I interpret this announcement as Breed recognizing many of her administration's policies have have a disastrous effect on the SF tax base, and for the tax base to return, she needs to clean up the city.
I'll be watching the numbers to see if the city can turn itself around.
A lot of the companies that went remote due to COVID or went to Miami due to politics will never go back.
Lots of cities have had remote workers leave, permanently or temporarily, for obvious reasons. Is there anything showing that SF is somehow worse?
What I do believe I see is a strong relationship between reactionary/GOP political messaging and what is repeated about cities. The Republican National Convention's focus was the 'chaos' in cities, IIRC, though few noticed because other issues dominated. Reactionary messaging seems inredibly effective; whatever they say, people of all stripes are soon repeating. The emotionally intense, repetitive style also seems to match it - I don't see many reasoned arguments.
It can absolutely be self-fulfilling. Perception is reality. Look at many Americans worried about crime in cities, while crime is low and dropping. Homicides (a small portion) are up, but all over the place, not cities in particular. (Source: Recent FBI/DoJ report.) I live in a place with low crime, yet people say they are leaving because of it.
> A lot of the companies that ... went to Miami due to politics will never go back.
As of a few months ago, most people leaving SF went to the greater Bay Area, next elsewhere in CA, next the state of Washington.
Most companies go to SF for politics (or policy), but it's the norm and therefore unremakrable. You don't see a lot of leading companies outside the leading cities, maybe for a reason. Politics, especially when one group advocates ignorance, hate, and disrupting the rule of law, correlates with intelligent policy. Also, most people don't like living around ignorance, hate, and chaos.
This is a sensible argument, but there is absolutely a reality on the ground. San Francisco has horrid problems compared to all other US cities I have been to. It is even more extreme when you compare it to international cities. The crime, homelessness and excrement is extremely visible, in the statistics and while walking down the street. It is bad, it is broken, and it doesn’t need to be that way. I spent a month in 5 separate cities this year, one of which was Vienna. Vienna is spectacularly well run through the result of decades of well considered governance. A significant contribution is a yearly investment in public housing which has prevented property speculation bubbles and given marginal people a place to live. The first step to fixing a problem is to admit you have a problem.
Have you seen any high-quality data on the state of SF? It's such a political issue that I have a hard time finding anything but propaganda and rants. Real data would help understand what happens where, when, etc., rather than a general 'human feces!' alarm bell.
No American city is going to turn into Vienna! Also, it is said (maybe complete BS), the culture that makes Vienna so beautiful also produces fascists and the murder of many Vienna residents.
You don’t need statistics you need real reports of quality of life from people living there. What you mistake as rants are people who live there telling you they hate it. What other data do you need?
> You don’t need statistics you need real reports of quality of life from people living there. What you mistake as rants are people who live there telling you they hate it. What other data do you need?
At this date, we still don't understand that such things on the Internet are completely unreliable?
If you don't believe the news, and you don't believe the statistics, and you don't believe the anecdotes, then what would you believe? Do you have any first hand experience of the city at all? I'm not some shill. I have no agenda. I tried to live in SF, and left because things that don't occur in poor countries are an every day occurrence on the street there. Everyone I knew was affected and everyone had their own stories. But more than any other place, San Franciscans can deny reality and blame it all on Reagan, the weather, the red states, anything but themselves better than anyone.
Actual data. Emotional testimonials are a terrible way to set public policy. See also the security theatre we've instituted in our airports since 9/11. Going off of people's self-reported experiences is how you get policy driven by mass hysteria like the "Satanic Panic"[1].
The thing that makes SF worse is that the lawlessness, drugs, human shit all over the streets really make you wonder if it’s worth $3,000/mo for a 1 bedroom. Other cities are simultaneously more pleasant places to live and cheaper.
I.E The place is expensive and objectively terrible.
City government has been experimenting with new progressive models for drugs (don’t criminalize addiction!) but failing to follow through and actually solve the problem.
Pop quiz: If you decriminalize drugs without funding addiction treatment what do you get?
What happens when you decriminalize petty crime without instituting any measures to otherwise prevent crime? Guess what happens?
I don’t know the answers to society’s problems, but I can spot failure when it drops thou in broad daylight and shits on my bumper. And frankly I’m over paying a premium for that privilege.
No matter your politics, the quality of life is going downhill in SF. Property crime is up, racial attacks are up and more concerning are the brazen daylight looting of stores which shows criminals have little fear of consequences.
To add to this, in Boston we are seeing a divergence between the condo and single family real estate market. Condo prices are way up, but single family prices are down.
Based on anecdotal experience, I suspect that people who wanted the single family lifestyle are leaving the city whereas those who want the city lifestyle are entering. Remote work means you don't need to choose where you live based on commutes. Similar to the Bay Area, around here there are suburban campuses which are impractical to commute to from the city.
I'd be curious of there is a similar effect in SF causing specific single family neighborhoods to empty out.
> I'd be curious of there is a similar effect in SF causing specific single family neighborhoods to empty out.
Single-family home prices have been on a tear the past year, and for 2020 prices flattened rather than drop. Condominiums took a huge hit in 2020 and have only recently recovered to their 2019 levels.
I don't know if actual families (or couples looking to start a family) are moving into those homes, though.
Cities are hitting RECORD homicides though. Does the data show that suburbia is suffering anywhere near as bad of a spike? I dunno....I haven't picked through the data to compare [these 12 cities] vs [America ex-these 12 cities].
It's a real crisis and horrible for the victims. But ... very few people are murdered - it's just a rare thing regardless - and afaik most by people they know.
> Does the data show that suburbia is suffering anywhere near as bad of a spike?
Based on the Washington Post story on the FBI report that I read, as I recall, it was pretty much everywhere. Of course a suburban township with 1 murder last year and 2 this year has doubled its homicide rate.
> Of course a suburban township with 1 murder last year and 2 this year has doubled its homicide rate.
So you made a hypothetical in your head and hand wave all criticism away? How is this not confirmation bias? If you like it fine, but to dismiss what everyone else is saying is strange. If you lived in the Bay Area, you could see it falling apart in real time. Homeless, crime, quality of life, drugs and everything else got worse and worse. It wouldn’t be a meme if it weren’t actually there.
You literally offered no standard of evidence and explained how you make up hypotheticals to hand wave away all evidence that doesn't fit your narrative so I don't think you have the highest standards. You can argue semantics or word choice, but the data backs up what I'm saying--a whopping 80% of SF residents believe SF crime has gotten worse in recent years: https://sfchamber.com/new-polling-shows-that-8-out-of-10-res...
Why would 80% of residents think this if it wasn't actually happening? Quality of life is in free fall in San Francisco but some folks just want to live in denial and ignore reality.
A few other highlights from the study:
70% feel that the quality of life in SF has declined
88% see homelessness as having worsened
76% believe it should be a high priority to increase police officers in high-crime neighborhoods.
I’m shutting down my tech company based in SF due to the bad faith accounting practices of their local tax office. (I’ll just open a new one elsewhere) I won’t call it corruption because I don’t know that anyone is personally profiting, but I’m sick of dealing with it.
I’m out, I’d never recommend anyone do business in SF. Time and again I’ve seen the same bad behavior when I interact with any department (I once spent a week in the planning office— every day with revised plans, ultimately rejected not because of anything being incorrect but because, and I quote “I don’t like the drawings”). SF city government is run by a bunch of entitled pretentious pricks on arbitrary power trips and no regard for the people they ostensibly represent and serve.
I’m not surprised in the least that they can’t figure out how to provide basic safety for their citizens and businesses, or that they’ve lost entire regions to lawlessness.
Just commenting again here to vouch for this statement. I've spent a ton of time in both cities, and Miami is so different but in my opinion miles better. Constant sun and breezes. 8 months of perfect weather. Actual diversity, not just in ethnicity but also walks of life. Awesome little open bars and restaurants all over at any hour. The people - both men and women, are beautiful. Many people dress nicely and with pride - you'll always see men in nice suits and hats, and women in nice dresses. I just found that interesting as it was so different than most other places, reminded me of something from a movie.
Miami is criminally underrated. Ultimately I just don't enjoy living in a 'big city', but for anyone that does, I highly recommend giving it a try!
In most employment contracts in the US, the employer owns anything you create, including what you do in your personal time. But not in California, which happens to have a thriving startup culture, many of which were created after work hours.
Not OP, but speaking from personal experience and preference, summers in So Fl aren't that bad. It rarely goes above 90, and there's a constant sea breeze. Don't get me wrong, it is hot, but never unbearable.
I spend time north of there and as long as you’re on the ocean summers are awesome. Walking on the beach is just about always great on a hot day since you get sea breeze and can cool off in the water. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but it sure is mine!
The departure of tech workers is what springs to mind for us (I too moved out of SF during the pandemic), but don't forget that tourism is also a huge factor in the city economy, and that has also been decimated - though more temporarily.
I also think it's over-hasty to attribute many of these things to Breed's policies. Companies in knowledge industries going remote isn't a unique-to-SF thing, and the housing prices and street problems that caused many people to leave the city are rooted in bad housing policy that long predates her mayoral term.
I don't find this argument to be particularly persuasive, at least not unless you are also making the claim that all big cities are screwed. COVID caused many people to leave cities, not just tech workers in SF. The federal stimulus package was just a part of the federal government's efforts to shore things up due to COVID. Of course it's not a sustainable strategy; it's a short-term measure due to the pandemic.
Now, certainly things are not going to go back to the way they were once we start pulling out of the pandemic (whenever that will be). But they will go some part of the way back. I don't think it's easy to predict exactly where things will be in 1, 2, or 5 years. Maybe what comes will be enough, maybe it won't. I'm betting that things will work out just fine. There will be some budget shortfalls, and some strife, but life will go on, and the city will rebound, just like most/all of the other cities in the world will.
Frankly I don't care why Breed just now feels like she needs to clean up the city, but I'm glad it's happening, finally.
I thought the recent data showed that most of this exodus of workers is overblown? People leaving stayed nearby, and people continued to move in (at a much lower rate than pre pandemic)
> About two-thirds of those who left San Francisco last year stayed in the 11-county Bay Area economic region, according to the same California Policy Lab study. About 80 percent stayed in California.
Hasn't San Francisco Covid policy been a massive success? I'm pretty sure their numbers are a lot better then most parts of the country especially considering urban density
If your only goal is to minimize deaths from COVID without regard for any other consequence. Most pragmatic people recognize that you need to weigh deaths against economic health and other considerations and strike a balance.
Earlier this year there was a lot of reporting about how California recovered much quicker from the first few waves that shut down the country, especially as compared to states like Georgia. Just because other states had fewer restrictions does not mean people actually returned to their routines.
Some argued that in California more people were quicker to return to economic life, greater social restrictions notwithstanding, because they felt safer. I have no idea how those trends and theories have actually panned out since then. And the theories weren't necessarily needed. It's not surprising California's economy did relatively well simply because it benefits disproportionately from tech, entertainment, and related industries which were more amenable to work-from-home, and which actually saw growth potential from people spending more time at home.
By what measure? Major cities in CA saw significant population declines during the pandemic and the SF Unified School district has a major budget short fall now. Places like Miami and Austin which were much less restrictive are now booming and gaining residents by all accounts. SF crime is so bad businesses are closing because no sooner do they stock the shelves than roving bands of thieves clean them out.
Is there any evidence that the SF Unified School District short fall has anything to do with either the pandemic or population decline?
California has population decline because its such an attractive place to live, which I know goes against the conservative narrative but its the reality. Austin, Seattle, Portland, Denver, and Phoenix are full of Californian expats who would move back in a heart beat if they could afford it.
The budget problem is a direct result of losing 3,500 students since COVID began. schools are funded based on the number of pupils they serve. It also didn’t help that they remained shutdown longer for in person learning than most other districts while they did stuff like soap box about eliminating advanced math.
The costs of the pandemic and the decline in enrollment have certainly significantly exacerbated the problems. But one of the reasons so many locals (of all political persuasions) were upset with the school board committing so much attention to changing the names of schools and related social activist causes is because all the while they were dithering on addressing far more pressing budgetary problems and related structural issues. And they continued to do so even into the pandemic.
Anecdote: I've lived in Santa Clara, Seattle, and now Austin. I've been much happier in Seattle/Austin and it's not even close. The thought of moving back hasn't ever entered my mind and is frankly repulsive.
They can’t afford it because they aren’t building enough housing and especially higher density housing. The high cost of living is a direct result of political policies that keeps housing supply low and taxes high.
Studies show a correlation between economic down turns and increased mortality rates. I say this as someone who didn't / doesn't have the luxury of routine work from home. Adjusted for population age Florida and California had similar death rates but one was extreme in their measures and the other was very laze fare. Both were very average relative to other states.
> giving them housing won't fix their behavioral problems.
What is that based on? My understanding from experts is that housing provides people with the stability to address their other problems. It's a valuable first step. Imagine trying to deal with whatever your problems are today if you also were homeless. Now imagine your problems are far worse, food is an issue, and emotionally debilitating.
Even well-housed people I know have a hard time dealing with their long-term problems. Add some more stress to their lives and they fall apart.
> ~50% of the homeless are severely mentally ill and/or on hard drugs
Where does that number come from? AFAIK, medical bills are a leading cause of homelessness.
Have there been any recent attempts at providing this? Seattle has had some success creating tiny house communities, I just saw one the other day and it was really cool!
What if I told you that there are plenty of people and families in the Tenderloin that face public safety issues on the daily on their way to school?
Now that a safe injection site is opening, we need no longer tolerate people injecting needles into themselves on the streets.
Maybe you think what's going on in the Tenderloin (and Soma) is acceptable. But if so, you're in the minority now. No one should be subjected to being harassed by psychotic people while picking up household necessities at Target on a Saturday afternoon. After all these years people's patience is wearing thin.
> Maybe you think what's going on in the Tenderloin (and Soma) is acceptable.
I definitely don't think things are good as they are now. And I would highly appreciate programs that help the homeless as well as cleans things up.
> What if I told you that there are plenty of people and families in the Tenderloin that face public safety issues on the daily on their way to school?
If you read the post I was replying too, bostonsre was describing this program as mainly about helping the poor, and with cleaning up as a side effect. In reality the program mostly talks about the cleaning up side of things. That's all.
What would help the homeless that SF isn’t already doing? City already offers them shelter and services. And most refuse because the pay don’t want to obey any rules. There’s always this constant rhetoric that more needs to be done but frankly SF is already doing a ton but it’s all optional… it needs to be mandator. Either you accept the housing, or we arrest you for blocking public sidewalks. Either you accept drug counseling, or we arrest you for drug possession. If there is no carrot and stick approach, people will just keep using. And now that meth and heroin are decriminalized and theft is decriminalized, it’s obvious why things are only getting worse.
The homeless are highly vulnerable to violent crime, and often deal with illness and disability, so less violent crime and better emergency services & accessibility should benefit many of them.
I don’t think the Mayor cares about the Tech exodus as much as about voting residents in the troubled neighborhoods that are mentioned; only in the HN bubble would people think that.
Despite the dubious "tech exodus" there are still a lot of insanely wealthy people in this city. One recent example being a house in a not-particularly-desirable neighborhood selling for $1million over asking price:
Businesses are what pay it. Hence the payroll tax a few years ago. Hence the relative ease of getting new office space approved vs. new housing.
To preserve the tax base, the city govt. will need to keep business around and office space full. Even if the crotchety old money people who pay pennies per year for their semi-private streets don’t like it.
>Wealthy people in SF, particularly “old money” types, don’t really pay significant taxes:
Hold on a sec -- the parent was asserting that wealthy people still want to pay big bucks to live in SF, even despite the huge tax bill. They gave an example of an expensive recent property sale, which would force a huge property-value-up-assessment and thus a big tax bill.
You're then citing a story to refute this belief, which talks about a very unusual case where a tax-nonpayment-sale was reversed, treating like it never happened (because corruption), and thus avoiding the up-assessment. That's not responsive to what the parent was talking about.
Now, you're right that wealthy, very-long-time SF residents do avoid most of the property tax due to never having sold and the Prop 13 shield. But that isn't relevant to a case of a new buyer picking up a property like that commenter was referring to.
Agreed, and while SF certainly does have a fair amount of old money, I'd argue that most of it is new money. From my point of view, most of the homes selling in my neighborhood over the past year (average sale price of $2.2 million) are young-ish families in their 30s and 40s who have made their money in tech over the past 10 or so years.
Don't believe the hype. That area of SF is highly desirable (near Mount Davidson), prices are about $1,200-1,500/sq ft, which would make the selling price pretty much what you'd expect.
Those realtors just did what they all do in SF - underprice a listing by 30%, then when it selling at what they thought it would, hype up their "realtor expertise". These two got free publicity out of it.
The Mayors incentives are not dictated by tax revenues. I don’t understand where you would get that idea. She could bankrupt the city and still get re-elected if she manages to stay popular.
I really don't know how to respond to a comment this stupid.
Actually, yes I do... you think that because Jackson, Mississippi is 92% African American that I left due to the changing demographics, as opposed to the increased crime, the declining infrastructure, a reduction in tech jobs, and the continued mismanagement of the city. To think racism has anything to do with the decline of Jackson, Mississippi from around 1985-current, as opposed to the mismanagement of tax revenues and tax policy that forced business out of the city is not only laughable, but it tells me everything I need to know about you.
You're ideologically possessed. You are, literally, mentally ill and need help. You're also so arrogant you're going to tell me that you know more about a city in which I used to live - in which I grew up!
I guess my lifelong friend - whom I've literally known since I was 14 - left Jackson, Mississippi to go work in Sacramento, California because he's just a raving racist... OH WAIT, Preston's BLACK! AND he went to Jackson Prep... meanwhile I was stuck in a small town school district so poor that I had literally taken every class by the time I got to 12th grade except for AP English 4, AP Calculus, and AP Biology 4. I was forced to be assigned a study hall because it wasn't even legal for me to leave school before noon.
Don't talk to me about racism, you arrogant jackass.
Poor white people and poor black people and rich white people and rich black people grow up around each other in Mississippi all the time.
We leave because Mississippi is an economic shithole with extremely limited opportunity. That's why I left. It's why Preston left, it's why his brother left. It's why my brother left, it's why my sister left. It's why 40% of the people from my high school graduating class left.
Perhaps not, but it's clear that reduced police funding and enforcement hasn't been working...so I think it's a natural shift in the other direction from leadership. While I'm sure many in SF will be disappointed by this, many others will probably be much happier.
Really? Who has been to San Francisco and actually thought we need to further reduce sentencing or that there was too much police? I think most feel the opposite and SF doesn’t exactly mass-incarcerate… I am all for applying the rule of law for once but I am skeptical this is anything more than a PR tactic. Nothing of consequence will change until leadership in SF is thrown out and that will likely never happen.
I live in SF and think that there’s an okay amount of police. I don’t want enhanced police presence. Increased social services sounds like a better way to spend that money to me.
Do you really think SF is lacking in social services? I think the problem is people don’t really want them and can’t be forced to use them so it’s just a waste of resources. Every year millions more are dumped into social programs and the problem has only gotten worse.
SF has shown the road to hell is paved in good intentions. I moved out of SF because there were constantly tweakers camping in my garage area and cops took hours to respond and they didn’t even do anything, drug users just came back repeatedly after cops left. SF is fine for the champagne liberals living on Nob Hill with private security but everyone else is living in a place where rule of law barely exists.
I think we probably have a difference of opinion of what problem we should solve.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but this sounds like the problem you want to solve: drug users and homeless people make you feel unsafe, and you want to feel more safe.
I don’t personally feel unsafe in SF, at all. The problem I’d like to solve is this: how can we get help to people who need it? Be that unhoused people, people struggling with mental health issues, people who are addicted to drugs.
I don’t know if more social services will help solve my problem, you’re right that we spend a lot of money on it and it doesn’t seem to work all that well. But I do know that more policing will absolutely not solve my problem, it will only make it worse. It might solve yours though, as there won’t be as much drug use and theft with increased police presence.
I’m not saying either problem is objectively the right or wrong one. I don’t think there is an objective answer. Just want to show you why people like myself are not looking for an increase in SFPD funding.
Seems like a selfish and arrogant answer, but at least it's honest. The reality is, you're one bad encounter away from agreeing with me. You just haven't had to experience the worst of SF. After cleaning up messy human feces and drug paraphernalia on your property for years I'm sure you'd come around.
Because other countries like Singapore or Japan, which have world class cities, actually care about their citizens and provide them with real support. This kind of dogmatic thinking in America will literally be the end of it.
"Beatings will continue until morale improves", was not meant to be advice.
Sorry, but if Singapore and Japan are your ideas of what liberal reform looks like, I've got a bridge to sell you. The kind of lawlessness you see in American and European cities is shocking to anyone coming from these places.
Both countries are paternalistic, statist societies controlled by right-wing governments since WW2. Singapore's safety comes from harsh punishment for antisocial behaviors, from caning for vandalism all the way to execution for drug trafficking. Japan is a bit softer on this front but strict cultural norms are enforced by society as a whole. They have freedom of speech but start rioting the way BLM did in 2020 and you can expect the government to use a few "emergency powers" with overwhelming support from the public.
Yes, they've implemented a few social safety nets here and there that resemble the welfare system in Western Europe, but they also don't hesitate to use the full power of the state (and public shaming) to crack down on deviant behavior.
Isn’t this always the case with ANY government? Use crisis to get access to more funding that they can waste like the rest and more power to control more of its citizens. I’d for once like them to more efficiently use the billions that they already spend and amend policies that have created this crisis in the first place.
Putting up more cctv cameras is not remotely in the realm of science fiction. It's present-level tech more widely deployed. Privacy advocates won't like it, but that doesn't make it anything like precrime.
Definitely seems like we’re part of the way there. You only see these problems to this degree on the west coast. LA, SF, Portland, Seattle. It’s not hard to figure it out.
Actions speak louder than words. The man explicitly is against the most basic duties of his position, and has followed through on that by not prosecuting people for all sorts of crimes.
I think so. The article talks about a vague initiative to make more arrests. The majority of SF criminals are out on the streets the next day after they are arrested.
If you want meaningful change first audit the funds disbursement of organizations which allegedly exist to aid the homeless of SF. You may be shocked to discover what is actually happening.
Doesn't matter. He's very unpopular, he's likely to be recalled. Meanwhile actual families and kids who live in the Tenderloin and face public safety issues on the daily need our help.
I will support him on the internet as I cannot vote.
Other cities look to follow SF's steps of restorative justice.
I think this is bad, but I can't be sure.
Since I don't live in SF, I want SF to go all the way with the restorative justice to see if it works. Maybe I'm wrong. This is a low cost way of experimenting.
Here is the kicker: SF residents also want more restorative justice (based on their official votes).
We all from other cities should help support Chesa.
We will all benefit from the restorative justice experiment, and SF residents get what they vote for. It is a win win.
Chesa Boudin’s strategy is a complete failure. Crime is up and everyone hates it. We are known internationally for how lawless and unsafe it’s become. If you want more republicans to get elected, sure vote for more candidates like Chesa who will lead to voter backlash when they get to experience the reality of buzzwords like “restorative justice” while champagne liberals with private security tell them it’s for their own good. The reality is the poor suffer the most from this woke mentality.
So ignore the reality we see with our eyes and double down on an ideology that is clearly not working for anyone? Got it. SF never mass incarcerated criminals and was already lax on crime. I didn’t realize “restorative justice” meant letting elderly Asians get beat in the streets or letting drug users take over children's parks. SF is a joke and doubling down on failing strategies because of ideology is why it such a miserable place. The neo-liberals have turned SF into ancapistan. Hopefully you can afford privat security, otherwise SF feels like living in a slum.
Other countries that are actually progressive (not just woke) have found better ways to clean up cities but also decriminalize drugs. The red light district in Amsterdam is cleaner than almost any part of SF. What we are doing is clearly failing. The difference is they don’t let people just openly use drugs on the streets, don’t allow theft, and don’t tolerate anarchy like we do.
You should take a hard look at the criminal justice system of those 'actually progressive' countries because they look a lot more like California than they do Texas.
They tend to spend their money on the social safety net and provide behavioral and physical health care to all people, which is why they don't have a lot of the same issues we do. Crime is up everywhere in this country.
We jail tons of people in the US and its gotten us absolutely nothing.
People were sure a lot safer before meth and heroin were decriminalized. If anything that’s gotten us nowhere. No other country allows people to just sit on the sidewalk and smoke meth and shoot heroin and break into cars and shoplift to support their habit. We have the worst of all outcomes. The champagne Neo-liberals who advocate for this stuff don’t have to live with the consequences. It’s all woke virtue signaling. Sadly it’s the drug addicts and mentally ill who suffer since they are just constantly let to spiral further downward. There are zero guard rails to individual behavior anymore. This is Ancapistan, not some progressive utopia.
> People were sure a lot safer before meth and heroin were decriminalized.
I'd love to see some actual data on this.
> No other country allows people to just sit on the sidewalk and smoke meth and shoot heroin and break into cars and shoplift to support their habit.
No other country puts addiction treatment behind a huge financial wall either. America is broken and that's just a symptom of it.
> It’s all woke virtue signaling
Just as an aside, people who use 'woke' and 'virtue signal' really discredit themselves by using those terms. It telephones the reality that you probably consume a lot of conservative 'sky-is-falling' media that is designed to make you scared and reactionary.
> Sadly it’s the drug addicts and mentally ill who suffer since they are just constantly let to spiral further downward
Is your thought that being locked in a jail is somehow better for them? You don't need to pretend that you actually care what happens to them.
Virtue signalling is a real thing. You see it often with things like land acknowledgements[1][2], for example.
As far as whether people should be allowed to rot on the streets, stealing from local businesses to feed their drug addiction, and being sexually assaulted by their dealer - there are better alternatives. Behind bars is one option, Lanterman-Petris-Short conservatorship[3] (not the Britney Spears type) is another.
> Virtue signalling is a real thing. You see it often with things like land acknowledgements[1][2], for example.
Of course its a thing. It discredits you because its a term conservatives have been trained to use when they don't like a concept or don't want to think about a new concept. Your land acknowledgement example is actually great. It's intellectually weak to claim that everyone who does land acknowledgements is just virtue signaling. It implies that you have, or generally all conservatives have, insight into the motivations of hundreds of thousands of people. Here is the definition of 'virtue signaling'
"the action or practice of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one's good character or the moral correctness of one's position on a particular issue."
The practice might not be particularly useful, or even an empty gesture, but that doesn't make it virtue signaling. Virtue signals are done for your own benefit. You can project onto folks doing land acknowledgements but you to write them all off as virtue signaling is really just sad. You should get to know some tribal members, because they do it too. I've been to many meetings where tribal members lead the land acknowledgement. Are they just virtue signaling too?
> As far as whether people should be allowed to rot on the streets, stealing from local businesses to feed their drug addiction, and being sexually assaulted by their dealer - there are better alternatives. Behind bars is one option, Lanterman-Petris-Short conservatorship[3] (not the Britney Spears type) is another.
As with all things, solutions to problems are easy to find when you aren't restricted by reality. The War on Drugs didn't work for the first 60 years, I don't know why you think it'd work now. I also think you are greatly over estimating how willing judges anywhere are to institutionalize people, especially when they are just drug addicts.
The only real solution to the problem is to have single-payer health care and massively increasing spending on mental and behavioral health by the federal government. Unfortunately with the republican party more or less in control, I don't think we will see an increase in any spending that helps Americans any time soon.
>It discredits you because its a term conservatives have been trained to use when they don't like a concept or don't want to think about a new concept.
You sound like a Scientologist talking about "SPs" or suppressive persons. You've been brainwashed to ignore anything that doesn't reinforce your worldview.
I used virtue signaling first and I'm not conservative--I have never voted for anything but democrats my entire life. Stop with the nonsense please--this type of nonsense is harming social discourse. There is no reason that associating with red/blue should predict every other political view you have--people need to judge policies individually.
No, it is not low cost for people who bear the brunt of crime on the daily.
> Here is the kicker: SF residents also want more restorative justice (based on their official votes).
He won by a 1.6% margin. A narrow victory is a victory yes, but recalls and impeachments are a part of democracy - and he will be recalled no matter how narrow the margins are.
This argument is like 'the rest of them', uninformed, cynical, accomplishes nothing but poisons civic discussion. Maybe the politicians we get are an outome of our actions.
Like the one you made when you moved to California to exploit the job market and vote in a bunch of BS that you will never experience since you will most likely move back to where you originated from once you make enough money to escape the rat race? Yeah I can generalize, too.
The most interesting thing about San Francisco, to me at least, is just ignorant some residents seem to be of just how bad the situation is. You simply can't walk down the Mission or anywhere near the Tenderloin and not see open drug use, drug dealing, homelessness and crime.
By "ignorance" I mean I know a lot of people who work in tech (as I do), many of whom live in SF. I'm actually shocked at how often they'll tell me how amazing SF is. Like where do they live? Do they go out? I really don't get it.
I'm against the culture of mass incarceration but not prosecuting thefts below $950 [1] isn't the answer.
There's no simple answer here. There are lots of contributing factors. But pretty high on that list is income inequality and housing unaffordability.
If it were up to me, I'd also get rid of the "are you a felon?" question that permanently excludes you from many jobs, renting somewhere to live and generally from many aspects of society, forever, with no recourse. If you do your time then your record should be expunged (except for sentencing for future convictions). Some crimes may exclude you from certain jobs (eg sexual or violent crimes and working with children). But it should be pretty limited.
Felons should certainly not be stripped of the ability to vote. That should be illegal.
If you exclude felons from society, what do you expect these people to do when crime is the only way they can support themselves?
When talking to someone native to the area I would often times mention that I was taken aback by the amount of homelessness and open drug use in the streets of San Francisco. (This was pre-pandemic.)
They seemed puzzled, as if I came from a small town and wasn't used to life in a big city. I've moved to SF from NYC. Several times I would get a variation of "isn't it the same in New York?" from them. It's not, it doesn't even get close to SF. Mid-pandemic NYC at 2am felt safer than pre-pandemic SF on a Monday morning.
This is my experience as well as someone who lived in NYC for >10 years.
For example, I was living downtown during Sandy and my area lost power for 4 days. The police were there to deter looting and property crime. Every hour or so, a police cruiser drive down my street with lights on but no siren checking for crime.
I'd walk home at 3-4am and feel completely safe. This was in Manhattan and I realize the outer boroughs are, at least in part, a different story.
I once had a car alarm go off outside my window at 2:30am early Sunday. While deciding what to do I called 311 after about 10 minutes. While talking to them a police car rolled up and officers broke into the car and disabled the alarm. I went out and talked to them and said they'd respond to any unattended car alarm, which was defined as an alarm that had been going off for more than 10 minutes.
And here's a big one: lower income people are infinitely better off in NYC than SF IMO. While Subway coverage isn't complete in the outer boroughs, lower income people aren't typically burdened by the costs of car ownership and having to drive 4+ hours a day to get to and from work (unlike, say, the people who drive the tech giant buses [1]).
It confused me why so many self-described liberals didn't see or didn't want to see the misery in their own city, caused by policies they supported to turned a blind eye to.
I don’t think the people living on the streets of the tenderloin are there because of housing prices.
They’re there because of drug and mental health issues.
In Europe, they’re not tolerant of drug use on the streets. Even in cities where it’s decriminalized.
On the flip side, in countries with mass poverty issues and mass homelessness - the slums aren’t necessarily a place of rampant and constant drug usage. (You still see grinding poverty and families on the street, but it’s different)
Not sure about the Tenderloin specifically, but often the causality is the reverse of what you suggest: people develop mental health and drug issues due to the pressures they face after becoming homeless.
I'm pretty sure homelessness would go down significantly if housing was available. Drug and mental issues are significant but they're more easily treatable of people are housed, and it's easier to help more people with housing if housing costs to pay/subsidize isn't sky high. And if we build a LOT more prices will go down.
I’m all for a monstrous building spree in places like SF. It’ll solve a lot of problems.
But - at the risk of sounding callous - why would someone down and out on the streets of the Tenderloin think, even if they completely sober up and clean themselves up, that it’s a long-term sustainable option to live in one of the highest cost of living cities in the world.
> In Europe, they’re not tolerant of drug use on the streets. Even in cities where it’s decriminalized.
Ehm Berlin and Frankfurt are pretty much Europe and there's open drug use and selling on "sanctuary districts", same as San Francisco. On Frankfurt it's more blatant because it's right by the train station, but a little bit more nuanced than in SF because they have "safe drug use houses" so people don't do it in the sidewalk.
You can't look at tolerance for open drug use in isolation. It's part of a complete system that includes a social safety net, access to medical care, treatment for mental health issues and the initial conditions that cause people to become drug dependent in the first place.
Europe understands that people are entitled to and deserve a basic standard of living. It largely explains why the EU has expanded eastwards into former Soviet bloc countries where people are much poorer. The EU as a whole takes an economic hit for that but it's an undeniable good for those poorer members.
Whereas in the US, people seem to be stuck in a 19th century "every man for himself" frontier cosplay.
Huh? Go to the downtown east side of Vancouver and it’s as bad if not worse than SF. And all those folks have free healthcare, plenty of social services and even clean injection sites.
That didn’t solve the problem in the least. It certainly reduces harm, but not drug use.
There's no reason for people to put up with crime and squalor while we are waiting to fix the income inequality and housing affordability issues. Things were bad before COVID but not this bad. We could work to get them back to pre-COVID bad if there was enough political will.
Most neighborhoods are not the mission or tenderloin. I work in a rough part of SF, but live in a neighborhood a few miles away that is both one of the more affordable and doesn't see much homelessness. This is not to excuse any ignorance, but to say that SF can be both wonderful and terrible at the same time; just not in the same place.
> You simply can't walk down the Mission or anywhere near the Tenderloin and not see open drug use, drug dealing, homelessness and crime.
The Tenderloin was like that in the 1990s. Same with SOMA, the Lower Haight, 6th and Market, and other parts of the city as well but those were places I frequented often enough to have seen it myself.
I lived in SOMA in the summer of '94, and it was pretty clean. The Tenderloin was bad, and the Lower Haight wasn't great, but neither of those places had tent cities and human poop.
I worked in central SOMA from 1995-2002. In the 90s, the most prominent neighborhood fixture was the homeless shelter at 6th and Bryant, and there most certainly were homeless around there and human poop in the alleys along 6th, it was notoriously stanky. The northeast end of SOMA wasn't as ripe, though.
Things changed after the first DotCom boom and the advent of Pac Bell Park.
I mean.. my simple but privileged answer is that I avoid the handful of bad neighborhoods. I have no idea why anyone would choose to live in the Mission and certainly not the Tenderloin unless that was the only place they could afford, in which case I'd probably not live in SF. My friends who love SF are the ones who can afford to ignore/avoid the ugly side of it.
> If it were up to me, I'd also get rid of the "are you a felon?" question that permanently excludes you from many jobs...
This is already illegal in California - banned as of 2018 under the California Fair Chance Act. Through companies can still conduct background checks after extending offers.
A lot of people in power don't live in the Tenderloin. I mean, take District Attorney Chesa Boudin. He lives in the Outer Sunset, which is a super exclusionary suburby part of the city that's safe.
I used to live in the Outer Sunset around 48th and Judah. You didn't walk into Golden Gate Park after dark, because it just wasn't safe. The 7/11 a few blocks away saw its share of drug deals and troubled people living homeless. I liked the Outer Sunset because it was a relatively cheap place to live compared to most of the city. "Super exclusionary" doesn't seem like what I experienced there.
There aren't very many 1-bedroom apartments for rent in the Outer Sunset - it is mostly single-family homes - so Zumper data on 1-bedrooms is not really relevant here. Also, the apartments there are largely older builds (they are super nimby out there).
> You didn't walk into Golden Gate Park after dark, because it just wasn't safe.
This is laughably inaccurate. There are plenty of runners and recreational cyclists at night in that part of Golden Gate Park. Even more so now that they re-opened Great Highway to cars on weekdays. And if you think the 7/11 next to the Indian pizza place is shady - wow. You'll see far more shady stuff, in broad daylight, inside the Target at 4th and Mission on any afternoon. Which is why they cut hours down and only open at 9am and close by 6pm for their SF locations.
Perhaps you left San Francisco a long time ago. Today the Outer Sunset has a median home price around $1.8M, and is the safest neighborhood in the city that isn't at the top of a hill.
I'm not particularly interested in playing "my anecdotal data is better than yours," so I won't. Mostly I just wanted to counter the implication that Boudin was living in some sort of magical oasis, because he's not.
I will point out that "isn't at the top of a hill" is not actually much of a distinction when you're talking about San Francisco. If there's one thing the city isn't short on, it's hills.
NIMBY is correct. The neighborhoods are highly resistant to new construction.
It's not anecdotal that the Outer Sunset has lower crime than pretty much anywhere else in the city. This is clear from the crime data - not an anecdote.
> I will point out that "isn't at the top of a hill" is not actually much of a distinction when you're talking about San Francisco.
What?
How does Haight-Ashbury compare to Ashbury Heights, Corona Heights, or Cole Valley?
How does the Mission compare to Bernal Heights or Noe Valley, or even Potrero Hill?
How does the Fillmore compare to Pac Heights?
How does the Bayview compare to Portola, even?
Again, take a look at the crime data. There are some exceptions in the stats (eg. Twin Peaks - but largely because of tourists getting their car broken into at the viewpoint) but by and large, top of a hill = less crime.
When you say ”the safest neighborhood in the city that isn't at the top of a hill,” you’re not eliminating a lot of neighborhoods. A relatively high percentage of SF neighborhoods are on hills; it’s a hilly city.
My overall point here is that the Outer Sunset isn’t a super exclusionary neighborhood. You get that kind of rhetoric up here in Seattle, too: people like to imply that anyone with a progressive approach to crime must not live someplace that’s affected by crime. It’s usually untrue.
> I'm actually shocked at how often they'll tell me how amazing SF is. Like where do they live? Do they go out?
I live in the Dogpatch and it is amazing here, ditto for most of Potrero Hill. I do occasionally see a small number of homeless people about, but nothing particularly threatening, and I don't see trash and needles and whatnot everywhere. I go out nearly daily. I stay closer to home these days, since there's plenty to do in my neighborhood, and I feel like I've gotten a bit more insular since the pandemic began.
And yeah, when I do venture out farther for dinners & drinks, well... it depends. Parts of the Mission have gotten really bad (they've been bad for many years, but have been getting worse). Parts of North Beach aren't great. Ten years ago I would cut through the Tenderloin on foot when walking places, but I would definitely not do that today, especially after dark. I used to live in Soma, and it got pretty bad there too. I felt unsafe at times, and that's part of why I moved. (And I didn't even live in the worst areas around mid-Market.)
But consider places like the (inner) Sunset, Richmond, Lower Pac Heights, Bernal, Glen Park, Balboa Park, most of Japantown. They're... fine? A lot of these neighborhoods have reputations for being sleepy, but if you're content to make a night just at one restaurant followed by one bar, you can have a great time. If you want to do a bar crawl or see some serious nightlife, sure, you're going to have to go to the Mission, Nob Hill, Haight, Lower Haight, North Beach, Marina, the south-of-Geary Divis corridor, etc., and yeah, some of those places can feel varying degrees of unsafe at times, depending on where you are. That's definitely a problem that needs to be addressed.
But this narrative that SF is just chock full of homeless people shooting up, with spent needles, trash, and human shit on the streets and sidewalks everywhere... no, that's just not my experience over the 11+ years I've lived here. No neighborhood is perfect, but these particular problems are nowhere near as widespread as some people make it sound.
> I'm against the culture of mass incarceration but not prosecuting thefts below $950 isn't the answer. [...] There's no simple answer here. There are lots of contributing factors. But pretty high on that list is income inequality and housing unaffordability.
I'm in full agreement with you here. I think some of the crime is driven by opportunism (if the cops won't even investigate, there's low risk), but a lot is driven by desperation and feelings of powerlessness. We need to get everyone in secure housing, get people with mental health and/or addiction issues the help they need, and somehow let people feel financially secure enough without having to work 3 jobs and 100 hours a week.
I think its because a lot of new apartments and Twitter went up straight in the roughest part of town in the early 2010's under Ed Lee's plan to clean up the Market street Tenderloin area (which is probably not a bad idea long term).
This put the new well to-do Twitter techies in constant daily contact with the original "residents" who were/are down and out on their luck where as before the original "residents" had that end of Market to themselves. The Twitter techies were then very likely to make a big deal about it on social media.
It also probably tore down a significant number of SRO units.
As expected, all of the comments here are very critical of this without proposing something new. What are some alternate proposals to solve these problems?
I'm don't really have much to criticize here, aside from my usual cynicism (justified, IMO, based on Breed's general lackluster performance) that it's just words until we see actual results. But I'm cautiously optimistic that this could be the start of some change, assuming the political will is there among everyone required, and corruption, bureaucracy, and back-stabbing doesn't destroy the initiative.
I'm uncomfortable about loosening the surveillance statutes, though. Accessing random private business surveillance feeds should require a warrant. And I don't want government CCTV everywhere, period.
You think they'd remote work in their rented million dollar shed in SF? Or shell out a debilitating mortgage for 20 years just to stick around bay area?
I think you’re misunderstanding the transient nature.
There are always people coming in and out, and while that growth rate of new people has slowed down bit (it’s still positive) and the rate of people leaving temporarily went up, it will pick back up as companies return to the office.
I don’t think it’s for the reasons you suggest. A lot of the influx is young people, and there isn’t a compelling reason to move somewhere if you’re not going to make friends or establish social groups due to WFH, or are hesitant because of crime or safety or hygiene.
Our new grad offers, for example, have SF relocation in Q2 2022.
If the mortgages are perpetually ultra expensive, then it’s not a bad place to park your money.
I don’t know of any tech workers living in shacks in SF. I know people paying an extra 1-1.5k to live in 1bdrms vs. outside of SF/NY. If you keep a lower budget, you’ll probably end up in interesting situations in shared housing, which can get pretty shitty.
Lots of anecdotes, but when you look at the people who stay in SF you see people working at big companies and people doing the serial startup think. Survivor bias considered, these peoples’ resources have trended toward compounding over time and growing faster than other places.
SF is hot for startups, and even if those companies move out once they’re large, new companies are filling the gaps continuously. The high equity culture associated with that sees folks without a lot of cash, but that’s been changing the last several years, too as competition for hiring has gone way up.
2 million dollars for a shitty house is ridiculous. But it doesn’t really matter if you’re making 5 million every 10 years. Local banks will even get creative and lend against illiquid stock options now, sometimes non-recourse.
Most major cities are going the way of the UK and using CCTV's for facial recognition and crime alerts. Detroit for example has a MASSIVE center for crime monitoring with camera's of the entire city. It's like the bat lair. It's a proven strategy that works.
IMO, we should try for it. If we succeed, we get a world in which woman feel safe in their own cities, which to me is an absolutely massive advantage. My friend goes to Peking (Beijing) and feels perfectly safe walking around at 3am. I love that.
Create a safe supply of prescribed drugs for drug users, build housing and increase the minimum income assistance so that people that cannot work aren't living a miserable and traumatic life and are able to focus on ending drug addictions and improving their life situation.
No one is putting any thought into the root causes of why petty theft is occurring. When you're addicted to drugs you need to use every day which costs money. You need even more money if you find yourself in debt, say to someone who gave you some drugs when you couldn't pay. No surprise that someone that needs a few bucks badly might rifle through a globe box for something to sell or steal from a store.
Creating a safe supply of prescribed drugs breaks up the entire cycle. No dealers to get indebted to, and accordingly no one to have to steal for. With affordable housing and supports, the driving reasons to commit survival petty thefts disappear. Sure there will probably be some people that continue to steal for extra cash, but at this point you've shrunk the problem down which gives police more of an ability to deal with the real trouble makers, the people that aren't stealing merely to survive.
It's wild that people are pointing the lack of prosecutions of theft under $1000 as the problem. Throwing the book at people committing these trivial thefts is the most costly and least effective approach. I suppose jailing people for petty theft makes the problem "disappear" but only until that person is released. Who wants to pay the enormous expense to lock up everyone? Not me.
Socialized medicine and mental health care. Social safety nets. Meaningful jobs programs. Less policing and more community resources. Reforms on how prescription drugs that lead to addiction problems are prescribed. Free care, at the expense of pharmaceutical companies, for human beings who have had their lives ruined due to inadequate care from the medical community who have been misled by the pharma industry. Accountability for our leadership that has been bought and sold by corporate interests.
The list goes on. There's a lot that can be done. Increasing policing and cracking down on drugs have both proven to be damaging, but it's the only thing the uncompassionate and out-of-touch know how to do in response to problems they refuse to address.
Regardless of the difficulty, an attempt should be made towards all or at least some of these ideas. Just speculating that it's too difficult and not even trying shouldn't be acceptable.
That said, I think plenty of this is realistic and achievable - just not with the voters we currently have. Maybe the next generation will be more compassionate and in my old age I can see the beginning of progress.
Cities can do more than you might think. IIRC some cities plan to cover universal community college, and I know some have universal pre-K. Large cities have health systems.
SF already has free community College. It also has free public Healthcare for the poor (or at least did). Last time I was aware, they changed it so that only illegal immigrants were eligible for coverage.
Like most US community colleges, it was already extremely cheap, ~$2,500/year for a full time student, but this can still be a barrier for some people.
Does anyone have any good data sources that identify the problems everyone is complaining about?
Every source I browse finds that crime is at an all time low. I keep hearing anecdotes about robberies and break
-ins, but nobody every has the data. The cynic in me believes people are just using perceived crime as an excuse to leave when in reality, they're just being priced out of the city.
I live in a west coast city that has seen an explosion in crime, much like San Francisco. While anecdotal evidence is not the same as data, I can tell you from my own experience and those of many others I’ve talked to, you won’t see the data reflecting the true crime rate because people don’t bother reporting it to the police. In my city, it’s not uncommon to wait on hold with 911 for up to 20 minutes at a time. If the police show up, it’s often hours later. When they do, they will typically tell you there’s nothing they can do, especially if the crime in question is a property crime. The best you can hope for is a police report.
In my city, car theft has become so rampant that a whole new subreddit has emerged specifically to track stolen cars here. Groups of citizens with guns sometimes organize on Facebook to go reclaim stolen vehicles from homeless encampments. Catalytic converter theft is also rampant. My street has been hit multiple times. Our shared mailboxes have been broken into over and over again. Stores in my neighborhood routinely experience break-ins and thefts. Shootings are through the roof. In October 2019, there were 28 shootings in my city. In October 2020, there were 88, and in October 2021 there were 129.
Sometimes, when the thermometer reads 98.6, it’s because the patient is healthy. But sometimes, it’s because the thermometer is broken.
I’ve read that police simply aren't reporting low level crimes at the rate they used to due to staffing shortages and apathy. I would be curious to see the data too, but I doubt it paints the whole picture.
There is a political aspect too: The reactionaries and GOP have been pushing how dangerous and horrible cities are for many years, major cities being Democratic strongholds. It was a major focus of the GOP and Trump in the last election.
It seems like if they repeat anything enough - anything - eventually people of all political stripes take it as assumed fact.
It seems like you keep pushing the narrative that problems with SF are not real and a fabrication of the GOP. You have posted multiple comments doing this.
But you don’t live in SF and have no firsthand knowledge. All you are doing is advancing your own political agenda from a remote location through online commenting, with no regard to the truth people here are witnessing.
> with no regard to the truth people here are witnessing
I mean, a bunch of anecdotes are still a bunch of anecdotes. Especially on an anonymous internet forum.
> All you are doing is advancing your own political agenda from a remote location through online commenting
You could say the same thing about those anecdotes you're referring to.
For what it's worth there's plenty of other anecdotes to the contrary. I live in the Bay Area and SF is a fun, beautiful city except for the Tenderloin and some parts of Mission street. I'm glad the local government finally taking their heads out of the sand and doing something. Though it's a complicated issue with no easy answers and frankly I'm not holding my breath
> You could say the same thing about those anecdotes you're referring to.
No, they are not the same. People here are posting what they have experienced.
The person I was responding to is only spreading a theory that SFs problems are just a GOP meme. That person does not live in SF and is not reporting their own experience. Only what they have read.
For them to be true, you’d have to accuse the people reporting their experiences of lying, while taking the poster I was replying to at face value. That would be delusional.
I’m taking them all at face value, unless there is evidence to the contrary.
Your opinion about SF is certainly valid, but has nothing to do with a distant person talking about GOP memes.
> The person I was responding to is only spreading a theory that SFs problems are just a GOP meme.
That's fair, he doesn't live here, but I can vouch for his idea that SF woes are exaggerated for political purposes.
I used to live in a very conservative part of California and they used to talk about how the Bay Area is an expensive shithole. I had to move here due to work and was surprised that everything here seems to be about the same price. You get slightly less apartment for the same price, but price floor is pretty much the same. The roads are definitely not as nice but taking public transportation is actually feasible option here. Homelessness mostly hasn't been a problem except for those two areas in SF and Oaklamd, aside from there it's only slightly higher than other major cities I've been to, with the possible exception of Vancouver, where it's actually better.
Hopefully my anecdote has enough detail to convince you that I'm at least being honest :)
> For them to be true, you’d have to accuse the people reporting their experiences of lying, while taking the poster I was replying to at face value. That would be delusional.
Yeah I agree, I reached the same conclusion as that poster by experience, but you definitely shouldn't take it as fact based on it's assertion alone. I think he was just throwing it out there in hopes of starting a discussion, but that's definitely a charitable interpretation.
> I’m taking them all at face value, unless there is evidence to the contrary.
Statements like these remind me of the old saying from a bygone age "only a fool would take anything posted here as fact." Anonymous internet posts have no bar for entry and as such, should be treated with extreme skepticism.
>> I’m taking them all at face value, unless there is evidence to the contrary.
> Statements like these remind me of the old saying from a bygone age "only a fool would take anything posted here as fact." Anonymous internet posts have no bar for entry and as such, should be treated with extreme skepticism.
Sure but then you have to take literally every post with extreme skepticism. If you pick and choose, then you are simply deluding yourself. If you don’t pick and choose but assume everyone is lying, then you end up in a uselessly paranoid position.
This is why I take the statements at face value for the purpose of the conversation.
And as I have said elsewhere - people sharing their actual experiences is very different from a distant person saying it’s all a GOP plot.
For what it’s worth, I have lived in SF, and the East bay, as well as Europe, and SF is not as bad as the GOP would like to claim, but frankly who cares. Nothing is as bad as the GOP claims.
What does seem true to me is that SF and the Bay Area in general does have serious problems and some things have been getting worse for a while. E.g. homelessness. There simply weren’t the same tent cities all over the bay 20 years ago.
My point is that this has nothing to do with the GOP meme. Introducing that is literally a way to distract from what is actually going on.
> The person I was responding to is only spreading a theory that SFs problems are just a GOP meme.
That's not what I said.
(EDIT: For what it's worth, regarding political polarization, I just 'vouched' for your formerly 'dead' comment to me above. While I disagree and don't love how it's handled, it shouldn't be killed IMHO.)
You could google it. There's actual polling and data that backs it all up. Why write up all this without just doing a google search? It's not like we're talking about something that's hard to find....
It may seem like that, but it is not in my words. Perhaps it's a result of political polarization and the suspicions it creates? Let's do away with that. I only meant what I said.
> The reactionaries and GOP have been pushing how dangerous and horrible cities are for many years, major cities being Democratic strongholds. It was a major focus of the GOP and Trump in the last election.
It seems like if they repeat anything enough - anything - eventually people of all political stripes take it as assumed fact.
It sure looks like what you are saying.
If you want to play games about it not being your precise wording, you can do that on your own. The only person making politically charged statements here is you.
The lede (in my opinion) is SFC plans to repeal their 2019 moratorium on facial recognition surveillance*, to free the city government to fight terrorists etc.
>"While this legislation created a clear public process and transparency relating to surveillance technologies, it also created barriers for law enforcement when responding to public safety emergencies. It hobbled law enforcement when confronting life-threatening incidents like active shooters, suspected terrorist events, hostage taking, kidnapping, natural disasters, or looting."
*(The blogpost doesn't explicitly name "facial recognition", but from context I understand she's referring to this law [0] that was frequently discussed on HN [1]).
> The blogpost doesn't explicitly name "facial recognition", but from context I understand she's referring to this law [0] that was frequently discussed on HN
I don't think that's right. That facial recognition bill was largely for show. Since 2006 San Francisco has had strict limitations on the placement of public-facing surveillance cameras by the city. They're virtually unheard of. There are exceptions, but as far as I can tell cameras have mostly dwindled further since shortly after the original legislation as each successive administration became less inclined to even try to seek permission to install a camera somewhere. The biggest exception by far, and also relatively recent (2016, AFAICT), was permitting the use of police body cameras.
Because there are so few city surveillance cameras, the police created a program to work with businesses and homeowners to make it easier to access their security footage. But as mentioned by Breed, in 2019 the city passed a law to limit that as well.
Anyhow, so long as people are wearing masks then facial recognition doesn't provide any benefit, presuming it even could.
Too late. I and many other people voted with our feet and left. We bought a decent house in a decent neighborhood that had 5x the square footage of our old apartment and only pay a few hundred dollars more for the mortgage than we were paying in rent. People leave things on their porches and they don't get stolen! It's amazing.
People obviously love living in dense cities. Look at the demand for real estate compared to elsewhere.
Maybe people generally like other people, not to mention the best of art, food, culture, convenience, etc. etc. etc. How can anyone live in a small town? (Just kidding; I completely respect people's decision to live in small towns; my point is that there is an entirely different, and widespread perspective.)
Apparently an analysis was done in restaurant menu items and gentrification is making it worse because cooks don’t make enough to live close to work, so there are fewer skilled ones and hence fewer items and more salads :)
The weather is a close second, I'm in Noe Valley which is really chilly and I like that. You should have people at your place and cook for them and call it a party, San Francisco has The Midway, Great Northern and outdoor activities at Golden Gate which are kinda "world class" partying but there's a lot going on in house parties and places of ill repute.
I'm not really one for parties or restaurants, but I really enjoyed the walkability of San Francisco when I lived there. It's something that I always miss anytime I'm staying in a more suburban/rural area, having to deal with a car to run any errands, grab a coffee, or meet up with friends.
Yea, that's fine, but San Francisco is still a nice city.
You are minutes away from the beach, and mountains.
A lot of the jobs are union.
I've been to a lot of cities, and none compare to SF.
As to the homeless. It's everywhere. America is not what it used to be. I don't care where I go--there's a homeless problem.
The police force needs an enema though. I would like to see a top down firing. It's been terrible for years. They need social workers instead of harassment, They need to lower ridiculous traffic fines though, but every town has been slowly raising fees/fines. I would like to see all nepotism in city hiring stopped.
San Francisco is going nowhere. It will just get more popular once the Covid problem is abated.
Oh yea, if you are a SF resident, and have a sick pet, you will never find a more reasonable vet than their SPCA.
Breed’s been mayor since 2018 and was a supervisor before that since 2015. How come she’s just launching a public safety plan now? And when is she going to take responsibility for her role in getting us to where we are now?
The board of supervisors has most of the power in SF government (despite that, the mayor traditionally takes most of the blame). It seems that Breed's hands were tied until a situation where the board's majority would cooperate. The board's majority is a faction that often opposes Breed.
When CVS said they were closing 6 SF stores primarily because of retail theft Breed said CVS was using that as an excuse for their poor sales performance. She seemed completely disconnected from what's been happening in SF.
Her hands were tied. She had to wait until things are bad enough that the board of supervisors - the majority of whom are hostile to her - get forced to play along.
People saying she has been forced by tech exodus or whatever are betraying a lack of understanding of how sf politics works. The recent BOS decision to reject a couple of housing developments on fairly spurious grounds has really shown how stupidly political and out of touch the BOS is; to make them get along with anything requires a crisis.
Side note: my mental model of the BOS is the Pawnee town council from the TV show Parks and Recreation; the real life folks seem to operate along depressingly similar lines.
She’s trying to save her own skin and wants to get re-elected so she’s trying to pretend she’s going to fix this problem she helped create. Then she’ll ignore it and do nothing again.
This kind of reads like Mayor Breed will be handing over a whole lot of power and funding to SFPD and whatever tech contractors they’ve partnered with on the basis of… what?
The violent crime and open drug use in San Francisco has been famous for a very, very long time. Am I to believe that the open air drug market at the corner of Turk and Hyde was impervious to police intervention for a decade because… the police didn’t have enough money? But now that they’re getting more money, they’re confident that they’ll be able to make it more difficult to buy drugs in an area that’s walkable on foot in like 15 minutes?
This whole thing really seems like police grift. A long time ago (back when I used to do drugs), I actually remember patrol cars regularly cruising around that group of blocks and doing NOTHING to interfere with these activities.
I’m quite skeptical that handing full control of a big chunk of the city to (what sounds like) cops with a blank check and whatever city personnel that feel like pulling up Palantir or whatever is a good idea. This kind of sounds like a giveaway to cops that have demonstrated for years that they haven’t been intrinsically motivated to clean up anything, ever.
1) San Francisco has suffered from a massive tech exodus during COVID and its lockdowns, exacerbated with many municipal policies:
https://sfciti.org/sf-tech-exodus/
2) The city has only been saved from deep budgetary cuts by a massive federal bailout:
https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Federal-stimulu...
Which is not a sustainable strategy.
I interpret this announcement as Breed recognizing many of her administration's policies have have a disastrous effect on the SF tax base, and for the tax base to return, she needs to clean up the city.
I'll be watching the numbers to see if the city can turn itself around.
A lot of the companies that went remote due to COVID or went to Miami due to politics will never go back.