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As someone planning to move to San Francisco from outside the US soon, is living in SF really as bad as all the blogs make it to be? I chose SF mainly because

• PopeDotNinja 7y ago
  The first thing you'll notice when you get to San Francisco proper is how many homeless people there and how dirty it is (google "sidewalk poop"). My recommendation would be to visit before you move.
• Daniel_sk 7y ago
  I would recommend spending a week or two there first. I was astonished how many crazy and homeless people are on the streets and theft/crime levels (broken windows on cars is now nothing uncommon). Do you want to actually live directly in SF or somewhere in the surrounding cities?
  • chrisseaton 7y ago
    Are those issues only in the downtown area or they extend to the residential areas to the west as well?
    • inferiorhuman 7y ago
      It's not as bad west of Twin Peaks, but there are still homeless folks living there. I'm baffled by the folks who think there aren't any homeless people out west (presumably they never go out at night). You'd be hard pressed to find any city in the Bay Area without a homeless problem.
    • prpl 7y ago
      Not really in the western neighborhoods except in a few select spots. You can live in those neighborhoods without seeing it except when you go to the grocery store, parts of Golden Gate park, or the beach
    • thatfrenchguy 7y ago
      Never seen this in the Haight, Mission, Noe, really anything west of van ness. You can also not get a car :)
      • inferiorhuman 7y ago
        You're joking, right? Personal experiences with the other neighborhoods you've mentioned aside, the Haight has been a mecca for drug use and homeless youth for more than fifty years now.
        • thatfrenchguy 7y ago
          The haight outside of the street itself is fine though.
          • inferiorhuman 7y ago
            The haight outside of the street itself is fine though. Erm, no. At the very least the panhandle is like two blocks over.
• dpedu 7y ago
  It is highly dependent on where in the city you live. Your experience will be drastically different, but then again, so will your rent.
• djrobstep 7y ago
  I wouldn't move without visiting first, I found the place incredibly depressing. Dire poverty, brutal injustice, and blatant dysfunction at every corner, in one of the most moneyed cities in the world. A human centipede of grift at city scale. Nice bridge tho.
  • fjabre 7y ago
    SF has problems like most major cities but your exaggeration is obviously ridiculous. Have you not traveled to 3rd world countries?
    • unnamed76ri 7y ago
      He just said he was in SF, so kind of
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • halfdan 7y ago
      While the comment may be extreme it's somewhat amusing you're comparing SF to third world countries - which speaks to itself I guess.
• danenania 7y ago
  All the "SF is a dystopian nightmare" posts are referring to a few downtown neighborhoods which represent probably less than 5% of the city by land area. It's a huge problem and it sucks if you have to go to those areas regularly, but most of the city isn't like that. I live in the Inner Richmond and it's one of the nicest neighborhoods I've ever lived in (I've lived in a bunch all over). The combination of natural beauty, urban amenities, walkability, laid back vibe, etc. is amazing. There are dozens of other neighborhoods with similar qualities to choose from.
  • dannyr 7y ago
    If only they build more housing in Inner Richmond, more people will benefit from it.
    • danenania 7y ago
      Agreed. Though afaik there are plans to build a huge apartment complex where the recently closed CPMC California St hospital is now (despite strenuous NIMBY objections of course). So some progress is being made, but a lot more is definitely needed.
  • inferiorhuman 7y ago
    All the "SF is a dystopian nightmare" posts are referring to a few downtown neighborhoods which represent probably less than 5% of the city by land area. LOL Downtown neighborhoods? Like the Haight? Potrero? SOMA? the Tenderloin? the Mission? Western Addition? Fisherman's Wharf / Aquatic Park? Homelessness and grime isn't endemic to "downtown" San Francisco. Most of the tent cities I've seen in San Francisco are in SOMA, but even walking from the inner mission to market at night you'll find plenty of sidewalk dwellers.
    • danenania 7y ago
      Most of those neighborhoods are downtown... the others have some issues but aren't what people are referring to when they say "dystopian nightmare". That's mainly just Tenderloin/Soma/Civic Center, and a bit that radiates into adjoining neighborhoods from there. Moderate homelessness is sadly an issue in any large Western city, so if you want to avoid it completely, you'll have to go to a smaller city or the suburbs (or somewhere with authoritarian policies). There also aren't any neighborhoods in Manhattan or central London/Paris/Sydney/etc. where you won't find any homeless people or some grime on the streets.
• keerthiko 7y ago
  One of the cliche transplants from SF to NYC: The lack of concrete jungle, and that desire from people both who predated the tech deluge and those who arrived because of it (like you are planning to be) is precisely why it has become as bad as the blogs make it to be. I think some things are not as bad as the blogs make it be, and many things a lot worse. In the latter category: - there is now a "fire season". Yes, those precious outdoors, swathes of it gets burned and the beautiful CA air gets filled with smoke from burnt forests, houses and people - the city is politically paralyzed. Everyone now treats their SF stay as even more temporary (moreso than the natives already complained about before, because now it's crappy to live in for everyone, not just the poor people) = limited investment in political future - diversity shrinks every year. It gets more white/asian, more male, more single/childless, more tech, and more techie-centric entertainment, and less everything else everyday - offline businesses are narrowing operation. Not merely "local" and "small" businesses dying, but even chain stores are not able to find staff or attract enough foot traffic because...the city simply doesn't have that many people out and about anymore. Business hours are shrinking, stores are receding to the downtown center streets, and service staff is disappearing. There are hardly 50 stores left in all of SF that are open 24 hours, even my podunk hometown in Oman, Middle East has more. - the tourist industry is dying. People used to visit and fall in love with SF. Now, they get embarrassed about the state of the city (the more obvious stuff like homelessness, cost of living, filth) and leave trying to forget about this city. I still love SF, and would love to move back if they can turn the ship around. As a non-US citizen I cannot even vote, and felt utterly helpless in the face of rampant NIMBYism preventing any development, upzoning, housing reform, transit reform, tax reform, homelessness relief, police retraining, non-tech subsidies, etc. But over the course of the 6-7 years I lived there, it went from a "this city is wonderful" love to the kind of love you have for a drug-addled suicidal family member. It is incredibly relieving to see NYC being run extremely competently in contrast, and while I vaguely miss the weather, imo the summers here are better, the winters perfectly tolerable, seasons are a nice way to keep track of the passage of time, and I can enjoy nature more every time I go out of town.
  • nlh 7y ago
    Very well said.
  • 7y ago
• thatfrenchguy 7y ago
  Look, everyone who’s happy (like me) with their loving conditions in SF isn’t going to write a blog post about how their apartment is fine.
  • danenania 7y ago
    I'm Doing Pretty Okay in San Francisco: A Manifesto
    • thatfrenchguy 7y ago
      « Rent is a little expensive, my landlord is nice, my neighbors are ok: why I was not going to write a blog post about this »
    • cbames89 7y ago
      "Surviving SF: A beginner's tutorial" seems like a normal HN post title.
• nlh 7y ago
  I’ll echo what other happy SF residents have said - it’s pretty great if you’re able to put yourself in a good part of town. Look I’ll be honest - your experience in SF is going to correlate with your ability to afford living here (I hate to say it but it’s true). If you’re up for spending $3-$5k/month on an apartment, you can live in a nice area (Hayes Valley, Marina, Cow Hollow, Pacific Heights, etc.) and life there is pretty darn good. There’s access to some of the most spectacularly beautiful cycling on earth (just across the Golden Gate Bridge), the Presidio is a beautiful, Marina Green/Chrissy Field is beautiful, Golden Gate Park is beautiful, the food is amazing and there are wonderful new restaurants popping up all the time, the Mexican food (cheap!) is some of the best you’ll find. There’s plenty of access to shared bikes and scooters (you don’t need to own a car), the CalTrain makes it reasonably easy to get down to the peninsula, and the competition between Uber and Lyft keeps ridesharing costs relatively low (for now - that’ll change). It takes only 20-30 minutes to get to SFO, United has pretty good coverage of the whole world from there, so if you like to travel it’s easy to get away. And, if you’re in tech, there’s plenty of other like-minded people around so there’s always a group of folks to nerd out with. And in general I’ve found people are very welcoming of newcomers (but of course this depends on the social circle you find yourself in - I perhaps got lucky). I know this isn’t the “popular” opinion because it’s easy to hate on SF for the various PR things you read about (it’s expensive, there really is a bad homelessness/street encampment problem, and the NIMBYism/old coots voting in their own interest can be annoying), but if you happen to fit one of the molds this city is well-suited to handling, it’s quite lovely here. That ALL being said - there are days where I look at how much I spend in rent and how much it would cost to own an apartment and I do daydream about moving to Vietnam and living like a king....
  • inferiorhuman 7y ago
    I'm just gonna leave this there: https://sfist.com/2019/12/18/man-photographed-pooping-in-an-aisle-at-the-marina-safeway/ https://sfist.com/2019/12/18/man-photographed-pooping-in-an-...
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• skookum 7y ago
  It surely depends on what you consider "the outdoors" and what your baseline for proximity is, but speaking as someone whose definition of outdoor recreation skews towards mountain sports in both summer and winter I would not consider SF to be proximate to the outdoors and would recommend looking further north (Portland, Seattle, Vancouver) if you want to live somewhere urban-ish and have quick, regular access to the backcountry.