9 ms·

As someone who moved into this city, after a year I see nothing good about San Francisco. It’s a shithole with every well off person in their little castles of

As someone who moved into this city, after a year I see nothing good about San Francisco. It’s a shithole with every well off person in their little castles of crumbling houses that are worth $2.5M. As a staunch democrat, I always wonder - why are cities in Red states such as Austin, Houston, Phoenix, Raleigh, Dallas have so much better infrastructure than Portland, Seattle, LA and San Francisco? Pot holes everywhere and homelessness out of control.

throwaway189262 6y ago
I don't think single party control is a good thing anywhere. I lean Democrat like most of us here, but I find myself avoiding deep blue cities. A lot of Democrats are just as selfish, Republicans tend to be more open about it. Deep blue cities have the same corruption and social segregation as red ones do. A lot of "hot" cities outside SV are Democratic mayors in Republican states. The mix keeps corruption low and forces compromises. The homeless issue is a city scale prisoners dilemma. By offering better services you attract homeless. Homeless people aren't stupid and will move to places that suit their lifestyle better, just like we do. The only way to avoid it is better policies on a national level. Otherwise cities that treat homeless better just become a magnet for them.
- nickpinkston 6y ago
  The "homeless people move to SF thing" is significant, but often overstated: "[The] survey showed that 71% of San Francisco’s street people had formerly been housed in the city." http://www.housethehomeless.org/myths-about-homelessness/ http://www.housethehomeless.org/myths-about-homelessness/
  - throwaway189262 6y ago
    Housed for how long? It's common for people with mental and substance abuse issues to move in and out of housing transiently because they frequently lose their jobs. There's a recent example of numerous homeless coming to the city because the mayor promised housing during corona https://abc7news.com/homeless-in-san-francisco-coronavirus-sf-help/6158835/ https://abc7news.com/homeless-in-san-francisco-coronavirus-s...
    - hindsightbias 6y ago
      There was a time you could do time or lose a job and come back to a SRO unit. Not like anyone warned there was a problem: https://thebolditalic.com/life-inside-sf-s-vanishing-single-resident-occupancies-the-bold-italic-san-francisco-20bf7aa0b3c8 https://thebolditalic.com/life-inside-sf-s-vanishing-single-...
      - throwaway189262 6y ago
        The huge expense of housing is due to insane NIMBYism that somehow gets tied to progressive policies. Protect the children, the forest, the neighborhood. There's enough laws going around to protect everything that nothing can change at all. And it may or may not be intentional that this housing shortage increases property values. My theory is that red states distaste for regulations discourages everyone from weaseling housing policies for their own interest. Housing is definitely cheaper in cities within red states. And in my experience there's less homeless, which may be directly correlated.
- imtringued 6y ago
  >The homeless issue is a city scale prisoners dilemma. By offering better services you attract homeless. Homeless people aren't stupid and will move to places that suit their lifestyle better, just like we do. The only way to avoid it is better policies on a national level. Otherwise cities that treat homeless better just become a magnet for them. Well, you're wrong about one thing. The homeless don't have to move. If SF attracts homeless people then it is entirely possible that people in the "grey zone" become homeless on their own. A lot of people just move in with their parents or friends if they lose their home. If the stigma of homelessness is smaller than the stigma of living with parents it's entirely possible that people go to shelters just to save themselves the embarrassment of failure in front of their friends and family. Especially if that "shelter" is just a free apartment room.
dougabug 6y ago
Well, for one costs are much higher, availability of labor and land are far more constrained. Also, while their states (Texas, Arizona, and North Carolina) might be slightly red, those cities, like all large American cities, lean blue. The climate is fairly hospitable year round in the Bay Area. If I were homeless I doubt that I'd choose to live in Arizona or Texas in Summer or Winter. The concentration of disposable wealth and a generally liberal population in San Francisco probably makes panhandling easier, I would guess.
- cheriot 6y ago
  > costs are much higher Much of this is caused by the high cost of housing. Everyone needs to be paid enough to live here or enough to be worth commuting long distances. > availability of labor and land are extremely constrained That's not really true. There's not a lot of empty land, but there's huge swaths of underutilized land. Only zoning law prevents it from becoming more useful. Instead we get crumbling single family homes a few miles from a growing number of skyscrapers.
  - dougabug 6y ago
    Zoning could arguably mitigate the problem, but geography strongly constrains the Bay Area in a way that simply does not apply to major metropolitan areas with vastly lower property values. Ironically, it really is pretty much supply and demand. It's wishful thinking that the rest of America's real estate market is much more affordable due to wise zoning choices. A lot of the land that seems underutilized is contaminated (SuperFund sites, ex-military, industrial, etc) and requires significant remediation. Even so, Peninsula residents still spend $1M for townhouses and condos built on former SuperFund sites. That's the discount price...
    - cheriot 6y ago
      3/4 of residential land in SF is zoned for single family. We're not to the point where we need to talk about geography or the superfund sites. When we actually use our land wisely, then it will be easy to build more around train stations. The measure of distance that matters is not miles, but minutes. > It's wishful thinking that the rest of America's real estate market is much more affordable due to wise zoning choices. SF jobs are more concentrated in a down town area. Offices in cities that were built post car culture are more sprawled out. It's terrible for the environment, but it postpones the problems that SF is running into. > Ironically, it really is pretty much supply and demand. Well, cheers to agreeing on something. Sucks that this is a debated thing here.
mikeyouse 6y ago
The original sin in California is Prop 13. Nearly all of our budget and housing issues can be traced back to that god awful ballot proposition. With high housing costs comes increased homelessness, higher wages for public employees, larger pension liabilities, and on and on.
- centimeter 6y ago
  There is zero evidence that homelessness is caused to any substantial degree by high housing costs. The kind of people who are chronically homeless at $3000/mo/1br are also chronically homeless at $1000/mo/1br. They usually have some kind of mental problem or drug addiction, not just “they can’t afford rent”. The people at the margins of being able to afford housing usually just move elsewhere, rather than end up on the streets.
  - mikeyouse 6y ago
    Zero evidence? That charging more for housing increases the number of people that cant afford housing? It’s tautological... The majority of San Francisco’s homeless are from San Francisco and were recently homed.. if not for cost, what’s causing people with stable housing to end up on the streets?
  - cheriot 6y ago
    High housing costs make people financially vulnerable. Then all it takes is illness or an unexpected bill to miss rent and get evicted. High housing costs mean housing vouchers cover fewer people with its budget. > They usually have some kind of mental problem or drug addiction, not just “they can’t afford rent”. I suspect you're making assumptions based on the more visible homeless people you see, but if there's any data to back that up I'd love to see it. calmatters.org does some of the best reporting on housing and homelessness topics. For example https://calmatters.org/explainers/californias-homelessness-crisis-explained/ https://calmatters.org/explainers/californias-homelessness-c...
    - refurb 6y ago
      SFgov 2019 survey on homelessness (page 70) [1] "Do you have any of the following health conditions?" Drug or alcohol abuse - 37% Any psychiatric or emotional condition - 35% Those are the top two health conditions identified. There is obviously overlap since the total of all of the answers is >100%. [1]https://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2019HIRDReport_SanFrancisco_FinalDraft-1.pdf https://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2019HIRDRep...
centimeter 6y ago
Moving out of CA made me realize that progressivism in America simply doesn’t work if your goals are vaguely along the lines of <high standard of living for the middle class>. The fact that SF caters so aggressively to the poor and the homeless, coupled with the massive population of chronically impoverished people in the US, all but guarantees that it’s going to be an unlivable shithole. And indeed, needles, druggies with open wounds, feces, homeless encampments, everywhere.
- cheriot 6y ago
  SF "protects" its single family neighborhoods by herding all the heroin, hookers, and new housing into a few containment zone neighborhoods. The police department has completed 40 of the 272 reforms it promised to the Department of Justice in 2016. There's a lot of progressive talk to dress up traditional conservative policies. Sadly, the best thing SF has done for progressivism is serve as a warning to other progressive cities that they need to put action behind their rhetoric.
  - hindsightbias 6y ago
    And then enticed tech into those containment zones. Chaos ensued.
  - defnotashton2 6y ago
    I think maybe it's taught many of them to act less and more slowly rather than over regulate and burn money. What's the tax rate there and what are you getting again? Oh cool trolleys.
    - cheriot 6y ago
      For example, advocates of this law warned that Portland would become more like SF: https://www.npr.org/2019/07/01/737798440/oregon-legislature-votes-to-essentially-ban-single-family-zoning https://www.npr.org/2019/07/01/737798440/oregon-legislature-...
  - wahern 6y ago
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
> As a staunch democrat, I always wonder - why are cities in Red states such as Austin Uhhhh, wut? I think everyone in Austin is dying to see this wonderful infrastructure you speak of, considering we're fairly well known for our inadequate-to-non-existant public transportation system.
Simulacra 6y ago
As a conservative I encourage you to question your staunch affiliation, and consider that the party you support no longer supports you.
wahern 6y ago
> why are cities in Red states such as Austin, Houston, Phoenix, Raleigh, Dallas have so much better infrastructure than Portland, Seattle, LA and San Francisco? Pot holes everywhere and homelessness out of control. One obvious answer is age. It's cheap to build greenfield infrastructure.[1] It's expensive to rebuild infrastructure in dense areas, and that's before factoring in NIMBY pushback. (BTW, that expense is why the wealthy often live in older housing stock in cities. Maintaining an older home is expensive and thus a way to signal wealth. Once enough wealthy people move in you can start to condemn properties that aren't maintained to the same standard. Old money understands this dynamic very well. New money people conflate wealth with newness, which is poor people thinking.) Regarding homeless: in dense, high-cost of living areas the homeless will be concentrated and adjacent and thus highly visible. As someone who grew up relatively poor, on occasion briefly homeless and often housing insecure, I assure you there are a ton of such people in suburbia, but they're spread out and hidden--couch surfing, pushed to the rural edges, and either scattered around or concentrated in hidden areas (e.g. trailer parks). And of course housing is generally cheaper in less dense areas--the middle classes build new neighborhoods in greenfield areas, then vacate them in a decade or two, making them available for the working classes and the poor. Suburban neighborhoods don't get recycled back up the income ladder like they do in cities. Gentrification in suburbia is rare; rather a new neighborhood is destined to be abandoned and forgotten by the middle classes. Of course, much could be said regarding Portland's, Seattle's, and San Francisco's licentiousness regarding drug use and other aspects beyond geography and pricing that draw and concentrate the homeless, but those are somewhat unique to those cities, not a general phenomenon. Regarding potholes: Those older suburban neighborhoods above are just as pothole-filled (if not more so) as any city downtown, but you won't see it because you have no reason to go there! While cities are highly income segregated--often much more so than suburbia--proximities are closer and infrastructure expenditures more equitable so you're far more likely to see the seedy underbelly of your regional community. Regarding potholes in SF specifically, the city is halfway through a 20 year, multi-billion dollar water & sewer refurbishment plan. The roads are torn up across the city because of this. The Van Ness/Mission and Geary BRT projects are compounding the problem on two of the busiest thoroughfares, and since COVID-19 the city seems to have taken the opportunity to rip open the streets all over the place simultaneously, presumably (hopefully!) to get some of the most inconvenient segments and intersections out of the way earlier. [1] Not just cheap, but often free. Alot of suburban infrastructure--streets, water, power--is built by the real estate developer. The cost is hidden in the original purchase price. Afterward the cost can't be hidden. Faced with the prospect of having to pay out of pocket, directly or through higher taxes, the middle class will elect to simply move on to greener pastures.
hindsightbias 6y ago
My fillings fall out when driving in Austin and Dallas. But after 50 years of construction (that is not an exaggeration), 635 isnt so bad. Mopac is a nice for a parking lot. IH-35... lol. SF has been updating 100+ year old sewer system. The roads will suck until that is done. It does really suck how we don’t criminalize homelessness and mental illness in CA like good Christian Red States do. I do wonder who filled up those 20000 SROs in the last ten years. Just where did all those homeless come from?

throwaway189262 6y ago

I don't think single party control is a good thing anywhere. I lean Democrat like most of us here, but I find myself avoiding deep blue cities. A lot of Democrats are just as selfish, Republicans tend to be more open about it. Deep blue cities have the same corruption and social segregation as red ones do. A lot of "hot" cities outside SV are Democratic mayors in Republican states. The mix keeps corruption low and forces compromises. The homeless issue is a city scale prisoners dilemma. By offering better services you attract homeless. Homeless people aren't stupid and will move to places that suit their lifestyle better, just like we do. The only way to avoid it is better policies on a national level. Otherwise cities that treat homeless better just become a magnet for them.

nickpinkston 6y ago
The "homeless people move to SF thing" is significant, but often overstated: "[The] survey showed that 71% of San Francisco’s street people had formerly been housed in the city." http://www.housethehomeless.org/myths-about-homelessness/ http://www.housethehomeless.org/myths-about-homelessness/
- throwaway189262 6y ago
  Housed for how long? It's common for people with mental and substance abuse issues to move in and out of housing transiently because they frequently lose their jobs. There's a recent example of numerous homeless coming to the city because the mayor promised housing during corona https://abc7news.com/homeless-in-san-francisco-coronavirus-sf-help/6158835/ https://abc7news.com/homeless-in-san-francisco-coronavirus-s...
  - hindsightbias 6y ago
    There was a time you could do time or lose a job and come back to a SRO unit. Not like anyone warned there was a problem: https://thebolditalic.com/life-inside-sf-s-vanishing-single-resident-occupancies-the-bold-italic-san-francisco-20bf7aa0b3c8 https://thebolditalic.com/life-inside-sf-s-vanishing-single-...
    - throwaway189262 6y ago
      The huge expense of housing is due to insane NIMBYism that somehow gets tied to progressive policies. Protect the children, the forest, the neighborhood. There's enough laws going around to protect everything that nothing can change at all. And it may or may not be intentional that this housing shortage increases property values. My theory is that red states distaste for regulations discourages everyone from weaseling housing policies for their own interest. Housing is definitely cheaper in cities within red states. And in my experience there's less homeless, which may be directly correlated.
imtringued 6y ago
>The homeless issue is a city scale prisoners dilemma. By offering better services you attract homeless. Homeless people aren't stupid and will move to places that suit their lifestyle better, just like we do. The only way to avoid it is better policies on a national level. Otherwise cities that treat homeless better just become a magnet for them. Well, you're wrong about one thing. The homeless don't have to move. If SF attracts homeless people then it is entirely possible that people in the "grey zone" become homeless on their own. A lot of people just move in with their parents or friends if they lose their home. If the stigma of homelessness is smaller than the stigma of living with parents it's entirely possible that people go to shelters just to save themselves the embarrassment of failure in front of their friends and family. Especially if that "shelter" is just a free apartment room.

dougabug 6y ago

Well, for one costs are much higher, availability of labor and land are far more constrained. Also, while their states (Texas, Arizona, and North Carolina) might be slightly red, those cities, like all large American cities, lean blue. The climate is fairly hospitable year round in the Bay Area. If I were homeless I doubt that I'd choose to live in Arizona or Texas in Summer or Winter. The concentration of disposable wealth and a generally liberal population in San Francisco probably makes panhandling easier, I would guess.

cheriot 6y ago
> costs are much higher Much of this is caused by the high cost of housing. Everyone needs to be paid enough to live here or enough to be worth commuting long distances. > availability of labor and land are extremely constrained That's not really true. There's not a lot of empty land, but there's huge swaths of underutilized land. Only zoning law prevents it from becoming more useful. Instead we get crumbling single family homes a few miles from a growing number of skyscrapers.
- dougabug 6y ago
  Zoning could arguably mitigate the problem, but geography strongly constrains the Bay Area in a way that simply does not apply to major metropolitan areas with vastly lower property values. Ironically, it really is pretty much supply and demand. It's wishful thinking that the rest of America's real estate market is much more affordable due to wise zoning choices. A lot of the land that seems underutilized is contaminated (SuperFund sites, ex-military, industrial, etc) and requires significant remediation. Even so, Peninsula residents still spend $1M for townhouses and condos built on former SuperFund sites. That's the discount price...
  - cheriot 6y ago
    3/4 of residential land in SF is zoned for single family. We're not to the point where we need to talk about geography or the superfund sites. When we actually use our land wisely, then it will be easy to build more around train stations. The measure of distance that matters is not miles, but minutes. > It's wishful thinking that the rest of America's real estate market is much more affordable due to wise zoning choices. SF jobs are more concentrated in a down town area. Offices in cities that were built post car culture are more sprawled out. It's terrible for the environment, but it postpones the problems that SF is running into. > Ironically, it really is pretty much supply and demand. Well, cheers to agreeing on something. Sucks that this is a debated thing here.

mikeyouse 6y ago

The original sin in California is Prop 13. Nearly all of our budget and housing issues can be traced back to that god awful ballot proposition. With high housing costs comes increased homelessness, higher wages for public employees, larger pension liabilities, and on and on.

centimeter 6y ago
There is zero evidence that homelessness is caused to any substantial degree by high housing costs. The kind of people who are chronically homeless at $3000/mo/1br are also chronically homeless at $1000/mo/1br. They usually have some kind of mental problem or drug addiction, not just “they can’t afford rent”. The people at the margins of being able to afford housing usually just move elsewhere, rather than end up on the streets.
- mikeyouse 6y ago
  Zero evidence? That charging more for housing increases the number of people that cant afford housing? It’s tautological... The majority of San Francisco’s homeless are from San Francisco and were recently homed.. if not for cost, what’s causing people with stable housing to end up on the streets?
- cheriot 6y ago
  High housing costs make people financially vulnerable. Then all it takes is illness or an unexpected bill to miss rent and get evicted. High housing costs mean housing vouchers cover fewer people with its budget. > They usually have some kind of mental problem or drug addiction, not just “they can’t afford rent”. I suspect you're making assumptions based on the more visible homeless people you see, but if there's any data to back that up I'd love to see it. calmatters.org does some of the best reporting on housing and homelessness topics. For example https://calmatters.org/explainers/californias-homelessness-crisis-explained/ https://calmatters.org/explainers/californias-homelessness-c...
  - refurb 6y ago
    SFgov 2019 survey on homelessness (page 70) [1] "Do you have any of the following health conditions?" Drug or alcohol abuse - 37% Any psychiatric or emotional condition - 35% Those are the top two health conditions identified. There is obviously overlap since the total of all of the answers is >100%. [1]https://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2019HIRDReport_SanFrancisco_FinalDraft-1.pdf https://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2019HIRDRep...

centimeter 6y ago

Moving out of CA made me realize that progressivism in America simply doesn’t work if your goals are vaguely along the lines of <high standard of living for the middle class>. The fact that SF caters so aggressively to the poor and the homeless, coupled with the massive population of chronically impoverished people in the US, all but guarantees that it’s going to be an unlivable shithole. And indeed, needles, druggies with open wounds, feces, homeless encampments, everywhere.

cheriot 6y ago
SF "protects" its single family neighborhoods by herding all the heroin, hookers, and new housing into a few containment zone neighborhoods. The police department has completed 40 of the 272 reforms it promised to the Department of Justice in 2016. There's a lot of progressive talk to dress up traditional conservative policies. Sadly, the best thing SF has done for progressivism is serve as a warning to other progressive cities that they need to put action behind their rhetoric.
- hindsightbias 6y ago
  And then enticed tech into those containment zones. Chaos ensued.
- defnotashton2 6y ago
  I think maybe it's taught many of them to act less and more slowly rather than over regulate and burn money. What's the tax rate there and what are you getting again? Oh cool trolleys.
  - cheriot 6y ago
    For example, advocates of this law warned that Portland would become more like SF: https://www.npr.org/2019/07/01/737798440/oregon-legislature-votes-to-essentially-ban-single-family-zoning https://www.npr.org/2019/07/01/737798440/oregon-legislature-...
- wahern 6y ago

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago

> As a staunch democrat, I always wonder - why are cities in Red states such as Austin Uhhhh, wut? I think everyone in Austin is dying to see this wonderful infrastructure you speak of, considering we're fairly well known for our inadequate-to-non-existant public transportation system.

Simulacra 6y ago

As a conservative I encourage you to question your staunch affiliation, and consider that the party you support no longer supports you.

wahern 6y ago

> why are cities in Red states such as Austin, Houston, Phoenix, Raleigh, Dallas have so much better infrastructure than Portland, Seattle, LA and San Francisco? Pot holes everywhere and homelessness out of control. One obvious answer is age. It's cheap to build greenfield infrastructure.[1] It's expensive to rebuild infrastructure in dense areas, and that's before factoring in NIMBY pushback. (BTW, that expense is why the wealthy often live in older housing stock in cities. Maintaining an older home is expensive and thus a way to signal wealth. Once enough wealthy people move in you can start to condemn properties that aren't maintained to the same standard. Old money understands this dynamic very well. New money people conflate wealth with newness, which is poor people thinking.) Regarding homeless: in dense, high-cost of living areas the homeless will be concentrated and adjacent and thus highly visible. As someone who grew up relatively poor, on occasion briefly homeless and often housing insecure, I assure you there are a ton of such people in suburbia, but they're spread out and hidden--couch surfing, pushed to the rural edges, and either scattered around or concentrated in hidden areas (e.g. trailer parks). And of course housing is generally cheaper in less dense areas--the middle classes build new neighborhoods in greenfield areas, then vacate them in a decade or two, making them available for the working classes and the poor. Suburban neighborhoods don't get recycled back up the income ladder like they do in cities. Gentrification in suburbia is rare; rather a new neighborhood is destined to be abandoned and forgotten by the middle classes. Of course, much could be said regarding Portland's, Seattle's, and San Francisco's licentiousness regarding drug use and other aspects beyond geography and pricing that draw and concentrate the homeless, but those are somewhat unique to those cities, not a general phenomenon. Regarding potholes: Those older suburban neighborhoods above are just as pothole-filled (if not more so) as any city downtown, but you won't see it because you have no reason to go there! While cities are highly income segregated--often much more so than suburbia--proximities are closer and infrastructure expenditures more equitable so you're far more likely to see the seedy underbelly of your regional community. Regarding potholes in SF specifically, the city is halfway through a 20 year, multi-billion dollar water & sewer refurbishment plan. The roads are torn up across the city because of this. The Van Ness/Mission and Geary BRT projects are compounding the problem on two of the busiest thoroughfares, and since COVID-19 the city seems to have taken the opportunity to rip open the streets all over the place simultaneously, presumably (hopefully!) to get some of the most inconvenient segments and intersections out of the way earlier. [1] Not just cheap, but often free. Alot of suburban infrastructure--streets, water, power--is built by the real estate developer. The cost is hidden in the original purchase price. Afterward the cost can't be hidden. Faced with the prospect of having to pay out of pocket, directly or through higher taxes, the middle class will elect to simply move on to greener pastures.

hindsightbias 6y ago

My fillings fall out when driving in Austin and Dallas. But after 50 years of construction (that is not an exaggeration), 635 isnt so bad. Mopac is a nice for a parking lot. IH-35... lol. SF has been updating 100+ year old sewer system. The roads will suck until that is done. It does really suck how we don’t criminalize homelessness and mental illness in CA like good Christian Red States do. I do wonder who filled up those 20000 SROs in the last ten years. Just where did all those homeless come from?