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From a foreigner point of view who keeps reading about California, it seems both like a fascinating and terrifying place. So advanced yet so backward in some wa

by EZ-E 9y ago

From a foreigner point of view who keeps reading about California, it seems both like a fascinating and terrifying place. So advanced yet so backward in some ways

plusbryan 9y ago
Care to expand?
- ihsw2 9y ago
  The rampant homelessness and drug use for one, the putrid mess that is downtown SF for another.
  - DavidSJ 9y ago
    San Francisco is one beautiful city with one very ugly downtown.
    - briga 9y ago
      What's so bad about downtown San Francisco?
      - ihsw2 9y ago
        The stench of urine and feces is dominating, the random exposure to homeless folks mental problems is a daily occurrence, drug paraphernalia (eg: heroin needles) and trash are scattered throughout. SF downtown is an absolute dump. Go ahead, take a 30 minute walk just north of The Mission. Turn a corner and you'll find a homeless dude standing with a vacant look on his face and pants around his ankles, letting his penis sway in the morning sun. Turn another corner and you'll find someone shooting up with reckless abandon. Turn another and you'll be an uninvited witness to a homeless dude verbally and physically assaulting someone for no reason. LA, NYC, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, etc -- at least these have their size to distribute the problem, SF on the other hand is so small and its city council so progressive that there is a critical mass of it all.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - cpt1138 9y ago
    I believe other states send us their homeless cause here you can find places you wont actually freeze to death in winter. It may skew things a bit. Not sure.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - ryanobjc 9y ago
      The ag of California sure Nevada for doing exactly this. Nevada settled: http://www.sfexaminer.com/sf-reaches-400k-settlement-proposal-in-nevada-patient-dumping-case/amp/ http://www.sfexaminer.com/sf-reaches-400k-settlement-proposa...
  - cpt1138 9y ago
    Also California is a huge place, not just SF and LA. We have as many national parks as Alaska, 100's of some of the most beautiful state parks and 100's of county parks. Many states have much worse drug problems per capita. Any country of 39M people and the economy we have is going to have upsides and downsides.
    - hueving 9y ago
      But the downsides are concentrated in the population centers where most people need to live.
    - toasterlovin 9y ago
      Not having a viable path to produce the next generation doesn’t seem like a viable long term strategy to me.
  - ryanobjc 9y ago
    One of the consequences of the liberal tendenancies in California is visible homeless people. Californians just don’t want their cops regularly as policy beating homeless people and arresting them for existing. That’s why other downtowns don’t have homeless, they’re swept aside.
    - kelp 9y ago
      This is true for the most part. NYC has more homeless, but they are kept out of Manhattan, and the supportive housing is in the outer boroughs. That said, I think NYC also does a better job of housing their homeless. But, to your point about being too liberal, I've seen some of the most disgusting things ever in Powell BART station, and when the police try to kick people out, they get too many complaints and have to back off. So we all have to suffer.
  - chillacy 9y ago
    What large US cities don't have these issues? People complain about the same things in Seattle, LA, NY, etc. In fact, it's not the worst based on the data: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/is-seattles-homeless-crisis-the-worst-in-the-country/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/is-seattl...
    - closeparen 9y ago
      Contemporary Manhattan and downtown Chicago, for one. These things exist, of course, but they aren’t in your face all the time on the major pedestrian corridors.
calinet6 9y ago
To be clear, it's absolutely not terrible or backward by any stretch. Please visit and see for yourself. Expensive, sure. But there's a reason (another word for price in a decent market is 'value'). And not every city in California is San Francisco in terms of cost of living.
- closeparen 9y ago
  Our most central and highly-trafficked sidewalks and public transit stations are de facto public restrooms and homeless shelters. The plaza around our government and cultural center is densely populated with open drug use and varying degrees of mental health crisis. Begging and tent encampments abound. The cyclist-advocacy and homeless-advocacy groups are at each other's throats over whether the takeover of bike lanes by encampments should be permanent. Violent mental health breakdowns on the sidewalk are not considered worthy of the attention of any government service, least of all the police. You can learn to tune these things out and live with them, but it is absolutely 100% backwards for place so rich and so ostensibly progressive and compassionate to blithely incubate such shocking and pervasive displays of desperation and public neglect in its own backyard. Property values are in a sustained, meteoric rise and we choose not to tap them to address these issues in any meaningful way, not from a compassionate perspective, and not from an enforcement perspective either. EDIT: more detail.
  - newnewpdro 9y ago
    Having seen how places like Chicago treat the homeless in the interests of keeping the things you're pointing out hidden from sight - I appreciate SF's more tolerant, somewhat live-and-let-live methods, in lieu of better, more compassionate solutions. Hopefully having all this on display in SF will eventually provide enough impetus for the better solutions to emerge. Until then, I hope they don't decide to start being agressive and violent towards what is a largely mentally ill and incredibly vulnerable homeless population. My admittedly limited understanding is that much of this problem is the result of mental institutions being closed across the state in the face of federal funding vanishing in the 80s. [1] I've also heard numerous anecdotes about mentally ill patients and the homeless being forcefully bussed to San Francisco from not just other parts of California but other states, precisely because of the city's tolerance. If there's a shred of truth to this, it's a trivial to see why it's such a persistent problem. [1] http://sfist.com/2016/06/27/san_francisco_homeless_history_1982.php http://sfist.com/2016/06/27/san_francisco_homeless_history_1...

by EZ-E 9y ago

From a foreigner point of view who keeps reading about California, it seems both like a fascinating and terrifying place. So advanced yet so backward in some ways

plusbryan 9y ago

Care to expand?

ihsw2 9y ago
The rampant homelessness and drug use for one, the putrid mess that is downtown SF for another.
- DavidSJ 9y ago
  San Francisco is one beautiful city with one very ugly downtown.
  - briga 9y ago
    What's so bad about downtown San Francisco?
    - ihsw2 9y ago
      The stench of urine and feces is dominating, the random exposure to homeless folks mental problems is a daily occurrence, drug paraphernalia (eg: heroin needles) and trash are scattered throughout. SF downtown is an absolute dump. Go ahead, take a 30 minute walk just north of The Mission. Turn a corner and you'll find a homeless dude standing with a vacant look on his face and pants around his ankles, letting his penis sway in the morning sun. Turn another corner and you'll find someone shooting up with reckless abandon. Turn another and you'll be an uninvited witness to a homeless dude verbally and physically assaulting someone for no reason. LA, NYC, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, etc -- at least these have their size to distribute the problem, SF on the other hand is so small and its city council so progressive that there is a critical mass of it all.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- cpt1138 9y ago
  I believe other states send us their homeless cause here you can find places you wont actually freeze to death in winter. It may skew things a bit. Not sure.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - ryanobjc 9y ago
    The ag of California sure Nevada for doing exactly this. Nevada settled: http://www.sfexaminer.com/sf-reaches-400k-settlement-proposal-in-nevada-patient-dumping-case/amp/ http://www.sfexaminer.com/sf-reaches-400k-settlement-proposa...
- cpt1138 9y ago
  Also California is a huge place, not just SF and LA. We have as many national parks as Alaska, 100's of some of the most beautiful state parks and 100's of county parks. Many states have much worse drug problems per capita. Any country of 39M people and the economy we have is going to have upsides and downsides.
  - hueving 9y ago
    But the downsides are concentrated in the population centers where most people need to live.
  - toasterlovin 9y ago
    Not having a viable path to produce the next generation doesn’t seem like a viable long term strategy to me.
- ryanobjc 9y ago
  One of the consequences of the liberal tendenancies in California is visible homeless people. Californians just don’t want their cops regularly as policy beating homeless people and arresting them for existing. That’s why other downtowns don’t have homeless, they’re swept aside.
  - kelp 9y ago
    This is true for the most part. NYC has more homeless, but they are kept out of Manhattan, and the supportive housing is in the outer boroughs. That said, I think NYC also does a better job of housing their homeless. But, to your point about being too liberal, I've seen some of the most disgusting things ever in Powell BART station, and when the police try to kick people out, they get too many complaints and have to back off. So we all have to suffer.
- chillacy 9y ago
  What large US cities don't have these issues? People complain about the same things in Seattle, LA, NY, etc. In fact, it's not the worst based on the data: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/is-seattles-homeless-crisis-the-worst-in-the-country/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/is-seattl...
  - closeparen 9y ago
    Contemporary Manhattan and downtown Chicago, for one. These things exist, of course, but they aren’t in your face all the time on the major pedestrian corridors.

calinet6 9y ago

To be clear, it's absolutely not terrible or backward by any stretch. Please visit and see for yourself. Expensive, sure. But there's a reason (another word for price in a decent market is 'value'). And not every city in California is San Francisco in terms of cost of living.

closeparen 9y ago
Our most central and highly-trafficked sidewalks and public transit stations are de facto public restrooms and homeless shelters. The plaza around our government and cultural center is densely populated with open drug use and varying degrees of mental health crisis. Begging and tent encampments abound. The cyclist-advocacy and homeless-advocacy groups are at each other's throats over whether the takeover of bike lanes by encampments should be permanent. Violent mental health breakdowns on the sidewalk are not considered worthy of the attention of any government service, least of all the police. You can learn to tune these things out and live with them, but it is absolutely 100% backwards for place so rich and so ostensibly progressive and compassionate to blithely incubate such shocking and pervasive displays of desperation and public neglect in its own backyard. Property values are in a sustained, meteoric rise and we choose not to tap them to address these issues in any meaningful way, not from a compassionate perspective, and not from an enforcement perspective either. EDIT: more detail.
- newnewpdro 9y ago
  Having seen how places like Chicago treat the homeless in the interests of keeping the things you're pointing out hidden from sight - I appreciate SF's more tolerant, somewhat live-and-let-live methods, in lieu of better, more compassionate solutions. Hopefully having all this on display in SF will eventually provide enough impetus for the better solutions to emerge. Until then, I hope they don't decide to start being agressive and violent towards what is a largely mentally ill and incredibly vulnerable homeless population. My admittedly limited understanding is that much of this problem is the result of mental institutions being closed across the state in the face of federal funding vanishing in the 80s. [1] I've also heard numerous anecdotes about mentally ill patients and the homeless being forcefully bussed to San Francisco from not just other parts of California but other states, precisely because of the city's tolerance. If there's a shred of truth to this, it's a trivial to see why it's such a persistent problem. [1] http://sfist.com/2016/06/27/san_francisco_homeless_history_1982.php http://sfist.com/2016/06/27/san_francisco_homeless_history_1...