Best North/Central NJ towns for an LGBTQ family with young kids?
My partner and I are looking to move somewhere in North/Central Jersey with our two young kids, and I feel like I’ve read just about everything there is to read online at this point. Our budget is around $1.5M, and right now Bridgewater, Scotch Plains, and Westfield are probably the three we’re taking most seriously. We’ve also looked a lot at Montclair and SOMA since they come up so often when you’re looking for LGBTQ-friendly places to raise a family in NJ. Commute and proximity to NYC aren’t huge priorities for us, but we’re not interested in the greater Princeton area.
I’ve already gone pretty deep on school rankings, taxes, housing, etc., so what I’m really trying to get a feel for now is what these places are actually like day to day. What are the parents like? Is it easy to make friends and build a community? Are the schools really intense or competitive? Do people generally seem pretty down-to-earth? How diverse does the area actually feel once you live there?
Even though we’re LGBTQ, we don’t necessarily need to live somewhere with a huge LGBTQ scene, but I’d like our kids to grow up somewhere where having two parents of the same sex is basically a non-event and where there are at least some other families like ours around. I’m especially curious how these towns compare to somewhere like SOMA or Montclair in that respect. I guess the bigger question is whether we’d actually be giving something up by choosing one of these towns, or if we should just hold out for the right house in SOMA because the community fit would be worth it. And are there any towns we’re overlooking entirely that you think we should have on our list?