One family moving to the city this July — with two small children in tow — described their April scouting trip in terms that would make the tourism board weep with joy: perfect weather, endless parks, walkability, and "breathtaking nature." Their verdict? They "couldn't get enough."

As one local put it with characteristic San Francisco self-awareness: "The weather here is perfect! It never rains!" Sarcasm aside, they added a genuinely warm "Welcome home."

Look, we spend a lot of ink around here documenting the ways City Hall burns through your money, the bureaucratic absurdities, the housing costs that would make a Texan faint. That's our job. But intellectual honesty demands we acknowledge the other side of the ledger too: San Francisco, for all its governance dysfunction, remains a genuinely spectacular place to live — if you can afford it.

And that's the asterisk that should haunt every city supervisor. The families choosing SF aren't arriving because of our government. They're arriving despite it. They're drawn by the geography, the culture, the parks, the bones of a world-class city that previous generations built. What they'll quickly discover is how much of their paycheck goes to a city budget that somehow tops $15 billion and still can't keep the streets clean or the schools fully enrolled.

The real question isn't whether SF can still attract families — clearly it can. The question is whether the city will price out everyone who isn't pulling tech-tier salaries. When a modest Sunset home that sold for $229,000 in 1986 would cost well north of a million today — far outpacing even inflation-adjusted estimates around $700,000 — you start to see the structural problem.

So welcome, new family. Seriously. You're going to love the parks, the fog, the sourdough. Just maybe don't look too closely at your property tax bill your first week. Give yourself at least a month before that particular heartbreak.