[HN Gopher] Why San Francisco's city government is so dysfunctional
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Why San Francisco's city government is so dysfunctional
Author : JumpCrisscross
Score : 70 points
Date : 2021-08-27 21:41 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| redis_mlc wrote:
| > SAN FRANCISCO boasts the lowest death rate from covid-19 of any
| big American city. An early shutdown, a culture of caution and
| mask mandates helped curb the spread of the virus.
|
| Or more likely, SF's proximity to SFO meant we've had corona
| since 2019. The US received 100,000 passengers per week from
| China, with 50% going to SFO and LAX.
|
| There was no shutdown of grocery stores, drug stores or anything
| food-related really.
|
| I followed the Santa Clara Country hospital usage for most of
| 2020, and ICU usage was only from 10% to 20%.
|
| The NIH admitted in summer 2021 that the actual rates of
| infection were 5x higher than reported.
| fspacef wrote:
| Per my own experience SF is not a bad place to live. But the
| homelessness has gotten worse so I had to get out.
| flyinglizard wrote:
| So it _is_ a bad place to live.
| LurkingPenguin wrote:
| > Per my own experience SF is not a bad place to live.
|
| I have the opposite view. In SF, your risk of the following
| occurring is non-negligible and in some cases, shockingly quite
| likely: - Being mugged/robbed - Having
| your car broken into - Being harangued or even assaulted
| by someone who is mentally ill and/or under the influence
| - Witnessing public urination, defecation, drug use and grab
| and go retail theft - Stepping in human feces
|
| I don't see how a place where these things occur on a regular
| basis, and where, in most cases, such crimes are not
| investigated and prosecuted, could ever be considered "not a
| bad place to live".
| kelnos wrote:
| It depends on where you live. If you live in the general area
| of soma or civic center, or parts of the mission, then yes,
| those last three things you mention are quite likely. Outside
| those areas, much less likely.
|
| I've been mugged once in my 11 years here (in 2013)[0], but I
| don't know anyone else who's been mugged. I don't believe the
| risk of mugging is significantly higher here than in any
| other US city, but I haven't checked stats, so I can't back
| that up.
|
| The car break-ins are truly ridiculous and have gotten out of
| hand. I'll definitely agree with that. I'm lucky that my car
| is garaged, so I haven't had to deal with that.
|
| I was in Manhattan last month, and I was reminded that
| significant swaths of the island smell like trash and sewage
| during the hot day, and saw more homeless people than I
| remember being common (perhaps COVID-related?). Every city
| has its problems, and while I'll agree that SF has quite a
| few, I would also agree that "SF is not a bad place to live".
|
| [0] Not to victim-blame myself, but I was walking home after
| midnight, alone, inebriated, on a quiet night (Monday) where
| no one else was around (aside from the muggers, I guess). I
| wasn't paying attention to what I was doing and didn't follow
| the usual common-sense advice for people walking alone late
| at night in a city.
| diffset wrote:
| The homeless and those issues pretty much only exist in the
| tourist areas near downtown, the tenderloin, soma, etc. The
| tourists come and see all of that and get the idea SF is some
| horrible dystopia, but unless you live in those areas, it's
| not a problem. I lived in Noe Valley for 3 years and never
| ran into a single problem from your list. SF is so much more
| than downtown.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| I lived in San Jose for two years. Commuted to Los Gatos.
|
| 880 had cardboard cities up and down it; my morning walk
| for coffee had 3-4 "regulars" living along it with frequent
| homeless transients.
|
| Many neighborhoods full of Multi-million dollar properties
| that looked, and felt, like unmaintained slums.
|
| The societal decay of SF extends through the entire Bay
| Area.
| Aspos wrote:
| Can confirm. In general, unless you actually step into
| them, human feces are not a problem. Just watch your step
| and be alert. How difficult can it be?
| rcurry wrote:
| You should submit this to the next license plate slogan
| contest. "San Francisco - Don't like needles, just watch
| your step!"
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| "California - it looked good on paper"
| muh_gradle wrote:
| The dysfunction is definitely not isolated to just certain
| neighborhoods in SF. It goes beyond the tenderloin now.
| themanmaran wrote:
| Noe Valley resident as well. But you have to realize that
| Noe is very segregated from the rest of the city.
|
| Mainly it's the hills. Hard to be homeless and hike up the
| castro hill. Same with why Bernal is so clean.
|
| But anywhere in Mission or along Market gets pretty sketch.
| pjlegato wrote:
| The "bad / dangerous" part of the city is now significantly
| larger than it was even three years ago, when you moved
| here. It's been expanding rapidly the past few years.
| LurkingPenguin wrote:
| There are homeless encampments and tents on streets in the
| Marina district now, so these issues aren't isolated to
| "tourist areas".
|
| Yes, some parts of the city definitely have it worse than
| others, but I don't think it's fair to dismiss these issues
| on the basis that there are small residential enclaves that
| are less affected.
|
| If you want to enjoy SF's restaurant scene, nightlife,
| hiking, etc., you will inevitably have to go to areas where
| this crime is rampant. And this crime should not be
| happening in an American city, let alone one that is so
| rich.
| scottm01 wrote:
| As long as we're giving personal anecdotes, I lived in the
| mission (the "good side" near dolores park) for 8 years and
| experienced most of that list. I was physically assaulted
| last fall while walking back from Noe Valley at 2pm in the
| afternoon. Nobody answered the police non emergency number
| while I followed the assailant (who threw a right hook that
| I only partially dodged as he walked past me on the
| street).
|
| Sure, you get better at dodging feces and ignoring the drug
| use, littering, and theft, but let's not pretend it's
| confined to "downtown, the tenderloin, soma, etc".
|
| I've lived and worked in Manhattan and DC, and spent time
| in many international cities. I've walked all over all of
| them, and never felt less safe than I regularly did walking
| to work in soma.
|
| SF has a unique political situation, a climate that makes
| homelessness "bearable" and a huge number of absentee
| landlords (thanks, Prop 13).
|
| We were sad to move out in January. SF is a gorgeous city
| filled with kind, interesting people. "Horrible dystopia"
| is certainly an exaggeration, but the situation is bad and
| has gotten much worse in the past few years.
| lhorie wrote:
| I've lived in Toronto, SF and Sao Paulo. In 18 years living
| in Sao Paulo, I've witnessed one gun-related incident and was
| victim of robbery once (I lived near Heliopolis, one of the
| largest slums in the city). In 18 years living in Toronto, I
| was involved in zero. In my first 2 years in SF, I was
| harassed twice and witnessed retail theft 2 times.
|
| SF is "not bad" in the sense that you won't get shot in the
| face. It is however quite bad in the sense that the amount of
| petty crime is so off the charts that you can't even compile
| accurate statistics because security personnel at retail
| stores don't even bother reporting it anymore.
|
| A few months ago, I witnessed another theft in inner Richmond
| (one of the nicer neighbourhoods), the security guy did a
| half-ass attempt at running after the guy but gave up and
| came towards the customer support desk I was at. I asked if
| that was common, and the security guy literally just shrugs.
| emacsen wrote:
| I've visited SF four or five times and the last time, I was
| waiting downtown (sorry I don't remember exactly where, but
| a high wealth, high traffic area) and a man who was clearly
| down on his luck came up to me and yelled at me. This was
| about five years ago.
|
| I've lived in NYC for ~9 years and that's never happened to
| me.
|
| It was genuinely shocking and very worrying.
| kmtrowbr wrote:
| I've lived in San Francisco for 16 years. Yes, I have
| experienced the homeless problem. I had my car broken into
| once when I left my backpack inside. I have never been mugged
| or robbed or had any physical violence occur, or be
| threatened. We have many lovely friends who live here. San
| Francisco is under a lot of pressure: population, finance,
| environmental. It is not a dystopia. It is a community where
| people build their lives and deserves love and support. I
| have spent significant amounts of time in New York, Paris and
| other world cities. I do not find San Francisco to be all
| that different from New York or Paris.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >As it is, the city has been safely Democratic for 40 years and
| seems allergic to choosing a Bloomberg-type figure from one of
| the big tech companies to try something different.
|
| San Francisco is what New York City would be like if it only had
| the UWS, Village, and Wall Street/Midtown.
|
| To put another way, if the Bay area had been unified a century
| ago as "San Francisco" including the Peninsula and East Bay,
| things wouldn't be so dysfunctional there. Heck, just the
| Peninsula would be sufficient.
| dayyan wrote:
| The logic here implies an already dysfunctional government
| would fair better with more to govern.
| TMWNN wrote:
| No, I'm saying that NYC is a very large city (speaking
| geographically, by population, or by politics). It has the
| super-liberal UWS and Greenwich/East Village, but also the
| UES, Staten Island, eastern Queens, Orthodox Jews in
| Brooklyn, old-line Italians in Arthur Avenue, Howard Beach,
| and a lot of ordinary middle-class areas. All those areas
| balance out the nutty leftism of other parts of the city.
|
| San Francisco doesn't have anything like that. As the article
| discusses, the middle class has been fleeing San Francisco
| for decades. it's never going to elect a Bloomberg, let alone
| a Giuliani.
| gsnedders wrote:
| There's definitely dysfunction caused by lack of planning at a
| metro level; many of the problems are arguably burdensome for
| any one county to address, but aren't high enough priority to
| attract attention to force coordination at a state level.
| Merging all the counties into one is certainly one approach to
| solving it, and would make the governance more addressable to a
| larger number of people who work in the area, versus the much
| smaller number who live there.
| babesh wrote:
| No city on the Peninsula in their right mind would want to
| merge with SF. SF has close to 10x the crime, worse schools,
| etc... What is there to gain?
| babesh wrote:
| The Peninsula is generally much better run than SF.
|
| It kind of helps that it isn't one big city. It forces the
| cities to compete and makes the democracy more direct and
| participatory. It also limits the blast radius of bad
| decisions.
|
| Also, because of the greater percentage of kids, the parents
| often vote based on what is best for their kids.
|
| The issues are much more mundane. Better roads, funding for
| schools, etc...
| manderley wrote:
| The housing crisis is perpetuated by a lack of coherent
| planning. It's also why transit is suboptimal. It definitely
| doesn't help that it isn't one big city, it's actively
| detrimental.
| babesh wrote:
| It definitely helps the quality of life of the Peninsula to
| not be embroiled in SF politics. Tons of SF natives moved
| to the Peninsula for those reasons.
|
| You don't need a large city to coordinate transportation.
| By that logic, the whole Bay Area should be one city.
|
| After all, you have BART running to the East Bay, South
| Bay, and a tiny part of the Peninsula.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Maybe the best solution is some sort of regional
| association or federation of governments working on multi-
| jurisdictional concerns. Representing an entire area you
| could say.
| [deleted]
| redm wrote:
| Full article:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210826152420id_/https://www.ec...
| Jackpillar wrote:
| First mistake is taking The Economist seriously. A neoliberal rag
| that just had an op-ed from Henry Kissinger not even two days
| ago.
| webwielder2 wrote:
| I've never read about any organization larger than zero people
| that didn't seem hopelessly corrupt, bureaucratic, toxic, or
| dysfunctional. Things do occasionally get done, though.
| hilyen wrote:
| party doesn't matter, both are owned by their donors. we are an
| empire of capital.
| teebs wrote:
| I don't think this article successfully describes "why" SF is
| dysfunctional. I agree that the government is bureaucratic and
| slow, and the school system is terrible, and our government is
| corrupt. That's the "what." I think some of the "why"s mentioned
| in the article are accurate. It's true that SF residents tend to
| be transient and only homeowners vote in large numbers. And SF
| political actors see themselves through a national prism (because
| SF politicians tend to go on to higher office - like the Senate,
| Governorship, or the Vice Presidency) that encourages them to
| focus on relatively less important policies like banning vaping.
|
| But I think saying no mayor hasn't been re-elected in 20 years
| isn't remotely unique to SF. Guiliani was re-elected, and so was
| Bloomberg, and so was the widely despised de Blasio. Politicians
| generally get re-elected everywhere. Further, it's misleading to
| say that Democrats always win. SF elections are often hotly
| contested between the dominant political factions of "moderate"
| and "progressive" (although those labels are always changing
| meaning), even if it's Democrat vs Democrat. Some candidates are
| law and order, and some are anti-capitalist. There is plenty of
| political competition in SF - which brings me to my next point.
|
| I think it's wishful thinking to say that a "Bloomberg-type
| figure" would solve all these problems. The mayor doesn't have
| the power to solve these problems. In fact, that's one of the
| (many) root causes of SF's problems - in order to make progress
| on all the problems listed in the article, you'd need to pass
| ballot propositions, change most of the Board of Supervisors,
| elect a different school board, elect a new mayor, and change
| some state laws like CEQA too. The real problem is that power is
| too diffuse, which encourages corruption by encouraging everyone
| to demand concessions before any reform can be made. It also
| means that candidates have to run promising things they can't
| deliver, or things they can deliver that don't solve the city's
| biggest problems. That, in turn, trains the public to expect even
| less of their representatives.
|
| I think another factor is that NYC's government controls much
| more of its metro area than SF's government does. If the Bay Area
| had a governmental body that covered the whole region, they'd be
| able to pass broader laws that, for example, funded transit
| across city borders. Today, most laws like that have to be passed
| at the state level instead, and the state is split between many
| metro areas so it doesn't bother to address Bay Area-specific
| problems.
| hamburgerwah wrote:
| A lot of my family has lived in SF for decades, all of them have
| moved out in the past 4 years. It's a monstrous dystopia now. The
| ultra rich completely insulated from the human misery sprawled
| out in every direction around them while their peasants toil away
| as tiny ants looked down upon with pity from their gleaming
| towers.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| I've lived in SF for decades, it is hardly a monstrous
| dystopia. It's actually a very nice, if expensive, place to
| live.
|
| There are homeless in several parts of the city, yes, but those
| parts are easy to avoid if that's your inclination.
|
| San Francisco is a very liberal city, and with that comes
| compassion for the less fortunate. Because the Constitution
| says anyone can move about anywhere in the US, that means that
| a lot of those unlucky end up here because it is better than
| living in a conservative city where there are less activists
| looking out for their interests. San Francisco doesn't create
| homeless people faster than other cities, but it does attract
| them, simply because compassion isn't spread evenly across the
| country.
|
| I'm not convinced it is as dysfunctional as the article states.
| And I'm very happy I don't live where people are screaming at
| other people because those people are (god forbid) wearing
| masks. All of the partisan hatred and vitriol that has consumed
| so much of the country hasn't really hit us here. At least not
| among ourselves.
| ahmadss wrote:
| sounds like Mumbai or Karachi or any other large city in a
| developing nation. sheesh.
| pknomad wrote:
| yep.
|
| I moved to the SF Bay area from NYC 4 years ago and I
| routinely tell my friends that you need to watch out for
| human, not animal, feces on the street.
|
| It's really sad to see people who are employed that are still
| homeless and have to deal with mental issues :(
| yodsanklai wrote:
| Reading from HN, half of Americans are either in jail or
| homeless dealing with mental issues. Are there proper
| statistics to get a better assessment of the situation?
| nradov wrote:
| https://www.usich.gov/homelessness-statistics/ca/
|
| The Federal Government estimates that about 0.4% of
| Californians were homeless in 2020. From what I've seen
| on the streets the numbers are probably a little worse
| now.
| flyinglizard wrote:
| No, it's actually crazier in a sense. The contrast between
| the populations, the "virtual fences" created across main
| streets where you have chaos in one side and first rate
| everything on the other, seeing all the crazy on the backdrop
| of Twitter and Uber buildings and ultimately recognizing the
| futility of a place so rich destroying itself like a
| misdirected, spoiled trust fund brat. It's the city that had
| everything going for it other than a common sense. I love SF
| but get it the fuck together.
|
| The article touches on why that won't happen though. Voter
| demographics won't allow that. It's either radical and young
| liberals which would go for every insane policy or the old
| and entrenched.
| wahern wrote:
| > The contrast between the populations, the "virtual
| fences" created across main streets where you have chaos in
| one side and first rate everything on the other
|
| San Francisco was this way since forever. The poor have
| been systematically corralled into the Tenderloin for over
| 100 years. The divisions between neighborhoods elsewhere
| were why San Francisco was always considered so "charming"
| --you could cross the street and enter an entirely
| different world.
|
| Setting aside the tremendous increase in drug abuse and
| homelessness, it's the tearing down of those virtual
| fences, especially around the Tenderloin, that is really
| causing people to freak out. It's just that their freak
| outs are coded in the language of social activism.
| Excepting the Tenderloin, every other part of San Francisco
| has become systematically homogenized, not to mention seen
| increased wealth.
| lpolovets wrote:
| I think many of SF's ultra rich are also very aware of the
| issues and are moving out in droves. FWIW a lot of my VC
| friends who have been in VC long enough to have $$$ have moved
| to other states (or at least other cities in California). I
| think that's an especially strong signal about SF's dysfunction
| given how much motivation there is for venture capitalists to
| be close to SF given its founder density.
| shuckles wrote:
| Huh? The primary issue with San Francisco is that you are in
| fact not insulated from human misery at all. If you want
| insulation, check out Atherton or Woodside 20 miles down south.
|
| In addition, the wealthy of San Francisco live in giant single
| family homes. It's not a big skyscraper culture.
| metalforever wrote:
| Yeah, I agree. The poster above is a nut.
| andbberger wrote:
| Yes yes, too many poor people. That's definitely the problem
| kelnos wrote:
| Er, what? Anyone who has walked through SoMa or the Tenderloin
| or the financial district or... quite a few other neighborhoods
| knows that no one here is "insulated from human misery".
|
| Also what "gleaming towers"? We have, like... 5 of those in the
| entire city? Most residential stock is low-rise or SFH, and the
| rich certainly mostly live in the latter (see: Pacific Heights
| and parts of the Sunset).
|
| I'll be the first to not only admit, but scream, that SF has a
| ton of problems, but you have not characterized them correctly
| at all.
| bryan0 wrote:
| I can sadly relate to this. Before the pandemic, in my tech
| company's offices you could sip free cold brew looking out at
| the beautiful city from way up above. But if you looked
| directly down at the plaza below there was a growing sea of
| homelessness. Often needles and shit littered around them.
| Everyone seemed to just "tune it out" and pretend they weren't
| there, because otherwise you would have to face that we were
| living in a dystopian reality.
| nlh wrote:
| Sorry, that's just not true. Twitter loves perpetuating the
| story of what an insane dystopia SF is these days, but if you
| actually live here and actually spend time in the city instead
| of complaining about it, you'll see that is just insanely
| false.
|
| It's got problems (rise in homelessness & property crimes and
| the Tenderloin is as bad as its ever been re: drugs), but the
| gap between "big city problems" and "monstrous dystopia" is
| about as wide as the bay itself.
| aiisahik wrote:
| this is the podcast from the Economist that goes into a little
| further detail about the failures of the SF gov including the
| corruption issues and the anti-liberal housing policies:
|
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/checks-and-balance-bay...
| runarberg wrote:
| What is the point of this article? The bulk of it is explaining
| that things are bad in SF, and that the city government is to
| blame. Sure I'll buy that. But then it makes a leap of logic by
| claiming--or rather insinuating--that the reason for why they
| don't fix those issues is because they are dysfunctional. As for
| _why_ it is dysfunctional. Well:
|
| > As it is, the city has been safely Democratic for 40 years and
| seems allergic to choosing a Bloomberg-type figure from one of
| the big tech companies to try something different.
|
| So it is the voters fault, I guess. And specifically, the voters
| fault for not electing a conservative enough of a mayor.
|
| This is a trash article. And is more of a partisan propaganda
| piece then actual news.
| lostdog wrote:
| Yeah, the article completely ignores that the voters are
| prioritizing other things.
|
| SF voters don't want to send so many people to prison. Yes,
| that means that criminals and the homeless have more freedom
| than in other cities. But SF voters feel that the US prison and
| "justice" systems are too immoral to implement in SF.
|
| SF voters also want to keep low-rise housing and prevent making
| it easier to change neighborhoods by adding housing. Of course,
| this also has the bad tradeoff of over-constraining supply,
| leading to ridiculous housing costs. But this tradeoff is a
| response to plowing highways through and dumping toxic waste in
| poor neighborhood.
|
| So yeah, if you hate these tradeoffs, then you'll also feel
| that SF is dysfunctional. Thanks Economist for your un-
| insightful article.
| zaphar wrote:
| I mean it's hard to argue that it isn't the voters fault.
| Whether that is because they are not electing a conservative
| enough mayor or not isn't the point of the article.
|
| Vote in non-corrupt officials who are willing to clean house
| and you start to make a dint in the problem. Ideology is
| irrelevant as a qualification for the candidate. The fact that
| they choose largey based on ideology rather than integrity _is_
| the problem.
| shuckles wrote:
| At this level of evidence, every problem in a nominally
| democratic society could be explained by "voters" in the
| abstract. Would you blame local discretion over land use,
| Prop 13, or CEQA - semi-permanent features of the Californian
| democratic system - on today's San Francisco voters? How
| about the lack of national healthcare system that can support
| drug abusers and other mentally incompetent which drives a
| lot of net migration of homeless people to the city?
| shuckles wrote:
| I agree. I think the only explanations it gives are that the
| city has no middle class and politicians try to solve national
| problems with local solutions. Neither are root causes in my
| opinion. The former is explained by a lack of new home building
| which is a statewide and national problem and the latter is
| explained by the fact that the San Francisco political machine
| generates a lot of national political candidates! The city is
| hugely over-represented in national politics. I have no clue
| why, and the causes of both are probably more explanatory than
| whatever the article provides.
| babesh wrote:
| Nope. There are plenty of local problems that the city has
| been completely inept at solving. Go look at how much it
| costs to build a mile of tunnel and how late it is. Roughly
| 1b and 10 years late and the clock is still running.
| shuckles wrote:
| Which is in line with infrastructure costs throughout the
| country. How much did the 2nd Ave subway cost? LA Metro
| expansion?
| babesh wrote:
| That doesn't mean that SF isn't incompetent. That means
| they are all incompetent. You have those cities also
| complain about those costs.
| shuckles wrote:
| Then root causes that put blame on San Francisco voters
| are not very convincing.
| rpmcmurdo wrote:
| 27 year San Francisco resident here. The government here is
| dysfunctional because that's what people voted for. The fact that
| people pay so much to live here says that people are willing to
| put up with a lot in exchange for living in a diverse and
| beautiful city.
| pkdpic wrote:
| I grew up in SF and still have family sticking it out there. I
| don't completely disagree with the sentiment here but last I
| heard I thought SF had a pretty serious diversity problem. Is
| that no longer the case?
| version_five wrote:
| What is a "diversity problem"?
| robbrown451 wrote:
| What do you mean by a "serious diversity problem"? Not white
| enough, or what?
| junon wrote:
| There's human feces everywhere outside the tourist/financial
| districts, and the entirety of the inner city (Tenderloin) is
| disintegrated and full of poverty, homelessness and crime - and
| it's predominantly people of color who accumulate there.
|
| If that's "diverse" and "beautiful" then I'd hate to think what
| "monocultural" and "dull" looks like...
| fallingknife wrote:
| > people are willing to put up with a lot in exchange for
| living in a diverse and beautiful city.
|
| You mean in exchange for living in a city with high paying tech
| jobs?
| reilly3000 wrote:
| San Francisco was brilliant before tech, and will be shining
| in the next boom. Some things are bigger than now, and maybe
| bigger than we can fully understand.
| ithinkso wrote:
| People are willing to put up with a lot if it means they don't
| give anything to someone that doesn't deserve it.
|
| 'I will walk through a pile of shit before my money is used for
| you to shit somewhere else you lazy fuck'
| metalforever wrote:
| You don't actually live in SF or you would know that there's
| not actually literal piles of shit everywhere.
| omegaworks wrote:
| There is literal shit everywhere. A walk down any block
| needs one eye kept on where you step. If it's not human
| shit it's dog shit because pet owners can't seem to be
| bothered.
|
| There are few and dwindling public bathrooms to the point
| where gig workers struggle to find facilities[1] while
| they're out there doing critical work. Rich NIMBYs believe
| that bathrooms (and not the sky-high rents they seek)
| encourage people to become homeless, so they've
| successfully shut down the emergency facilities opened up
| during the pandemic[2].
|
| 1. https://www.vice.com/en/article/884xyp/gig-workers-have-
| nowh...
|
| 2. https://www.sfchronicle.com/local-politics/article/San-
| Franc...
| bubersson wrote:
| It's not the first time that you see a man defecate on the
| street that gets you. It's the second time.
|
| Speaking from experience of daily driving through
| Tenderloin.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| IMO there's kind of a lot. I live a few minutes south of SF
| on the peninsula and last weekend I walked around the
| waterfront and the mission with friends. I was struck that
| I encountered visible piles and marks as well as smells
| pretty much everywhere we walked. Like, it's really a lot
| of public shit compared to any town a few minutes south of
| the city.
|
| FWIW I blame systemic problems not the individuals
| responsible. But the problem was viscerally apparent to me.
| civilized wrote:
| I went to a conference once and walked up and down Market
| Street twice a day for a week, and never saw a single pile
| of shit!
|
| I was attacked by a disturbed man who chased and pulled a
| (probably fake) gun on me, but no piles of shit whatsoever!
| ithinkso wrote:
| True, my comment was a bit loaded but 'shit' in my comment
| was not really mean excrements... I used it to mean
| 'problems' in a hard, loaded way like 'This is the shit I
| have to deal with' with some parallels to homelessness but
| if you read my comment again, it doesn't really say what
| you think it does
| flyinglizard wrote:
| Not sure I'd call a city which had one ruling party for forty
| years "diverse".
| nverno wrote:
| in this social respect though, one party actively promotes
| 'diverse' lifestyles while the other just accepts them. I
| don't think SF would have come to be under the latter, nor
| could the latter exist in SF
| nemothekid wrote:
| It's not hard when the only other sizeable party would love
| to purge the queer 16% of the population. Diversity is when
| you elect people who actively try to make the population less
| diverse.
| [deleted]
| runarberg wrote:
| Just because people vote for it, it doesn't mean it is what
| people want. There is also the option that the voting system is
| faulty and that the voters don't have a real option.
|
| As an example, the city of Reykjavik has 23 representatives in
| the city council. They are voted proportionally from parties
| represented distinct views. San Francisco board of supervisors
| have 11 members, less then half of Reykjavik's despite having
| more then 6 times the population. And to make it worse, each
| member is voted on a first past the post system.
|
| The San Francisco mayor is voted in a separate election and is
| not on the board of supervisors. Since this is a position where
| a lot of political capital is to be gained it is often used as
| an opportunity for a politician seeking a career, rather then
| as a passive position willing to let diverse opinions and find
| consensus among differing views.
|
| None of this is voter's fault. Rather there is a systemic
| problem which can only be fixed by the people who are
| benefiting from the status quo.
| necubi wrote:
| > And to make it worse, each member is voted on a first past
| the post system
|
| That's not actually true, we use RCV to elect supervisors
| (and the mayor).
| kernoble wrote:
| Reminds me of a Star Trek DS9 episode that takes place in an SF
| of the near future.
|
| "By the 2020s, those without employment, as well as those with
| mental problems, were moved into the Sanctuary Districts, which
| would later become no better than slums."
|
| https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Past_Tense
|
| https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Bell_Riots
| grillvogel wrote:
| Soylent Green also presents an exaggerated but somewhat
| plausible view of the cities of the slightly distant
| future(stepping over piles of homeless people to get out of
| apartments, not the eating people)
| lindseymysse wrote:
| Oh, we've got ecological collapse too, so the eating people
| thing seems plausible enough for me.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Forget both of those old works. _Looper_ came out in 2012 and
| oddly has a pronounced depiction of homelessness and poverty
| in America. And none of it seems exaggerated today. Though it
| was made after the Great Recession, so maybe Rian Johnson was
| just merely projecting then-current trends.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| muh_gradle wrote:
| I was thinking of making the move to SF for the higher income.
| Seeing the past few years of the city have completely changed my
| mind though. Chesa Boudin physically makes my head hurt so much.
| redm wrote:
| "Nor are the police blameless. In the fourth quarter of last
| year, the "clearance" rate for robbery (which measures the share
| of reported crimes that result in an arrest) was half that of New
| York City. The police are notoriously unresponsive."
|
| This. Not only do I RARELY see a police officer in SF, but when I
| do, they look "beat down" or ambivalent. I'm sure years of police
| being the political "whipping boy" has taken its tole.
| hn8788 wrote:
| I was watching a twitch streamer who lives in SF, and he told a
| story about a time he was walking down the sidewalk at night
| and saw a homeless person peeing on someone's car. He said
| there was a cop nearby that saw him doing it, but he told the
| streamer that the homeless guy looked gross and he didn't feel
| like dealing with him, so the homeless guy just walked away
| when he was finished.
| Jackpillar wrote:
| You want a cop to physically detain a homeless person which
| will just result in sending him through a pointlessly cruel
| and expensive criminal justice system where he'll pop-out the
| other side with nothing but unpayable debts that'll drive him
| through the same cycle again - all because he urinated on a
| car of someone who won't even realize it happened?
| Lammy wrote:
| > Matt Haney, who represents the troubled Tenderloin
| neighbourhood
|
| I love the characterization of the neighborhood as "troubled"
| like it was an accident:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrific_Street#Demise
| jwagenet wrote:
| Terrific Street is nowhere near Tenderloin.
| kelnos wrote:
| Not sure what connection you're trying to draw; Terrific Street
| was far north of where the Tenderloin is.
|
| (Thank you for the link, though; I had never heard of Terrific
| Street, and I'm always curious to learn something new about the
| city's history.)
| pc86 wrote:
| You linked to a section about outlawing _dancing_... over 110
| years ago.
|
| Something tells me the troubles in the Tenderloin today are not
| related.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I will note that California seems to be America's dumping ground
| for the nation's homeless problem. There are also long-standing
| federal and state housing policies impacting San Francisco.
|
| I have no idea how dysfunctional the local city government is in
| this case, but there are things going on here beyond its control.
| It's not fair or reasonable to act like the condition the city is
| in is entirely due to local government stuff.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I keep hearing this. Do you have any citations for "America's
| dumping ground". How many homeless are migrating to California?
|
| > As the data shows us, most of the homeless people you pass on
| the streets every day are in fact Californians.
|
| > Less than a fifth (18 percent) said they had lived out of
| state before becoming homeless.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/us/homeless-population.ht...
|
| Everytime this argument has been brought up, instead of owning
| to the responsibility of causing homelessness, Californians
| love to point out how kind they are to homeless and how they're
| a "dumping ground" for homelessness. It is a cop out.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| If you search the term "bus homeless to California" it is
| easy to find multiple articles about this long-standing
| policy, such as this one:
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvg7ba/instead-of-helping-
| ho...
|
| I probably first heard of it around twenty years ago on a
| discussion forum for urban planners who were literally saying
| "Homelessness is uncalled for. Let's just give them bus
| tickets to elsewhere." as if busing them elsewhere actually
| fixes the problem.
|
| It doesn't. It just makes the problem some other city's
| problem.
|
| I had a college class on Homelessness and Public Policy a
| long time ago through SFSU when I was living in Fairfield. I
| left California during my divorce because I couldn't afford
| the rent anymore, basically, and later returned while
| homeless. I was homeless in California for about 5.5 years
| and I do a lot of writing on the topic.
|
| California has higher rates of unsheltered and long-term
| homeless than most of the nation. Homeless people are able to
| get up and go elsewhere and it's fairly common to see people
| on the internet say things like "I'm homeless (or about to be
| homeless). Where is the best place for me to go."
|
| Answers typically involve statements to the effect of
| "Someplace with decent weather." and California has some of
| the driest and most temperate weather in the nation, which
| makes it the ideal place to sleep outdoors year-round.
|
| It also has very high rents. That combination of high rents
| and good weather makes it easy to be homeless there, hard to
| get your life back there.
|
| A few weeks after finally paying off my student loan, I left
| the state of California to get back into housing.
|
| Studies typically show "It's locals! who are homeless." There
| is some truth to that but it's not the whole picture and I
| don't think you can trust those studies. Homeless people are
| hard to survey and have strong motive to say whatever most
| benefits them in some way. It's propaganda to some degree to
| say "It's locals!" It's a way of saying "They are our people
| and our responsibility and we need to deal with this."
|
| And I agree we need to deal with this, but we have more than
| fifty years of federal housing policy shaping the landscape
| in a certain way and that's enormously hard to escape,
| especially if you are oblivious to that fact and making no
| effort to change it. California has also passed a lot of
| protectionist tax policies that fuel high housing prices and
| has been underbuilding for years.
|
| It doesn't have to be anywhere near half the homeless
| population for in-migration of homeless individuals to be a
| serious problem for California. It can be a relatively small
| percentage of people with very intractable problems.
|
| I have intractable problems and I've worked extremely hard to
| resolve them, with far too little support. I am not
| suggesting we throw homeless people to the wolves.
|
| But I do not believe California can single-handedly solve
| this issue. The nation as a whole needs to resolve a long-
| standing lack of affordable housing.
|
| _For every 100 families living in poverty on the West Coast,
| there are no more than 30 affordable homes_
|
| https://www.geekwire.com/2018/every-100-families-living-
| pove...
|
| This is a national issue. This is an issue I have studied for
| a lot of years. This is not just California.
| kelnos wrote:
| I would love to see data as well, but I don't consider self-
| reported origins to be all that convincing. If I were
| homeless and moved to a city where it's "easier" to be
| homeless, I would probably claim that I was previously housed
| there if asked.
| manderley wrote:
| You're linking an article lacking in data.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I'd expect the claimant to provide the data to support
| their assertion.
| manderley wrote:
| You were the one disputing the claim, it's on you to
| bring the actual data. So no, you can't pass the buck.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I'd like bundle Oakland (across from SF on east bay) with this as
| well. Totally useless government, unbelievably filthy, utterly
| third world and embarrassingly woke. Yes, I say this as a liberal
| who's never voted for Republican candidate ever. Portland,
| Seattle, LA and SF - this is a west coast phenomenon and a
| policy-induced suicide.
|
| > In 2017 Portland ranked third. Now it has dropped to 66th out
| of 80.
|
| https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/06/12/portland-...
|
| Democrats need to get to the bottom of which policies caused the
| west coast to all simultaneously degrade. May be we should look
| at other democratic cities and some republican cities and adopt
| their policies.
| nemo44x wrote:
| San Francisco is what happens when so many of your citizens are
| rich enough to opt into private everything and not have to deal
| with the effects of or take seriously the policies of the people
| their money puts into power. It's a type of oligarchy and
| plutocracy where the patrons can pay to be seen and "adored" by
| the political class for social standing but can opt-out of every
| policy choice.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| >One City Hall insider suggests that San Francisco overreacts to
| issues that are in the national news, and designs solutions to
| the country's problems rather than its own. For example, when Mr
| Boudin ran on his platform of less punitive justice, San
| Francisco already had one of the lowest incarceration rates in
| the country. In 2019, 106 adults were in prison for every 100,000
| people, one-fifth the rate in California and the nation. If the
| rest of the country behaved like San Francisco, the prison
| population would decline by 80%, says James Austin of the jfa
| Institute, a think-tank that evaluates criminal-justice policies.
|
| This seems like a very reasonable hypothesis
| ecf wrote:
| Are incarceration rates low because people behave or are they
| low because SF police don't bother to arrest people?
| space_fountain wrote:
| I think some of the responses here are too gloomy. Look things
| are bad but SF does have a lot going for it and it's a lot less
| bad than some people think, just don't live in SOMA or the
| tenderloin and you'll be a lot better off. SF has lots of wealth
| and resources just waiting to be tapped into, a climate that's
| likely to get nicer over the next several decades (maybe ignoring
| smoke), some of the highest densities both of people and of parks
| in the US. Yes there are problems deep in the politics of SF, but
| none of them are unfixable.
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