4 ms·

“Up and down the city’s disorienting hills, you notice homeless men and women — junkies, winos, the dispossessed...“ Did the author ever actually walk in SF? T

“Up and down the city’s disorienting hills, you notice homeless men and women — junkies, winos, the dispossessed...“ Did the author ever actually walk in SF? The homeless mostly stay in the flats, the hills are fine (and higher rent of course).

jostmey 8y ago
I don’t even want to visit San Francisco anymore. Why would the writers want to? I’m making a point about how bad it’s become in San Francisco relative to the rest of the US
- leesalminen 8y ago
  My partner and I visited SF last summer and were fairly shocked with all the homelessness, drug use on the streets and human feces scattered about. We won’t be back.
  - tvanantwerp 8y ago
    My wife and I had the same experience. As an east coast programmer, I was curious about what it would be like in SF and arrange a vacation to see it for myself. We spent a week there, and both decided that we never ever wanted to move to a place like that. Nothing looked clean (certainly nowhere smelled clean) nor inviting. It would've been a considerable decline in our quality of living to move there.
  - dekhn 8y ago
    I'd just like to say, as somebody who used to live in SF, I feel sorry for tourists. What the city is permitting is unthinkable, but up to about a year ago, even saying that it wasn't acceptable was social suicide. Now it's changed a bunch- people are much more clearly stating that allowing people to put up tents and litter the sstreets with poop and needles isn't OK. However, the city really can't do anything about it because it's tolerated this for so long and anything they did would be massively controversial.
    - asdf21 8y ago
      Sounds like private property is better managed than public property in SF...
- tjr225 8y ago
  Just as a counterpoint to most of the comments here, I find San Francisco to be unique, charming, and beautiful. I have been there ~4 times in the past year and have had a great time every time. Posts and comments in threads like these cause me to not want to participate on internet communities as my experience in reality seems to not match up with the cavernous anxiety taking place online.
ryanjadhav 8y ago
This is not true, I live in twin peaks and there's been an increase of homeless folk coming up the hill.
whyenot 8y ago
I don't think you would hold that opinion if you walked in the hilly are near Union Square.
carlineng 8y ago
According to the latest SF homeless census[1], nearly 50% of SF's homeless population are in District 6 -- Tenderloin, Civic Center, and SOMA. These are also areas where there are high concentrations of tourists and visitors. Someone just visiting San Francisco vs actually living here is likely to come away with a grim impression. [1]http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/San-Francisco-PIT-Executive-Summary-FINAL-6.21.17.pdf http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/San-Francisc...
floatingatoll 8y ago
I lived in SF for several years. The decline described was already a thing in 2005, and has been steadily worsening since. The flats are where businesses are, so doing business in the city means facing the despair of its homeless precisely as described. To quote the article about Florida and ocean level rise, it doesn’t matter how high you lift your house up above the water line if there’s nowhere left for you to go when you leave it.

jostmey 8y ago

I don’t even want to visit San Francisco anymore. Why would the writers want to? I’m making a point about how bad it’s become in San Francisco relative to the rest of the US

leesalminen 8y ago
My partner and I visited SF last summer and were fairly shocked with all the homelessness, drug use on the streets and human feces scattered about. We won’t be back.
- tvanantwerp 8y ago
  My wife and I had the same experience. As an east coast programmer, I was curious about what it would be like in SF and arrange a vacation to see it for myself. We spent a week there, and both decided that we never ever wanted to move to a place like that. Nothing looked clean (certainly nowhere smelled clean) nor inviting. It would've been a considerable decline in our quality of living to move there.
- dekhn 8y ago
  I'd just like to say, as somebody who used to live in SF, I feel sorry for tourists. What the city is permitting is unthinkable, but up to about a year ago, even saying that it wasn't acceptable was social suicide. Now it's changed a bunch- people are much more clearly stating that allowing people to put up tents and litter the sstreets with poop and needles isn't OK. However, the city really can't do anything about it because it's tolerated this for so long and anything they did would be massively controversial.
  - asdf21 8y ago
    Sounds like private property is better managed than public property in SF...
tjr225 8y ago
Just as a counterpoint to most of the comments here, I find San Francisco to be unique, charming, and beautiful. I have been there ~4 times in the past year and have had a great time every time. Posts and comments in threads like these cause me to not want to participate on internet communities as my experience in reality seems to not match up with the cavernous anxiety taking place online.

ryanjadhav 8y ago

This is not true, I live in twin peaks and there's been an increase of homeless folk coming up the hill.

whyenot 8y ago

I don't think you would hold that opinion if you walked in the hilly are near Union Square.

carlineng 8y ago

According to the latest SF homeless census[1], nearly 50% of SF's homeless population are in District 6 -- Tenderloin, Civic Center, and SOMA. These are also areas where there are high concentrations of tourists and visitors. Someone just visiting San Francisco vs actually living here is likely to come away with a grim impression. [1]http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/San-Francisco-PIT-Executive-Summary-FINAL-6.21.17.pdf http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/San-Francisc...

floatingatoll 8y ago

I lived in SF for several years. The decline described was already a thing in 2005, and has been steadily worsening since. The flats are where businesses are, so doing business in the city means facing the despair of its homeless precisely as described. To quote the article about Florida and ocean level rise, it doesn’t matter how high you lift your house up above the water line if there’s nowhere left for you to go when you leave it.