walk to the local park, but everything else is about 1.5 miles away.  We have a Trader Joe's, Sprouts, Peet's etc. plus a bunch of chains and a handful of mom and pops.  

I know some folks who live in Benicia and have spent a good bit of time there.  I like it a lot and it is definitely walkable and has a lot of charming small businesses on 1st street.  It doesn't feel very diverse and it doesn't really feel like it's part of the Bay Area proper.  Most of the people we know here in Pinole go into the city or Oakland/Berkeley pretty regularly, whereas most of the people we know in Benicia don't really seem to like to cross the bridge.  

I really feel like Pinole is one of the "best kept secrets" here in the Bay, and my husband and I joke that it must have a cloaking device on it or something.  We feel close to everything but also far away, if that makes any sense.  It also feels much less crowded here than it does everywhere else.  Good luck with your search!  

We bought a house next door in Pinole in 2013 and love it here. We have friends who commute to the city -- there is an express bus to downtown SF that picks up from Richmond Parkway Transit Center, and my husband works in Berkeley and gets there by either car (San Pablo Dam Rd to 24 to avoid 80) or commuter bus (picks up right downtown, a 5-minute drive from our house, and goes to Del Norte BART). Pinole has a farmer's market and CSA subscription options; there's a small pick-your-own farm in El Sobrante. We have neighbors from a wide range of racial/ethnic backgrounds, and another friend, a former Lutheran minister, pointed out that El Sobrante has just about every house of worship you can name in one small parcel of land :)

If you have specific questions, feel free to contact me directly. I would also highly recommend the realtor we worked with, Declan Spring from Red Oak Realty; he knows West County very well and is good at meeting people where they're at and giving them a realistic sense of their options.

We live next door, in Pinole.  Some parts of El Sobrante are really lovely and some parts are downright weird since it is unincorporated.  A few years ago when we moved it wasn't unheard of to see someone riding their horse to the local liquor store.  Lots of people have big gardens and raise chickens, we know one family there that also has sheep and goats.  The neighborhoods near Kennedy Grove are lovely and get a highly regarded elementary school, Olinda.  Pinole is close by, and has a Trader Joe's, Sprouts, Peet's, etc. and a bunch of other big chain names.  People seem to flow easily between El Sobrante, Pinole, and Hercules.  Pinole also has a decent weekly Farmer's Market with at least a few organic vendors.  This whole area is very diverse and we've met a lot of progressively minded people here, although we've also met a few older folks who definitely were not.  I get the feeling this used to be a very conservative area but that a lot of the old guard is aging out/moving on and younger, more progressive families are moving in.  

If we ever win the lottery we will move to Northbrae in Berkeley, but in the meantime we just feel fortunate to have found a section of the Bay Area that is still affordable and nice.  We love being here, and the outdoor recreation availability has been more amazing than we first thought.  It's awesome to be able to walk out your front door and access the Ridge Trail.   Logistically: There is a truly excellent play based preschool in El Sobrante called Sunshine Playschool that I would highly recommend over driving to Berkeley.  Your husband can take the Lynx bus from the park and ride in Hercules to the Transbay Terminal in downtown SF.

I'm just going to throw out a 3rd option: Pinole! It's farther from Berkeley than El Cerrito, but closer than San Leandro.  We walk around and ride bikes around our neighborhood all the time with our 5 and 3 year old, and we are always running into other families out doing the same thing.  It's a really family friendly town, our local school has an extremely active PTA and we've made more friends living here than we ever did after living a decade in Oakland.  This summer they're doing live music and movie nights in the park, and families bring picnics and chill.  My husband commutes to Berkeley during normal commute times and it takes him about half an hour.  If you look at the back part of Pinole Valley, the part that gets Ellerhorst Elementary, you should be able to get a house in your size with a great backyard for between $600-650.  We live there and are able to walk to the local park, which has playgrounds, soccer fields, and a baseball diamond.  Pinole has excellent nature, a handful of decent restaurants, a great Farmer's Market etc.  Take a look!      

West Contra Costa County! We moved to Pinole in 2013 and are now very happily settled in with our 8-month-old daughter, planning to stay here for a long while. We feel like it's perfectly situated on the line between semi-rural (we have hiking trails in the hills behind our development, and neighbors with horses) and semi-urban (there's an independent coffeeshop downtown, a commuter bus that runs to Del Norte BART, a Saturday farmer's market, and very talented community theater). My husband commutes to Berkeley for work, which has good days and bad days, but is generally manageable. And when we are craving more culture, Berkeley and San Francisco are easy to get to. I can definitely feel the place shifting as more young professionals get priced out of Berkeley/Oakland -- the elementary schools are OK, middle and high school are by report not-so-great, but I would not be surprised if they look very different in 10 years.

Hope this helps. Happy to answer any more questions if you've got them!

I know this is not the part of the county you're asking about, but I wanted to put in a plug for west Contra Costa :)

We have lived in the western half of the county (Pinole) for 3 1/2 years and LOVE it. It is definitely an "up-and-coming" area (there are open houses in our development literally every weekend), lots of young families moving in. The houses are not cheap, but you could definitely get more house for your money than you'd find in Lamorinda or Berkeley. There are tons of hiking trails within an easy walk from our house; neighbors have chickens, goats, and even horses. Before my daughter was born last year, I regularly rode my bike downtown to write at East Bay Coffee Company; now I walk w/her to the playground around the corner from our house almost every day, and have met several very kind mamas and babies there. My husband commutes to Berkeley, and while 80 is sometimes challenging, there are back roads and workarounds that can spare you most of the traffic.

Public schools here are OK-and-on-track-to-get-better (one of the few up sides of gentrification), and we are 15 minutes from the East Bay Waldorf School in El Sobrante.

Happy to talk more about pros and cons if it's helpful. Good luck!

We live in Pinole after ten years in Oakland and are very happy here.  It was a big culture shock at first, we accidentally called the police on the paper boy because a decade in Oakland told us that a man going slowly from house to house at 4 am was up to no good.  I don't know about your price point, but I think you can rent a nice 3 bedroom house around here for $2600 and a 2 bedroom apartment for around $1900.  Small houses like ours seem to be selling for around $500-550k.  It's cheaper because the commute to the city is awful, but my husband commutes to Berkeley and it's not bad.  I have a reverse commute to Solano County and that is smooth as butter.  Pinole is a great place for kids.  There are awesome parks and a lot of nature and in general it's just very chill and safe.  We have a newly built Sprouts, a Trader Joe's, a third wave coffee place, a weekly farmer's market, and a bunch of mom and pop restaurants.  There are not a lot of cultural opportunities though, and we still head into Berkeley/Oakland at least once a week.  As far as schools, I toured Ellerhorst Elementary (a 7 on Great Schools) and talked to a lot of people in the neighborhood and people raved about it.  I have no idea what we'll do for middle/high school since their reputations aren't great, but they are both newly rebuilt and who knows what they will be like by then.  In general, I think that Pinole is a "hidden gem" in the Bay Area because driving through on the freeway makes it look like just a bunch of big-box stores, but it's so much more. When we wanted to buy we just kept driving up 80 until we could afford something, but now that we're here I've turned into a Pinole booster! Good luck with your search!    

We live in West Contra Costa County (Pinole) and love it! While I don't know specifically about LGBT resources here, our area definitely meets your other criteria (diverse, low crime and affordable). We moved here 3 years ago and when we moved in, our neighbor across the street told my husband about how he and his wife had had their house broken into! ...in 1975. A big change from where we were living in Oakland.

We are a white family; our neighbors are white, black, Hispanic, East and South Asian. El Sobrante (the next municipality over) has a huge Punjabi-speaking community because it is the home of the only Sikh house of worship in the East Bay. The elementary school around the corner from our house is 40% white, 40% Hispanic, 10% Asian and 10% black. If I walk in one direction from the bottom of our street, I can get to the library, Trader Joe's and Peet's Coffee within a mile; in the other direction, I pass horses and cows.

There isn't a whole lot of "culture" here yet, but that is changing rapidly (gentrification, for better and worse, as people get priced out of Berkeley/Oakland) -- and we are only 20 minutes from downtown Berkeley outside of rush hour. I'd definitely encourage you to look at West County -- am happy to give more info if you want to contact me directly.

We don't have school-aged kids yet (first child due to arrive any day now :)), but we can speak quite highly of West Contra Costa County; we moved to Pinole almost 3 years ago and there seems to be quite a strong community of families here. We frequently see kids playing in each others' yards, and there are also a lot of public play spaces like parks and sports fields that are always well-used without being too crowded. For older kids, the city's pretty bikable although a bit hilly. The city's also very clearly putting in an effort to make itself more "community-friendly"; there is a winter holiday festival, a 4th of July parade and other activities that are increasingly well-attended. And both the houses and general cost of living are cheaper than you'd find in the eastern part of the county, and the temperature swings are not nearly as crazy either :)