[HN Gopher] San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet
___________________________________________________________________
San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet
Author : crhulls
Score : 122 points
Date : 2022-10-19 22:37 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sfchronicle.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sfchronicle.com)
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| I'm thinking of a bar in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, back in the day,
| where the owner got tired of repairing destruction and lined the
| whole bathroom with stainless steel plate, to which he welded
| stainless steel sinks, urinals, and toilets (as used in prisons).
|
| At the end of the evening, he'd take the firehose in there to
| clean up.
| ahelwer wrote:
| For the past few months I've been listening to Robert Caro's _The
| Power Broker_ on audiobook (which has far and away the best
| narration I 've ever heard - props to Robertson Dean!) and am
| about 40 hours in out of 65. The book is about a NYC
| administrator named Robert Moses who operated from roughly
| 1930-1970, and is quite eye-opening in its depiction of how the
| sausage is made in public works projects. I greatly recommend it
| if you have any interest at all in the nature of power within
| these areas. Robert Moses was famous in his time for "getting
| things done", which he was certainly successful at - but to think
| this required him to sweep away all the corruption and graft is
| absolutely untrue. He turned it to his own ends and operated
| successfully within an amazingly corrupt system, paying off
| everybody he could. All of this was non-transparently funded with
| money from public authorities, like bridge operators collecting
| tolls whose capitalization and disbursement were purely
| controlled by him. So we know this public toilet costs $1.7
| million, which honestly isn't too astonishing a sum, but another
| era it also probably would have cost that - you just wouldn't
| know it unless you dug through the records decades after everyone
| involved was dead. Also the toilet would have, like, displaced an
| entire block of ethnic minority families or something. And had an
| elevated highway built over it.
| willcipriano wrote:
| The biggest problem in America: Things are inexplicably extremely
| expensive, especially if government is involved and nobody can
| give a straight answer as to why.
| anm89 wrote:
| It's pretty explicable. Our entire economic system is based on
| the premise that we should off shore the production of things
| to other places who are willing to deal with the nitty gritty
| and get it done at a price Americans can afford and then we
| regulate and enforce wages that ensure that those activities
| are prohibitively onerous and expensive to be done in the USA.
| This is literally by design.
|
| It's great for multiplying the amount of physical things
| everyone gets to consume as long as the quality of those things
| isn't taken into account. It's a disaster in the event we
| actually need to build any physical things for ourselves.
|
| We've been able to pretend this isn't true for the last 40
| years as we wore our existing infrastructure down into the
| ground. It is becoming more apparent now as we fail to rebuild
| to the state we were in 70 years ago.
| missedthecue wrote:
| This can't be the explanation, because the US has never
| offshored construction. You can't offshore construction. It's
| a service business that requires being on-site.
| anm89 wrote:
| Right, and this a big part of the reason that houses are
| prohibitively expensive. If you could offshore them they'd
| be affordable.
|
| Americans can't afford to buy things made by Americans.
|
| Again we papered over this issue with decades of supressed
| interest rates but the ruse can't last forever.
| fudidjfuf wrote:
| yucky wrote:
| There is a straight answer. Government is far too big and
| inefficient, which adds tremendously to the cost when it is
| involved.
| VHRanger wrote:
| It's not inexplicable.
|
| The political system froze up to protect entrenched interests
| (NIMBY land owners).
|
| It's making conscious efforts to make new construction onerous
| to get through permitting process. That restricts supply and
| enriches existing land owners.
| willcipriano wrote:
| If expensive permitting is the problem, since it's the
| government doing the building shouldn't that not really be a
| "cost", order the department to waive any fees.
|
| Also, If that were the case I would suspect that adding a
| bathroom to your house in SF would cost upwards of a million
| dollars as well but I doubt that's true. Correct me if I'm
| wrong.
|
| A similar effect can be seen in ancient Rome, towards the end
| of the empire the millers started to produce less and less
| product from the same amount of grain. The mint that produced
| the coins would mysteriously lose large amounts of them, or
| they wouldn't contain the correct percentages of metals and
| nobody in power did anything about it. Well that's not
| entirely right, one person did and they killed him.
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| Government has to get permits like the rest of us
| bhelkey wrote:
| > since it's the government doing the building shouldn't
| that not really be a "cost", order the department to waive
| any fees.
|
| This assumes that the cost is due to fees imposed by the
| government.
|
| From the article:
|
| >> [The costs] include planning, drawing, permits, reviews
| and public outreach.
|
| >> we expect to be able to complete [the toilet] in 2025
| willcipriano wrote:
| It couldn't cost more than say 200k (and that is pretty
| crazy the article says the plumbing hookups are there
| it's not like they have to dig up a city block to run a
| sewer line or something) to actually build the thing so
| we are talking what? A million and a half in
| illustration, planning and review for a single toilet?
| bhelkey wrote:
| I don't have any special insight here but, in other
| cases, environmental reviews and environmental lawsuits
| are tools used to stifle new developments.
|
| > a rejected San Francisco apartment complex...required a
| more than 1,110-page environmental assessment [1]
|
| It is not socially acceptable to charge a million dollar
| permit for constructing a toilet. It is socially
| acceptable to make the process so onerous that it costs
| more than a million dollars to complete. Think of the
| environment.
|
| [1]
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-04-20/the-
| landm...
| bergenty wrote:
| Getting a contractor to work on your home is ridiculously
| expensive too. The other day I paid $900 to replace a faucet
| for my tub.
| gimoc wrote:
| Couldn't you do it yourself? It's typically a relatively
| simple job, no need to get a contractor in. The tools to
| replace it, if you don't have them already, would have come
| in at a fraction of $900.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| You can for now, while it's legal. Electrical work is now
| illegal in many places.
| bergenty wrote:
| I could and I will moving forward. My wife ended up paying
| him when I was at work and she had no idea what it was
| supposed to cost.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| I've had nothing but bad experiences with contractors. I had
| to do the exact same thing, while it wasn't $900 it was
| $200-300 to have someone come out and replace a faucet. I
| ended up buying the tools and did it in ~20 minutes for like
| $20 in parts. I've done a lot of other projects and
| constantly get outrageous quotes from landscapers, plumbers,
| HVAC, etc.
|
| My theory is that they prey on people that don't know any
| better. Less and less people know how to DIY so they have no
| frame of reference for the real value of labor and get
| scammed.
| willcipriano wrote:
| I'd love to see a breakdown of wages paid to plumbers,
| tilesetters and carpenters as well as all material and
| equipment costs vs everything else. I'd gamble it isn't even
| 20% of the total.
| screye wrote:
| Is the SF Bay Area the worst managed "successful" economic urban
| area in the world ?
|
| It performs pretty badly on public transport, safety,
| affordability & sanitation. All its pros seem to exist despite
| the management, and not because of it. (Universities, Jobs,
| Weather, Nature)
|
| I thought Greater Seattle was badly managed, but it has been
| funding light rail, missing middle-housing and recently started
| reversing the crime problem bit-by-bit. Bangalore might get a
| shoutout, but they did see unprecedented population explosion in
| a decade and are at least (badly) trying to build their way out
| of it now.
|
| I'll take a moment to mention one of my favorite comments on HN
| "I call them PINO NOIRs: Progressive In Name Only, NIMBY-Only In
| Reality"
| cdot2 wrote:
| I think calling them "progressive in name only" is a bit of a
| "no-true-scotsman"
| hexator wrote:
| There is nothing progressive about literally stopping
| progress on housing affordability.
| cdot2 wrote:
| They could certainly make arguments about "urban
| beautification", "community involvement", and other
| "progressive" causes. Unless of course those arent true
| progressives.
| epistasis wrote:
| I don't think that either of these are examples of
| progressive politics in San Francisco. The city is not
| being beautified, it is being kept the same and not
| allowed to be beautified. All comparisons with the rest
| of the US would place San Francisco as more conservative
| on beautification than progressive.
|
| Similarly, it's not the community that's involved in
| these decisions, it's a veto system where only those with
| abundant time and resources can be heard and have
| influence in the system, further cementing economic
| privilege rather than making it more equitable or
| democratic. For recent academic investigations of this,
| check out the book Neighborhood Defenders by Katherine
| Einstein et al:
|
| https://www.politicsofhousing.com/neighborhood_defenders/
| uoaei wrote:
| I don't understand what definition of "progressive"
| you're using here, if you think that putting pretty names
| on oppressive policies constitutes "progressivism".
| [deleted]
| hexator wrote:
| I don't really think any of those are the problem,
| they're just being used as weapons by people who are
| against housing affordability.
| s0rce wrote:
| I moved from Canada to what I thought was progressive SF bay
| area, not so much, very conservative on many issues.
| anon291 wrote:
| The bay area is 'conservative' on issues that actual American
| conservatives are not very conservative on. For example, bay
| area people seem to hate building housing, whereas most red
| states are building like crazy.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That's because conservative areas are rural. When they
| become dense enough to have urban problems, they inevitably
| become liberal. So then we get to paint the urban problem
| as a liberal one, when in reality it is orthogonal.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| Conservatives _say_ they love cars but they hate it when I
| drive my car*
|
| You have to evaluate the context of the action. "not
| building stuff" and "building stuff" can both be
| conservative at different places or times.
|
| * I drive on the sidewalk
| baby wrote:
| what about NYC?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I'm definitely a YIMBY but red states are coming from a
| place of much lower density. They will certainly get these
| problems as they get more density.
|
| Which red state area is more dense than SF?
| TbobbyZ wrote:
| Can you give an example?
| nostromo wrote:
| Having a wildly successful city economy and becoming poorly
| managed is a causal relationship I think.
|
| In regular cities you simply can't afford to be wasteful. But
| San Francisco and Seattle have endless streams of easy money to
| burn.
|
| It's sort of like the oil curse. The governments of gulf states
| can afford to be uniquely terrible, in ways other governments
| cannot.
| bombcar wrote:
| I suspect it's also part and parcel with having a city that
| is vastly "commuter" in some way - SF has about 800k
| population and estimates are that 250k commute into it each
| day; meaning that the "voting residents" make up only about
| 80% of the "actual city users".
|
| This means there's a steady supply of "tax income" that is
| not from residents, which I bet exacerbates the problem until
| such time as companies move to the suburbs.
|
| Some areas have "solved" this by moving much of the actual
| government to the county level, or by creating intercity
| agencies to handle things.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| SF is a City and a County
| ActorNightly wrote:
| tchaffee wrote:
| And here you are virtue signaling that you're so much better.
| Even worse: with a false claim.
| adammarples wrote:
| Certainly not in England. The shire Tories will block wind
| turbines and new housing to keep the value of their Surrey
| pile going up, while the progressives live in major cities
| and have everything built in their backyards.
| 323 wrote:
| Official Labour Twitter account with a NIMBY proposal:
|
| https://twitter.com/uklabour/status/1406947513857462276
|
| Afterwards reaction:
|
| > _Lucy Powell has said that she "would not have signed
| off" a "NIMBY" Labour Party graphic distributed on social
| media earlier this year that criticised the government's
| plans to build on "your green spaces without your say"._
|
| https://labourlist.org/2021/09/i-would-not-have-signed-
| off-n...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That's absurd. NIMBY is absolutely, 100% independent of
| political ideology.
| hot_gril wrote:
| IMO so are the two major political parties. Self-interest
| takes priority. Not 100% but like 75%.
| rhino369 wrote:
| I agree. Free market conservatives will suddenly love
| zoning if it keeps a factory out of their neighborhood.
| choko wrote:
| Free market conservatives don't necessarily hate zoning.
| titzer wrote:
| The city should just spend $1.7M on composting toilet buckets
| ($22 at REI) and leave them by the dozens in areas with public
| defecation problems. What a goddamn boondoggle.
| urmish wrote:
| Californians who move out, remember back test your beliefs before
| you force them (usually via money) where you move to. There's a
| reason why you're moving out and part of that reason is your
| flawed thinking. Doubling down on that will only lead to more 0
| trust societies like SF.
| jquery wrote:
| Any actual SF residents in this thread? I'm seeing a lot of very
| authoritative posts coming from places of ignorance. One person
| even called it a "right wing dystopia".
|
| Here's the bottom line. The problems we are trying to solve in SF
| are _hard_. This place is fully developed. No way around that. Is
| SF perfect? No, not at all. But damn if this city doesn't try its
| hardest, moreso than almost any other city I know of. We could
| easily sweep away the problems tourists complain about, do a
| little fascism, and make all these "problems" go away... by
| ignoring the humanity behind them. But we don't. Instead we keep
| looking the problem in the eye and trying to solve it at a
| systemic level, as best a super dense 7x7km "island" possibly
| can.
|
| I would love to hear actual solutions from people who say they
| could do it better, but I am not holding my breath. They're
| usually like people claiming P != NP because "well, obviously"...
| notch656a wrote:
| >But damn if this city doesn't try its hardest, moreso than
| almost any other city I know of.
|
| This is the problem.
|
| The problem is you're trying too damn hard. Just build the
| fucking toilet. Less trying hard to do things the perfect way
| and be better than "almost any other city." At this point you
| should be looking at Camden or Gary IN for inspiration.
| jquery wrote:
| >"Just build the toilet"
|
| Did you think we are doing anything else? The article makes
| it pretty clear that's all that is happening, but it's making
| a big fuss over the fact some planning needs to take place,
| and that the planning website has some corporate-speak about
| doing our best or whatever.
|
| $1.7m is what it costs to hook up a full service public
| restroom in SF from idea to completion. It's not cheap to
| build on top of fully developed area, you can't just "dig and
| hope for the best". No, you can't cheat by sticking a commode
| on top of a storm drain and calling it a day.
| notch656a wrote:
| It's clear to me they're doing a lot else.
| carapace wrote:
| > Any actual SF residents in this thread?
|
| Hello! :)
|
| I grew up here, and live here now. I'm left-leaning by USA
| standards.
|
| > One person even called it a "right wing dystopia".
|
| As an aside, I think they meant something like "what a right-
| winger would call a dystopia", not that it was the result of
| right-wing policies (which makes no sense.)
|
| > The problems we are trying to solve in SF are hard.
|
| Not this one. Pooping and peeing in cities has been a solved
| problem since Roman times.
|
| A toilet could be a simple as a hole over the sewer: squat and
| go. That would be better than the current status quo and cost
| approximately nothing. But we're trying to act like a grown up
| not-insane town these days due to the influx of techies since
| the Dot Com Boom.
|
| > This place is fully developed.
|
| What do you mean?
|
| > But damn if this city doesn't try its hardest, moreso than
| almost any other city I know of.
|
| I can't agree. We make loud noises, sure, but when it comes to
| actually getting things done downtown it's just like any other
| city. I mean, check out the career of Willie Brown, eh?
|
| It's an open secret (if you've lived here long enough) that
| city hall has a lot of "soft" corruption. Some of it even makes
| the papers, e.g. Nuru et. al.
|
| > we keep looking the problem in the eye and trying to solve it
| at a systemic level
|
| Superficially maybe.
|
| In reality we sweep homeless camps and keep or discard people's
| stuff. I've heard we recently started requiring homeless to
| carry special ID cards to access city services. "Papers
| please?" We have special police on the buses to check people's
| fares. That is a new thing here. I remember when we didn't
| waste taxpayer money on _fascist_ policies like uniformed
| police sweeping public transport checking papers and ticketing
| or arresting people who didn 't pay their fare.
|
| I've heard that now-Governor Newsom wrote a book about his
| experiences as Mayor here. In it he relates that he found out
| that the fares we collect on our public transportation system
| only cover the cost of collecting the fares themselves. It's a
| break-even process: the fares pay for collecting the fares,
| everything else in the Muni system is paid for by taxes.
|
| So he asked, why not make Muni free?
|
| The answer, he wrote, is that it's believed that all the
| homeless people would ride it, and trash it. They buses would
| become "rolling dumpsters" was the quote, IIRC.
|
| Look that in the eye, eh?
|
| If I seem somewhat aggressive I apologize. I don't mean to pick
| on you.
|
| > I would love to hear actual solutions from people who say
| they could do it better
|
| Okay, I was homeless for about 4.5 years, and spent a little
| bit of that time here in SF.
|
| Here's how you solve it.
|
| First, everyone eats.
|
| Say it with me, shout it loud as you can: _EVERYONE EATS!_
|
| There are thousands of commercial kitchens in the city. This
| state produces more food each year than most nations.
|
| "Even God hesitates to offer anything but bread to the starving
| man."
|
| Step one: Everyone eats.
|
| Step two: Build houses and give them to people. This city is
| empty. More than half of it is one story tall. We could easily
| house a million more people here without sacrificing QoL or
| open space.
|
| Step three: human recycling center, that's a crass way to put
| it but whatever. Heal people. Love each other, etc.
|
| That's really step zero: get out of the way of love. All these
| problems are easy to solve if we just loved each other better,
| eh?
|
| Peace man, :)
| jquery wrote:
| Your post didn't offend me, if anything it reminded me how
| hard the problems are to truly solve. I appreciate your
| ideas, but we are in a democracy and you need buy-in.
|
| > the city is empty
|
| Maybe so, but you have to convince the residents that
| doubling the density won't affect them. I'd be happy to
| double the height of my residence and house another family or
| two here, but right now I'm already near the max zoned
| height.
|
| > A toilet could be a simple as a hole over the sewer: squat
| and go.
|
| We have storm drains. The problem is any time we offer
| privacy, they get used for shooting up drugs and people pass
| out inside the bathrooms. This greatly raises the cost. We
| could solve this by being super tough on crime but for better
| or worse we've decided not to mass incarcerate.
|
| I agree that SF does homeless sweeps now and then, but it's
| generally a last resort, not a first one. And notice is
| required... other cities will give you much rougher treatment
| than SF. Or they have severe weather which acts as a more
| effective deterrent to homelessness than any level of
| policing.
|
| I'm also seeing a lot more old RVs where I used to see tents,
| I think that's an improvement even if I'd still consider them
| homeless. RVs are also illegal but are much less of an
| eyesore than tents and probably safer too. There's probably
| even roaming services going around and "emptying" the RVs
| because I'm seeing a lot less urination on the street lately.
| [deleted]
| Ptchd wrote:
| dboreham wrote:
| The original Chronicle article (linked in TFA) is less onion-y.
| For readers not familiar with the city -- this proposed loo is in
| Noe Valley, an affluent residential area far from downtown, so
| comments about homeless people are not too relevant.
| dang wrote:
| (this comment was probably posted to
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33274885 before we merged
| it hither)
| jimrandomh wrote:
| I think things in SF have gotten well past the point where people
| should believe that it's mere inefficiency, and start calling it
| what it is: corruption. This money is being embezzled, used as
| political favors, or otherwise misappropriated. There will be a
| story about a wasteful process, of course, some budget paperwork,
| and excuses. But unless a detective looks closely at the books,
| those excuses will probably be lies.
|
| This particular price tag on this particular project isn't super
| important, but it looks to me like California government projects
| and public institutions have a pattern of doing this, adding up
| to a whole lot more than $1.7M.
| anm89 wrote:
| Where's the corruption here? If you set up a system of
| regulation where a building a toilet costs 1.7M and then
| building a toilet costs 1.7M, that seems like inefficiency not
| corruption.
|
| I'm open to being proven wrong here but it seems like this
| statement needs to be justified.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Ironically it would be cheaper if it were corrupted. People
| involved would actually be interested in cost cutting.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| People that think like you interest me. Exactly how much
| would someone have to move against you before you simply
| stopped them and said this is enough regardless of evidence?
| Like would you die instead of fight back if it came to it?
|
| Were your parents extremely well off? I don't see how one can
| make it through life without being wary of the bad intent
| other people can have without some sort of caretaker that
| will bail you out.
| anm89 wrote:
| You are just making wild assumptions about my belief
| system. This is bordering on incoherent
|
| Can you point to where I say any of this is good or show
| any sign of support for any of it?
|
| Were your parent's uneducated? I don't see how you could
| make it through life with this level of reading
| comprehension.
| jshzglr wrote:
| If a proposal for a toilet needs to pass through several
| committees to be built, it sounds plausible that SF is just
| one bureaucratic monstrosity organized democratically. It
| doesn't need to be fraud, although frankly I wish it was.
| That would be easier to dismantle.
| fragmede wrote:
| Calling it corruption isn't even a stretch. Nuru was ex-
| director of San Francisco Public Works, and plead guilty to a
| federal fraud charge.
|
| https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Ex-S-F-Public-Wo...
| cberry2010 wrote:
| It just me or why can't the City just put a bunch of porta potty
| throughout the city and have a crew with trucks that
| replaces/clean them on a periodic basis. This is what
| construction sites and community events do all the time! It's a
| simple model.
| cdot2 wrote:
| That would need to be approved through the same channels
| abeppu wrote:
| I've seen multiple articles on this, but none really explain why
| the public toilets that are used at other locations in SF cannot
| be used in this instance. Another comment in this thread mentions
| Paris's sanisettes, and SF already has a similar product (though
| far fewer of them). Given the city has already put them several
| places, I would have thought the marginal bureaucratic effort for
| one more shouldn't be so large.
|
| https://www.sfpublicworks.org/services/public-toilets
| sschueller wrote:
| In contrast the tiny city of Zurich Switzerland has 106 public
| toilet facilities. [1] Some are staffed, some cost money to use
| and some are open 247. Does my tax money pay for this, yes, I
| have used them and I am glad they exist.
|
| The maintenance of these 106 facilities cost around 6,895,000 CHF
| (~USD) per year. Around 40% of that is staffing costs and 23% is
| rent to 3rd parties.
|
| Yearly investment in upgrades etc. is around CHF 1,796,000
|
| [1] https://www.stadt-
| zuerich.ch/gud/de/index/gesundheitsschutz/...
| firefoxkekw wrote:
| Probably one of the best choices of my live was moving out of
| S.F to Switzerland five years ago, the culture here is a lot
| less focused on virtue signaling and way more focused on
| working, being respectful about no making a lot of noise on
| your house and public transport, actually having good
| incentives and culture about recycling and the washing machine,
| ultra safe place in general.
|
| It only took me about a year of about 2 hours per day learning
| german as my third language to feel confident enough to apply
| for a job that was similar enough to what I got in S.F, I was
| hired in about a week at a financial institution as an applied
| data scientist in the fraud deparment. Could probably have
| tried earlier but wanted to be able to integrated decently into
| the swiss society without feeling I was leeching too much.
| someuser4234 wrote:
| Is German or French more common?
|
| I knew someone in S.F. who married a woman from Switzerland
| roughly 5 years ago and moved out there...did you work at a
| software consulting company in S.F.?
| firefoxkekw wrote:
| Hi,
|
| Is German or French more common? >
|
| It depends base on the canton, but in the overall swiss
| german is more spoken than french.
|
| I knew someone in S.F. who married a woman from Switzerland
| roughly 5 years ago and moved out there...did you work at a
| software consulting company in S.F.? >
|
| Can't be me, I'm a female ^^.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| SF has something like 67 public toilets, 49 of them staffed,
| according to an article written two years ago. And the
| population of the city is about 50% greater than Zurich.
| reportgunner wrote:
| Based on a quick search Zurich has some 440K inhabitants
| while SF has some 880K inhabitants which is roughly double
| (or 100% greater)
| calebm wrote:
| I remember finding the Zurich public toilets strange - they use
| the toilet bowl as the sink as well (notice in the photo how
| the water to wash your hands falls into the same bowl). It was
| a strange surprise, but seemed pretty efficient:
| https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2F3...
| sschueller wrote:
| Only some are like that.
| Kukumber wrote:
| This almost sounds like some sort of corruption, but i must be
| over-reacting
| tristor wrote:
| There's a lot of comments in this thread blaming this on the
| boogeyman of "conservatives", but you're talking about a city
| that has been hard blue for more than 50 years and has not
| elected a single red in that time. Granted, blue isn't really
| "progressive", it's more globalist center-right in the global
| sense, but nonetheless, in the American sense, it's certainly not
| "conservative".
|
| I would suggest a re-examining of your political compass if this
| is the conclusion you came to after reading an article saying
| this boondoggle was based on regulations, committees, and unions.
| hot_gril wrote:
| I've lived and worked in SF. Thankful that I'll probably never
| have another work-related reason to go back. SF is marked
| deprecated in my eyes.
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33275411.
| stephencoyner wrote:
| It's easy to pile onto articles that highlight some of the
| city's mismanagement, but San Francisco is one of the most
| naturally beautiful places in the country. If you're out on the
| west side by Golden Gate Park, Baker Beach or the Presidio it
| feels like you're in a nature movie.
|
| Even with all of its problems, I will always love that city.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Yes, I loved GG park on weekends, but that's about it. I'm
| very sick of working there or even visiting. It did not
| improve since I left.
| baby wrote:
| I live in SF and honestly I don't see it. Any city in Europe
| is much more pretty, I was in Medellin this month and it's
| much more pretty as well.
|
| SF to me is just empty, cold, and only has big roads for
| cars.
| bombcar wrote:
| There are tons of naturally beautiful places up and down the
| Californian coast; San Francisco is just one of them.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > San Francisco is one of the most naturally beautiful places
| in the country.
|
| It's hit or miss. I find large swaths of the Outer Sunset
| desolate and depressing. Places like this:
| https://goo.gl/maps/QQbarT8iGEqLfNuN6
| acchow wrote:
| Agree. Much of the Richmond/Sunset is quite flat and
| doesn't exhibit the natural beauty of other parts of SF.
| WalterSear wrote:
| Golden Gate Recreation is working to mess all that up.
| jm20 wrote:
| I agree with you, but that has nothing to do with the city's
| management though. SF is a tragedy considering all of its
| natural gifts.
| acchow wrote:
| Or on the top of any hill (Russian Hill, Nob Hill, Potrero
| Hill, Bernal Heights, etc. etc. etc.)
| [deleted]
| lkjlk34t34 wrote:
| misiti3780 wrote:
| If you're NOT super rich and work in tech (aka can leave), I do
| not know how you sleep at night paying those ridiculous taxes
| knowing they are getting pissed away on projects like this.
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| there are a lot of people who basically save nothing but they
| don't think about tomorrow.
| asow92 wrote:
| Why is it that the deepest blue areas of the country have some of
| the most abject inequity and poverty? It seems that there's a
| fine line between compassion and enablement when it comes to the
| deep blue municipalities of New York, Chicago, San Francisco,
| Portland, Seattle, etc. Sure the rustbelt, deep south, and
| Appalachia are areas with similar problems and mixed politics,
| but they also somehow feel different.
| galdosdi wrote:
| The destitute are merely more visible in "big dense blue
| cities" but statistically there are more of them in rural red
| places like Mississippi and Oklahoma.
|
| After all, in OK or MS you need a car, which is a $2000+ asset,
| just to even access any public space or resource or make
| yourself visible at all.
|
| There's much more poverty in those places, but it is hidden
| away. You can see a slight bit of it at gas stations that are
| walking distance to poor areas, but for the most part, those
| are the lucky ones, and the unlucky ones are walking distance
| to nothing.
|
| I would much rather be destitute in a big city where I can
| access all kinds of formal and informal resources like temp
| agencies or subways to sleep on, than in a rural area where I
| am totally dependent on rides to anywhere.
|
| The advantage of the rural poverty accrues solely to the
| wealthier, who don't have to look at the poor as much as the
| urban wealthy and middle classes do. And perhaps that is why we
| are kinder (well, ok, slightly less unkind) to the deeply poor
| here, because we actually see them regularly rather than having
| locked them away so securely we can actually trick ourselves
| into thinking we don't have them here.
|
| It is deeply ironic that you came to the opposite conclusion by
| accepting superficial appearances. The trick of hiding the poor
| by means of car culture sure worked on you.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > I would much rather be destitute in a big city where I can
| access all kinds of formal and informal resources like temp
| agencies or _subways to sleep on_ , than in a rural area
|
| This is why so many commuters forego cities' public transit
| in favor of driving.
| asow92 wrote:
| I've literally seen someone shit in a subway before, and as
| we know, single toilets can cost millions of dollars in
| cities for some reason.
| bombcar wrote:
| According to Wikipedia a subway car is only 300k more, so
| it might be a better deal to buy subway cars to use as
| restrooms than buying these toilets.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R160_(New_York_City_Subway_
| car...
| asow92 wrote:
| It might get a little messy with the bumps around, but it
| could work in theory if cleaned regularly.
| Zanneth wrote:
| "Hiding the poor" versus "letting the poor suffer in plain
| sight" doesn't seem to matter, then. If it was true that
| oblivious poverty resulted in more action being taken to help
| those in need, we wouldn't have a homelessness problem in San
| Francisco. Clearly that is not the case, so I'd much rather
| live in a place where it is hidden.
| asow92 wrote:
| In my personal experience of living in both rural New York
| and Pennsylvania and NYC for decades, the ratio seems to skew
| more towards the city. But I can't say as much for the west.
|
| A $2k car is a lot less than higher average taxes and housing
| costs.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Try the rural south. Lots of rural NY is just a play place
| for richer people.
| asow92 wrote:
| I totally agree with you and don't want to discount the
| plight of the south.
| asow92 wrote:
| But, I'd also like to point out that much of the southern
| tier and western NY is a lot like Appalachia
| economically. We have much higher poverty rates compared
| to the rest of the state. The town in which I live is
| double the state average at around 30% poverty.
|
| And despite the fact that we have double the poverty rate
| of NYC it's nowhere near as apparent.
| bombcar wrote:
| In the rural areas you have "poor people" who have their
| own land and may even live off it a bit - which means
| they have housing and so are not as noticeable as actual
| homeless.
|
| If you own your hovel outright you can be incredibly far
| below the poverty line and be "okish" for some value of
| "ok". Especially if you have a number of people banding
| together on the same property (very common in rural
| areas) - some on SSI or SSD, some on welfare, some making
| some money on odd jobs.
|
| You can't really have that in the city or near it; the
| land is too valuable.
| galdosdi wrote:
| The rural places you lived in probably genuinely didn't
| have as much extreme poverty. I'm familiar with some of the
| types of places you probably mean.
|
| I was thinking of the rural South, where maintaining some
| degree of radical poverty even in the face of all kinds of
| modern development has been a strange national sport of
| sorts for hundreds of years. The OP seemed to be pitting
| southern red state rural vs northern cities based on their
| list.
|
| $2000 is a lot for plenty of poor people. And it's not even
| that easy to get a reliable car at that price anymore, you
| know. I'm glad it's hard for you to imagine that, but
| having to constantly either deal with the lack of a car
| (which usually means being unable to get to work, and thus
| earn money to feed the car...) or struggle to keep a car
| (worrying about a surprise bill) is a huge, huge pain for
| the poor.
| asow92 wrote:
| You don't need a car to live in these cities, but that
| doesn't mean it costs less to live there overall.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| City vs rural have different challenges for one. Cities as a
| whole seem to lean left but it's unclear if the policies are to
| blame or if it's just a problem of unrelated political factors
| (eg bussing homeless into cities from red areas to "clean up
| your streets")
| asow92 wrote:
| NYC has started bussing people to my rural area in Upstate NY
| because there isn't enough section 8 housing available and
| they're on a waiting list.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| this is a very a different sort of "bussing", it is state
| wide allocation of section 8 housing. they're not bussing
| people if they don't have section 8 already.
|
| Massachusetts does the same thing but from Boston to places
| like Fall River.
|
| Homeless are being bussed to SF without any housing
| arrangements.
| asow92 wrote:
| At the end of the day we have more people coming into our
| community of who don't feel inclined to contribute to it.
| The pedantic semantics of the difference is immaterial to
| my peers and neighbors.
| juve1996 wrote:
| Seems to be a strong statement to make - how do you know
| they don't contribute? Already by paying some form of
| rent, is that not contribution?
| asow92 wrote:
| If they're rent is subsidized by the state and they do
| not work is their contribution a net positive? Many of
| these people that I've met don't want a W2 or 1099 in
| fear of loosing their entitlements. The only folks who
| win there in the long run are landlords (rich getting
| richer).
|
| Sure some do contribute in a qualitative way to culture
| and social functions, but not as much economically.
|
| Yes, I'm often accused of being an un-empathic robot, but
| I can't help looking at this in a macroeconomic sense.
| Just trying to be intellectually honest with what I see
| around me in the world.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I can guarantee you it would not be immaterial to you if
| the state was shipping people there without housing
| already lined up.
|
| It is the state's prerogative to distribute this as it
| seems fit.
| asow92 wrote:
| As it is our prerogative to protest it either way.
| d23 wrote:
| Inequality is pointless to talk about in a vacuum. Blue states
| tend to have higher wealth overall, so it's unsurprising
| there's a bigger measure of "inequality." On basically every
| economic point, blue states are better:
| https://appliedsentience.com/2020/07/30/economics-are-red-or...
| For this reason, blue states also end up essentially
| subsidizing the red ones:
| https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2022/01/22/blue-states-pay-...
| asow92 wrote:
| Better economically, with more tent cities too.
| drewrv wrote:
| Other comments mention that it's more visible in cities, but
| I'd like to add that "abject inequity and poverty" are national
| problems that cities cannot solve individually. Rural areas are
| given disproportionate political power in our national
| elections while cities go underrepresented. So national
| problems that affect cities go ignored.
| asow92 wrote:
| If rural areas are given disproportionate political power,
| why can't political parties that feel this disadvantage do
| better in those areas? Why change the rules of the game
| instead of winning it?
| juve1996 wrote:
| Because the two-party system limits choice to voters and
| polarizes camps.
|
| A democrat could have genuinely good policy that would make
| an enormous difference for a lot of republican voters. But
| stances on social issues like gay marriage, gun control,
| etc, will make them unviable as a candidate. If they switch
| and support these issues, then they'll lose their primary.
| asow92 wrote:
| While I don't think Yang has a shot, I really appreciate
| his attempt to find a new, level-headed middle. Finding
| middle ground is our best hope. I think there are ideas
| from both sides that could help both city and rural
| constituents, and believe that the culture war has gotten
| out of control on both sides with irreconcilable
| differences that disqualify the other. However, I also
| believe that rural voters could be won by Dems if they
| were engaged on their level instead of flown-over.
| asow92 wrote:
| https://youtu.be/3_3cwjoQedQ
| googlryas wrote:
| Because cities tend to go blue and tend to have their problems
| crammed into a small area, where a single person can observe
| it. Taking a photo of 10 junkies strung out on a city street
| corner tells a more compelling story than taking a picture of a
| rural junkie on their porch, then driving 10 minutes and taking
| another picture of a rural junkie on their porch, and then
| driving another 15 minutes...
| asow92 wrote:
| Why do they congregate in cities and not rural areas?
|
| /s Wouldn't it make more sense for them to ramshackle up
| together in bobbies place down the road? I hear he's got the
| good meth.
| yadaeno wrote:
| Chicago and New York do not belong in the same category as
| Seattle and SF. Chicago is orders of magnitude better than
| seattle wrt inequality and poverty
| raldi wrote:
| Show me a place that lacks inequality and I'll show you a place
| that drove out all their poor people.
| asow92 wrote:
| Nowhere is without inequality. Hierarchies form naturally and
| cannot be abolished regardless of the system in which they
| form.
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| Because those things are a result of progressive policies.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I used to be a progressive and used to campaign for
| candidates. Then I stayed where I am and the rest of the
| bandwagon moved way way left. So, I will probably vote
| against any of the "progressive" policies, politicians and
| elections.
|
| At this point, Florida and Texas have record net in-flux
| migration from California. Can't wait to see this competition
| completely kick California's butt. It is a shame, I am stuck
| here, I'd move otherwise. With all my heart, I want to
| improve California. I just don't see a way.
| nemo44x wrote:
| The rustbelt, deep south, and Appalachia are not some
| beautiful, middle class paradises. They're full of towns
| littered with heroin and meth addicts subsidized by welfare and
| petty crime. You just don't see it or read about it because
| it's across thousands of small towns and not concentrated in
| major cities, where media also tends to live.
|
| These places have a lot of violence, social issues, drug
| overdoses, etc. They may not have homelessness at the same
| level because housing is cheaper and in many cases involves a
| trailer or an old house in disrepair.
| haberman wrote:
| I just spent a few days in Birmingham, Alabama. The downtown
| streets were so clean you could eat off of them.
|
| It is really hard to come back to Seattle and see all of the
| trash everywhere. In the Seattle airport one of the bathroom
| stalls looked like someone had used the floor as a trash can.
| There were orange peels, discarded shoes, and various other
| trash sitting on the floor next to the toilet.
|
| Social problems exist everywhere, but that's no reason to
| give up on having pleasant and usable public spaces.
| asow92 wrote:
| Not disagreeing with that, and both city and rural have their
| problems.
| Zanneth wrote:
| Whether they exist or not, the fact that the normal working
| population don't have to see or deal with it sounds like a
| significant upgrade.
| bsder wrote:
| So, it's perfectly okay for the poor to suffer terribly as
| long as it's out of your sight.
|
| Got it.
| mehphp wrote:
| Do they though? I think the problem is just more visible in
| densely populated areas (which tend to lean blue).
|
| Red states are filled with poverty/inequity it's just more
| spread out.
|
| Drive through the derelict areas in rural America and you will
| see similar issues.
| asow92 wrote:
| In my personal experience of living in both rural New York
| and Pennsylvania and NYC for decades, the ratio seems to skew
| more towards the city. But I can't say as much for the west.
| [deleted]
| moneycantbuy wrote:
| https://archive.ph/hDumb
| baby wrote:
| I'd really like to read an anonymous report from someone working
| in the government and who understands why the city is such a
| mess. Like, I read so many theories, but they mostly seem to be
| written by people with an agenda or who have no clue.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| If this is anything like the $20,000 trash cans[0], the price
| is inflated because there's only one and so all the one time
| costs around design and manufacturing are put on a single item.
| When you amortize the costs across the entire production run,
| it falls to a tenth the price, but "$2,000 trash can" doesn't
| generate headlines and outrage because that's how much a sturdy
| municipal trashcan costs.[1]
|
| But to talk about the nationwide problem that building anything
| anywhere takes orders of magnitude too long and too much,
| there's no smoking gun. It seems to be a combination of factors
| from understaffed government agencies, to invested interests,
| to out of date regulations, to just bad engineering and
| planning.[2][3]
|
| [0] https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/san-francisco-
| pricey-t...
|
| [1] https://www.trashcanswarehouse.com/Municipal-Trash-Cans-
| and-...
|
| [2] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/07/why-we-cant-
| figure-o...
|
| [3] https://www.vox.com/22534714/rail-roads-infrastructure-
| costs...
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| The thing is, you can look at this headline and know immediately
| that it's hiding information. You can read the opening paragraph
| and tell that it isn't an article that's actually seeking to
| inform anyone about anything. It's not news. It's not really hard
| to figure out why public discourse is so broken when this sort of
| shit-shovelling churnalism is treated seriously.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| I can see why you were downvoted. You are correct about the
| submitted article, and these types of posts attract a different
| audience - newer, lower karma accounts that tend to focus on
| non-technical subjects.
|
| Yahoo doesn't produce much content, they distribute it. This is
| from the National Review, which is a partisan editorial
| magazine. It is not bias or incorrect to say it is not
| journalism. It is a subsidiary of the NRI, which is a dedicated
| to advancing conservative ideas and politicians (that is in
| their words - https://www.flipsnack.com/nrinst/2022-my-
| newsletter.html)
|
| This type of content is fairly well crafted to appeal to
| certain worst impulses, and manipulate people. There is a US
| political movement based on creating a long standing state of
| aggrievement and thrive on this sort of cortisol raising
| material. It's is a shame to see it getting a foothold here.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| What's the "truth" behind the headline then? Genuine
| question, I totally agree that it sounds a bit "too bad to be
| true" especially without more context. But what's the other
| side of this story?
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| I sorry, I didn't make my point very clearly: I think this
| article is raises non-issue, intended to create conflict
| and bad feelings. They say that the opposite of love is not
| hate, it's apathy; I am ambivalent about this article and
| am not invested enough to knowledgeably discuss it. I'm not
| an SF resident, and I don't know how much it would
| reasonably cost to put up a durable and safe public toilet
| in a high cost, seismically active urban area. I don't have
| time to figure that out, so I'll assume the people involved
| are doing their best and I will go on with my life. There
| are a lot of people here focused on unproductive
| negativity, and that is not good for them or Hacker News as
| a community.
|
| The truth is there is always something to get outraged
| about somewhere, and rather than focusing on them everyone
| should do their best to live with dignity, integrity, and
| empathy.
| [deleted]
| hot_gril wrote:
| Reminds me of their $2.4B bus terminal, which opened in 2018,
| closed a month later when they noticed structural cracks,
| reopened in 2019, then closed in 2020 for covid19. Had to walk
| under its unfinished skeleton every day going to work.
| m0llusk wrote:
| You are making light of things for your own delight and
| political leanings which is exactly the kind of thing that
| leads to all this nastiness. The station you are talking about
| is multimodal and is going to get Caltrain even though it takes
| a long time. It has a unique structure that makes it
| essentially a big floating barge and the problems that came
| with that have since been fixed. Lots of stuff got closed for
| COVID that could probably have been kept open with precautions.
| Your pointed criticism needs to be balanced against
| alternatives and you provide none.
| hot_gril wrote:
| There's the obvious alternative of just building a regular
| terminal instead of an overdone mall-like thing with an
| artificial park on top. What they did was excessively costly
| and time-consuming, and during its long construction
| (effectively 9 years) the area was much less ped and bus
| friendly. It's like they wanted an iconic transportation
| structure like GG Bridge, except GG Bridge's form actually
| serves its function.
|
| Since $2.6B can be too big to think about, Salesforce Tower
| (tallest building in SF) cost $1.1B to build around the same
| time and in the same location. It took 5 years to build.
|
| Why did I mention Covid, to illustrate the point that things
| are more valuable now rather than later, cause you don't know
| what's going to happen. I don't want to hear that it's going
| to be useful eventually when they could've KISS'd and made
| something useful years ago.
| Drunk_Engineer wrote:
| About that Caltrain connection...the terminal was built
| before the connecting tunnel was planned. It is still unclear
| how the terminal will accommodate the required number of
| trains without the tunnel backing up. The latest workaround
| being studied is to make it a Through-station -- which would
| be great except these same city officials allowed a bunch of
| skyscrapers to be built east of the terminal (i.e. where the
| through-tracks would go).
|
| As for the bus-station-in-the-sky...talk to any AC Transit
| planner and they will say (privately) the agency would have
| much preferred for transbay buses to continue down Market St
| (i.e. similar to how BART works). But AC Transit is not
| allowed to compete with SF Muni, so instead a giant bus
| parking lot was built above some of the most pricey real
| estate in the world.
|
| So yes, the station is yet another example of Bay Area
| dysfunction.
| dllthomas wrote:
| And is presently open and pretty cool actually, most notably
| the way the transbay buses have a direct link to the bridge.
| And I believe the full price tag included the park on top of
| it, which remained open (though vendors did not) during COVID.
| I don't have a strong opinion about whether it was all worth
| $2.4B, but at least it wasn't quite as much of a disaster as
| you are portraying.
| tomcam wrote:
| Why didn't they open up the bids? My firm would've been willing
| to do that toilet for only $1.45 million and get it done within
| 18 months. Because we are go-getters
|
| /s
| PKop wrote:
| jdross wrote:
| I do not believe this type of public theft is due to
| incompetence, I believe it is corruption and grift
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| > I do not believe this type of public theft is due to
| incompetence, I believe it is corruption and grift
|
| A lot of the money is presumably going into the extremely long
| public comment process mentioned in the article that building
| any sort of public works take in the US and which usually ends
| up resulting in paying to have projects redesigned multiple
| times when anyone complains. That seems more like incompetence
| or a failure in the political process than corruption/grift to
| me. Really the only people that benefit are the planners who
| end up redesigning stuff multiple times (but who probably don't
| necessarily really want to have to do that) and the NIMBYs who
| are able to effectively destroy any project if they're
| persistent and vocal enough. The politicians or local
| government officials don't really benefit because their
| projects end up getting effectively killed. While it's tempting
| to assume everything is due to intentional corruption, it's
| actually hard to point to anyone who's really successfully
| pulling off a "grift" here.
|
| Actually building anything also costs more in the US than
| pretty much anywhere else, which could be attributed to "grift"
| but it's so diffuse and systemic that it also seems to fall
| under "incompetence" as a result of the complete lack of any
| process that successfully keeps the prices in check or looks at
| how other countries are doing things better.
|
| Also, it seems like even other countries that have more
| outright bribery are more successful at actually getting stuff
| like this built than the US, so even if corruption is a factor
| it might not even be the biggest problem.
| dekken_ wrote:
| hey now, let's not give them too much credit, it's probably a
| bit of both
| duxup wrote:
| Incompetence and bureaucracy seem more likely.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| Por que no los dos.
|
| All the waste of money was done above the table and according
| to official government process. On one hand it's just a bunch
| of people who DGAF about the big picture doing their jobs and
| nothing more. On the other hand it walks, floats and quacks
| like the graft duck.
| duxup wrote:
| Incompetence looks like graft too... doesn't make it graft.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| Where does the line get drawn?
|
| This looks a lot like the "I'm gonna pay you $100 to
| F-off" scene from Trailer Park Boys where the money is
| being given to parties who would usually whine if there
| wasn't something "in it for them" (the unions, the
| NIMBYs, the politicians, etc.)
|
| Surely the fact pattern doesn't meat the legal definition
| of graft but if the entity doing the paying out wasn't
| the government a negligence tort would probably fly so it
| kind of begs the question why this fact pattern is
| acceptable.
| [deleted]
| tlogan wrote:
| Correct -- everybody knows that Mohammed Nuru [1] was not the
| only corrupted one. He was just the only one caught. The
| problem is that these kind of corruptions is so hard to catch
| and prove.
|
| [1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-san-francisco-
| pu...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It's straight out of the OSS (pre-CIA)'s "Simple Sabotage Field
| Manual".
|
| https://gist.github.com/kennwhite/467529962c184258d08f16daec...
|
| > General Interference with Organizations and Production
|
| > Insist on doing everything through "channels." Never permit
| short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions. Make
| "speeches." Talk as frequently as possible and at great length.
| Illustrate your "points" by long anecdotes and accounts of
| personal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate
| "patriotic" comments. When possible, refer all matters to
| committees, for "further study and consideration." Attempt to
| make the committees as large as possible -- never less than
| five. Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
| Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes,
| resolutions. Refer back to matters decided upon at the last
| meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability
| of that decision. Advocate "caution." Be "reasonable" and urge
| your fellow-conferees to be "reasonable" and avoid haste which
| might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on. Be
| worried about the propriety of any decision -- raise the
| question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within
| the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with
| the policy of some higher echelon.
| newsclues wrote:
| awestroke wrote:
| But it's being used by hardcore capitalists in this case?
| In fact, it seems to be in the republican handbook
| mardifoufs wrote:
| There are republicans in the san francisco
| administration?
| lkjlk34t34 wrote:
| vxNsr wrote:
| What's crazy is many of the people doing this are doing it
| without a hint of irony or intentional malice. They truly
| believe they're working towards a worthy goal and what you've
| described above is the only way to reach it.
| newswasboring wrote:
| What's funny is if you remove all the scare quotes this can
| be added to any organization guide for many big corporations.
| The crux of the thing is "follow the process, keep following
| the process".
| leereeves wrote:
| I'm curious when the OSS, which was both founded and
| dissolved during WW2, had use for that advice.
|
| Were they sabotaging German bureaucracy, or American? Neither
| seems likely.
| [deleted]
| ceejayoz wrote:
| My understanding is it was for partisans embedded in
| occupied areas working in critical infrastructure and
| manufacturing.
| leereeves wrote:
| The Germans held meetings where they allowed partisans to
| make speeches and question their decisions?
| bombcar wrote:
| It's similar to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-to-
| rule or
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malicious_compliance - you
| are actively working against the goals of the
| organization by overtly acting toward the goals.
|
| Anyone who has dealt with children can recognize it
| immediately, but it can be damn hard to "identify and
| punish" because they're following the letter of the law.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| When the Germans took France and all the other countries,
| they didn't replace all the management and workers at the
| various factories there. They didn't have that much
| manpower; their own managers and workers already had
| jobs. This left plenty of opportunity for obstruction and
| sabotage.
|
| For example: https://jalopnik.com/citroen-sabotaged-
| wartime-nazi-truck-pr...
|
| > Of course, he instructed workers to set a nice,
| leisurely pace when building trucks (likely Citroen T45
| trucks) for the Wermacht, but that's fairly obvious. What
| was brilliant was Boulanger's idea to move the little
| notch on the trucks' oil dipsticks that indicated the
| proper level of oil down just a bit lower.
|
| > By moving the notch down, the trucks would not have
| enough oil, but German mechanics would have no idea,
| because, hey, the little notch on the dipstick says its
| just fine. Then, after the truck has been used for a
| while and is out deployed somewhere crucial, whammo, the
| engine seizes up, and you've got a lot of angry,
| stranded, vulnerable Nazis, balling up their little fists
| and redly barking curses in German.
|
| The whole thing also includes lots of non-meeting
| options; making sprinkler systems go off, clogging
| toilets, dulling cutting tools, etc.
| faebi wrote:
| That paper sounds like a fun rabbit whole to go down to. Do
| you have any other recommendations to read? Maybe some books?
| foobarian wrote:
| This almost reads like it was written not seriously, but as a
| plausibly deniable rant by someone who spent a few too many
| years in a government job.
| lkjlk34t34 wrote:
| thebigship wrote:
| San Francisco has always been bad at building public amenities:
|
| https://theoutline.com/post/8660/san-francisco-pissoir-aesth...
| greendestiny_re wrote:
| Grand opening of a public toilet, escalator, or elevator is a
| common sight in Eastern Europe during an election campaign.
|
| https://www.klix.ba/vijesti/bih/gradonacelnik-zivinica-sveca...
| sn0w_crash wrote:
| Eastern Europe is 100x cleaner and more beautiful than SF will
| ever be.
| [deleted]
| ck2 wrote:
| Build it in a mobile truck like an RV, make a fleet of them and
| drive/park them to where needed
|
| Then at end of day replace with another truck while the previous
| goes to get flushed/cleaned.
|
| $1.7 million could build a fleet of a dozen with spare parts for
| a decade, fuel and labor to maintain/clean.
| olalonde wrote:
| Related: $2M bathroom in New York
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfAE5emMCs8
| kyleyeats wrote:
| NIMBYism would be a lot less popular in SF if we called them what
| they were: Conservatives.
| anonygler wrote:
| Meanwhile, in Florida:
|
| https://twitter.com/MyFDOT/status/1582832749681201152
|
| California is a failed experiment.
| lovich wrote:
| Meanwhile in Florida
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/interactive-see-after-p...
|
| You can find failed/failing/failing to implement infrastructure
| in every state in the US, it's a national issue
| anonygler wrote:
| Counterpoint: California residents would've blocked the Condo
| development using CEQA and it'd be a hybrid parking
| lot/homeless encampment. Checkmate indeed.
|
| It's a good thing the Millennium Tower is still standing.
| lovich wrote:
| It's not really a counterpoint when every place is fucked.
| I'm saying this from region that did the last mega
| engineering project in the US (the big dig) and that was
| even 20 years ago. We are one of the best areas for
| approving infrastructure projects and we still don't
| approve enough to support the areas needs.
|
| It is a national problem
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Honestly, as a Californian; I see this positively. We need our
| butts kicked a bit to make progress. I _want_ California to be
| the best place in the world. It's trying hard to not be.
| refurb wrote:
| _The Arts Commission's Civic Design Review committee will be
| responsible for conducting a "multi-phase review" of the project,
| like it does for all projects on public lands.
|
| Before the project is put out for bid, it will be subject to
| review under the California Environmental Quality Act, according
| to the Chronicle.
|
| The public toilet will be built by union workers who will "earn a
| living wage and benefits," according to a joint statement from
| Rec and Parks Department and the Department of Public Works,
| which added that, "While this isn't the cheapest way to build, it
| reflects San Francisco's values."_
|
| Lots of palms greased all the way around.
| _dain_ wrote:
| > The Arts Commission's Civic Design Review committee will be
| responsible for conducting a "multi-phase review" of the
| project, like it does for all projects on public lands.
|
| this part stands out to me, they have no incentive to say "yes"
| to anything (apart from a bribe) and every incentive to say
| "no". if they say "yes" that means projects can actually go
| ahead and the arts council has nothing left to do[1]. and they
| can say "no" for any reason they like since the standards are
| subjective.
|
| liquidate the whole thing.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/gmOvEwtDycs?t=93
| derelicta wrote:
| I mean there is nothing wrong with the whole "built-by-union-
| workers"-thingy. its more all of the Bureaucracy involved thats
| stupid.
| LanceH wrote:
| Nothing wrong with paying non-union livable wages, either.
| Except that they don't contribute politically, of course.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| Nothing wrong with lazy and unaccountable workers?
| derelicta wrote:
| tell me you've been victim of corporate propaganda without
| telling me you've been victim of corporate propaganda
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| I work for the government in one of my jobs. I see it all
| the time.
| derelicta wrote:
| Not to downplay your observations but thats mostly
| anecdotal.
|
| Also, I think professionals working in STEM fields should
| be careful not to encourage this race-to-the-bottom wage-
| wise for workers, for it may also happen to us sooner
| than we may hope.
| 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote:
| There's nothing wrong with a $1.70m toilet either.
| kortilla wrote:
| There is if they were selected for any reason other than
| offering the cheapest price.
| derelicta wrote:
| sometimes there are other factors besides the price tag.
| not to defend the ridiculous amount being wasted on this.
| nemo44x wrote:
| There's a lot of issues with it. It's de facto bribery to buy
| votes from labor unions. If a union can win the job in a free
| and open auction then so be it. But it shouldn't be awarded
| to them just because.
|
| There's a reason we have transparency in the bidding process
| for government work. This is cronyism.
| [deleted]
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| This could be an article in the Onion.
|
| And people wonder why SF can't build affordable housing ... :/
| newsclues wrote:
| Remember the jokes about the military overspending on toilet
| seats?
|
| It seems like it's a bipartisan past time to waste taxpayers
| money on foolishly over expensive pet projects.
| mellavora wrote:
| It is a bipartisan pass-time (not past-time, you must have been
| auto-corrected) to accuse the government of wasting money.
|
| And then forcing them to waste money by shifting their tasks
| and priorities followed by blaming them again for the waste.
|
| The military overspending was on hammers. And the politician
| forgot to mention that these were hammers for use in a
| munitions factory, where it was rather important that the
| hammer not generate even micro-sparks.
|
| The politician also didn't mention anything about government
| overspend on desks for senators. I'm sure his desk didn't come
| from Ikea, but somehow that wasn't a problem.
| newsclues wrote:
| Attack the other team for their spending.
|
| To gain power and direct the spending to your team.
|
| Rinse and repeat.
| jhgkjhlkhjkljk wrote:
| hansvm wrote:
| The funny thing is a huge number public-facing businesses in SF
| are already legally required to have toilets and make them
| available to the public, but every single one of them is
| supposedly in a perpetual state of "the pipe just broke an hour
| ago" or other such excuses 24/7.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| It's very expensive to defecate in San Francisco...
| Ptchd wrote:
| vanillax wrote:
| I would never step foot into a public SF toliet. Last time I went
| in there the homeless shit all over the floor and toliet and
| walls. I went in and nearly threw up. A homeless person pointed
| and laughed at me. Fuck that.
| insanitybit wrote:
| Public toilets aren't really for you, they're for the people
| who have nowhere else.
| [deleted]
| eloisius wrote:
| It's shocking that this is a normal opinion. Taipei is a much
| bigger city than SF. There are public restrooms everywhere.
| Every single metro station has clean, indoor restrooms. Not
| just "available" restrooms, I mean clean, like cleaner than
| most gas station restrooms in the US. Parks also have
| restrooms. Failing that, you can probably find a private one
| at 7/11.
|
| I really can't believe how shitty major US cities are, nor
| can I fathom how they got there and how we think it's normal.
| It can't be just "public funding" because Taiwan isn't
| exactly a socialist welfare state either, yet the cities are
| downright urbane.
| creato wrote:
| A tiny minority of people ruin things like this for
| everyone, and the US doesn't have the political will to
| deal with them (they likely need involuntary commitment to
| mental institutions).
|
| When I lived in SF, I couldn't believe the amount of trash
| on the street. How can so many people litter so much? Then
| one day, I happened to witness a homeless guy taking all
| the trash out of every trash can on the street and just
| dumping them.
|
| That one guy was undoing a week of effort by thousands of
| people to keep things clean of litter. That kind of
| behavior should be considered a serious offense, but no one
| cares, about either the guy or the trash. Have a paper
| straw! That will fix it.
| insanitybit wrote:
| I'm not saying "every public bathroom is for homeless
| people". I'm saying _in San Francisco_ that is the problem
| being addressed. I have traveled to many countries with
| public toilets that do not have these issues, I am aware of
| what is possible.
| knaekhoved wrote:
| > Public toilets aren't really for you, they're for the
| people who have nowhere else.
|
| This is an incredibly stockholm-syndrome take. If you live in
| a place that isn't a total failed state, _normal people
| actually can use the public toilets!_
| rumpelstinkin wrote:
| honestly though, public toilets are usually so dirty in my
| area (unless there are entry fees) that I rather use a
| shop's toilet instead. This is not about failed states, but
| a large portion of the populace not giving a shit about
| others... or giving too much shit perhaps =)
| knaekhoved wrote:
| gtirloni wrote:
| Japan has excellent toilets. They have that by doubling
| down on cleaning, not on expecting their people to care
| more (they don't).
| kolinko wrote:
| Where do you live?
| semitones wrote:
| Ideally, public toilets are for everyone - for the public...
| insanitybit wrote:
| And ideally people wouldn't be homeless, but here we are in
| reality.
| mcculley wrote:
| This may be true in San Francisco and certainly is in many
| other parts of the U.S.
|
| It is not true in places with functioning government.
| insanitybit wrote:
| Yes, obviously. We're talking about San Francisco where
| this toilet is being built with a very explicit purpose.
| mcculley wrote:
| I responded to the blanket assertion. I wouldn't want
| people in civilized places to think that public toilets
| should only be "for the people who have nowhere else".
| gtirloni wrote:
| What's different between a traditional public toilet that
| anyone can use and a homeless toilet? You seem to imply
| there's a difference that affords extra explanation and
| justification.
| insanitybit wrote:
| I'm not implying any difference at all. I'm not saying
| the public can't use the toilet, I'm saying that the main
| problem that the government is trying to address is one
| with the homeless population.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| You are arguing an ideal and they are making a point
| about practice and fact. The practice on the ground and
| public policy is that certain "public toilets" are for
| the homeless. This informs government decisions about how
| they are designed, who has to maintain them, where they
| are placed, and who uses them.
|
| A public toilet in the tenderloin is a homeless toilet in
| all but name. A public toilet in Golden Gate Park is
| actually a public toilet in the sense that you are
| talking about.
| illuminerdy wrote:
| That doesn't make any sense. Public toilets are for the
| public. Anyone who finds themselves in a situation where they
| need a toilet. A tourist, for example. Or maybe just someone
| who finds nature calling at an inopportune time. I'm sure
| we've all been there.
|
| Also, even if it WAS for people who have nowhere else, that
| doesn't mean that it should be covered with shit.
| insanitybit wrote:
| No one is saying it should be covered in shit. I'm just
| explaining that projects like this in SF are targeting a
| very specific issue - a large homeless population.
| jgerrish wrote:
| Yes, but San Francisco also has a large tourist
| population.
|
| Speaking of targeted, this public project almost feels
| like it was designed to piss off conservatives. Which is
| a shame, because older tourists are a big segment of the
| market there. And foreign toursts. And just like climate
| change and summer homes on the coast, I hate that there
| will be ironic endings to this for conservatives.
|
| Obviously, the homeless population and climate challenged
| have it worse. But we didn't need to make others suffer.
|
| Such a shitty situation. Pin sanitation worker pay to
| software engineering rates or higher and build some
| fucking toilets.
| jgerrish wrote:
| It just makes life more difficult. It's work in a way,
| dodging all this.
| xwdv wrote:
| Have you ever taken a shit in a public toilet? It is a
| disgusting, degrading experience. I'm still traumatized
| from the one time I had no choice, and I said never again.
| kolinko wrote:
| It really depends on a place. I used public toilets in
| Europe without much issue.
| renlo wrote:
| All of the public toilets I used as a tourist in Europe
| cost a euro, bathroom operators have an incentive to keep
| their bathrooms clean. San Francisco (lived there for 4
| years) does not adequately maintain their toilets,
| echoing other comments in this thread, they're literally
| the worst I've seen. Even the NYC MTA (i.e. subway)
| bathrooms were better, bathrooms which tend to be
| portrayed as being especially dirty
| golergka wrote:
| In any normal city, public toilets are for everyone.
| _dain_ wrote:
| this mindset is why you have terrible public services.
| dahfizz wrote:
| Then they should rebrand from _public_ toilets. Maybe a sign
| that says "poopy poopy homeless toilet" would clear up the
| confusion.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| At that point we should just give up and make a pit latrine
| and ask the homeless to defecate openly into that.
| [deleted]
| rootusrootus wrote:
| At the last office I worked at, there was someone who did that
| to our bathroom. Not a homeless person, either, but one of the
| employees. They never figured out who.
|
| In a public bathroom, I wonder how much of that happens because
| of mental issues, and how much is a byproduct of the bathroom
| not getting cleaned often enough.
| hot_gril wrote:
| I wouldn't either, but that's only cause I've literally never
| found one.
| throwawaytoilet wrote:
| For years I felt this way. But with a 3 year old child you go
| into lots of public toilets all over the city. Nearly all
| toilets near playgrounds for children have been fine. Basic but
| fine.
| scrumbledober wrote:
| I was blown away by how nice the bathrooms at dolores park
| were. I was really avoiding going in because I had very very
| low expectations.
| throwawaytoilet wrote:
| Thinking through this more. SF Parks and Recs managed toilets
| have all been fine from a sample size of about 20 uniques and
| maybe 80 visits. About 75% of those visits are weekend days
| in the mornings.
| kfarr wrote:
| Yes Rec and Parks bathrooms are plenty good for the job,
| even with kids. Maybe they should take over the other ones!
| sva_ wrote:
| > shit all over the floor and toliet and walls
|
| Sounds like someone made it their home
| rajup wrote:
| You probably don't want to step in SF ever. FTFY.
| [deleted]
| Spivak wrote:
| I had Paris syndrome for SF real bad because of how it was
| described by people and portrayed in movies and when I
| finally went there it was uhh.. not somewhere I would live
| forever. I'm sure it's amazing if you live in the rich areas
| but I got an apartment in the mission which was sold to me by
| some of my native friends as one of the good semi-affordable
| areas for young professionals and it was culture shock.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| All the novels and biographies I've read that make SF out
| as a cool bohemian wonderland were all written in the
| 60s/70s and even then they were lamenting about the good
| old days being gone. It's remarkable to see a city living
| so long off a reputation it earned generations ago.
| illuminerdy wrote:
| I used to live in the South Bay and go up to San Francisco
| and Oakland every other weekend. It was bad, but it seems to
| have completely gone to hell in the last decade.
|
| I would not set foot there unless all of human existence
| depended on it.
| throwawaytoilet wrote:
| I've wanted to leave SF for a few years as I don't connect
| as well after having kids. It has slid but it is very easy
| to avoid the big problem areas and you get desensitized.
| But there is still lots to love about the city. It soul
| isn't crushed yet.
| fooblaster wrote:
| hear hear! San Francisco is still a beautiful place,
| leagues ahead of the south bay strip mall.
| mattnewton wrote:
| I feel like there are two SF's - the one that other people
| write about on 6th Street and the tenderloin, and then the
| one I visit west of that which is one of the most beautiful
| and vibrant American cities I have ever spent time in.
| snarkyturtle wrote:
| So basically any big city. The tourist trap where one wrong
| turn can lead you to homeless encampments, and the actual
| city that people live in.
| throwawaytoilet wrote:
| I think you need to be a bit desensitized to problems that
| are visible all over the city (e.g. trash under and along
| freeways etc) for that to not be the memory that sticks
| rather than the beauty.
|
| It is like SF needs a "clean up the city volunteer day"
| once a month that is broadly attended.
| uoaei wrote:
| In my experience, empathy is a much better solution for
| these kinds of emotional reactions than desensitization.
| mattnewton wrote:
| Hmm, having just visited SF and then spent a week in New
| Haven and Hartford in CT, I can't agree. What American
| city doesn't have trash? I can't think of a city I have
| visited in the world that meets that standard. I haven't
| been, but maybe Singapore?
|
| The homeless problem is very bad in California and SF in
| particular, and it is very concentrated in a small area
| to the east that looks positively dystopian. But that
| doesn't represent the whole city. If there is a next time
| you visit, I recommend spending some time in the
| panhandle, the Haight, the sunset, basically anywhere
| bordering golden gate park.
| muaytimbo wrote:
| I lived in New Haven for 4 years. The difference in the
| amount of trash between American cities is vast, compare
| NYC with Chicago. Or really any city on the east coast
| with Chicago for that matter.
| mattnewton wrote:
| I'm not sure if you mean that Chicago is clean or dirty?
| I saw a lot of both last time I visited, it's hard to
| say. It certainly seemed a lot cleaner than, say,
| Rochester NY or Philadelphia when I visited, but not sure
| if that was just the areas I was in.
|
| Of course the difference is vast, I think you could
| compare one part of NYC with NYC even and end up with
| vastly different ideas of trash. And that's kinda what I
| am going on about; the trash under highways in some part
| of the city is a meaningless metric.
| muaytimbo wrote:
| Chicago is a much cleaner city. No comparison with New
| Haven, NYC (where I used to live), Philly (where I live
| now) or really anywhere else on the east coast. The
| culture of throwing trash on the ground is endemic on the
| east coast.
|
| I was flying from NYC to Denver a few months ago and a
| Denverite and I struck up a conversation on this very
| topic after observing multiple people throwing trash on
| the floor in LGA. Speaking of which, Denver, another city
| that is much cleaner than anywhere on the east coast.
| mitchdoogle wrote:
| It's because Chicago has alleyways to hide their trash
| and NYC doesn't. It's not that Chicagoans are any cleaner
| or have cleaner habits
| muaytimbo wrote:
| Chicago also uses cans instead of throwing trash onto the
| streets. In conjunction with using alleyways I think we
| have planned structural differences between the two
| populations. Surely the beginning of an argument for the
| "cleaner" and "cleaner habits" between the two.
| throwawaytoilet wrote:
| FWIW, I visit golden gate twice a week in average.
|
| I guess I'm saying something a bit different. When people
| visit SF from SFO they get on the 101 and within 2 hours
| they have a feeling of things are broken and that memory
| sticks. I'm desensitized to those problems so I mostly
| see the beauty.
|
| If people land at SFO and took 380 onto 280 thn straight
| to golden gate perhaps their impressions would be
| different.
| dehrmann wrote:
| They might have also taken Bart to the cheapest hotel
| they could find near Union Square.
| nemo44x wrote:
| "the committee evaluates each project's design, scale and massing
| for accessibility, safety and aesthetic merit." The review
| process "ensures that each project's design is appropriate to its
| context in the urban environment, and that structures of the
| highest design quality reflect their civic stature."
|
| This is a perfect example of why you codify requirements and any
| review for permitting is as objective as possible. In this case,
| it's totally subjective and will be abused to get money and other
| favors from developers that want the project.
|
| This is pure corruption out in the open and they don't even try
| and hide it. They even mention that they might not need the full
| $1.7M and they'll find other uses for the money if it doesn't
| cost as much. This is theft of tax payer money by unaccountable
| officials.
|
| Any extra money should be returned to tax payers and every single
| part and labor cost must be documented and justified.
| lkjlk34t34 wrote:
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Can you crap in it? Does it get crap on you? Anything that
| meets the description will do (doo) .
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I wonder what precautions will be taken to make sure that toilet
| doesn't become either someone's residence or a "shooting
| gallery."
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| How the rest of the world (including parts of the US) does it -
| https://abcnews.go.com/Health/blue-lights-drug-users-high/st...
| Gigachad wrote:
| Honestly these just make the place feel extremely shady.
| Supposedly addicts just mark their veins with a pen before
| going in anyway.
| xyzzy4747 wrote:
| Maybe they'll raise taxes to pay for these toilets, and then
| raise the price of the toilets to match the higher budget.
| danschumann wrote:
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| A novel solution: what about a hose into the ground with a large
| opening, and a 3/4 blind, maybe mounted on a tree, or post.
|
| Feces is another issue but ... urinating is something we can
| solve.
| [deleted]
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| One of my jobs is in the public service.
|
| This seems like the usual case of public servants doing
| everything possible to avoid someone being unhappy with them
| later. Consultations, union workers, tons and tons of approvals,
| etc. Remember, you can't really win as a government worker. The
| priority is not to lose.
|
| You want every little concern addressed? You want layers and
| layers of accountability? You want the top concern of every
| person in gov to be avoiding any possible desire to be
| responsible for something?
|
| You get this.
|
| I've seen this play out many times. No corruption. No grift. Just
| ass covering.
| ticviking wrote:
| I'm increasingly convinced that a good deal of our societies
| problem is pathological conflict avoidance.
|
| The people we have elected(directly or indirectly) are
| terrified they might be confronted with the consequences of
| doing their job, and making a choice. I see the same thing at
| work, and in my church community.
|
| I've found it's often better to have a direct conflict early,
| than an prolonged indirect conflict. Having the courage to
| deliberately engage in it is a whole different ball game
| though.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| Probably.
|
| But people also need to have an actual interest in engaging
| in the conflict. I refuse to engage at work. You could be
| shipping passwords in plaintext and I will let you do it, as
| they are not my users.
|
| In the case of elected officials, it is even worse. Smaller
| waste can easily go unnoticed, unless you bring it up, fight
| a lot of people, and get blamed for not finding it earlier.
| Another thing work has taught me. Cover ups nearly always
| make sense.
| newsclues wrote:
| You say that like these public servants care about everyone but
| the taxpayers footing the bill.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| I don't personally care about anything as a public servant
| beyond covering my ass. Joe Taxpayer does get screwed, but he
| gets screwed by the collective decision making satisfying
| everyone else, so I can't get in trouble for it.
|
| Joe Taxpayer doesn't show up to the planning meetings. Joe
| Taxpayer doesn't submit anything to the feedback forms. Joe
| Taxpayer doesn't care enough about any particular project to
| really win.
| abeppu wrote:
| Aside from the cost, the broken thing here is that the process
| requires so many layers of review and approval, but _everyone_
| disapproves of the status quo of feces on the sidewalks. The
| bathroom needs an environmental review, but sidewalk feces
| don't, even though they get mixed into storm drains.
|
| You're saying this process arises by trying to not make people
| unhappy, not leave concerns unaddressed, having layers of
| accountability. But people are not happy, concerns (ongoing
| feces) are not addressed, and given that there isn't a person
| to blame for the ongoing situation there is clearly
| insufficient accountability.
| 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote:
| So how do we fix it without adding yet another layer? All the
| govt seems to do is add more layers.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| You would need two things:
|
| 1. Actual rewards in gov for success. In the public sector,
| the smartest people try nothing new and do not innovate
| because that would be a dumb thing to do, as you are punished
| for failure and not rewarded for success.
|
| Someone who delivers a big win should get a big bonus. The
| problem is that when that has happened, some article will get
| written and managers will get in trouble over it.
|
| 2. Tolerance for missteps, delays, and schedule changes.
|
| I spend 2 weeks fixing a hard to solve bug for my private
| sector unicorn? No big deal. Maybe talk about it a bit in
| retro and move on.
|
| In my public sector job? At least three meetings on why we
| missed the sprint goal. Why? As someone above wants to cover
| their ass on missing the sprint goal. And we will write up a
| several page doc on why we missed the sprint goal.
|
| Someone takes a chance on a much cheaper contractor and it
| doesn't work out? They can't be dragged to meeting after
| meeting having to defend it. That is how you get people
| hiring IBM for failed project after failed project, because
| at least they can say "IBM is the standard practice."
| mellavora wrote:
| We start regarding public servants with some respect instead
| of someone to be yelled at.
|
| A culture shift.
|
| You are right more regulations/another layer isn't going to
| help.
| fdewrewrewf wrote:
| A culture shift, yes.
|
| Back to the idea that public _servants_ are indeed servants
| to the public, and their entire purpose is to spend the
| public 's money in a way that benefits the public.
| mellavora wrote:
| I've heard horror stories on HN which would justify your
| cynicism, and agree that corruption is a problem. See
| also issues with police and accountability.
|
| You might be surprised, however, at what percentage of
| federal bureaocracy does see themselves as civil
| servants.
|
| The culture shift can be done. And it is well worth it,
| for everyone's sake. Corruption represents a Nash
| equilibrium, once rooted it is very hard to remove.
|
| That's why I'm defending government workers here. We want
| good, effective government. This requires good, effective
| people to carry out the work. Making this respectable and
| letting those people do their job is pretty key to
| getting that good government.
|
| The principles aren't so different from managing a team
| of software engineers. Would you enjoy working (in
| software) in a company where sales and marketing was
| always blaming the engineers, and HR was always calling
| the engineers lazy, and management was constantly
| shifting priorities while blaming engineers for not
| hitting targets, etc...
|
| So why create the same environment for government
| workers? Why not treat them with the same professional
| respect you'd expect/hope for in your job?
|
| And why not call out the politician as the a*hat when he
| insults the people trying to get the job done?
| duxup wrote:
| Yeah the local state had some efforts to reclassify some state
| construction rules for work on state facilities. Through years
| of rando events it came to pass that installing a door required
| a "metal worker" (I forget the exact term) ... because it
| involved some metal ... in some way. But generally they were
| just prefab doors with frames that you drop in. This only
| seemed to apply to doors and a couple other also "this is
| actually a cheap job" type situations.
|
| It jacked up the price considerably. Lots of interests end up
| with some strange outcomes.
| michaelscott wrote:
| > _San Francisco, which is struggling with a troubling
| homelessness and public-defecation crisis, needs more public
| toilets._
|
| The irony in this statement, given the reasons why this toilet
| costs so much, is absolutely unreal. I had to check the date on
| this article to make sure it wasn't an old April's Fools skit or
| something, but it seems red tape and NIMBYism have escalated to
| such a degree in SF that (a) securing budget for a single toilet
| that will take 3 years to build is considered a political victory
| worthy of patting themselves on the back in the press, and (b) a
| toilet to "ease" rampant homelessness is considered a far better
| option than actually trying to provide housing or attack more of
| the root causes.
|
| Wild.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Society is strange. Last year a Canadian woodworker made cabins
| for the homeless which was destroyed (probably because of some
| regulation) by the city.
| Kalium wrote:
| SF and Oakland have both had problems with fires in
| encampments. I'm betting the... let's call them guerilla
| housing efforts generally don't measure up on fire safety.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| The city should create encampments themselves rather than
| let them grow organically. Then provide security and
| sanitation service. Portland may actually try this, all
| because the city got sued for violating the ADA. Maybe
| someone should try that in SF.
| Kalium wrote:
| That's such a good idea that SF already does it! They're
| called "navigation centers". As you might guess, where to
| site one is an intensely political process.
|
| Oakland tried doing one temporarily. Three months turned
| into nine with major drug abuse and violence problems.
| Further, they couldn't actually manage the shrink-the-
| encampment goal, so eventually they had to clear it.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Yeah, I think the only way to make it work is to provide
| plenty of security, right along with the social workers.
| The NIMBYs in Portland primarily argue against siting a
| homeless shelter near them because of the associated
| violence. If the city actually staffed the shelters with
| enough security, that argument could be dismissed.
|
| Of course another argument would pop up to replace it. So
| the other thing we need to do is quit trying to do direct
| democracy at every last level of the process. We elect
| representatives, so we should let them do their thing.
| And if we don't like it, elect someone else next time.
| Kalium wrote:
| That only works if the people in need of assistance don't
| respond to the on-site security by moving out of the
| encampment. You wind up having to establish a sizable
| security-protected area around the blessed encampment,
| otherwise you wind up with a series of unsanctioned and
| unsecured encampments anchored by the serviced one.
| Neighbors tend to object to that kind of thing.
|
| What SF actually needs to do is house people.
| Unfortunately, its main dysfunction is its flat refusal
| to actually do this.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| It seems that should be weighed against no home at all.
| Kalium wrote:
| How do you weigh incipient death-by-fire-with-major-
| public-hazards against other options? I have no idea how
| you'd do it or how you'd weight other options.
|
| Basically, how many avoidable deaths by fire are you
| willing to sign off on with this justification?
| Ancapistani wrote:
| > how many avoidable deaths by fire are you willing to
| sign off on with this justification?
|
| Up to, but not including, the number of avoidable deaths
| by exposure that are already occurring.
| Kalium wrote:
| Given the permanently mild weather in the SF Bay, this
| number is probably smaller than you think. Whereas fires
| in homeless encampments are a relatively frequent
| occurrence.
| notch656a wrote:
| Being exposed without, say maybe wooden structure to
| block the wind around you while you sleep, may be a
| reason homeless build fires.
|
| The last story I was able to find was of someone that
| died exactly that way, a fire in near freezing weather in
| SF [0]. If that person had a lockable wooden shed to put
| blankets and sleep in, she wouldn't have needed a fire.
|
| [0] https://www.kqed.org/news/11906661/woman-who-died-in-
| homeles...
| Kalium wrote:
| When I lived in Oakland, my apartment building had
| several close calls with wildfires caused by poorly
| contained campfires in a nearby encampment of vulnerable
| community members housed in tents to keep the wind off as
| they slept. Given that lockable wooden sheds / "tiny
| homes" can and do catch fire from things like poorly
| managed propane stoves in particle board construction,
| perhaps a better solution is in order. As stopgaps go,
| this one has a bunch of known drawbacks that lead policy
| to shy away from it.
|
| Personally, I favor actual housing.
| notch656a wrote:
| The Canadian woodworker built these structures for people
| who had no actual housing. Not people who had the
| immediate option of an actual house and just picked
| living in the shack for funzies.
|
| Your suggestion that these homeless people should have
| just went in 'actual' housing instead is absurd, it
| almost certainly wasn't an option for many if not most of
| them in the face of the immediate expedient options.
| Kalium wrote:
| Thank you for clarifying that I correctly understood the
| earlier comment.
|
| What would you like me to say at this juncture? I firmly
| believe that the root of the issue at hand is
| California's, and the Bay's, collective aversion to
| housing. It's an aversion written into policy. Policy can
| be changed.
|
| Similarly, people in need can be housed by municipalities
| sufficiently devoted to doing so in a cost and time-
| effecitve manner. It just requires the political will to
| do so and a political system that does not cater to NIMBY
| impulses.
|
| Please accept my apologies for my lack of clarity
| earlier. I _do not_ think that people lacking housing
| should "just go into housing". You are completely
| correct. That would be utter nonsense. I think the proper
| policy response is actual housing for people, as opposed
| to an entrenched policy apparatus devoted to doing
| literally anything but that. I hope this clears things up
| for you.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| SROs in SF have a long and storied history and generally one
| of the good lessons to draw from this history is wood
| structures are a bad idea for housing homeless people.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > a far better option than actually trying to provide housing
| or attack more of the root causes.
|
| I see a lot of discussion among urbanists of "induced demand"
| when adding extra lanes to highways. Are we sure there wouldn't
| be induced demand from providing free housing to the homeless?
|
| Already, the Bay Area & LA are major draws to homeless
| populations throughout the country. [0]
|
| [0]: Yes, there are some studies that show "70% of homeless
| people in the Bay Area list most recently becoming homeless in
| the Bay Area" but many of those people came to the Bay in the
| first place to access homeless services and that study also
| relies on a very expansive definition of homeless). These
| studies are also incentivized to show this as a local issue
| from an ideological perspective. If you actually ask visible
| homeless people on the street where they are born, most will
| not say the Bay Area.
| bnralt wrote:
| Another problem with "just providing housing" is that there
| are a good number of these people who need a lot of support
| and have a hard time functioning in society. Here, they tried
| giving homeless residents housing vouchers to apartments, and
| it lead in a significant drop in quality of life for the
| people who lived there, with a rise in violence and crime in
| the buildings (this is based both on newspaper articles about
| the program and talking with residents). I've known people in
| buildings like that who are looking to move after living
| there for decades.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Of course it would induce demand, especially when the
| benefits are an order of magnitude better than in other
| jurisdictions. It might even attract people to be "homeless"
| for free housing in one of the most desirable cities in the
| country.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > I see a lot of discussion among urbanists of "induced
| demand" when adding extra lanes to highways. Are we sure
| there wouldn't be induced demand from providing free housing
| to the homeless?
|
| This is an interesting point, but would it not apply more
| generally to creating more housing for everyone, rather than
| just when creating housing for homeless? The population of
| homeless people is just a tiny fraction of the total number
| of people in the housing market.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| The difference is that with normal supply and demand for
| housing, shifting the supply curve right will both lower
| the price and increase the quantity.
|
| Not the same for artificial supply of zero cost housing.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| If food became twice as cheap, would you consume twice as
| many calories?
|
| Induced demand is easily applied to traffic because people
| shift consumption from X to X+Y% miles when trip times are
| reduced. Housing demand is finite. There is no +Y% additional
| housing that is being consumed when it is free, because it's
| only available to people who have none. Google's software
| engineers aren't going to be using free housing if it becomes
| available.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > it's only available to people who have none.
|
| It's only available to people who have none _across the
| entire country_ , plus it lowers the cost at the margin to
| becoming homeless (albeit only slightly).
|
| > Housing demand is finite.
|
| So is traffic demand. Demand being finite does not mean
| that induced demand no longer exists as phenomenon.
| bombcar wrote:
| Induced demand is just another way of saying the supply
| is too low - and increasing the supply doesn't "increase
| the demand" it just reveals demand that was already there
| (and being unfulfilled).
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > demand that was already there (and being unfulfilled).
|
| This is true of anything with supply and demand and a >0$
| price.
| aliqot wrote:
| Red tape and nimbyism is hard to imagine from what I see of SFO
| in books, it seems like the most anti-diversity thing you can
| do.
|
| Can anybody from SFO relate their experience? Hard to tell
| these days what is editorial bias or sensationalism and what is
| true.
| epistasis wrote:
| Here's a quote of the city planners' process to remove
| parking from in front of bus stops, a sevev year effort worn
| bearing doe every single stop:
|
| > We can't just paint 1,200 curbs, it's going to be a longer
| process.
|
| https://twitter.com/aarieff/status/1582408966163660802?s=46&.
| ..
|
| This is the method for any change. SF thinks it peaked in the
| 80s or 90s and any change requires community consensus lest
| the 50 people that use a bus stop a day are inconveniencing
| the single car owner that parks in front of the bus stop.
| jayzalowitz wrote:
| This one is stupid, you can walk in between cars.
| orhmeh09 wrote:
| Try taking a wheelchair between cars.
| aliqot wrote:
| If I were in a wheelchair, I'd be terrified of cities
| like SF who only grow vertically and are opposed to any
| types of accommodations requiring construction.
| hot_gril wrote:
| I wouldn't feel safe around there either. Also, SF is
| naturally very hilly.
| bena wrote:
| It's what I call the difference between "northern racism" and
| "southern racism".
|
| The American South is probably more ethnically diverse than
| the North. If you're in the South, you are going to encounter
| black people. They're 13% of the nation but they're up to 30%
| of the population in some states. Whereas, there are some
| states further north where the population is mostly white.
| Like the joke that when Prince died, Minnesota's black
| population died.
|
| So the areas developed different styles of racism. The South
| has more of a "know your place" kind of racism. You can live
| here, you can shop here, you can blah blah blah. But "know
| your place". Defer to your "betters". Etc. The North has
| developed NIMBY. "Yes, you are equal to me, but just not
| here." A "roll up the windows and lock the doors" kind of
| vibe if you will. Redlining was as much, if not more, a
| Northern thing.
|
| And while San Francisco is geographically South, it's got a
| lot of the North mentality about race relations. They want to
| deal with it by not dealing with it. They should be able to
| buy houses and shit with dignity, just not here.
|
| And it's a kind of attitude that can pervade while claiming
| to be fighting for racial equality. And those people may
| truly believe they are fighting for racial equality. Which is
| why we should always be a bit introspective and concerned
| whether our own actions are prejudiced in some manner.
| Because it can develop despite our best intentions.
| hot_gril wrote:
| This reminds me of one party in UC Berkeley hosted by my
| extremely Democrat-voting, racism-fighting friends. All
| their friends and acquaintances were there. 20 minutes in,
| I noticed something was different... every single person
| out of ~100 attending was white. This is statistically
| unlikely, given that >50% of the students are (or were?)
| Asian. And I'd been to plenty of other parties not like
| that.
|
| Then I realized, that entire friend group is distinct from
| my other groups, with almost no overlap.
| cjtrowbridge wrote:
| I have a degree in Urban Studies and Planning from San
| Francisco State University and I work on affordable housing
| and mutual aid. San Francisco is objectively the worst city
| in the world, and a right-wing dystopia masquerading as a
| progressive utopia but never in any way that matters.
| stvswn wrote:
| "a right-wing dystopia?" Seems like you'd prefer to
| redefine what it means to be left or right wing rather than
| admit that this is the outcome of left-wing governance.
|
| The specific issues here are: tight control over building
| standards leading to red tape; high levels of process to
| ensure community review and involvement; paying more than
| market price for labor in order to support unions as a
| political value; supporting restrictive zoning to keep
| renters and homeowners in stable homes.
|
| "Right-wing" imperatives did not create these issues.
|
| Put another way, if a city elects left-wing politicians
| exclusively for 50 years, and those left-wing politicians
| enact policies and values consistent with their platforms
| -- it's probably not the case that negative results are
| because they're actually secret Republicans.
| indymike wrote:
| In government, the continuum is not a line, it is a
| circle. If you go far enough left, or far enough right,
| you end up at the exact same place.
| stvswn wrote:
| I don't think there are many ways in which SF is similar
| to a "very right wing" city. First of all, "right wing"
| politicians do not control any city governments in any
| real way, but if you were to compare SF with say, Houston
| -- which has radically different policies along these
| lines -- you wouldn't find that the results are the same.
|
| In the American context, an extreme right-wing city
| government would theoretically provide very few public
| services, allow all property to transact in open
| marketplaces with very little red tape, allow for any use
| of property to meet market demand. In other words, you
| could build a gigantic high rise in Noe Valley but the
| city wouldn't pay for public toilets in any case (but
| someone could feel free to make pay toilets if they own
| or lease the land). Left wingers imagine that this sort
| of arrangement would lead to worse or similar outcomes
| for the poor than SF currently, but... I don't know,
| honestly.
| aliqot wrote:
| I assumed it was an attempt at ideologically shirking
| accountability for the outcomes involved in elected
| officials doing what they were elected to do.
| carapace wrote:
| Could it be they meant a dystopia as right-wing might
| view or describe it?
|
| As in "I'm right-wing; this is my idea of what a dystopia
| would be; SF seems like that."
|
| Rather than "this dystopia is the result of right-wing
| policies." which clearly doesn't fit the facts, eh?
| stvswn wrote:
| No, I think the comment was meant to mean "this is not
| left-wing, this is late-stage capitalism, the problem is
| that we have too many right wingers in SF that are
| cosplaying progressivism"
| aliqot wrote:
| what is 'fact' and what is anecdote are unclear here,
| I've observed none of this personally, until then it is
| me suspending disbelief and relying on the words given to
| me for the interpretations and observations of those that
| I assume have more familiarity than me. I have no idea if
| it 'could be' that they meant X. I'm asking to know, not
| because I have an agenda.
| Ligma123 wrote:
| aliqot wrote:
| In what ways is SFO right wing? I don't see much
| representation of that type as far as elected officials. Is
| this a term used in spirit or something I'm overlooking?
| xienze wrote:
| > In what ways is SFO right wing?
|
| I think the poster misspoke, SF is more like what those
| on the left imagine a right wing dystopia would look like
| (massive wealth inequality, homelessness and litter
| everywhere, crime, everyone is a NIMBY, etc.).
| aksss wrote:
| Are we going to talk about the cognitive dissonance in
| there? Nobody can argue that SF hasn't had every
| advantage (for many decades) in implementing a left wing
| utopia - a pure monopoly in politics, high taxes on high
| earners to fund policies - and at this point we're saying
| it turned out looking like a right-wing dystopia. Why
| isn't it a left-wing dystopia? Probably because in some
| people's minds, left==utopia, right==dystopia, and that's
| where any analysis stops; but this is just someone
| incapable of acknowledging any error in their own policy
| prescriptions. "I don't suck at tennis, it's this shitty
| equipment." From the outside, it's almost comical. It
| couldn't possibly be that the systemic criticisms had any
| merit to them.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| If something has problems, it's due to the right wing,
| naturally. The far right, because there's no such thing
| as being just a little right. Alt-right if it's citizen-
| led and not overly Christian.
|
| Overall, it's just a manifestation of "if we were only
| just a _little_ more left, things would work out! "
| you'll see.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| SFO is an airport, so two wings generally..
| TeeMassive wrote:
| Replace "right" with "those who doesn't want to do the
| right thing" and most political speech kinda makes more
| sense.
|
| The Left/Right split of viewing politics is a false
| dichotomy that made sense only about a century after the
| French Revolution, in France.
| aliqot wrote:
| >Replace "right" with "those who doesn't want to do the
| right thing" and most political speech kinda makes more
| sense.
|
| >The Left/Right split of viewing politics is a false
| dichotomy that made sense only about a century after the
| French Revolution, in France.
|
| I don't think that's a fair characterization. I don't
| think people affiliate with a certain party seeking to
| "not do the right thing". Saying it is a false dichotomy
| while still saying one side doesn't do the right thing is
| a bit two sided. I am, however, getting the idea that
| there is some subtle derision being conveyed when the
| term 'right wing' is used, which is unfortunate because
| at least to me I'm being pre-loaded with bias about
| people I don't really know yet.
| savingsPossible wrote:
| It is not meant (I'd guess) as a characterization for
| people, but as a way to explain/read the words left and
| right, especially when one is criticizing the right
|
| (i.e.: right is used mostly as a synonym for bad, for
| some people)
| aliqot wrote:
| This comment makes more sense in that context, thanks for
| breaking it down for me. I don't know how we can have a
| meeting of the minds while people use the term for others
| as a pejorative. I hope it gets worked out some day when
| we mature as a species and global community.
| eitally wrote:
| https://www.commentary.org/noah-rothman/would-you-
| believe-sa...
| enragedcacti wrote:
| People who are left wing w.r.t. the organization of the
| economy view democrats as right wing i.e. upholding the
| entrenched power structure. SF dems will happily support
| spending money on the homeless in principle, but they are
| still deeply conservative when it comes to how policies
| will affect them or their capital. They are pretty much
| the poster child of NIMBYism:
|
| "I know X is something the community needs and I'm all
| for building it, just _Not In My Back Yard_ "
| aksss wrote:
| This is some hilarious gymnastics. S.F. is basically a
| poster child for how left wing urban policy is easily
| turned into abusive graft and inherently prone to abuse
| and corruption and it's just like, "no, _more_ cowbell!"
| Just keep turning the dial up and I'm sure it will get
| better.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| Of course, classic left wing policies such as single
| family zoning that somehow hasn't been removed after
| decades of the socialist iron grip on the bay.
|
| In all seriousness, how do you differentiate between left
| wing policy that is "inherently prone to abuse and
| corruption" and policy with a progressive facade that is
| designed by and for those with a vested interest in
| maintaining the status quo? Where are the left wing
| professors that are saying "actually we need more public
| hearings, stricter building codes, more environmental
| review, and by god we can't let anyone touch the
| zoning!"? Presumably they would exist if SF policy is
| what the left wing actually wants.
| msoad wrote:
| SFO is the airport. I'm very confused by this comment. We're
| not all working at Google right now.
|
| MTV, SFO, MPK and all of this lingo is not familiar to all
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| People sometimes use major airport codes as shorthand for a
| city or the metropolitan region the airport serves.
| simonw wrote:
| People who live in San Francisco don't use SFO to refer
| to the city.
|
| The airport is actually a couple of cities away (there
| are a lot of cities in the Bay Area).
| soperj wrote:
| People who use airport codes to refer to cities don't
| care.
| yardie wrote:
| I would hope not, considering many major cities are
| serviced by multiple major airports.
|
| NYC - JFK LGA EGW
|
| PARIS - CDG ORY
|
| London - LGW LHR
|
| Tokyo - NRT HND
|
| SF - SFO SJC
|
| If someone starts refering to a city by the airport code
| I'd be completely lost because most airports and their
| codes don't reflect the name of the city they service.
| hot_gril wrote:
| SJC doesn't really serve SF. You can say OAK sorta does,
| but not really. It's pretty clearly SFO. Also, the BART
| line to SF is called SFO (used to be called whatever
| terminating city until they realized that's stupid).
| hotpotamus wrote:
| And anyplace without a major airport is "flyover country"
| often to the chagrin of people who live there.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| We have the best pizza in ORD
| warkdarrior wrote:
| Indeed ORD-style pizza is the best.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Back to that same old place, sweet home ORD.
| elcomet wrote:
| I'd say the worst
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is not pizza, so it cannot be best or worst pizza.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| We have a datacenter there, so I'd totally know exactly
| what city you meant by that. I wouldn't say we always
| call Chicago ORD, but it definitely happens.
| kergonath wrote:
| From my experience doing so is a good way of coming
| across as a douche tech-bro ("yeah, I'm so cool I use
| code names"). Particularly when the comprehensible way
| would be to write SF rather than SFO.
| hot_gril wrote:
| I should get a Patagonia that says "SFO" on it. I already
| have the EECS Supreme shirt.
| astockwell wrote:
| SFO is commonly a shorthand for San Francisco, LA for Los
| Angeles, SD for San Diego.
| hot_gril wrote:
| SFO, LA, SD. One of those is not like the rest.
| fooblaster wrote:
| no, SFO is an airport
| thatswrong0 wrote:
| SF, not SFO
| mikeryan wrote:
| Username checks out.
| bombcar wrote:
| Nobody refers to San Diego as SAN, even though LAX is
| used for LA, the airport, and the train station?
|
| Just be glad you don't live in Cumana I guess.
| [deleted]
| hot_gril wrote:
| You're right. I used to work there. Hated the experience, but
| I can see why it's like that.
|
| SF was always dense. At some point, all these tech companies
| moved in, and it became what I call a "commuter city" where a
| huge proportion of people there during the day don't actually
| live there or necessarily want to be there. It also shifted
| the culture, probably for the worse. Of course many living
| there beforehand might not like that. Yeah some people own
| property, but generally big business stands to gain the most
| from the influx, not the residents. I wouldn't be happy in
| their shoes either, and the only reason I wouldn't be NIMBY
| about it is I'd just leave. The NIMBYs basically lost; the
| city grew anyway.
|
| And it comes from every side, not just a "left or right"
| thing. People with nice houses don't want their neighborhoods
| to deteriorate. Renters don't want rent to go up. Even the
| stereotypical SJW people against gentrification... that's
| NIMBY.
|
| Also, being a dense, very wealthy area with relatively fair
| weather, SF is naturally a place for homeless people to
| congregate. Besides the obvious squalor that brings,
| businesses don't trust just anyone off the street. No public
| restrooms, no chairs in Starbucks, covers on everything in
| Walgreens, ID requirements to enter stuff, you get the idea.
| There's no obvious solution to that.
| batman-farts wrote:
| "The NIMBYs basically lost" feels like it's true in a lot
| of Northern California. Out in Tracy, a local lawyer (who
| had an office but not a residence within city limits) got a
| residential growth restriction on the ballot and passed
| circa 2000. The city took it to court, it was upheld after
| a few years, essentially zero residential development went
| on in the lead up to the '08 recession because the city had
| allowed "too many" houses to be built per the terms of the
| RGA restriction...
|
| Fast forward 20 years later, the town grew substantially
| anyway, within the terms of the restriction. And all the
| problems that the lawyer and his supporters said their
| restriction would prevent happened. Traffic, densification
| (loss of "small town" feel), escalating housing prices, a
| majority commuter population... and much less of an escape
| valve to fix it all. The NIMBYs basically lost. And it has
| a knock-on effect, because families pushed into commuting
| to support themselves have to look even further out from
| their Bay Area jobs to find an affordable places. But the
| same lawyer still shows up to city council and planning
| commission meetings to remind everybody about how close
| they are to the limits on how many houses can be built this
| year.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Yeah, there's a sour spot where they're not planning for
| growth but not conserving the neighborhood either. I
| don't like the idea of neighborhoods becoming urban. It
| just doesn't work well. The urban area should be planned
| for density from the beginning, and they go all-out there
| without fighting the neighborhood for zoning permits.
| Make it ped/transit-friendly, and put parking on the
| perimeter instead of wasting valuable space on the
| inside. Meanwhile there's no reason a quaint neighborhood
| needs a huge apartment complex.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| > No public restrooms, no chairs in Starbucks, covers on
| everything in Walgreens, ID requirements to enter stuff,
| you get the idea. There's no obvious solution to that.
|
| Is this seriously the reality of SF? Never been there. If
| yes, that's pretty bad and degrades the city in some
| aspects to 3rd world place. But then again I am in Europe,
| many things like crazy homeless people I saw often in LA
| are unheard of here.
|
| What do you do if you do multi-hour walk around the city?
| Or hop from one restaurant/cafe/bar to another one?
| kaesar14 wrote:
| You pay for something, then you're allowed to use the
| bathrooms.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Many places don't have one for customers.
| hot_gril wrote:
| I worked there in 2016-2018 and returned several times
| 2020-21, and yes it's been this way.
|
| It's not very difficult to deal with, just annoying
| enough that at some point you might get tired of it. I
| walked everywhere, only avoiding a few streets. You can
| find the cafes or even public seating areas that are
| hospitable, but it may require a little trial and error.
|
| The one actually hard thing is finding a bathroom. Many
| businesses don't have one even for paying customers,
| unless it's a sit-down restaurant.
| notch656a wrote:
| The Philippines has pay toilets ("comfort rooms")
| everywhere. I've always wondered why the US has
| capitalism for everything but toilets. It really makes
| things more convenient as people have an actual incentive
| to offer toilets to the public, and the prices are low by
| local standards.
| dalyons wrote:
| there's actually bans against them in most states, from a
| student campaign in the 70s. Funny little piece of
| history: https://apnews.com/article/3b2787ac6c32405e8cd7a
| afe8789cd8e
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| Yep, sounds about right. If you're a tourist, though, I
| would say that restrooms are accessible to a similar
| extent as any European city I've traveled to. They're
| perhaps more likely to be disgusting if you're in the
| worst parts of the city. Decent venues stay on top of it,
| though, and any place with a counter to order from will
| have a code you need to ask for to gain access.
|
| If you're a local, there's of course social engineering
| tricks you can use, like going into a branch of your bank
| to make a withdrawal, then asking to use their bathroom.
| bombcar wrote:
| And the quiet part that isn't spoken of is that all these
| businesses HAVE to have restrooms for their employees;
| and if you are nice and (basically not visibly homeless)
| and nobody is looking, you can often get access to them
| "as a favor".
|
| Restrooms are the first victim of the tragedy of the
| commons.
| xenadu02 wrote:
| Be careful about trusting what people in this thread are
| saying. If you only spent a few years here to work, live
| in a "trendy" spot for startup kids, and mostly spend
| time in SOMA/FiDi/Hayes then your understanding of the
| city will be skewed.
|
| In Sunset, Parkside, Richmond, Sunnyside, Glen Park, etc
| the coffee shops and restaurants have chairs. Many with
| the space have outdoor seating. Lots of them have
| bathrooms too - the ones that don't are for building
| space reasons not because of abuse. The bathrooms are
| supposedly for paying customers only (like much of the
| US) but I happen to know if you have kids they waive that
| restriction (blowouts rightfully generate pity from
| anyone who's ever had kids). I've never been asked for ID
| to enter a store. My local CVS does have some products
| behind locked covers but only a few more than my parent's
| small town CVS. It doesn't have a security guard.
| Everything is just more normal and relaxed.
|
| That said there are areas of the city where things are
| much more annoying due to theft, vandalism, and so on.
| Walking into a CVS in Mission/SOMA vs a CVS in Diamond
| Heights is like two completely different brand of store.
| Crime has definitely increased.
| aliqot wrote:
| Thank you for this frank breakdown of what's going on. This
| seems like a good possible explanation for the testimonials
| I'm reading in this thread. I'm still struggling with what
| is espoused by those from SFO area and tech culture
| compared to the reality of what's going on.
|
| If anybody is dedicated to 'social justice', to
| remove/resist facilities to relieve oneself just seems so
| far off the mark. I'm sure a lot of this is due to me not
| being in a city as dense as SFO, that undoubtedly has to
| change the dynamic. How much is this a "this is just a
| great place to live" issue, and how much is this a "this is
| a great place for easy resources if you're disadvantaged"
| issue?
|
| Maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way, but in a chicken
| and egg way, I'm curious if a city with this much "not-
| here" going on, do people give money to initiatives and
| charities and people who ask for money/food on the street,
| or is it typically a city where people avert their gaze? I
| ask this because if resources were hard to be secured
| without effort, and if the city is generally expensive to
| reside in, the amount of those without resources should
| decline, right?
|
| Where my hypothesis / thought-experiment falls apart is
| from what I can tell, most of California has amazing
| weather, so even sleeping on a sidewalk it's got to be
| quite hospitable and paradise-like (as odd as it feels to
| say)
| hot_gril wrote:
| > If anybody is dedicated to 'social justice', to
| remove/resist facilities to relieve oneself just seems so
| far off the mark.
|
| I don't know but would wager that it's not those people.
| All sorts of people live in SF, like anywhere else.
| jwagenet wrote:
| I'm not sure I'm getting the full gist of your questions,
| but to one point: Yes I think people generally avert
| their gaze to the people and the issues, perhaps because
| of shame or sheer disinterest. I personally want to
| financially contribute to make things better, but it's
| unclear how to get accountability with my spending.
| Giving cash on the street seems inefficient and likely to
| be used for the 'wrong' things. Organizations in the city
| and the city itself don't appear to be doing much at all
| due to incompetence or bureaucracy.
|
| To another: The folks living in the street are generally
| not the same as those in the laboring class. So indeed,
| those without resources working especially in the service
| industry are declining, and this is becoming quite an
| issue with cost and availability of these businesses. The
| people on the street mostly seem to thrive off the excess
| wealth the city casts off. But to be clear, although it
| doesn't freeze, SF is no balmy paradise.
| carapace wrote:
| I wasn't born here but my parents came here just after I was
| born, and they had lived here before that, I did grow up
| here, I've lived in other (N. Am.) cities, and I've studied a
| bit about San Francisco's history (Viva Emperor Norton III!)
| and I've seen more-or-less first hand SF city politics.
|
| This city is nuts.
|
| It's always been nuts. (Since the arrival of the Europeans, I
| don't know what it was like with the Ohlone
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohlone )
|
| First it was sort of concentration camps for the Native
| Americans run by Spanish Catholics.
|
| Then "Commodore John D. Sloat of the United States Navy
| sailed into Monterey Bay in 1846 and began the U.S. military
| invasion of California," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Califo
| rnia#U.S._Conquest_and_t...
|
| Minutes later gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill and the
| Gold Rush was on
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Gold_Rush
|
| That was a pretty nutty (to put it mildly, very very mildly)
| time...
|
| Eliding all the craziness between then and the "Bohemia by
| the Bay" period brings us to the 1950's
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Renaissance)
| which then leads directly to the Summer of Love a decade or
| so later (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_Love)
|
| There has always been a dark side to the city, from the
| tortured and murdered Indians, to the Jonestown Massacre.
| Sick shit has gone down here. It's not all sunshine and
| roses.
|
| Last but not least, this city has been the catch-all for all
| the folks who are too weird or crazy to fir in in the rest of
| the country. There's even an old joke about it here.
|
| It's only in the last twenty years, since all the tech
| companies and hype have come, literally since the Dot Com
| Boom (and bust). Remember that?
|
| Before 2000 nobody but the crazies came here to live. I can't
| emphasize this enough.
|
| All this "What's up with San Francisco?" is a young person's
| perspective. It's only by totally ignoring the entire history
| of the city up to ~2000 A.D. that the current situation seems
| puzzling or strange.
|
| So anyway, to answer the immediate question: Yes, red tape
| and bureaucracy are wielded here with a perfection of
| hypocrisy. If you don't know a "fixer" you can waste hundred
| of thousands or even millions of dollars and years trying to
| get projects approved.
|
| We do build things: the new Bay Bridge, and a tunnel under
| Chinatown, but some of the things we build are crap: The
| Millennium Tower is sinking, the sidewalks are pulling away
| from the buildings in Mission Bay (Mission Rock?) The new
| transbay terminal cracked, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
| /Transbay_Transit_Center#Extend...
|
| Then there's the recent and ongoing FBI probe into
| corruption, with the arrest of the director of Public Works
| among other things ( E.g.
| https://sfist.com/2020/07/15/ongoing-fbi-corruption-probe-
| hi... )
|
| So yeah we have things like empty "luxury" condos next to
| folks living in tents in little shanty towns.
|
| (The condos aren't actually lux, they look nice but the
| construction is crap, the folks in the office are sales not
| managers or maintenance, to get maintenance you call a call
| center in another state or country, the owners are a faceless
| LLC or other corp, etc. These things are all over the place!)
|
| The city does house and feed some homeless people, credit
| where credit is due. Some folks have been put up in hotel
| since COVID and some other things have been done.
|
| But we spend $250,000,000 (a quarter of a billion dollars) on
| less than 10,000 homeless people. As you can imagine _most_
| of that money is not just given to the homeless people
| themselves. Most of it goes to people who are not themselves
| homeless. Those people don 't actually take any homeless
| people into their own homes and care for them. I'm not sure
| exactly what they do with all that money, but I'm sure the
| folks who get paid to "deal with" homelessness in SF are able
| to pay their rent or mortgage regularly and on time. (I feel
| a rant coming on, so I'ma stop myself there.)
|
| So yeah, this is a case where the sensationalism is actually
| warranted in the sense that the situation here is
| "sensational" (but not in a good way, unless you have lots
| and lots of money, then you can avoid the worst of the bad
| stuff by isolating yourself in the nice neighborhoods and
| taking uber, etc.)
|
| The educational system here is also wildly mismanaged. I
| could go on but this is already a long post. We recently
| recalled three school board members for being too nuts and
| radical for SF! Also the DA got recalled!
|
| (A friend of my sister works for a school, the new principal
| of which turned out to be so fucking crazy the kids
| themselves went on strike! They literally walked out! I don't
| think this made the paper even locally, and I forget the name
| of the school, if anyone asks me I'll ask my sister about it,
| okay?)
|
| To sum up: it's nuts here, it's always been nuts, but at
| least it used to be mostly fun nuts, and now it's more like a
| 90's cyberpunk dystopia nuts.
| dmead wrote:
| I lived in the bay for a year. the city is for the winners of
| the startup and stock lottery and those who want to rent to
| be near them.
|
| 100% believe this.
| _jal wrote:
| I've lived here off and on since 1993. I work for startups
| but haven't hit the lottery.
|
| There's a lot of San Francisco (and Bay Area) out there
| that has nothing to do with the startup scene, and many,
| many people who have no connection to and couldn't care
| less about it.
|
| You should have gotten out more.
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| its hard to appreciate anything else when you are
| bleeding through the ears due to expenses.
| [deleted]
| _jal wrote:
| I don't know about you, but people don't charge me money
| to talk to them. All I have to do to meet people outside
| of my work peer group is go somewhere different.
| hot_gril wrote:
| I agree, SF area has a lot of non-tech-related people and
| activities that should be enough to at least enjoy your
| non-work hours, but same with other areas. Moved to San
| Diego, and now I'm happier all around.
|
| Running joke between me and the rest of the startup team
| in SF was that every time we go to an event, people lead
| conversations by asking what stack I use, which version
| of Python, and why the heck I'm messing with XMPP. I
| understood the importance of seeking out non-techies.
| dekhn wrote:
| SFO is the airport, not the city. We call it SF, or San
| Francisco.
| hot_gril wrote:
| People in tech companies with many offices tend to call
| cities by the nearest airport, cause that's what the local
| office (or datacenter) is called.
| dekhn wrote:
| Yes, I worked in Moutain View, AKA MTV.
|
| And the SF office of Google is SFO. But nobody calls the
| city SFO.
| tanseydavid wrote:
| >> But nobody calls the city SFO.
|
| Yes they do. And some also call it Frisco and San Fran.
|
| After 35 years in the Bay Area I have settled on calling
| it "The City" but will bust out with "San Fran Frisco" on
| special occasions to just to be irritating to those who
| desperately want to "fit in."
| hot_gril wrote:
| I've never heard anyone from there call it San Fran.
| That's almost as weird as calling the state Cali.
| dekhn wrote:
| He's explicitly attempting to trigger people who agree
| with Herb Caen ("Don't call it Frisco").
| bombcar wrote:
| Cisco(tm) is a registered trademark of Cisco Systems(tm).
| hot_gril wrote:
| Maybe you call it that if the entire point of the city to
| you is just the office, haha. I do hesitate to call my
| home city "LAX."
| avisser wrote:
| At least LAX is in Los Angeles. Not true of SFO.
| dekhn wrote:
| While SFO isn't in the city limits, it is owned by the
| City and is in an unincorporated section of San Mateo;
| the SF police have a significant presence (probably the
| largest force) on site.
| dekhn wrote:
| I call it BUR.
| jquery wrote:
| This is largely editorial bias and sensationalism. The
| original article was clickbait, $1.7m is merely the going
| rate for a public restroom (think of the big installations
| with women, men, and family rooms plus a janitor room). It is
| not what SF spent on a single commode.
|
| Keep a skeptical eye whenever you see an article trashing SF.
| We are the boogeyman city for right wing demagogues in the
| USA.
|
| Edit: Responding to a sibling comment:
|
| > No public restrooms, no chairs in Starbucks, covers on
| everything in Walgreens, ID requirements to enter stuff, you
| get the idea. There's no obvious solution to that.
|
| Lest people think the whole city is like this, this kind of
| thing is limited to a few square blocks inside the downtown
| area. As a gone-native SFer, I would have no problem finding
| public restrooms anywhere in the city, or a coffee shop with
| comfy couches soft enough to nap in.
| MrFantastic wrote:
| Most people that own a $2 million home don't want a toilet
| for homeless people in front of their house.
| tanseydavid wrote:
| For 2MM you get 1.5 baths!!!
| glacials wrote:
| Born and raised in SF. NIMBYism is indeed a huge problem.
| It's the hidden underbelly of a city with otherwise modern
| and diverse thinking.
|
| I've since moved to Seattle and it's crazy to see shit can
| actually get done here.
| [deleted]
| giantg2 wrote:
| How would the NIMBYism contribute to that cost? I can see
| construction costs being somewhat higher with COL and
| regulations, but you could solve this problem with one of
| those toilet trailers or a porta-john (or cinder block and
| other materials are relatively cheap). Seems like they want
| a certain "look".
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| My understanding is that NIMBYism also takes the form of
| adding multiple barriers to changing the neighborhood.
| Environmental permit, safety permit, approving
| architectural proposals prior to implementation,
| limitations on who does the construction, how the
| materials are sourced, approvals on construction times
| and schedules, etc. The people building it might need to
| hire lawyers to draft proposals formally to local
| committees to do multiple rounds of approval at multiple
| stages. These all have the intention of liberal policies
| (better materials for the environment for example) but
| the effect is that the community is conservative with
| development.
|
| [eta: I'm not making an opinion about what is
| good/bad/should be done. Just expressing what I
| understand is happening.]
| giantg2 wrote:
| I thought most of the permits would be be moot on cost if
| it's the city paying itself for permits.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| Not really, they have to pay someone to write the
| proposal to receive the permit.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Ah, that's much more involved than the permits I've dealt
| with in other places for small (eg not a development
| dealing with traffic flow) projects.
| mjhay wrote:
| > I've since moved to Seattle and it's crazy to see shit
| can actually get done here.
|
| I've never heard Seattle described as a place where "shit
| can actually get done," but I suppose its not quite as bad
| as SF at this point.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_process
| notch656a wrote:
| I almost spat out my drink when they said: ... and then I
| went to Seattle. The light rail extension fiascos are the
| most publicly facing examples of this. Dear god SF must
| be bad when Seattle looks like a well oiled machine.
| bombcar wrote:
| Seattle did bury the viaduct and add a light rail and
| build a stadium, so they have accomplished more than SF
| has, apparently.
| aliqot wrote:
| Thanks for the explanation. I'm a simple kind of person in
| a small town, so to us here this is all kind of crazy. Is a
| city as big as SFO still governed by politicians who live
| in it, or at that size does local government take people
| from other areas? I always read a lot about SFO as being on
| the cutting edge of progressive initiatives usually toward
| humane goals. Is this common?
|
| This gives everything I've been told or heard about SFO
| somewhat of a 'superficial' veneer (forgive me for lack of
| better words, I do not mean offense) based on the
| assumption that a city governed by its constituents ought
| to resemble them, but I'm seeing stuff like this where the
| words and intentions are right, but the actions and results
| are incongruent. Is this a mismatch between the politicians
| and residents or is this a "yes, but do it over there"
| thing?
|
| p.s. congrats on the move! in your opinion, what makes
| Seattle different? I've been there before, it was a
| beautiful and welcoming experience. People are friendly
| like here in the sticks, but there's just a lot more folks.
| didibus wrote:
| I've only visited San Francisco, but I think one thing to
| consider is actually that it's a really small city with
| just too much going for its size.
|
| It's only 46 square mile and has over 800k inhabitants.
| It's the second densest city after New York.
|
| The surrounding Bay area adds 6.7 million more people, a
| large amount of who regularly go into the city for
| entertainment or work. I think it's an estimated 160k
| additional people that come in to the city per day from
| the outer areas. And there is an average of 131k tourist
| in the city each day as well.
|
| So you have almost 1.1 million people in a 46 square mile
| area.
|
| The city is fully built as well, there's no lots left,
| everything has a building on it with no room to grow,
| nowhere to expand out.
|
| You could only expand up, but that would require
| destroying and rebuilding. The landscape is also all
| hills and valleys, huge slopes, it's not the easiest to
| work around.
|
| The mayor is born and raised and still lives in San
| Francisco.
|
| All in all, I just think running a city like that, of
| that size and yet so populous, that also has so much
| wealth at the top, a relatively strong middle, but also
| large lows, it's got a lot of all classes of things, it's
| just a harder problem because of the sheer scale and
| density of it all.
|
| Seattle is twice the size at 84 square mile, and has a
| smaller population at 740k. The city has developed more
| recently as well, and a lot of the newer development are
| big tall skyscraper, there's still a little bit of
| building too small in some places, but it still hasn't
| reached anywhere the sheer density of San Francisco.
| ericmay wrote:
| Be careful as the city square mileage can be misleading.
|
| The other problem facing cities such as San Francisco is
| that despite its density it does a piss poor job at
| public transit and is still focused on car-first
| infrastructure. To your point, the surrounding area is ~7
| million. It's physically impossible for all of them or
| even most of them to drive everywhere without gigantic
| infrastructure problems. It will simply not work. Ever.
| It is physically _impossible_.
| didibus wrote:
| > Be careful as the city square mileage can be misleading
|
| As in exaggerating it's livable land size? Or the other
| way around?
| ericmay wrote:
| For example, if you look at lists of "largest cities in
| the US" [1] you'll find Columbus in the top 15 or so. But
| if you actually visit, it's no larger than Indianapolis,
| Cleveland, Cincinnati, or other similarly sized _metro
| areas_.
|
| This occurs because the city occupies ~225 square miles
| [1] and so when you look at _density_ it turns out
| Columbus isn 't much of a big city at all.
|
| If you look at this link from Wikipedia, Columbus is even
| larger than San Francisco or Boston! Wow so big. But the
| relevant metric is density, not square milage.
|
| I could have been more clear here but I just wanted other
| readers to note that you can't just look at square milage
| or even population, you have to look at those together to
| get density to help derive insight.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_c
| ities_b...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > The city is fully built as well, there's no lots left
|
| While that may be true, a huge fraction of the city is
| single family homes. Increasing housing capacity would be
| trivial were the political will to exist.
| Kalium wrote:
| SF is governed mostly by the people who live there.
|
| The core of the problem is that SF has spent decades
| investing in giving every person, block, and neighborhood
| ways to participate in planning and changes. Generally
| this means giving out some kind of veto. So when the time
| comes to do something "Yes, but do it somewhere else" is
| the predominant response.
|
| To put it another way - everybody wants more shelters for
| the indigent, nobody wants one near where they live. The
| planning system is structured around enabling this.
| aliqot wrote:
| Thank you for your perspective on this. In my locale,
| this type of thing is hard to imagine, we'll feed anybody
| who can hold a fork here. We have almost zero resources
| for indigents here, so homeless and others without are a
| bit rare.
|
| What are the resources (aside from this restroom)
| afforded to those without, near SFO? I'm tempted to think
| about this time when a local made a habit of feeding the
| deer, eventually they went from not being seen to no
| longer fearing people and would walk right up to the
| porch expecting sandwiches and RC Cola. Is it possible
| the abundance of resources exacerbates the situation
| where those seeking them arrive?
| didibus wrote:
| I think we need to also keep things into perspective,
| there are an estimated 8k homeless in San Francisco,
| about 1% of its population.
|
| It seems most of those are caused by just poverty, not
| able to afford living expenses pushed people to the
| streets.
|
| Some amount of them are coming from other cities who get
| rid of their homeless by sending them to cities like San
| Francisco, but Sam Francisco also sometimes send homeless
| away similarly, this happens all over the US, as a kind
| of way to spread it out more evenly so it's not as
| visible in any given place.
|
| The fundamental issues of poverty are hard to solve,
| obviously, every country, city, nation, has always
| struggled with this. It's also a little more complicated
| due to some of the homeless also suffering from mental
| illness or drug addiction, that doesn't always make them
| qualified to even work, so it's like poverty mixed with
| what to do with the people that can't contribute to the
| work force as effectively.
|
| There's also the case of temperate climate, that's pretty
| attractive to people who live in the streets, but it's
| also convenient for a city, if homeless are dying of
| frost bites or heat, you might feel more compelled to
| give them shelter, but when outdoor tents suffice you
| might instead choose to shelter them outside like that
| and just keep moving them around so they don't stay to
| the same place too long for the neighbors to complain.
|
| I've heard San Francisco has a policy that when they give
| shelter, it has to be a full apartment with social
| service support, whereas New York and other cities go for
| more warehouse shelters, beds in a big room. The former
| is nicer to people that get to have access to them, but
| it hasn't scaled, whereas as the latter isn't as nice but
| has had more success actually sheltering them and hiding
| them from view I guess.
| cloverich wrote:
| Most homeless conversations center around those with drug
| addiction and mental health issues. Poverty as such is
| not the primary ingredient.
| Kalium wrote:
| https://hsh.sfgov.org/ And that's just the resources from
| the city. There's a bunch of non-profits and a generally
| permissive public attitude.
|
| As to that question... it's a difficult one to answer. My
| understanding is that it's both difficult to study and
| politically sensitive.
| aliqot wrote:
| >it's both difficult to study and politically sensitive.
|
| Unfortunately I think you're right. A lot of delicate
| conversations fall into this category, and not just in
| SFO. As time passes my perspective shifts and I begin to
| realize our actions being at odds with our beliefs is not
| an ideologically linked trait, it is an innate quality of
| humanity.
|
| It is as if having the correct belief-system is
| sufficient and on par with actually living those values-
| the emotional reward is the same.
| [deleted]
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| What's that old onion headline? "78% of Americans support
| public transit for everyone else"?
| giantg2 wrote:
| CA in general is like the leader of red tape, with SF as it's
| poster child.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > Red tape and nimbyism is hard to imagine from what I see of
| SFO in books, it seems like the most anti-diversity thing you
| can do.
|
| It sounds like your books are giving you an inaccurate view
| of San Francisco, because almost nothing is more on-brand for
| the city than red tape and NIMBYism.
| jquery wrote:
| Replying to the top comment for visibility... the entire
| article is clickbait
|
| Buried in the article is this:
|
| > In an email to National Review Wednesday, the Recreation and
| Parks Department said it will consider various options for
| constructing the toilet, including installing a pre-fabricated
| restroom. The department said it budgets for the worst-case
| scenario, so it estimates high. "In the end, the project may
| well be delivered for far less [than $1.7 million], with
| leftover funding put toward further improvements or
| maintenance," the email stated.
|
| $1.7m is the going rate for an entire public restroom. $1.7m is
| not what was spent on a single commode. It is merely what is
| set-aside for the project while in the planning stages.
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| Housing is provided. They don't want it. The ones that do move
| in to government housing often overdose.
| purpleblue wrote:
| This is what decades of single-party dominance turns a city
| into. It has reached a fevered pitch in the last few years.
|
| I'm voting Republican across the board, no matter what, until
| the Democrats regain some semblance of sanity. The Democrats
| have taken our vote for granted and are not only sucking the
| state dry with their corruption (a la Nancy Pelosi) but
| layering on ridiculous social justice programs that are
| destroying this state.
|
| ALL of my friends are doing the same, and many people I've met
| are also doing the exact same thing.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Is this the real SF experience? Or is it media hype?
|
| I'm completely unfamiliar with the city. My only experience of
| America is staying in Atlanta for 6 months during an exchange
| program, but that was years back.
|
| Some of the stories of bureaucratic meddling and political
| corruption sound like something I'd see back home in India.
| Always had this impression that America was above that.
| josh2600 wrote:
| America is really big. You'll find a high level of variance
| across the country just like you will in most g20 countries.
|
| Big cities have lots of problems and lots of desirable
| features. It's a toss up.
|
| Having recently returned from Japan to San Francisco, I find
| myself longing for a city which has less crime and more
| functioning infrastructure, but having grown up here it's
| hard to leave my friends.
| jquery wrote:
| Absolutely media hype. Read the article. Nowhere will you
| find $1.7m spent on a single commode. It's just a budgetary
| set-aside for a future public restroom at the going rate.
| Leftover funds will go back to the general fund or can be put
| towards long term maintenance of the public restroom.
|
| I don't know why people are so willing to spread right wing
| FUD about Sf, maybe it brings in the clicks I guess.
| nosequel wrote:
| I've lived in several cities around America, and nothing
| really compares to how poorly run SF is. There is corruption
| in every city on earth, so SF isn't special in that regard.
|
| There are much better run cities in the US, but most of the
| really functioning cities are smaller. The sweet spot it
| seems in the US are the 100k-250k sized cities, which
| typically are run much better (I'm sure there are many
| outliers).
| screye wrote:
| > sound like something I'd see back home in India
|
| I have started appreciating bribery and corruption as a
| necessary lubrication for any excessively bureaucratic system
| to work.
|
| Trying to go through all of the legal rigamarole of the
| Indian regulatory process would mean nothing ever gets done.
| jquery wrote:
| Allowing bribery and corruption only ensures that whatever
| system you end up with _requires_ bribery and corruption to
| work.
|
| Better to let the system freeze up entirely and remove the
| unnecessary bureaucracy than monkey-patch the bad system
| with bribery.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > I have started appreciating bribery and corruption as a
| necessary lubrication for any excessively bureaucratic
| system to work.
|
| I feel similarly, when it comes to pork. We tried to
| eliminate that from congress, calling it wasteful and
| corrupting. And perhaps at some level that is accurate. But
| when we took it away, now all we have is naked ideology.
| It's not clear to me that this is an improvement, in fact I
| think it is the opposite.
|
| Bring back the pork.
| xenadu02 wrote:
| The so-called "pork" definitely gave everyone an
| incentive to compromise to a far greater degree.
| testfoobar wrote:
| Transparency and politics can't mix. Zero sum deals where
| some group wins while another group loses are nearly
| impossible. Yet those are exactly the deals that need to
| be done. Example: America cannot agree where to store its
| nuclear waste.
|
| https://ag.nv.gov/Hot_Topics/Issue/Yucca/
| xenadu02 wrote:
| Resident of SF perspective here.
|
| SF has problems. The recent FBI investigation that nabbed
| Mohammed Nuru and the city's own investigation that nabbed
| Hui have helped a lot because it has reminded the rats that
| consequences exist. It's all just rumor but that seems to
| have damped down on corruption quite a bit.
|
| That said... for the life of the average person there is not
| as much impact. I don't need to bribe anyone to get something
| done. I recently installed solar and batteries and we got
| permits, inspection, and approval including variances for
| some placement issues. It was all wrapped up within two
| months. Another example: I've reported problems via the 311
| app and the tickets were fixed. One was a burned out and
| broken light in a playground bathroom (replaced the next
| week). Another was a water leak on O'Shaughnessy Blvd that
| took about 3 months to resolve because no department could
| figure out what line was leaking or who owned it with lots of
| finger-pointing... but ultimately the 311 people stayed on
| the ticket, figured it out, and the city fixed the leak.
|
| Corruption tends to happen on large projects or city
| contracts. Part of it has to do with public project bidding
| laws that don't allow for reputation to be considered.
| There's a gaggle of CA contractors who are experts at
| submitting low bids, then jacking the cost with change orders
| and delays. They keep winning contracts because they often
| submit the lowest bid. Sometimes things that seem way
| overpriced are that way for good reason... like buying rights
| to the land, digging up the street to run new plumbing which
| may require relocating other massive utilities, and so on.
| Other times you have things like the new outdoor trash can
| design where DPW employees treated it like a fun vanity
| project instead of buying an off-the-shelf design...
| resulting in vastly inflated costs. It's possible someone in
| DPW took a bribe but it's also possible they just didn't care
| about cost.
|
| The tl;dr: No. Corruption and political meddling in SF
| doesn't come within an order of magnitude of India...
| especially not for the average citizen who can usually access
| relevant government services within reasonable times at the
| scheduled rates. That said there's more of it than average
| involving large projects, but recent arrests have helped.
| giantg2 wrote:
| This is the even more wild statement to me. Just for the
| "look"?
|
| Last year, the city spent nearly a half-million dollars to
| develop new trash can prototypes because city leaders "weren't
| happy with the look" of off-the-shelf cans.
|
| At least the public defacation issue is a true public health
| concern.
| bongobingo1 wrote:
| I think it's not unreasonable to attack effects of homelessness
| as well as the cause. Some problems are _really hard_ and some
| are just _hard_.
|
| In other places where it wont cost 1.7M to build one public
| toilet, this wouldn't be seen as such a failure or mis-step,
| just extending public services to people in crisis - as long as
| it's not seen as "fixed" by doing so.
| roguas wrote:
| I don't feel it was intentended attack on OP's part. It seems
| he was pointing out that even a workaround for this seems
| crazy. Despite not really addressing the original problem,
| but only providing some relief - which still is pretty
| welcome.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| The issue is nobody leaning left politically is going to run
| with the truth that homelessness is caused by lax policies in
| regards to crime and drug abuse. California still sells the
| lie that homelessness is caused by lack of
| housing/affordability.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It can be both. I'd like to see numbers, though. Used to be
| mental health and drug abuse were by far the dominant cause
| of rough homelessness. Did the pandemic change that? The
| homeless population has _exploded_ in many cities in the
| last couple years. All from crime and drugs?
|
| I could believe that the non-rough sleeping homeless (couch
| surfers, as it were) are much more likely to be people who
| cannot afford a place to live.
|
| Also, politically conservative areas still have homeless
| problems of their own, so it might be premature to declare
| it a left leaning policy problem.
| tchaffee wrote:
| > homelessness is caused by lax policies in regards to
| crime and drug abuse
|
| You don't even have correlation let alone causation.
| California is slightly below average with its incarceration
| rate so not really lax at all compared to the 20+ states
| with lower incarceration rates. Alaska has an above average
| incarceration rate and ranks high on homelessness rate.
| Nevada has a high incarceration rate and ranks high on
| homelessness rate.
|
| > and drug abuse
|
| California doesn't even make the top 20 list for states
| with drug abuse problems. Not surprisingly some
| conservative states are on that list - thanks most likely
| to widely available and cheap meth.
|
| You want a reductive answer to a complex problem in order
| to make an ideological point.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_terri
| t...
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/727847/homelessness-
| rate...
|
| https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/care-
| coordination/20-s...
| the_snooze wrote:
| The $1.7M toilet is symptomatic of the root cause of
| homelessness in the Bay Area: you can't build anything within
| a reasonable time and budget there, even something as simple
| and small-footprint as a toilet.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| I think the OP wanted you to consider the benefit that 1.7
| million could have had in providing direct aid to preventing
| homelessness, e.g. rental assistance or job training.
| jonhohle wrote:
| Certainly even an existing residence or office with
| multiple toilets could be purchased for <=$1.7M within city
| limits.
| jandrese wrote:
| No way in hell you could buy even a small building in the
| city for the stated purpose of homeless services for
| anywhere near that amount of money. Anything homeless
| "attracting" will have you swarmed with NIMBYs and red
| tape for years. It will be called a crime magnet. People
| will say that it will reduce property values. They will
| sue you to stop the project. The one thing everybody
| agrees on in the public review meeting is that the place
| to put the homeless is "not near me". You will spend way
| more than $1.7m on lawyers alone for a project like this.
| itake wrote:
| I'd think increasing demand would hurt everyone's bottom
| line, since non-assisted renters have competition with
| assisted renters for the same set of properties.
|
| Is there any data on how rental assistance impacts market
| rental prices?
| cornel_io wrote:
| Funneling free money into rent, any way you structure it,
| will indeed raise prices unless you also build more
| housing.
|
| Ironically the people fighting the hardest to funnel free
| money into rent are the same ones fighting the hardest to
| prevent new housing at all costs, under the delusional
| theory that "induced demand" means that the law of supply
| and demand is wrong and the inverse applies.
|
| SF's NIMBY progressives are a weird lot.
| hedora wrote:
| We have an access road that was sized for utility trucks. We
| had to widen it slightly because of obscure California
| regulations.
|
| Widening it didn't cost $1.7M. However, the cost per linear
| foot was within a factor of two of buying a line of Tesla Model
| 3s. This is in an unincorporated (rural) area, on a farm.
|
| The work lasted one rainstorm before needing extensive repairs.
|
| I'm completely unsurprised that building a hut around existing
| plumbing and adding a toilet costs so much in the city. I
| wonder if the price includes a sink.
| jollyllama wrote:
| Too many bureaucrats and construction profiteers, not enough
| good laborers.
| eweise wrote:
| The good laborers are union workers, which drives the cost
| up significantly.
| [deleted]
| eweise wrote:
| hexator wrote:
| The actual labor costs for the workers are not the issue,
| they already don't make a lot and wages have stagnated
| for decades while costs have soared. Also, there's plenty
| of non-union areas that STILL have incredible costs.
|
| Profiteering from subcontractors and suppliers is the
| issue. All of these bids are public, this isn't exactly
| forbidden knowledge.
| eweise wrote:
| "The actual labor costs for the workers are not the
| issue" How do you know? The article explicitly calls out
| union labor costs. By "profiteering" are you complaining
| that someone made a profit because there is nothing in
| the article to indicate excessive profit.
|
| Union labor is really expensive. It cost my neighbor who
| is part owner of the SF ferry building wine shop, over
| $8K to install a TV set because it had to be done with
| union labor. And get this, he was not allowed to install
| it himself because of union rules.
|
| I have another neighbor that works as a location scout
| for movies and commercials. He says all filming in SF has
| to be done by union workers and its much more expensive
| than filming outside SF.
| notch656a wrote:
| So underbid them. You just found a golden goose.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I sincerely wonder if we have 'democratized' infrastructure
| and construction too much.
|
| >"First, an architect needs to draw plans for the toilet,
| which will then be presented to the public for feedback.
| The Arts Commission's Civic Design Review committee will be
| responsible for conducting a "multi-phase review" of the
| project, like it does for all projects on public lands.
| According to the Arts Commission's website, "the committee
| evaluates each project's design, scale and massing for
| accessibility, safety and aesthetic merit." The review
| process "ensures that each project's design is appropriate
| to its context in the urban environment, and that
| structures of the highest design quality reflect their
| civic stature.""
|
| I recognize that the verbiage of this quote is probably
| standard for construction projects in the city, and it
| sounds absurdly out of place for a project of this scale.
| That being said, at some point our elected officials just
| need to delegate authority and let them act _mostly_
| autonomously.
| toss1 wrote:
| Or, how about spend the money ONCE and create a set or
| two of architectural design standards for use in city
| projects? These would include aesthetic design, massing,
| scale, accessibility, safety, etc.
|
| This is really what the whole review is doing, attempting
| to make the design consistent with the surroundings,
| which is a worthy consideration. But literally re-
| inventing this wheel for every project id both wasteful
| and guaranteed to fail, as every committee will be
| different. Simply pick one or two, and maybe have a
| standing process to update it every decade.
|
| Then, it's just specify function, dimensions, etc., and
| maybe "in SF-City Style A", and put it out to bid, and
| passe it through maybe one or two approval processes to
| verify compliance before digging, or even include that in
| the bidding process - submit your design & costs, meeting
| these standards. IFF the process is good and fair, they
| should get many good bidders (ya, big IFF).
| nashashmi wrote:
| This arts commission is a thorn. A roadblock. And an
| energy drainer.
| erulabs wrote:
| > just need to delegate authority and let them act mostly
| autonomously
|
| Not to be glib, and I expect to be excoriated for such a
| comment, but I literally cannot think of a way to not be
| snarky: I believe what you're describing is called
| _ownership_.
|
| Particularly in discussions of SF, I find this amazingly
| long road back to where we started: "If only there was
| some system where people with the most interest in a
| particular building could make their own choices!" - "If
| only people who owned land could build buildings on it!".
| That system exists - it's called _private property_.
|
| Bureaucracy exists because no individuals have any
| ownership over any of this. The pipes and the surface of
| the sidewalk belong to different authorities - and dozens
| of oversight committees (the dreaded planning commission)
| have vague authority layered on top. If no one can own
| it, and we don't want authoritarian political power, then
| we have to accept that bureaucracy is simply the only way
| forward. There are no choices that are not somewhere on
| the line between "one person owns", "everyone owns" or
| "the king owns". We must make a choice - and if the
| choice is "libertarianism is stupid but ALSO
| authoritarianism is stupid" then hey, achingly slow
| bureaucracy is on the menu folks. We can't have our cake
| and eat it too.
| puffoflogic wrote:
| Private property is fascist, we don't need that in SF.
| erulabs wrote:
| Fascism is the idea that the nation (and the race) of a
| people is more important than any individual member of
| the people. A fascist would say bureaucracy only implies
| a lack of power. Private property is the _opposite_ of
| the textbook definition of fascism - private ownership is
| literally the idea that EVERY SINGLE individual is more
| important than the nation.
|
| The fascist answer is to consolidate more power in a
| single political body. This would, indeed, make toilets
| cheaper to build. I would suggest that the _polar
| opposite of that_ would also make toilets cheaper to
| build. The real question should be: how cheap should
| toilets be to build, and what is it about "fairness"
| that makes things so expensive?
| puffoflogic wrote:
| You've mixed up the definitions of fascism and socialism.
|
| Private property is part of a fascist system, not a
| socialist system. This isn't up for debate.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| >> just need to delegate authority and let them act
| mostly autonomously.
|
| Sounds a lot like the representative democracy that
| created this mess in the first place.
| hedora wrote:
| Actually, the construction workers found multiple issues
| with the plans, and were on the hook for some of the
| repairs.
|
| The profiteers were the engineers that designed the system.
| Each time they screwed up, they got to bill us more hours.
| Also, the contract with them stipulates zero liability for
| their incompetence.
|
| The state licensing board should be fired for allowing
| that.
|
| Also, we wanted to put in a more environmentally friendly,
| cheaper, and more reliable road technology (specifically, a
| permeable road), but the county blocked us, then made us
| pay to put in drainage to mitigate the effects of the
| obsolete thing they stipulated. Both the mandated obsolete
| road technology and the drain design immediately failed.
| The state regularly uses the disallowed permeable
| technology in this area.
|
| Since then, the county has approved similarly flawed
| designs at other sites, and the construction firm flat-out
| refuses to install them.
| novok wrote:
| And now I see the political money cycle that sustains
| this and prevents the state legislature from passing laws
| to clean up all the accumulated case law cruft.
| jollyllama wrote:
| I think we agree. I would consider the construction
| workers to be laborers. They're adding value.
| Profiteering would be collecting profit without adding
| value i.e. engineers and the licensing board in this
| case.
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| Why do you seem to believe that only manual laborers can
| add value?
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| Because in this specific case they are the only party who
| did anything helpful to the people who were trying to
| turn money into a road.
|
| I don't think he meant that you have to do labor to add
| value.
| jollyllama wrote:
| ^^^
| cudgy wrote:
| Perhaps because they are the ones that actually convert
| the plans and raw resources into a useful building? Plans
| for bathrooms and buildings can be easily pulled from a
| shelf of existing plans, tweaked a bit, and sent out, but
| building the actual structure can never be avoided.
| nashashmi wrote:
| > collecting profit without adding value i.e. engineers
|
| Civil Engineers DO NOT have the upper hand in any of
| their designs. They propose, and upper management
| comments, and they propose again, and upper management
| comments again, and back and forth it goes. At the end of
| the day, all they have done is manage a series of
| comments, and tried to please the client rep with
| something like a quick and dirty fix to whatever comments
| they are getting.
|
| Who has the creativity? The client rep, but he is so
| incompetent/overloaded/unelated that all he does is
| either manage from high above, or just look for ways to
| protect himself and the City, or ask the consultant to
| propose solutions and makes the smallest comments
| possible on these solutions, while leaving majority of
| the comments for other offices.
|
| This leads to designs that hardly get a fight history.
| And more of a sychophant-driven approach just to get
| nitpickers out of the way.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I think this is broadly true in the US, but let's face it
| who would you (or I) rather be - a good laborer or a
| good(?) profiteer?
| melony wrote:
| > _The public toilet will be built by union workers who
| will "earn a living wage and benefits,"_
|
| San Francisco doesn't owe anything to the tradespeople.
| When you share a border with Mexico, there is absolutely
| no reason not to outsource.
|
| Almost every city that can rapidly scale up
| infrastructure have access to _some_ type of cheap
| labour. The rapid construction in the middle east and
| asia didn 't happen by using union labor for everything.
| Nobody likes talking about the elephant in the room but
| that doesn't make it any less true.
|
| Most of the red tape and bureaucracy come from having too
| much local rights and democracy.
|
| If you can't build housing cheaply, then no amount of
| union rights and progressive policies would reduce the
| amount of homeless people.
| ruined wrote:
| i mean, the city has already hired police officers, who
| are armed. we know they're not solving murders or
| catching thieves, so i'm sure there's plenty of time to
| round up a work crew from the local population that will
| benefit from the toilet
| [deleted]
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Does San Fransisco owe anything to anyone?
| BobbyJo wrote:
| San Francisco, the government, owes the constituents it's
| meant to serve, and whom pay its taxes, literally
| everything.
|
| San Francisco, the city and community, as a society, owes
| what anyone in the world owes everyone else: an ethical
| existence.
| Arrath wrote:
| Ah so only your own chosen labor is worthy of a living
| wage, got it.
| colpabar wrote:
| Agreed. They should honestly just use prison labor.
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| [deleted]
| nopenopenopeno wrote:
| >not enough laborers
|
| Not enough wages. If the free market is good enough for
| everything else, why not for labor?
| pirate787 wrote:
| There's a non-market, political outcome that's the
| dominant factor in the labor market -- the degree to
| which the federal and state governments enforce or
| incentivize undocumented workers.
| scifibestfi wrote:
| It's being absorbed by the bureaucrats who have made it
| cost $1.7M to build a single toilet.
| scottyah wrote:
| There's plenty of good laborers, they just never get
| invited to the table
| borkt wrote:
| Litigation is the enemy here. I've been in this from top to
| bottom and it's always legal precedents that fuck everything
| up. Governing bodies, be they local or regulatory, are forced
| to broadly interpret legal precedent established in high
| profile situations, or small, specific legal settlements
| which have occurred at a local level. Lawyers then take this
| case law and work with bureaucrats to craft regulations and
| ordinances which have zero possibility of running afoul the
| case law, and these can become so odd and counterintuitive
| when broadly applied that they have wildly negative effects
| on the whole. A high dollar project can spend the money the
| develop legal justifications for getting a code variance and
| ignoring the precedent set by case law, but the 95% of the
| rest of us are forced to design, construct, and accept the
| baked in laws to gain the privledge from the city to operate
| under their purview (which ultimately puts them on the hook
| for any lawsuit in their jurisdiction - as they always come
| after cities before individuals, and the cost of fighting
| these always exceeds the cost of settling them). So
| contractors are left constructing shit they know won't work,
| engineers are signing off on shit they know won't work, and
| cities are authorizing construction on shit they know won't
| work, all to avoid taking on the responsibility doing your
| job right, and to avoid the horrendous consequences that
| would result from the people willing to go along with this
| system being in the position of making actual design
| decisions themselves, with no legal safety nets when they
| fuck up. It is the very definition of a broken, unsustainable
| system, and there are even more levels of red tape around
| environmental reviews I didn't come close to getting into.
| It's a lawyers dream, the most profitable contractor in your
| local jurisdiction is so solely because they are the best at
| exploiting loopholes in the system to overbill clients, it
| drives away anyone who has the skill or desire to fix it, and
| its and civilizations worst enemy.
|
| Edit: Pardon the typos, I've got gig to go do as I was stupid
| enough to try to address a small part of this on behalf of a
| city's residents, and boy have I suffered.
| testfoobar wrote:
| Maybe Shakespeare was right.
| collegeburner wrote:
| similarly, NYC decided to pay McKinsey $4mm to answer the
| question of whether large, stinky festering piles of
| trashbags would be better in containers.
| adolph wrote:
| I'm not here to defend McKinsey, but sometimes the real
| world is complicated and requires some observation and
| orientation before deciding on an action [see quote and 0].
| I'm not certain if McKinsey is better than trial and error,
| and McKinsey has likely/certainly faked solutions [1], but
| they are the IBM of consulting [2].
|
| _"Containerizing New York City's 24 million daily pounds
| of trash and recycling is far, far more complicated than
| many people initially realize," Goodman said. "How do the
| containers perform in winter weather, which they don't
| really have in Barcelona? Who is responsible for removing
| snow from them on each side? How do they work on narrow
| streets vs. wide avenues? What about our incredible number
| of very dense mixed-use buildings, given that DSNY collects
| residential but not commercial trash?"_
|
| 0. https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2022/10/03/exclu-sanitation-
| depa...
|
| 1. https://www.propublica.org/article/new-york-city-paid-
| mckins...
|
| 2. https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/perso
| nalc...
| eachro wrote:
| I mean the answer to this is not as simple as "yes trash
| belongs in trash bins". How do you organize trash pickup?
| Where do these receptacles get placed? How large should
| they be? Is this for business and residential? Do trash
| routes need to change as well? NYC is massive and what will
| probably work in a neighborhood in Manhattan may not work
| for one in Staten Island. It's not at all a simple
| exercise.
| jesuscript wrote:
| Source, my dear friend. The world is just too weird for me
| delineate between real and unreal at this point.
| collegeburner wrote:
| i know its hard to believe but
| https://gothamist.com/news/nyc-orders-4-million-mckinsey-
| stu...
| hedora wrote:
| Tangentially related, Folsom, CA still knows how to build
| stuff in a hurry:
|
| https://www.theonion.com/preemptive-memorial-honors-
| future-v...
|
| Separately, they completed the spillway upgrades about 10
| years after that video was produced, so 1 for 2?:
|
| https://ascecapitalbranch.org/geotechnical-aspects-of-
| the-fo...
| bombcar wrote:
| California can move mountains when they _really need to_
| - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekUROM87vTA covers the
| Oroville dam disaster and recovery (the disaster was
| averted, and the recovery was fast).
|
| In things that are NOT obviously life and death is where
| it gets bogged down by people "trying to help".
| Justin_K wrote:
| NIMBY? More like the government wants to control and tax
| everything.
| sbmthakur wrote:
| Is there any state that has laws to prevent NIMBYism?
| vxNsr wrote:
| Attacking the root causes would mean admitting that they have
| no idea what they're doing, that they've been running full
| speed backwards and that their political opponents were 100%
| correct. Or they can spend more public money and keep running
| backwards while claiming victory.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| Wow I agree. When I read I thought it was an Onion article.
| 323 wrote:
| It's actually cheap.
|
| 3 years of litigation until all the stakeholders agree on all the
| aspects of this public toilet are not cheap.
|
| And what if the environmental reviews find a bunny family living
| at the proposed location? Relocating the bunny family will
| probably cost another million and 2 years of delay.
| Bilal_io wrote:
| It's like when an org needs to add a button to their website
| and it takes 20 meetings to get the okay.
|
| It's inefficient, ineffective and definitely not cheap.
|
| When many hands, many meetings, and definitely many layers of
| middleman are involved, it'll cost millions to build a single
| toilet.
| jjk166 wrote:
| I think we as a society have collectively forgotten that to
| be a stakeholder in something means you have something at
| stake. You make people ante up to keep a discussion open
| (doesn't have to be money, just something that requires non-
| trivial effort on their part) and you'll very quickly
| separate out those who have legitimate concerns from those
| who are just bikeshedding. Require people who want to attend
| a public comment meeting to do 4 hours of community service,
| make the default vote an abstention and require anyone who
| wants to vote yea or nay to write a 500 word essay explaining
| why, have someone who wants to add new requirements late in
| the process to put a percentage of their income in escrow
| until the project is complete, etc. It should be something
| anyone can do, but only those who really care would be
| willing to do.
| system16 wrote:
| You're not even exaggerating. I worked as a contractor some
| time back for a major Canadian telecom company that no longer
| exists. I remember spending hours of meetings on calls with
| no less than 10 stakeholders (and in some meetings senior
| management) "circling back" to get a decision on button
| position. Not a single one of these people were a designer/UX
| person. I'd imagine it's even worse in the public sector.
| roguas wrote:
| There is probably some fallacy to explain this. My
| intuition tells me that if you have meaningless job (or you
| feel as if) you tend to make big deal out of small
| decisions, assert your territory of control/reign etc.
|
| This leads to what you described. I guess it also offers an
| easy cop out for them if the button will be placed in the
| worst possible way. "Since Jerry was also on the call and I
| always thought he has final say."
| clankyclanker wrote:
| Bikeshedding?
|
| http://bikeshed.com
| zdragnar wrote:
| I left a large employer (Irvine based, I think) that would
| occasionally run into this.
|
| The final straw was a feature that should have taken 15
| minutes. It instead took three weeks, because customer
| support, product owners and the design team couldn't agree on
| whether the change was necessary or if it would be harmful.
| Of course, none of this conversation happened until my change
| was already mostly done and I had to ask a question to
| clarify something in the ticket's acceptance criteria.
|
| I got dinged because my work took too long... and I
| immediately started interviewing elsewhere. When good workers
| leave because they cannot tolerate bad inertia, all you're
| left with is people who don't mind or find a way to game it,
| and the problem gets worse.
| sys32768 wrote:
| I thought San Francisco was a public toilet?
| toomanyrichies wrote:
| Rule #1 on the comments section of the Guidelines page: "Be
| kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-
| examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including
| at the rest of the community."
|
| Your comment goes against several of these requirements. Be
| better than this.
| sys32768 wrote:
| I agree I stepped in some snark here, but this city has a
| human feces tracker app, which I failed to include which may
| have softened the blow: http://mochimachine.org/wasteland/#
| prionassembly wrote:
| This is exaggeratedly mean.
|
| I can sort of correlate this, well, expression, with a
| political view. State it more crisply.
| [deleted]
| muaytimbo wrote:
| The infamous SF poop map provides some insight:
| https://www.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=b6fab72091...
| doitLP wrote:
| The Human Wasteland Project, that tracks human feces around SF
| agrees with you: http://mochimachine.org/wasteland/#
| ackbar03 wrote:
| Do you happen to be homeless?
| [deleted]
| 1024core wrote:
| It's simple. It's not their money. When you ask any SF Department
| to give you a budget for something, they will just hallucinate a
| number and pull it out of their ass.
|
| Matt Haney (the State Senator) asked the Parks & Rec Department
| for an estimate of what would it cost to build the toilet (given
| that the hookups are already in place). They shrugged and pulled
| a figure of $1.7M out of their ass. And he just accepted that!
| Any normal person would have alarm bells go off in their head
| about such a large amount. Imagine you walk up to a street vendor
| and ask about a hot dog, and he responds with $1000. You'll laugh
| at his face and walk away. But the politicians in SF thought this
| was perfectly normal, and were getting ready to celebrate this
| event (until the Chronicle published the article that went
| viral). Kudos to Heather Knight... but it shouldn't have come
| this far!
|
| Building a whole house costs $1.7M. A public toilet? Definitely
| not even close.
|
| But hey, it's not their money, so who gives a shit, right?
|
| When I read cases like these, I feel like maybe the Republicans
| _are_ on to something: the government has become too big.
| Raidion wrote:
| I feel like that's a terrible false equivalency. One of the
| most liberal cities in the country making a bad decision over
| one toilet is not nearly enough to say "the whole concept of
| American government is too big, better reconsider my political
| party"
| dralley wrote:
| >When I read cases like these, I feel like maybe the
| Republicans _are_ on to something: the government has become
| too big.
|
| States like Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Kentucky etc. are
| absolutely not immune to corruption, I assure you.
|
| Small-government Republicanism hasn't truly existed in decades.
|
| However, that's not to diminish blame from cities like NY,
| Chicago, LA, SF. They need to get their flipping act together.
| onetokeoverthe wrote:
| feoren wrote:
| > maybe the Republicans _are_ on to something: the government
| has become too big.
|
| Except this is SF, not the Federal Government, and part of the
| reason the costs are so high is because PG&E is holding the
| city hostage. Republicans _want_ giant corporations like PG &E
| to have more power to hold the government hostage and loot it.
| Why do you pay attention to what they say, rather than what
| they do? They never actually shrink the government; the bigger
| the government is, the more there is to loot, after all.
| mattnewton wrote:
| I think this is only a little bit of incompetence and poor city
| leadership, and a lot of Baumol's Cost Disease[0], which the bay
| area suffers from the worst case I have ever seen.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease
| tristor wrote:
| Paris has automatically self-cleaning public toilets all around
| and they cost around $200k each to build and install. There's no
| way this is a remotely reasonable cost and is clearly a grift.
| mym1990 wrote:
| These were a life saver for me a couple weeks back!
| insanitybit wrote:
| The cost isn't in the toilet itself, it's in all of the
| politics that will go into it. People will fight against it,
| there will be scrutiny in its design, etc.
| knaekhoved wrote:
| Honestly, I might fight a public toilet near my house too if
| I knew the end state was that it would mostly attract
| homeless people who want to shoot up heroin.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| I don't know, I'd rather them use a toilet that is self
| cleaning than do it on the trash bins outside my condo.
| I've lived in Brooklyn (Williamsburg) for a long time now,
| and the un-housed people that hang out up the block or
| sleep in the HSBC aren't happy about having to go to the
| bathroom in between parked cars on the street. Whenever
| I've walked by them while they're doing that (which is
| fairly often), they've always apologized. At least give
| them a clean, private place to do it.
| aperson_hello wrote:
| You don't need to go inside in SF to find people shooting
| up heroin...
| yardie wrote:
| The Paris sanisettes were controversial when they went up.
| Using the same damn arguments against them. Everyone cares
| so much about what the homeless and drug users might do and
| care very little about the millions of others who also use
| them.
|
| And they were unfounded. The self-cleaning and maintenance
| schedule does not attract homeless. I've literally watched
| a drug user argue with one because the door forcefully
| opened automatically after 15 minutes and he marched off to
| finish his business elsewhere.
| knaekhoved wrote:
| > Everyone cares so much about what the homeless and drug
| users might do
|
| Yeah, because it's a huge problem when you have a
| homeless junkie causing problems where you live.
|
| > And [the concerns] were unfounded. ... I've literally
| watched a drug user argue with one
|
| You're not helping your argument here.
| maeln wrote:
| If you read the article, the main reason why it cost so much is
| not because of the cost of the toilet and the installation per-
| se, but because there is many, many red tape around doing
| anything in SF.
|
| So it is not necessarily a "grift" ( although many are
| profiting from it and are probably more than happy about the
| situation being the way it is ) but the result of decades of
| laws to regulate public work and spending ( ironically ).
| acchow wrote:
| > but because there is many, many red tape around doing
| anything in SF.
|
| Right, the red tape still exists to this day to allow for
| grifters to come in who help "expedite" the process for a
| fee. So it's really the same thing.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I'd love to see an itemized break down of "red tape" that
| actually adds up to $1.7M. We too often accept officials
| obfuscating costs on these projects into opaque buckets like
| "studies" and "reviews". "We'll of course it's expensive! It
| all goes to uh... RED TAPE! Yea that's where it goes
| obviously!"
| renlo wrote:
| > although many are profiting from it and are probably more
| than happy about the situation being the way it is
|
| This is the "grift" part of it; those "many [...] profiting
| from it" are often times friends or acquaintances of the
| officials regulating them
| maeln wrote:
| Yes, I am aware, but the fact is those laws are put in
| place (and could be removed) by elected officials. If the
| resident of SF where so angry about the situation, they
| could vote against it.
| antiterra wrote:
| SF tried those toilets and they were a failure in nearly all
| categories. They charged $250k in 2019, the wouldn't be
| surprised if the full cost to set up is double now.
|
| https://missionlocal.org/2019/02/how-san-francisco-flushed-a...
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Whats the incentive to get it done fast or cheap when you don't
| have to answer for what you spend and the general public is
| threatened with incarceration if they don't pay you.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| It's not their money, it's California's money -- so how much
| would a SF politician care?
|
| > Matt Haney, who secured the $1.7 million funding from the
| state to install the toilet ...
| Balgair wrote:
| I like how there is currently a porto-john in the exact spot
| right now. Like, there is currently a working toilet in the
| exact location that is, to my limited knowledge, doing the bare
| minimum well enough right now. For likely much less in my
| entire life than the 1.7M that just building the new toilet
| will cost.
|
| If it's not corruption, then I am _more_ worried.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| Came here to say the same thing. There are 400 of them and cost
| about EUR6 million per year to operate and maintain:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanisette
| frereubu wrote:
| "Clearly" is doing a lot of work in that sentence unless you've
| delved deeply into the approval process of this specific
| toilet. It's absolutely believable that this is just produced
| by sclerotic bureaucracy.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| What's the difference between bureaucracy and grift? All
| those 1.7 million dollars go into pockets, no?
| kfarr wrote:
| Honestly it's a big difference. One is payroll and legal,
| the other is laundered and illegal and the feds regularly
| prosecute SF gov officials for this.
| bombcar wrote:
| The smartest grifters realize their life is a lot easier
| when the grift is entirely above board and legal.
| uoaei wrote:
| I think you should spend more time in corrupt
| institutions, to better see how one forces the hand of
| the other in practice.
| frereubu wrote:
| In my definition, bureaucracy is unintentional, whereas
| grift is intentional. I subscribe to the view that in
| general these things are more likely to be due to cock-up
| than conspiracy. Not everyone is Robert Moses.
| missedthecue wrote:
| I'm not sure how you would be able to codify it in a fair and
| just way, but this level of waste needs to be a crime. There
| needs to be accountability.
| sn0w_crash wrote:
| This is already codified. It's a political ideology that
| centers around throwing money into a bottomless pit of problems
| that never seem to be solved.
|
| "Accountability" would mean a massive reduction in headcount,
| budget, and taxation. The likelihood of this happening in SF
| is..... you know the answer to that.
| a_square_peg wrote:
| I wonder if this is a sign of a system that's no longer
| salvageable.
| BluSyn wrote:
| The entire article reads like something straight from The Onion.
| hunglee2 wrote:
| how do we maintain local community consultation _without_ it
| becoming a 'vetocracy'?
|
| Seems to me that this is a problem that may be ameliorated with
| some form quadratic voting
| jakear wrote:
| The real solution to the public defecation crisis is either
| unlocking bathrooms at night or more "single" use plastic bags.
| Anyone knows dog parks have less shit around when there are bags
| readily available, but somehow they haven't connected that to the
| city in general. It used to be you could pretty reliably find a
| good clean plastic bag in any trash can. Not so anymore.
|
| Problem is anyone proposing this in government would be cancelled
| for disgracing the homeless or some shit (I'm homeless, I get a
| free pass). The absolute worst part of the homeless experience is
| being in a city during the hours when bathrooms are locked and
| desperately needing to use one. Not proud of the things I've done
| in times of such calamity.
|
| At least SF has people freely shooting up on the streets, so
| perhaps they won't feel as compelled to prevent them from using
| bathrooms for the same? Anyone know if SF bathrooms get locked?
| Gigachad wrote:
| I don't think it's even possible to solve the public toilet
| problem without first solving the drug abuse problem. Everyone
| agrees it would be ideal to have toilet access to everyone, but
| no one has an answer for how you design a toilet that's
| impossible to abuse.
| jakear wrote:
| Folks abuse drugs right on the street in SF. I don't see why
| they'd prefer to take up a stall, where you're much more
| likely to get noticed, complained about, and "handled".
|
| If not a doggy bag supply outside locked bathrooms, a roomful
| of toilets with no doors/walls/etc would be better than what
| we have now. Down with the idea that defecation is a
| naughtily private affair, bring back public bathhouses!
| bombcar wrote:
| The guy is literally asking for doggie bags to be available
| so he can crap in a bag when toilets aren't available/closed.
|
| We need to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, or
| the whole city turns into a toilet.
| googlryas wrote:
| You're saying people who are pooping on public sidewalks will
| willingly choose to poop into plastic bags on public sidewalks,
| if only they had them available?
| jakear wrote:
| I can't speak for everyone, but some of them yes! If you were
| homeless and needed to shit in the middle of the night
| (usually avoidable, but stomach bugs can screw you - and
| they're more common when you can only afford bottom of the
| barrel food), would you prefer to do it directly on the
| street in the vicinity of your bed where you'll have to smell
| it and look at it for weeks, or into a bag where you can
| properly dispose of it immediately?
|
| Now imagine you live in a community with a dozen other hobos,
| what sorts of policies would you legislate?
|
| You know we aren't that different, you and I.
| duxup wrote:
| Really frustrating there are no photos.
| exabrial wrote:
| thfuran wrote:
| What is your proposed alternative?
| newsclues wrote:
| For this, let private companies install public pay toilets.
| Let activists fund free pay toilet passes for the
| homeless/poor.
|
| Eventually there should be a couple brands of private public
| toilets where some are essentially free (lets say you own a
| business in an area with no public washrooms, it may be a
| financial benefit to you to sponsor a public toilet) and
| others are more luxury with higher prices to keep the riff
| raff out and fund more public ones.
|
| There is a market solution if the government gets out of the
| way.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| There is a market solution for everything if we just
| imagine that the tragedy of the commons doesn't exist
| hot_gril wrote:
| I agree, but public pay toilets are illegal.
| titzer wrote:
| Kinda sounds like the _spending_ is stupid, not the taxation.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| > Taxation is stupid.
|
| To some extent I agree.
|
| > ... US Governments have the worst value-delivered-per-dollar-
| collected ...
|
| Can you give me your reference for this?
|
| Looking at [0] the lowest & highest marginal tax rates, cross
| referenced with citizen happiness [1], USA does not seem to be
| the worst, but you might have better reference data.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates
| [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-
| rankings/happiest-...
| hot_gril wrote:
| Can't measure it that way, or probably at all, but there's no
| way it's the worst. There are countries with corruption out
| in the open.
| [deleted]
| coltonv wrote:
| The central issue in SF really is just that all the stakeholders
| with any power whatsoever are highly incentivized to minimize
| change, because most of the voting and bribery base (I mean,
| political donation base) is manically obsessed with keeping
| housing prices as high as possible, so every department in every
| place in government is designed to slow and reject permits as
| much as possible. The incentives have been there so long that
| it's seeped into appointed bureaucrats in every place in local
| government, so even if you vote for someone staunchly anti-
| obstruction, it would take years of intense work to get the rot
| out of the entire system, longer than a single election cycle for
| sure.
|
| Plus, the people who would vote less obstructionist policies
| often are the ones who live out in Oakland or something and
| commute in to work, and thus can't vote on the SF policies, so
| those people get shoved out even more by the high costs. It's a
| vicious cycle and there's probably no answer to it besides
| state/federal intervention to force lack of obstruction (e.g.
| making certain zoning requirements like "single family home only"
| illegal). For now, the incentives of local voters are stacked in
| the "we'll take literal shit on the streets if it means higher
| housing prices" camp.
| novok wrote:
| IMO the higher prices for shit on the streets camp make sure
| that the shit doesn't end up in their neighborhood. Go to
| various wealthier & busier places in the city and notice the
| curious lack of crap on the roads, or homeless people in
| general.
| anon291 wrote:
| If the SF local government were to substantially change,
| particular political party officials would be out of a job,
| because the city is run by one party, and is in fact the
| breeding ground of a lot of major national politicians from
| that party.
|
| People should think about this when they go to vote, because
| several SF politicians are attempting to potentially run for
| president and other national positions. One of them is already
| in the executive branch.
|
| The 'both sides' nonsense I see in this thread needs to stop.
| It is a lie. There is only one side in San Francisco; we all
| know what side that is; and for someone reason, we're actually
| totally okay with those very same politicians becoming top dog
| nationally. Despite all the hand-wringing here by people saying
| they can't vote for SF politicians because they don't live in
| SF, everyone sure seems really happy to do it when it comes to
| the national elections.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| NIMBY-ism and the accumulation of power through real estate
| and capture of local power structures isn't an inherent to SF
| or any specific political party.
|
| It happens in Texas, NYC and Idaho.
| anon291 wrote:
| Texas and Idaho have much more housing and build much more,
| for better or worse. And are much cheaper.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > is in fact the breeding ground of a lot of major national
| politicians from that party.
|
| Really? If Newsom runs for president, despite being somewhat
| moderate, he's going to have problems because Republican
| attack ads will frame him as the former mayor of the most
| liberal city in the country while showing pics of the TL in
| the background.
| batman-farts wrote:
| He's obviously angling for a national platform, picking
| silly sound-bite fights with people like DeSantis. My guess
| is that he runs for president, fails somewhat spectacularly
| due to just this issue, and then steps back into the
| position of senator for as long as he likes. Quite possibly
| for life, just like Boxer and Feinstein. It's what I would
| do in his shoes. It would also give him the platform to
| launch another presidential campaign whenever it feels
| right. How many times did Biden run for president?
| costcofries wrote:
| This is like Canada spending $54m to build the BASIC covid entry
| app, ArriveCAN...
|
| Source: https://nationalpost.com/news/the-initial-cost-of-
| arrivecan-...
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| Is there a cost breakdown of what goes into an estimate like
| this? The 1.7 million number comes from somewhere, so how was it
| calculated, what parts of the process result in it being so high?
| Cost of labor for doing the actual job, materials, administrative
| salaries for the planning and regulatory hurdles? Surely that
| exists somewhere, and so if this is corruption seeing such a
| document should make it more obvious who is benefiting from it
| techdragon wrote:
| This highlights one of my personal favourite ways to attack
| this problem, itemised cost breakdowns.
|
| If they were required by law to keep sufficiently detailed
| account of the government money they are using, and while
| making these public by default might be hard to convince people
| of (due to obvious questions about commercial in confidence
| information)... just requiring them to exist as government
| records of the project opens a pathway for the existing FOI
| processes to grant access to these for public inspection when
| it's in the public interest.
|
| I really struggle to image how a FOI request to produce the
| itemised cost documentation of the 1.7 million dollar public
| toilet, might possibly not be in the public interest.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Container toilet from china - 10k
|
| Installation - 2k
|
| Rest - ...
| fdfaz wrote:
| Say what you will but the fact that cities in the US have that
| kind of money to throw around says a lot about the country -
| compare that to having to heat ourselves using duvets in Europe
| :D
| starkd wrote:
| No wonder they can't build high-speed rail.
| ChrisBland wrote:
| If you think about some of the really interesting architecture of
| San Francisco, do you think they could be built now? Imagine
| trying to get the golden gate bridge built today. At some point
| you have to accept that not everyone is going to like every
| aspect of your plan and tell them to go pound sound or nothing
| will ever get done.
| moduspol wrote:
| It's certainly going to be tougher (not just in San Francisco,
| but elsewhere) because it was previously standard practice to
| choose cheaper areas for these projects to keep taxpayer costs
| low. Of course, in reality this disproportionately affects
| marginalized communities, so it'd be a political dumpster fire
| nowadays to propose that.
|
| If you can't build things in the cheaper areas, all that's left
| are the expensive ones.
| carapace wrote:
| We just built a new bridge.
|
| > The eastern span replacement of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay
| Bridge was a construction project to replace a seismically
| unsound portion of the Bay Bridge with a new self-anchored
| suspension bridge (SAS) and a pair of viaducts. The bridge is
| in the U.S. state of California and crosses the San Francisco
| Bay between Yerba Buena Island and Oakland. The span
| replacement took place between 2002 and 2013, and is the most
| expensive public works project in California history,[5] with a
| final price tag of $6.5 billion, a 2,500% cost overrun from the
| original estimate of $250 million.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_span_replacement_of_th...
| antognini wrote:
| There were critics of the Golden Gate Bridge in the 1930s who
| complained that it ruined the view.
| maxwell wrote:
| It was quite a challenge to get it approved in the 1930s:
|
| https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/place/article/Golden-Gate-Bri...
|
| The detractors did have a point though:
|
| > Any bridge with a clearance of less than 250 feet could
| blockade the harbor as the size and height of international
| vessels increased.
|
| How much has the 220 foot air draft restriction affected the
| Port of Oakland (and SF, if Pier 80 ever got running again)?
| Does this factor into imports (that aren't bound for NorCal)
| seeming to goto the much busier container ports in
| Seattle/Tacoma and LA/Long Beach instead?
|
| https://container-news.com/top-10-the-busiest-container-port...
|
| Meanwhile, there's been a flurry of new construction across the
| street from my local container port in Old Portland (Maine),
| which sees 2 orders of magnitude fewer containers than Oakland,
| but does have a stranglehold on the nation's supply of imported
| fish sticks. It seems like a key in getting approval to build
| right on Commercial St has been proposing buildings that look
| pretty good and fit the area, e.g.
|
| https://hobsonslanding.com
|
| https://goo.gl/maps/uAgZepV25qzRxrtG6
| rootusrootus wrote:
| At some point I think we went off the rails and decided that
| democracy has to occur at every level of a public project. E.g.
| First the governor announces a vision, then the legislature
| allocates funds, then it goes to a design committee, etc, on
| down the line. At each level we try to get public
| participation, and at each level just a few loud voices can
| derail the whole thing for an indefinite amount of time.
|
| Perhaps we could reign that in. Democracy is how we elect
| leaders. If enough of our leaders decide to do something, then
| we do it. Maybe we have one public comment period for really
| big projects. But it gets done. Don't like what they did? Vote
| them out.
| bombcar wrote:
| The US was setup as republic for reasons that are becoming
| more and more apparent. We used to select representatives for
| a town or locality that would then group together and select
| representatives for the next level, etc. Much of this was due
| to communication limitations at the time, but there's
| something to be said to saying "I trust Bob here to make good
| decisions on my behalf" instead of everyone injecting
| themselves into every aspect of everything.
|
| All I can to personally is not vote for or against these
| various things.
| davidw wrote:
| This is exactly the problem. As someone who has been observing
| 'the process' closely in my own city, as we struggle to build
| enough homes, this piece really hit home:
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/local-gove...
| chrismeller wrote:
| Version I found without a paywall:
| https://www.nationalreview.com/news/flushing-money-san-franc...
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| Self-cleaning, vandalism-resistant public WCs have been around
| for a long time.
|
| Could SF purchase them instead?
| Ptchd wrote:
| jalk wrote:
| Could it be that the majority of the 1.7M is for getting the
| design "approved" and the clones they install elsewhere will be
| at a fraction of the cost.
| mattnewton wrote:
| One of the reasons this toilet is so expensive no doubt, is that
| the new SF public toilets are self cleaning and will have
| attendants on duty to try to prevent this. The one on golden gate
| park and Haight closes after each visitor to spray the inside
| down like a dishwasher, and has an attendant on duty to make sure
| no one is inside while it does that (and to generally discourage
| people from shady stuff). It's not perfect but they have been
| clean every time I used it.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| They have to pay an attendant hourly just to be sure no one is
| in there while the self clean runs? Why can't it operate based
| on a weight sensor?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| gregoriol wrote:
| Because no startup has made an AI for that purpose yet?
| uoaei wrote:
| All you need is a PIR sensor
| yupper32 wrote:
| It's cheaper to pay someone $20 an hour 24 hours a day
| for 20 years than it is to pay out the $4mil lawsuit for
| when that sensor fails.
| mousetree wrote:
| I'm not an American, but can/would people sue for getting
| washed in a self-cleaning toilet? Surely some signs and
| disclosures would be sufficient?
| dahdum wrote:
| They'd be injecting hard drugs, especially fentanyl,
| constantly in this toilet, so signs and disclosures won't
| mean much. SF is a rather "special" place, you can't
| easily compare to other international cities.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| People in America will sue because the "crunchberries" in
| breakfast cereals aren't real berries.
|
| That doesn't mean they'll win, but even a bogus lawsuit
| is expensive and time-consuming.
|
| https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/judge_tosses_suit
| _cl...
| hot_gril wrote:
| There's an AI, but there's no blockchain or AR, and that's
| really the important part.
| mikeryan wrote:
| When unmonitored public toilets have had issues with people
| camping out while partaking illicit substances and other
| X-rated activities.
| borissk wrote:
| Because somebody will step on the sink or somehow else avoid
| the sensor and then sue for a round sum.
| mrits wrote:
| I think I'd take my chances with the sidewalk than risk a
| startups new self cleaning censor. Literally a shit storm
| [deleted]
| Phlogistique wrote:
| All the toilets in Paris self-clean between users. You
| don't need the sensor to work not to get sprayed, just to
| exit the toilet when a voice says "EXIT THE TOILET NOW, THE
| SELF CLEANING PROCESS IS ABOUT TO BEGIN.
| mrits wrote:
| Even self flushing toilets are often broken. A certain
| building I worked at I had to jump off quickly and out of
| the way so it didn't spray up with a trigger happy mega
| flush.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| I used one of these and the self clean cycle started
| without warning while I was washing my hands. I couldn't
| have been in there more than 4-5 minutes. Luckily the
| door didn't lock so I was able to escape before getting
| "cleaned".
| hot_gril wrote:
| Heck, I cover up the self-flushing mechanism on toilets
| every time then remove it after. Not a pleasant surprise
| when it miscalculates.
| mattnewton wrote:
| It's not some startups self cleaning sensor, this is old
| technology that is in several other cities without
| attendants, and is basically idiot proof. The attendant
| hopefully makes it american-idiot proof too.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| I think the problem isn't making it idiot proof, but
| making it malicious user who really wants to do heroin in
| there proof
| perfectstorm wrote:
| why not have a full time janitor who cleans after each visit?
| much cheaper than a self cleaning toilet. even if you pay $100k
| to the janitor in annual salary, it will take 10+yrs to reach
| 1.7M and who knows what kind of issues these self cleaning
| toilets will have in that 10yrs.
| mattnewton wrote:
| Because a human who can afford to live in San Francisco
| almost certainly costs more than this machine over 10 years
| (the 1.7 million is for the whole project, not just the self
| cleaning portion), and drugged out crazies can make a mess
| that would be a very hard and unpleasant job to give a human.
| 1024core wrote:
| A large number of City employees live outside the City.
| According to this article, only 40% of the City employees
| live in SF. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/remote-
| work-17510522....
|
| So why is residence a requirement for the janitor??
| mattnewton wrote:
| Sure, substitute live in San Francisco with live in
| commuting distance of San Francisco. It's not like Daly
| city or Oakland are cheap either.
|
| Even when we focus on the fiscal aspect of it, I don't
| think a machine is a bad idea compared to a plan of "find
| some willing to clean up after addicts and the mentally
| ill at all hours" - how much would you need to be paid to
| take that job and show up to outcompete the toilet-
| dishwasher-machine every day? California has tons of
| other jobs and generous social programs.
|
| And that's ignoring the angle that we're allocating a
| human life to this extremely unpleasant and automatable
| task.
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| I was thinking the same thing. We now hire people to watch
| extremely expensive machines do incredibly menial tasks.
|
| Yes, I clean my own toilets at home.
| mym1990 wrote:
| These were the type of public toilets in France, it was
| actually very interesting to see and a bit confusing as I
| couldn't figure out why I couldn't go in right after another
| person...
|
| Wonder if it cost Paris 1.7 mil as well?
| david_allison wrote:
| Rented for about EUR1200 per month per toilet. 6MM/year for
| 420 of them.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanisette#In_Paris
| bruce343434 wrote:
| 6 million million?
| david_allison wrote:
| 6 million. Slipped my mind that MM is industry specific.
|
| M is ambiguous between the Roman (M = 1,000), the SI
| prefix (M = 1,000,000), and metres (screen readers).
|
| $1MM (capitalized) or $1mn (more recent) reduces the
| ambiguity.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MM#Units_of_measurement
| acchow wrote:
| MM = "mille mille" = "thousand thousand". You will be
| seeing this in many places.
| jallen_dot_dev wrote:
| Considering all the parties mentioned, from city leaders to
| committees etc., the massive figure makes more sense when you
| realize it's actually a welfare program in disguise to support a
| bunch of people with bullshit jobs.
| yardie wrote:
| Paris has over 400 public toilets, called sanisettes[0], and they
| work pretty well when they are in service. I doubt they cost
| ~$1.7m each.
|
| [0] https://europeforvisitors.com/paris/articles/paris-public-
| to...
| bsaul wrote:
| i wouldn't really set paris as an example for this particular
| issue.
|
| It's certainly getting better with time, but we're far from
| anything decent
| yardie wrote:
| The bar is so low right now, trust me, they are light years
| ahead of most of the rest of the world.
| [deleted]
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That seems to be about 2x the per capita rate of public toilets
| as SF.
| antiterra wrote:
| Price doesn't seem that outrageous to me.
|
| Public bathrooms in cities get destroyed and are very difficult
| to maintain; a lot of cities give up on free restrooms entirely.
| One of the biggest perks of working downtown in a moderately
| sized or larger city is being able to go to the bathroom there
| outside of work hours.
|
| I priced out some relatively minor kitchen/bathroom renovation
| work in 2018 at around $100k. Put it off during covid times, and
| today the quote for the same work is well over $300k. Sure, some
| company with modular units is gonna sell you a stainless steel
| box public bathroom for that price, but it's far from the same
| thing as a proper building.
|
| To those touting 'cheap' self cleaning toilets:
|
| https://missionlocal.org/2019/02/how-san-francisco-flushed-a...
|
| https://dcist.com/story/19/07/29/this-self-cleaning-toilet-c...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/nyregion/11toilet.html
| blaser-waffle wrote:
| > One of the biggest perks of working downtown in a moderately
| sized or larger city is being able to go to the bathroom there
| outside of work hours.
|
| I'm in a big city in Canada and there was a downtown farmer's
| market here for a while. Literally smack in the middle of the
| city, went up and down a few streets on Saturday mornings.
| Loved going, was a short walk and had lots of good eats, local
| produce, etc.
|
| But no bathrooms. None of the local places would let you in if
| you weren't paying, and the only way I could make a head call
| was at the local YMCA -- and the only reason they let me in was
| cuz I was a member of their gym.
|
| It's crazy to me how you can be in the center a huge edifice of
| planning, piping, conduits, etc. and still not be able to find
| a toilet.
|
| edit: they did normally have porta-johns but didn't this
| morning. On at least one occasion I'd seen people tip them
| over, hopefully with no one in them.
| colpabar wrote:
| I know this is a forum for tech bros who are generally well
| paid but responding to a story about a million dollar public
| toilet with "that's no big deal, I'm currently spending six
| figures on _minor_ kitchen renovations " seems pretty out of
| touch to me. That is a _ton_ of money to _so_ many people.
| jerrysievert wrote:
| I'm kind of surprised that new plans were drawn up when a
| perfectly serviceable toilet design[1] has been done and in
| production for much less[2].
|
| This doesn't get rid of the permitting process, but it has been
| debugged and is already working in multiple cities.
|
| 1. https://portlandloo.com
|
| 2. https://pffcdc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Portland-
| Loo-P... - $90,000 + estimated install costs of $4000
| bombcar wrote:
| "Not invented here" is not just a problem at companies like
| Google. And how dare you suggest that SF could use something
| named after another city!
| jerrysievert wrote:
| I mean, they could rename them.
|
| but very good point about NIH-syndrome. it's a shame that so
| much money needs to be spent when another solution has shown
| to work so well.
| Ninjak8051 wrote:
| $1.7M is approximately the construction cost for a ~2000 sq ft
| rebuild in the suburbs. So that does seem a bit high to construct
| a single 150 sq ft bathroom.
|
| Probably the mistake is undertaking such a small project to begin
| with. It sounds like there are many fixed overhead costs (such as
| environmental review) that must be paid regardless of project
| size. Maybe you could have a 1,000 sq. ft. bathroom for $2
| million, or an entire 10,000 sq. ft. park for $4 million.
| caned wrote:
| Sounds pretty reasonable...amortize the fixed costs over larger
| facilities and greater utility.
|
| Why was this downvoted?
| tapatio wrote:
| San Francisco is so advanced yet so birdbrained.
| zwilliamson wrote:
| Just pay for a top of the line port-a-potty cleaned and purged
| daily. Will be cheaper and won't look that bad. I used to hang
| out at the park daily with my dog. It would work out just fine.
| colpabar wrote:
| They'd need to find someone who owns a port-a-potty company and
| is also married/related to someone on the city counsel, which
| could be a challenge.
| UberFly wrote:
| You could have a village of port-a-pottys for a long time for
| 1.7mill. On second thought, the person cleaning it daily would
| need a 200k annual city salary, so maybe not.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| Let me guess, it will require a password, fingerprint, and
| subscription to access, then it will take a blood sample before
| the seat is lifted.
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