4 ms·

Expensive. If you moved here 5-10 years ago your rent isn't too bad but good luck if you need to move out for whatever reason (eviction, bad housemate vibe, mee

by nedwin 10y ago

Expensive. If you moved here 5-10 years ago your rent isn't too bad but good luck if you need to move out for whatever reason (eviction, bad housemate vibe, meet a partner, have a kid...). Relatively high crime rate, human shit on the street everywhere, terrible schools... By comparison Portland Oregon is 50% less expensive to rent or buy (1 bed SF = $3500-4500; 1 bed Portland $1435-$2535). Plenty of high paying jobs but I know that personally I would be up if I moved to any other city and took my companies cost of living adjustment.

broodbucket 10y ago
>human shit on the street everywhere Uh, what? I've never been to SF, but I've never heard this before.
- ahlatimer 10y ago
  It's definitely a thing. SF has a pretty substantial homeless population and apparently very few options for them to defecate that isn't the sidewalk. You can spend all day walking around playing human or dog. Walking by one of the BART stops on a warm day, you're hit with a pretty strong smell of urine.
  - vvvv 10y ago
    I've travelled all around the world, including India and a number of poorest countries, and I've never seen anything like this.
    - orf 10y ago
      Then you haven't looked. When I visited China I saw lots of people deficating in the streets, parents encouraging children to do it etc. When a man's gotta go...
      - vvvv 10y ago
        If you're thinking of the same thing I am, then it's different. In some places, the only option may be to defecate on the side of the street by the curb, but that area gets swept frequently. I have never been able to play a dog vs human sidewalk poo guessing game as suggested above, including in the African, Asian and LatAm slums. Perhaps it's because those people are not a transient homeless population that (presumably) gets cleaned up after, but they actually live there.
    - xerophyte12932 10y ago
      Then you happened to avoid the places in those cities where people defecate. Trust me, it's a thing. Though it surprises me that even SF has this problem
- jonathankoren 10y ago
  When you see a BART escalator out of commission, it's literally jammed full of bum shit. http://m.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Human-waste-shuts-down-BART-escalators-3735981.php http://m.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Human-waste-shuts-down-B...
- brobinson 10y ago
  In 2008, I saw a guy take a dump in front of the flagship Apple store in SF. Literally right on the sidewalk in front of the entrance, probably a hundred people in view. Human feces on sidewalks is definitely a very real thing in SF.
- phamilton 10y ago
  http://mochimachine.org/wasteland/ http://mochimachine.org/wasteland/
jacobolus 10y ago
“Terrible schools” is at least partly a upper-middle-class-white code for “schools full of poor minority kids”. A significant proportion of white kids living in the city go to private schools, and other white families move out of the city when their kids get to school age. Especially by high school, there are very few white kids left in SF schools. Beyond that, teacher salaries are a sad joke, and make it basically impossible for teachers to afford housing anywhere in the Bay Area. There doesn’t seem to be particularly more violent crime in SF than any other city, but there are a lot of car break-ins and bike thefts.
- Kalium 10y ago
  I know at least one not-even-slightly-white couple that moved to Dublin on the basis that the test scores are significantly better.
- rdtsc 10y ago
  > “Terrible schools” is at least partly a upper-middle-class-white code for “schools full of poor minority kids”. A significant proportion of white kids living in the city go to private schools Right. Talking to a wealthy, pretty liberal, upper class white person who sent their kid to a private school. Whatever the "code" they spoke I don't know. They were pretty blunt and factual. They did the research and it turned out that poor minority kids in schools did correlate strongly with disciplinary issues, high teacher to students ratios, overall bad scores for the school. Their kid was in a public school for a few years, then they switched to a private school. Knowing them for 5+ years, nothing indicated they were racist or had some kind of agenda against the poor. In this case they simply wanted a better school experience for their kid. While I don't doubt there are plenty of racist upper middle class white people who deliberately make that the central point of choosing schools, many also just look at the facts and draw conclusions. I don't have the resources to afford that for my family, so my kid is going to a public school, and that's fine. But those who are wealthy simply have more choices it seems.

by nedwin 10y ago

broodbucket 10y ago

>human shit on the street everywhere Uh, what? I've never been to SF, but I've never heard this before.

ahlatimer 10y ago
It's definitely a thing. SF has a pretty substantial homeless population and apparently very few options for them to defecate that isn't the sidewalk. You can spend all day walking around playing human or dog. Walking by one of the BART stops on a warm day, you're hit with a pretty strong smell of urine.
- vvvv 10y ago
  I've travelled all around the world, including India and a number of poorest countries, and I've never seen anything like this.
  - orf 10y ago
    Then you haven't looked. When I visited China I saw lots of people deficating in the streets, parents encouraging children to do it etc. When a man's gotta go...
    - vvvv 10y ago
      If you're thinking of the same thing I am, then it's different. In some places, the only option may be to defecate on the side of the street by the curb, but that area gets swept frequently. I have never been able to play a dog vs human sidewalk poo guessing game as suggested above, including in the African, Asian and LatAm slums. Perhaps it's because those people are not a transient homeless population that (presumably) gets cleaned up after, but they actually live there.
  - xerophyte12932 10y ago
    Then you happened to avoid the places in those cities where people defecate. Trust me, it's a thing. Though it surprises me that even SF has this problem
jonathankoren 10y ago
When you see a BART escalator out of commission, it's literally jammed full of bum shit. http://m.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Human-waste-shuts-down-BART-escalators-3735981.php http://m.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Human-waste-shuts-down-B...
brobinson 10y ago
In 2008, I saw a guy take a dump in front of the flagship Apple store in SF. Literally right on the sidewalk in front of the entrance, probably a hundred people in view. Human feces on sidewalks is definitely a very real thing in SF.
phamilton 10y ago
http://mochimachine.org/wasteland/ http://mochimachine.org/wasteland/

jacobolus 10y ago

“Terrible schools” is at least partly a upper-middle-class-white code for “schools full of poor minority kids”. A significant proportion of white kids living in the city go to private schools, and other white families move out of the city when their kids get to school age. Especially by high school, there are very few white kids left in SF schools. Beyond that, teacher salaries are a sad joke, and make it basically impossible for teachers to afford housing anywhere in the Bay Area. There doesn’t seem to be particularly more violent crime in SF than any other city, but there are a lot of car break-ins and bike thefts.

Kalium 10y ago
I know at least one not-even-slightly-white couple that moved to Dublin on the basis that the test scores are significantly better.
rdtsc 10y ago
> “Terrible schools” is at least partly a upper-middle-class-white code for “schools full of poor minority kids”. A significant proportion of white kids living in the city go to private schools Right. Talking to a wealthy, pretty liberal, upper class white person who sent their kid to a private school. Whatever the "code" they spoke I don't know. They were pretty blunt and factual. They did the research and it turned out that poor minority kids in schools did correlate strongly with disciplinary issues, high teacher to students ratios, overall bad scores for the school. Their kid was in a public school for a few years, then they switched to a private school. Knowing them for 5+ years, nothing indicated they were racist or had some kind of agenda against the poor. In this case they simply wanted a better school experience for their kid. While I don't doubt there are plenty of racist upper middle class white people who deliberately make that the central point of choosing schools, many also just look at the facts and draw conclusions. I don't have the resources to afford that for my family, so my kid is going to a public school, and that's fine. But those who are wealthy simply have more choices it seems.