6 ms·

Here's a short list to get you started: - Homeless issues. Mentally ill people pissing and defecating on the sidewalks in every significant public space. - Ve

• brian_cunnie 6y ago
  > Vehicle vandalism is extremely common and unchecked by police. I believe the problem is more nuanced. I spoke with a retired police officer, and he said, "we can only give them a citation, and they [the vandals] know that, that they're gonna be out the same day." In other words, the law is the problem, not the police.
  • csomar 6y ago
    No one is blaming the police officers. The police workforce is just a bunch of employees working for the government or the city.
  • sneak 6y ago
    If the same people were smashing the windows at Starbucks or Walgreens each day, the police response would suddenly be totally different. The police prioritize protecting the property rights of large landowners, first and always. Don’t buy their excuses.
    • cellis 6y ago
      Wrong. A law was passed specifically making crimes of less than $1000 a misdemeanor.
      • kikokikokiko 6y ago
        Exactly. You can see loads of videos online of 5, 10 people, entering a regular Whole Foods or 7-Eleven and simply looting the place and leaving without pay. This kind of thing doesn't even happen in 3rd world countries like where I live, its's baffling to see what a huge american metropolis is allowing to happen in the name of political correctness.
        • issa 6y ago
          This is actually really interesting. I don't think this is a problem with policing or political correctness. This is something I always think of when looting is mentioned: Most people reading this could walk into any grocery store (or Target, or auto parts store) and just purchase whatever they wanted without even thinking about the cost. For all practical purposes, in a software engineer's budget, expenses like that are a rounding error. My point is that the problems and solutions are usually a lot more complicated than they seem. The various social forces at work in SF are kinda crazy when you think about them.
          • kikokikokiko 6y ago
            It's not a matter of "affording" food/products or not. It's a political decision, to not prosecute people for crimes against property. And it's an extremely dangerous decision. The rule of law, and the freedom that societies that enforce it have, are inextricably linked. A government that does not protect the property of it's citizens has no right to exist. It's basically telling the ordinary citizen "you're on your own". What this type of goverment creates, either by stupidity or malice, is an anarchy fueled law of the jungle.
            • chasd00 6y ago
              It works if you have a captive population and the people have no other choice. As this thread demonstrates, people are getting fed up and just leaving. If the city doesn't turn things around it will setup a downward spiral that's very hard to get out of. I think that's a real risk for a post-covid comeback, if it gets bad enough after all the people making the city great have left then it just won't come back.
    • Talanes 6y ago
      People brazenly come into my Starbucks all the time and openly announce they are shoplifting, because they know that the police won't show up to take a report for at least an hour. Once we do have the report, even if they do get caught, nothing happens. Many months of reports and multiple trips to the courthouse and we can MAYBE get a stay away order. Usually before that point, the store management has shuffled around enough that the person handling the legal legwork has moved on.
      • galfarragem 6y ago
        And then people get astonished when the righteous party doesn't get elected.
        • galfarragem 6y ago
          This economical view on Justice - ignore petty stuff because it is too expensive for the system to deal with it - destroys the goodwill on people and on State.
  • Bud 6y ago
    "We can only give them a citation"? I think a big part of the issue is that the police almost never even do that much. They do zero. If you try to call this stuff in, they laugh at you.
    • enriquec 6y ago
      I've called 3 times for 3 different broken windows on my car (a 2010 jeep - nothing special) and they literally just send you to an online form that automatically generates a generic police report. Insurance fraud here also has to be off the charts.
    • hnmullany 6y ago
      This is going to get even worse under the new District Attorney.
    • Camillo 6y ago
      Because it would be a complete waste of time. The people have voted to decriminalize vehicle break-ins. Making the police to go through the motions when nothing's going to happen to the perpetrator would just be a waste of your own tax money.
      • EricE 6y ago
        >The people have voted to decriminalize vehicle break-ins BINGO! Isn't there a really, really old saying about not crapping where you sleep?
    • YinglingLight 6y ago
      Let's defund them some more, that'll show 'em.
  • gjs278 6y ago
    the police used to just beat them up
• option 6y ago
  SF city “leadership” had failed the city miserably. What we’ve witnessed is that the city was actually really, really hard to destroy with A LOT going on for it. The pandemic just accelerated the demise - no other city even in CA has exodus quite like SF. This is all very sad as SF was such a beautiful city. Why would anyone vote for the incumbents in SF’s next elections is beyond me.
  • zapita 6y ago
    If you are talking about the board of supervisors, I agree. They are to blame for many of the city’s problems, mostly because their most politically active constituents and donors are angry homeowners who block everything. The current mayor London Breed has been doing good work, her handling of the covid-19 crisis in particular has been excellent. The problem is that most supervisors hate her and block her every step of the way.
    • option 6y ago
      I disagree about the mayor. But since I am not SF resident I won’t argue. I hope you enjoy what you are getting
      • zapita 6y ago
        Out of curiosity, if you’re not a SF resident, what are you basing your disagreement on? Do you live in a nearby city that is affected by SF policies?
        • option 6y ago
          yes, I live nearby and used to visit SF often. But now my wife is afraid to even drive to Cal Academy of sciences with kids.
• x0x0 6y ago
  Public transit is a huge problem. Even if, say, my coworkers were willing to ride public transit, I'm not sure I'd be willing to be in the same room as them. And to add to the roommate problem, I think a lot of people in sf led lives predicated on not spending that much time in their tiny housing. All of a sudden with everyone all home all the time... oof. You really need a separate office for each person so you're not spending 95% of your life in your bedroom. That's pretty unaffordable for most of the city. My company bit the bullet and allowed permanent remote. Fifteen percent of our employees have already left sf. I suspect this will accelerate as leases expire. Also, the stunning incompetence of sf government has led to property prices that are just stunning. A coworker bought a nice condo -- obviously elsewhere -- for less money than he was paying to have two roommates in sf. Getting out from under the ridiculous cost of living here leads to such a stark change in quality of life elsewhere.
  • Bud 6y ago
    The property prices are due to "stunning incompetence of SF government"? I'm not buying that. Public officials are not in charge of—nor do they have any real control over—property values. Your co-worker who bought property elsewhere wasn't able to do so because the mayor of that town was incredibly competent. That had absolutely nothing to do with it.
    • ihaveajob 6y ago
      The board of supervisors routinely rejects housing projects, or puts them up for an absurd review process that involve things like banning buildings if they cast a sliver of shadow on a park (which would on the other hand be tremendously welcome these days). Several supervisors are landlords who are personally invested in keeping the supply low so that prices keep rising. By contrast, Seattle has been building to keep up with demand and has been able to manage prices much more effectively. We could have had a Tokyo of the West. Instead, we're left with an emptying shell of a self-agrandizing suburb.
      • vkou 6y ago
        > By contrast, Seattle has been building to keep up with demand and has been able to manage prices much more effectively. Do you live in Seattle? Because that's not what anyone who lives here who is not making a tech salary thinks.
• rswail 6y ago
  Homeless issues: Provide homes and mental health facilities Who are the vandals? Why are they vandalizing? Are they related to the homeless problem? Income/Property Taxes: Vote
• thu2111 6y ago
  Extremely high pre-COVID rents meant many adults were living in roommate situations that seem a lot less acceptable when your health is tied to the willingness of everyone in your unit to behave responsibly. Unless you're practically retired, this is not a real issue given the COVID mortality profile. The sort of people who have flatmates tend to be younger, so the idea that COVID means nobody can or should have flatmates anymore isn't backed by any sort of medical reality. But there does seem to be an issue here with the type of people who live in SF not seeming to perceive the risks around COVID correctly. Why is Google keeping their offices closed until 2021? All you have to do is look at the stats or the history of epidemics to realise that this doesn't make sense, especially for a workforce as famously young as Google's.
  • dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Unless you're practically retired, this is not a real issue given the COVID mortality profile. It certainly is if you are one of those odd individuals whose concern for your health involves more than just near-term mortality.
  • michaelt 6y ago
    If you could establish an impregnable firewall between young healthy people and vulnerable people, and you ignore the rare deaths of healthy young people and side-effects of infection, the infection rate among young healthy people would be less important. But establishing an impregnable firewall is impossible, and long as the boundary between groups is porous, a higher infection rate among the young and healthy will increase the infection rate among the vulnerable, and hence the death rate.
• rcpt 6y ago
  Also pretending to like the Grateful Dead gets pretty annoying after a while
• gobucks 6y ago
  Don't forget the frequent electricity outages, especially given its the tech capital of the world. I lived in Hayes Valley, across Warby Parker, last year and our electricity went out 3-4 times for the whole night. We paid our bills on time.