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Anecdote: almost every family with kids that I know has the same story: Lived in SF, had kids and gtfo because the city is not great for kids. That can easily b
by Zhenya 6y ago
Anecdote: almost every family with kids that I know has the same story: Lived in SF, had kids and gtfo because the city is not great for kids. That can easily be contrasted to Manhattan that was cleaned up by "broken windows policy". In SF the petty crime was rampant. Cars broken into, vandalism, drug use, theft and vagrancy(too bad it's not illegal in SF).
There are no borders and nothing stopping people from moving their tax base down to the Peninsula (where the weather is better, schools are great and no one shits on your doorstep).
Good luck sf, you'll need it.
- baggy_trough 6y agoHow dare you insult the highest form of humanity in San Francisco, the defecators-of-freedom?
- dang 6y agoPlease don't do this here.
- throw9872349872 6y agoSF needs a Rudy Guiliani type.
- cobookman 6y agoLet it sink in that East Palo Alto, former murder capital of USA has less crime per-capita than San Francisco. East Palo Alto is a shining example of how a township/city can clean up its streets in a short time period, by investing in the community. SF = 2018 was 690.89 per 100,000 population EPA = 2018 was 470.14 per 100,000 population Src: EPA = https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/us/ca/east-palo-alto/crime-rate-statistics https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/us/ca/east-palo-alto/crim... SF = https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/us/ca/san-francisco/crime-rate-statistics https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/us/ca/san-francisco/crime...
- throw9872349872 6y agoWow.. so violent crime in SF has the same rate as death by covid19? Puts things into perspective..
- jameslk 6y agoWhere are you getting your numbers for COVID-19 deaths for SF? Cumulative deaths in SF for COVID-19 is 123 so far according to https://data.sfgov.org/stories/s/COVID-19-Cases-and-Deaths/dak2-gvuj/ https://data.sfgov.org/stories/s/COVID-19-Cases-and-Deaths/d...
- foota 6y agoThose aren't death rates, they're the rate at which violent crimes are committed. Only some of which result in deaths.
- kwillets 6y agoDrug overdoses are far ahead of CoVid.
- millstone 6y agoI did not know that East Palo Alto had improved so much, that is great news! Can you recommend any articles on what specifically was done?
- pottertheotter 6y agoI'm pretty sure gentrification is the primary driver. You also have Ikea and Four Seasons within the city boundaries, and Facebook HQ right next door.
- cobookman 6y agoGentrification has a part, but so does the work of city & community leader. East Palo Alto became a city in 1983, before that the county handled the area's affairs...and given the smaller size/population it was not a primary focus. A lot of credit goes towards the police relationship - https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/01/02/how-east-palo-alto-shed-its-crime-rep-and-built-a-new-path-forward/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/01/02/how-east-palo-alto-sh...
- gumby 6y agoYes, there was a specific gentrification plan that included the Ikea/Home Depot complex and separately the Four Seasons Complex, but they appeared due to quite a lot of prior work. In the early 80s (82 or 84) they decided to incorporate on their own rather than join Menlo Park (they were just an unincorporated part of MP at the time, and still share a school district and, I believe, the fire district too). Calling the new town East Palo Alto (though Palo Alto itself is in a completely different county) was smart, despite earlier efforts to name the not yet incorporated place "Nairobi". They had been county land so had had only had a sheriff; but before the Whisky Gulch (where four seasons complex now stands) was built they already had a municipal police department. So yes you could say "gentrification" but it was a proactive policy by the city government. IIRC the last active farm in the city limits was sold after 2000, lasting longer than Mountain View or (except for stock) Palo Alto. The "murder capital" label was true only because the population wasn't high making the rate high. I personally never felt unsafe there though I only filled my car or got a coffee there.
- 6y ago
- noodlenotes 6y agoDid East Palo Alto actually turn things around, or did it just gentrify as housing prices in the nearby cities went up and up?
- nradov 6y agoThat happened in the mid 1990s before the latest wave of gentrification.
- ponker 6y agoDoes it matter? The city is now safe.
- tupputuppu 6y agoIndeed. San Francisco of all places should have benefitted from the huge wave of gentrification, yet the outcomes point in the opposite direction.
- nradov 6y agoEast Palo Alto also received significant law enforcement assistance from the state and neighboring cities. I wonder if SF leaders would want the CHP patrolling their streets? https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1994-01-09-1994009023-story.html https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1994-01-09-19940090...
- redis_mlc 6y agoEPA got gentrified over the past 20 years.
- jseliger 6y agoThe other thing is that SF's political leadership is put into leadership positions by voters; one could just as easily say, "SF voters have squandered a fortune."
- bassman9000 6y agoReminding this on HN is kind of taboo. And for good reason.
- tupputuppu 6y agoWhat is that reason? Apologies but I'm daft - do you mean it hits too close to home?
- phobosanomaly 6y agoThese are mentally ill people who are living in tents on the street. What are they supposed to do? How are the city managers supposed to solve that problem? Would love to hear policy proposals for how to tackle it in a humanitarian fashion. I don't have any answers. It's a tremendously complex problem. LA hasn't solved it either. Neither has Las Vegas, or San Diego.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- olivermarks 6y agoWhen Gavin Newsom was San Francisco mayor he issued a proclamation in 2004 that he would end 'homelessness' within ten years. https://www.sfchronicle.com/archive/item/A-decade-of-homelessness-Thousands-in-S-F-30431.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/archive/item/A-decade-of-homeles... As California governor he is now rolling out that failed policy across the state, attracting indigents and itinerants from far and wide with substance abuse, mental health and/or economic hardship problems. People who aren't thinking assume 'not in my back yard' is the problem with resisting including these hordes of people 'into their community'. The latest fiasco is a half billion dollars being spent on buying hotels to 'convert into housing' across California. This destroys bed tax revenue, places for tourists to stay while introducing a sizable contingent of people with serious issues into downtown areas. Proven approaches are projects like loaves and fishes in Austin Texas but California is ignoring cost effective and practical solutions, instead behaving like the well meaning but naive parents of an addict, lavishing money and help on their very sick child until it runs out with no success. https://mlf.org https://mlf.org California's autocratic political class are going to have a serious reckoning soon...
- phobosanomaly 6y agoAlthough undoubtedly an excellent program, Loaves and fishes is projected to provides housing for 200 people at some point in the future. SF currently has somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 homeless people living on the streets right now. From that SF Chronicle article: "A decade and roughly $1.5 billion later, the city has succeeded in moving 19,500 homeless people off its streets, roughly equivalent to relocating the entire Castro district. But despite that major effort, the homeless population hasn’t budged, showing that as one homeless person is helped, another takes his place." I mean, that's just incredible. They relocated nearly 20,000 people off the streets. What else are they supposed to do? You can't accuse them of not trying. They moved 100x more people off the streets than that Loaves and Fishes housing project is projected to do at some point in the future. It's a tremendously difficult problem to actually solve within the constraints of the constitution, and human decency.
- thatfrenchguy 6y agoThis is not because of crime, this is because upper-middle-class families in the US, especially in the bay area, play the "chase the school district" game in hopes that their kids will get a "better education" (which means being with other upper-middle class folks), despite it being a terrible idea both for society and for their kids.
- egsmi 6y agoI thought upper-middle-class families just went to private school.
- thatfrenchguy 6y agoNope, upper-middle class families buy a 1.5 to 3 million dollar house "to be in the right school district" in the Bay Area. Ask your colleagues with kids :-)
- myrandomcomment 6y agoYup! Had a kid. Where to live? Menlo, PA, Los Gatos, Cupertino, Los Altos. Moved to Los Gatos. Schools were the single driving factor in picking the area in which to look for housing. Without having a kid, downtown San Jose, Redwood City, East PA, etc would have been on the list. SF was never on the list for what it is worth. I like cites. Tokyo, NYC, London, etc. SF is not a really city as the side walk roll up at 10pm and in the past few years it looks more and more like a public toilet. If you step in shit on the sidewalk in SF, it likely not from a dog.
- Zhenya 6y agoThere are a few more cities with amazing schools on the Peninsula but this is effectively the calculus. Some people still send their kids to private schools from those cities but the home value is buoyed by access to the public schools.
- thatfrenchguy 6y ago
- monadic2 6y agoThe reason it's not good for kids is that the houses with enough space are either crazy expensive or far from work. Trust me if I could afford it I would love to live in SF.
- galimaufry 6y ago> That can easily be contrasted to Manhattan that was cleaned up by "broken windows policy". I believe this is more a just-so story than a fact. While New York did use the broken windows policy, they also grew the police force by 35%[1]. Rather than a special effect of the broken windows policy, it could just be with more police they were able to solve/prevent more crimes. One interesting thing about policing in the US, is that the US has fewer police than Europe and also more crime. People want to say interesting things about how politics or culture affect crime, but the simple story (where crime is high in the US because it is relatively easy to get away with it because there aren't many police) may be the best one. [1] https://www.nber.org/digest/jan03/w9061.html https://www.nber.org/digest/jan03/w9061.html
- Zhenya 6y agoExcellent. Let's get more police on the streets of SF. How many patrolmen can you hire with the ~170k avg salary of the cities paper pusher employee?
- tim333 6y agoEurope is much more inclined to improve things by providing government funded housing, education and the like.
- tupputuppu 6y agoI'm confused. The parent claimed the exact opposite - that we have more policing in Europe than in the US. Did you have opposite statistics?
- ashtonkem 6y agoNYC got safer at the same time large swaths of America became safer, a trend that has not yet been satisfactorily explained. These trends are far too complicated for simple explanations like “they hired more cops”.
- username90 6y agoNYC reduced their murder rate by an order of magnitude in just a few years. That is exceptional. There were several things that happened during these years, among them the expanded police force, much more aggressive stop and frisk to get people to stop take guns to the streets, and after the murder rate had started dropping they started with the broken window policy.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- AmericanChopper 6y agoHere I was thinking consulting at banks was the easiest money that could possibly be made. Turns out I should have been working for the local government in San Francisco.
- KKKKkkkk1 6y ago> That can easily be contrasted to Manhattan that was cleaned up by "broken windows policy". Reminder: That policy was found to be discriminatory and unconstitutional by the federal courts.
- Zhenya 6y agoI'm contrasting funding police and cleaning up a city versus paying continual homage to whatever the city is doing now - not much.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]