City of San Leandro

I just purchased a house in San Leandro because I was sick of the rat race and insanely bloated prices of Oakland. I love this city. It is convenient to everything, feels very safe, extremely diverse, beautiful nature, and has just lovely neighbors.

People move here for the convenience to Bart, 880, and it’s affordability. You get what you pay for. San Leandro is not safe IMO and the police response time is slow for such a small city.
Every time I stop by San Leandro to visit a friend, there was a 90% chance that i would see cops surrounding someone or there’s some incident require cop visits as I drive through the city. Is OK to live in when you don’t have much choices, since houses here are still very, very cheap here.

Ghetto city sandwiched between both highest crimes cities Oakland and Hayward. It has a decent looking downtown that’s mostly quiet. The traffic on 880 sucks bad going both North and South. It’s a decent place to live if you can not afford a better place to live. It’s not as scary as Oakland and Hayward or East Palo Alto, but it’s not a white collar city.

We moved to San Leandro mid 2015, looking for a chill, affordable city with amenities & diversity — totally loving SL! Plenty of yummy restaurants, though could use more organic grocery choices & a good old fashioned pub.
Definitely on the quiet side, but not boring. We keep discovering more to see & do. People are generally pleasant & happy. Range of interesting architecture & lots of nature nearby.
Close to city (25 mins drive when not rush hour). BART too. So far big olé thumbs up for SL…

Where is the rent control? Keeps going up.

San Leandro is going to be the next Alameda; It just needs to be discovered!
Before I moved here, it was not on my radar at all. There are beautiful houses with enormous lots and a couple of pleasant commercial strips. In addition, some very nice parks, a fantastic neighborhood café (Zocalo) and a solid «cloth napkin» neighborhood restaurant (Paradiso). However, the main selling point (besides the cute houses on enormous lots) is its proximity to Oakland, Berkeley and SF. BART, the 880 and the 580 all run through San Leandro. It takes 15 – 20 minutes to get to downtown Oakland via freeway and takes 35 minutes to get to SF via BART. In this way, it’s BETTER than Alameda (no bridge or tunnel traffic to deal with).
Looking to buy a house? Check out San Leandro! Especially the Broadmoor, Estudillo Estates and North Area neighborhoods. You will be very surprised by how awesome these residential areas are!

San Leandro or «The Dro» as locals affectionately call it. This is a pretty good town to live in. Lots of people that have been here for generations. I do love my city and will break down the pros and cons for you:
Pros:
1) Great neighbors… everyone says hi and knows what is going down… not in a creepy way but more like an «I have your back» way.
2) Alameda County Sheriff in unincorporated areas… They are awesome and make me feel safe even when it feels a little crazy in the neighborhood.
3) Multiple Big Lots stores. Maybe its just me, but this is a positive.
4) Awesome furniture stores that will give you a good deal if you pay in cash.
5) You are kinda close to everything and if you don’t want to drive BART can get you there. 580, 880, hey you are there quick.
Cons:
1)Restaurants…where are they??? Sure there are a few good places but it is just honestly a sad state of eating over here. My husband and I love walking and find it difficult to stay in San Leandro to eat. We end up crossing over to Castro Valley or taking a long walk to San Lorenzo.
2) Shopping… aside from the obvious Pro of the plethora of Big Lots, our shopping situation is sad. The most exciting thing at Bay Fair is that crazy kids train that drives through the mall at an alarming speed.
3) Crazy drivers– 40 mph down my street= no bueno!
Overall, a decent place to live and meet some good people… but seriously look both ways when crossing the street!

dude how do i get out or in to this city from 880 fix it. who guinness idea was this.

Moved here from San Francisco a year ago and our family LOVES it. Truly friendly, considerate neighbors, welcoming of people of all races and beliefs. It’s such a great place to raise kids. Beautiful weather, parks, historic homes, and community activities. Lovely marina with great views of SF Bay. Borders Chabot Park with boating, camping, picnic grounds and great hiking trails. Only one freeway exit from the Oakland Zoo! GREAT commute to SF. It’s a 25 minute BART ride to get to downtown SF. Very comfy, reliable commuter buses as well. The police are very friendly and do a great job keeping San Leandro safe. It’s amazing to have this lovely small-​town vibe right in the middle of all the hustle and bustle of the Bay Area. The mayor regularly shows up at our neighborhood association meetings and is always approachable. The central location is ideal, too — being right along 580 AND 880, and very close to the San Mateo bridge. The result is that we’re 10 – 30 minutes from everywhere — SF, Berkeley, Alameda, Oakland Silicon Valley, Walnut Creek. Even Napa, Sonoma, and Marin are reachable in under an hour. We can get to Santa Cruz and Carmel a lot quicker than we used to, too. If you are into gardening, San Leandro is heaven on earth — everything grows here: fruit trees including citrus, tomatoes, artichokes — pretty much every vegetable — and all sorts of herbs. Our garden has been a delight and very functional. We even got ourselves a couple of backyard chickens and a nice little coup (San Leandro city council made bee and chicken keeping legal last year). We were so reticent to leave SF and now we wish we’d moved here years ago. Lovely, lovely little gem of a city.

We went down to the MCC and put in a request to reserve a spot at one of the local parks. We requested to have a jumper and paid the fee and filled out all the necessary paperwork. The person helping us was great.
When having a jumper at their maintained parks, you have to use one of their approved companies. We chose Comic Jump since they were all set up with online ordering. I’m all for detail so it helped they had it all there. Anyway, that company sucked! I left a review on theirs as well. I am only adding this rating here because this company SHOULDN’T be on the approved list. Their customer service sucks, not clean and LATE! Do some research and have a better company represent you if they’re going to be on your «approved» list.

Best Bay Area City to Live In
Great Schools
SAFE Neighborhood’s
Marina Park
Mall
Shopping Centers
Quiet
Calm
Beautiful
Friendly People

This is where I call home. I love the east bay

San Leandro is honestly a boring place to live. It gets two stars because it’s not that bad in terms of crime and it’s close to a lot of ‘cool’ places.

I’ve been living in the city of San Leandro for over 20 years, this city is great to rise a family in!!!
every neighborhood is pretty quite and the schools are nice!!!

Best place ever. Sure it’s not perfect but better than Oakland California. The cops come out when you need them and there are shops with good reviews. we have three Mcdonalds five Subways three Jack In the Boxes a Burger King and lots more. There is also two middle schools a high school and a bunch of elementrys. There is even a local libary and pet store called Mike’s Feed and Pets. So come over

* 2.25 stars *
SL… you remind me of a typical little ghetto Texas city. Lots of chain restaurants & a whole lotta nothing to do.
Seriously, even a lot of the apartments are way bigger than ones in the City, Oakland, and Alameda (I know because we considered getting one there when we first were apartment hunting) — -just like in TX! That’s so you can go insane out of boredom or constant paranoia right there in your gigantic living room.
I don’t especially hate you or anything, I just try and get whatever it is I’m“m doing over with ASAP so I can leave you — fast.
You do have some charm I must say… in a weird «San Leandro» sort of way… I dunno… but it doesn’t get you past 2.5 stars in my book.
Conclusion: Stay alive SL. We need you for our occasional trip to Wal-​Mart.

I’m giving the City of San Leandro 2 stars because:
1. It’s next to Oakland… need I say more?
2. It has the Marina!!! MMmmm seabreeze!
3. There the Chinese, Mexicans and African-​americans residents
4. The city is trying to improve the streets
5. Not that many policemen around the area
6. More crimes…
7. More younger people moving into the area
8. It’s getting more GHETTO and GHETTO every year…

I am a resident of San Leandro who is very upset with all of the road work that is going on. Freeway entrences are closed in the morning when we are trying to get to work. There is so much traffic on Washington Avenue by the freeway and at the Greenhouse. It is very, very ridiculous. I don’t know if they are trying to make San Leandro look nicer, but it’s not working. Also, on Lewelling they put Islands all the way down it. So now if people want to take a left turn they cant, they need to flip a U turn, which is ridiculous. I understand it is not the workers fault, but doing road work during commute hours is unbelieveable. One last thing… the light leaving the Greenhouse by McDonalds and Jack In The Box, needs to be longer. That light, seriously lets 2 cars out each time.

We moved here from San Francisco (SOMA) 5 years ago. We wanted to live in a charming neighborhood (non cookie cutter) that wasn’t sheltered from life.
We moved to Estudillo Estates and absolutely love it here. Cute homes from the 40’s with great character. Yes there are some issues but compared to SF it’s great. We wanted a place with some edge and this place has it but I don’t feel unsafe. It’s pretty tame compared to other bay area cities. We didnt’ want to shelter our kids from the reality of society and for sure not fear it.
Our community is great. Our kids go to Roosevelt and we love the staff. There are a lot of young families here so you can definately feel the change coming. It’s affordable enough so that my wife can stay home and focus on the school system and their upbringing because that is really where it starts.
What we absolutely love is the people are so real. There isn’t a status that comes with living here. You know what I’m talking about. No Joneses just nice folks raising their families and keeping it real. Very old school.
The business are improving and thats the one thing missing. Hoping with the new families moving here this will change and start to cater toward us. It starting to. Bummed Trader Joes didn’t open because of their demographic study. There is a new generation coming though.
The good news is everything is within 20 mins. SF, Oakland, Alemeda, Berkeley, so you get all the flavor of those towns but you have to drive, which we don’t really like. But what we do like is we can leave those cities and the attitude that comes with them and come home to a relaxing atmosphere.
Growth would be nice but at the same time its nice to be in an undiscovered, unpretentious, area. If that comes I’m glad we’re here early.

San Leandro is a city in transition. It used to be a town that had a lot of older residents. Now it has a lot of younger folks, 1^st time homeowners.
Unfortunately it is suffering some growing pains like Riffraff from neighboring cities committing crimes, a growing homeless population in its cities parks. Also a shrinking budget to fund its Police and Public Works services. San Leandro still has some of the nicest Public Parks around.