Move back to San Francisco from the East Bay?

I can't answer moving back to SF, but have you checked out other less expensive communities in the EB?  It seems like prices have skyrocketed in Berkeley and Oakland more than anywhere else in the EB.  Alameda can still be affordable and is likely much more family friendly than SF.  We love it here.  San Leandro is also a great place to raise a young family.  Also, do you plan on sending your child to public school eventually?

If both of you are commuting to SF for work and it would save you a ton of time to live in SF, then maybe this makes sense? - but I have a hard time believing that quality of life with kids in SF is going to better than in east bay. Also - SF public schools lottery is a mess - have you talked to SF parent friends going through this? Even if your premise is right, that cost of living in SF is the same as here (which seems hard to believe in desirable neighborhoods for families, like Noe), I'm not sure this is a good plan. We used to live in SF and loved it but SF has turned sort of - awful - in the last 10 years. Oakland and Berkeley are, for all their faults, still quirky. If one or more of your jobs are in the east bay, I would stay here. Curious of course for others' thoughts. Good luck. I know this housing market is miserable.
 

I don't have a suggestion, but we have also considered this, so looking forward to others' responses. We lived on the east coast for about a year and a half, and then returned to Oakland. We're happy to be in California, but we miss our much more walkable and urban lifestyle in the previous city. From what I can tell, the school lottery system in SF is worse than in Oakland, but I lived in the city before our first child was old enough to be in school, so I don't know how accurate that is. 

We moved from SF to the East Bay just a couple of years ago and have many friends with young children who are in SF and have their kids in public school. The lottery sounds stressful but surprisingly all the families got their first or second choice and are really happy at their schools.  One change is that there is some sort of preference to your neighborhood school in the lottery now. 

We spent the past year house hunting in Berkeley, Oakland, Alameda and Piedmont.  What struck me is how few neighborhoods are pleasant and walkable.  The few that are, are very expensive and comparable to similar neighborhoods in SF.  So I think it does make sense to live in SF to avoid the bridge/tube. 

Thanks so much for the responses! Seems like the Berkeley lottery system became even worse recently so that also made us take another look at SF again. We lived there longer than EB, so we might just need to give EB more time to adjust. The commute from Berkeley is also not as easy as other parts of EB that have more BART lines. The areas in SF we were looking at are Richmond/Sunset, Portrero/Dogpatch seem to have families but are less expensive than Noe or anything like Pac Heights.

Also, we honestly didn't think the commute was going to get worse in EB going into the city. But the bridge traffic has become very tense over the last couple of years and the BART experience has been a bit nerve wrecking given the strikes and constant delays. Since we both work in the city we keep wondering if having a baby across the bridge will be harder if we can't make it to the nannyshare/day care in time. So our quality of life might just not be as great with those additional stressors. Would love to hear from any parents that work in the city still and take AC transit or BART.