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I've been to Portland, and I live in SOMA. SOMA and the Mission in SF are way worse than Portland. The article author has no idea how much more anarchy Americ

I've been to Portland, and I live in SOMA. SOMA and the Mission in SF are way worse than Portland. The article author has no idea how much more anarchy American progressives are capable of countenancing. SF is faaaaaar worse than Portland, and there really isn't any political backlash against city officials. The teenagers in the Bay Area call SOMA "pooptown". When I first came to learn of this nickname, I was about to protest as a resident, because I thought it was offensive and didn't reflect the neighborhood, with all its restaurants and fancy employers. But then I thought about it some more. And I remembered how on my first day at work in 2014, I stepped in human feces and tracked it over the office. And I thought these kids are visiting the neighborhood from other, cleaner suburbs. It makes sense that their primary impression of the neighborhood would be the large amount of human feces everywhere ... which would really stand out to them. As residents, we just walk around the poo, and don't think much about it. Anyway, I have to agree, we do live in a crime-ridden, feces smeared neighborhood. But there's a couple of positives too. First, the crime is almost all non-violent. And, second, the city cleans up the poo very quickly, if you call them.

_jal 9y ago
Fellow SOMA resident chiming in. Calling this the result of "anarchy" is silly and deflects responsibility. The cops manage where the homeless folks end up. They chase the homeless here, away from businesses north of Market and richer neighborhoods. Talk to enough cops and one will be honest about it. Any time I hear how powerless the city is to do anything, I point out that they can't do anything about the total population, but they can and do ensure the bulk of the homeless population lives in SOMA. San Francisco does have a serious homeless problem, but it isn't due to a lack of government. Quality of life on my block varies over time. Some months it is downright pleasant here; others, my street is an open sewer. I have a phone tree with some other nearby residents; through trial and error we've found a combination of calls to make that seems to reliably get action when things get awful. OP: Consider coming to a "Better SOMA" meeting. That group actually has moved the needle. (There's just still a lot of gauge left for the needle to move across.)
yammajr 9y ago
As a non-local, I had to look it up, but presumably you're talking about the Mission District ("The Mission") and South of Market (SOMA) neighborhoods in San Francisco, correct?
- ameister14 9y ago
  Yep, that's what he was talking about. Here's the San Francisco poop map - showing where people pooped in the streets the most there: http://mochimachine.org/wasteland/ http://mochimachine.org/wasteland/

_jal 9y ago

Fellow SOMA resident chiming in. Calling this the result of "anarchy" is silly and deflects responsibility. The cops manage where the homeless folks end up. They chase the homeless here, away from businesses north of Market and richer neighborhoods. Talk to enough cops and one will be honest about it. Any time I hear how powerless the city is to do anything, I point out that they can't do anything about the total population, but they can and do ensure the bulk of the homeless population lives in SOMA. San Francisco does have a serious homeless problem, but it isn't due to a lack of government. Quality of life on my block varies over time. Some months it is downright pleasant here; others, my street is an open sewer. I have a phone tree with some other nearby residents; through trial and error we've found a combination of calls to make that seems to reliably get action when things get awful. OP: Consider coming to a "Better SOMA" meeting. That group actually has moved the needle. (There's just still a lot of gauge left for the needle to move across.)

yammajr 9y ago

As a non-local, I had to look it up, but presumably you're talking about the Mission District ("The Mission") and South of Market (SOMA) neighborhoods in San Francisco, correct?

ameister14 9y ago
Yep, that's what he was talking about. Here's the San Francisco poop map - showing where people pooped in the streets the most there: http://mochimachine.org/wasteland/ http://mochimachine.org/wasteland/