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I'm leaving San Francisco next month also. I just see no reason to continue living here. The weather is nice in California, but the city is so mismanaged it's a
by Moodles 6y ago
I'm leaving San Francisco next month also. I just see no reason to continue living here. The weather is nice in California, but the city is so mismanaged it's a joke. The homelessness has been an issue for decades now and local politicians always talk about it, but what do they actually do to help? I genuinely have no clue where the high taxes go. I just find it so ironic that San Francisco is a bastion of liberalism, yet in Tenderloin every day for decades tech bros have stepped over needles and homeless people on their way to make their 200k a year. Why didn't they build more houses here? Oh, the views would be spoiled! Right. People can continue shitting in the street then. We don't mind that view.
- isoskeles 6y agoThese days, tents. https://sfist.com/2021/03/04/insanely-it-is-costing-san-francisco/ https://sfist.com/2021/03/04/insanely-it-is-costing-san-fran...
- khuey 6y agoWorth noting that the actual tents are cheap and what's expensive is the security, social services, meals, etc that come along with it. For comparison, the cost to incarcerate someone in California is around $7k/mo and what that money is spent on is broken down at https://lao.ca.gov/PolicyAreas/CJ/6_cj_inmatecost https://lao.ca.gov/PolicyAreas/CJ/6_cj_inmatecost
- xyzzyz 6y agoLast I checked, California cost per inmate was more than double the national average. Interestingly, from what I remember, 20 years ago the same cost in California was about national average. California should investigate contracting the prison service to Oklahoma: Oklahoma spends per prisoner something like a quarter of California spends, so California could save lots of money this way, and Oklahoma would make a lot of money, a great example of positive sum trade. Of course, that’s not going to happen, because California rulers don’t want to incarcerate all these people, and from this perspective, high cost is a feature, not a bug: it helps in arguing against incarceration.
- season2episode3 6y agoRight off the bat I'm not sure you want to look at Oklahoma as a shining example of how to treat prisoners. https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2019/feb/5/oklahoma-number-one-incarceration-rates/ https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2019/feb/5/oklahoma-num...
- dehrmann 6y ago> tents are cheap But that plot of land its pitched on might be worth $200 per month (using FiDi pre-pandemic parking rates).
- alain94040 6y agoHere's an interesting article that starts to answer where the homeless budget is going: https://www.sfpublicpress.org/surge-in-s-f-homelessness-funding-could-be-a-game-changer/ https://www.sfpublicpress.org/surge-in-s-f-homelessness-fund...
- Moodles 6y agoIt's not even just the homelessness. Public transport sucks too. Just given taxes and cost of living, I just don't see the value at all.
- systemvoltage 6y agoPeople of San Francisco passed a law t̶o̶ ̶a̶l̶l̶o̶w̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶ ̶r̶o̶b̶b̶e̶r̶y̶ ̶u̶n̶d̶e̶r̶ ̶$̶1̶0̶0̶0̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶f̶i̶l̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶c̶a̶s̶e̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶c̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶o̶p̶s̶.̶ They also expect safe neighborhoods. You can't have both. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26040812 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26040812 Liberal policies such as this does not solve the actual problem. Instead of providing food and shelter to the poor, perhaps starting an infrastructure program to employ these people and fix the damn roads, they empower the poor to go rampage stores to survive. Edit: I might be wrong. I think I am misreading this, it seems to be not just SF city per se, but the entire state of California. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47 See sacramento article: https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2019/09/25/grab-and-dash-thefts-rise-police-blame-law/ https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2019/09/25/grab-and-dash-the...
- Moodles 6y agoYeah, but we throw a really nice gay pride parade to show we're good people. Loads of BLM support on walls. Many of my colleagues updated their instagram filters.
- bassman9000 6y agoGuaranteed a decent amount of people won't see the sarcasm in this comment.
- Moodles 6y agoAnd that, my friend, is the final reason why I am leaving ;-)
- bassman9000 6y agoThe downvotes confirm.
- efikoman 6y ago?
- throwaway6734 6y agoNIMBYism is a scourge
- ajmurmann 6y agoIt's puzzling to me that NIMBYism seems so common among people who identify as liberal. It's clearly just another way of kicking away the ladder and is inherently with the stated goals of liberalism. At least neo-liberals seems to have gotten this one 100% correct.
- maybelsyrup 6y agoI'm wondering what you think of the idea that the people we call "liberal" in this country aren't really all that "leftist" - they're just more left than our "conservatives". This is especially true for economic beliefs, I find. Like, ask an Italian communist (they still exist!) whether Joe Biden is a leftist and he'll choke from laughter on his ravioli. And after all, Barack Obama's world leader bff wasn't some Green Party guy in Bolivia or something - it was Angela Merkel. I came around to this some time ago and I'm always curious if it makes sense to others.
- ralusek 6y agoLiberalism isn't a leftist ideology, why on earth would you expect a liberal to be a leftist?
- globular-toast 6y agoThis is what happens when several orthogonal concepts are distilled into two categories. Nobody actually knows what left or right actually mean. Originally it was just about economic policy, left being larger government, right being smaller (no party was extreme because that's insane). Now right can also mean authoritarian or racist. To many it's simply left=good, right=bad.
- reducesuffering 6y ago
- throwaway3699 6y agoCities are the root cause, imo. As a society we need to spread out towards the countryside more.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sjwright 6y agoDense cities make the problems more visible and makes decentralised solutions less effective, but the problems aren’t inherent. There are plenty of well functioning cities with high population density. And there are plenty of low density urban environments that suck hard.
- typest 6y agoCities are more efficient and sustainable. Most importantly, cities bring people together to enable cooperation, therefore acting as a multiplier on what is produced and generally making humanity better off. What’s needed are better run cities.
- throwaway3699 6y agoI'm not so sure that's even possible. The city reduces every single person's available personal space, naturally tensions will increase as a result.
- mikem170 6y agoHow about towns, dense in the middle, with greenways out to nearby nature? My thinking is there is more space for nature if people are a bit concentrated in one area. Hong Kong is an extreme example, over two thirds of the land is nature [0], the rest seems to be mostly high-rise skyscrapers! I think they did a good job with the small space they had to work within. I was hoping that you weren't thinking like a giant suburb or exurb where we are in cars all the time? That can be such a drag. [0] https://www.pland.gov.hk/pland_en/info_serv/statistic/landu.html https://www.pland.gov.hk/pland_en/info_serv/statistic/landu....
- lettergram 6y agoJust want to point out, this could be the result of socialist values. Throughout all history from Rome to Soviet Russia to the Bay Area. Giving away free stuff leads to an influx of people to the population center. They wanted or needed a free ride. The population center doesn’t get taxes from those people, so they are a burden on the system. Further exasperating the issue, corruption. There’s always corruption, in a company (using the corporate card to go out and eat), in government (preferred contractors - family friends, etc), etc. personally, I find corporations are slightly more accountable because they can fail if they don’t provide value... governments have no such burden. They raise taxes, and in the case of the US get bailed out by states or the feds. The only case counter to this is detroit that I know of (where it just collapsed). When I lived in the bay, when I went to SF I was regularly accosted by people screaming. Shit was everywhere. The public transit was down at least once a week, it was miserable. I lived in Alameda and that was a bit better. Locals were super nice, worked on the beach, etc. still wondered why I couldn’t get the bus to show up but w.e. If you want a better city / state, stop the one-party rule and actually shake things up. There needs to be competition and accountability. As it stands, it’s getting to the point the lights can’t even be kept on.
- croes 6y agoHow does this reduce the number of homeless? This "socialist" values maybe the reason why SF attracts so many homeless but it's not the cause of their existence.
- mensetmanusman 6y agoIt can cause population centralization, which can actually make the problem harder to solve. Other parts of the country are more than willing to help
- hindsightbias 6y agoSF trolled tech and let them have the Tenderloin. It took all those bright folks a decade to figure it out.
- thisarticle 6y agoThey’re intelligent, not bright.
- dan-robertson 6y agoWhat is the difference?
- gamechangr 6y agoNot OP but Intelligence is having knowledge (think book knowledge ) Bright is like sharp. (think street smart or think things through that are complexed) I have friends that I consider very intelligent that are not bright. One makes $200k as an actuary but can't figure out how to talk to his kids in a way that sounds human/normal.
- pedrosorio 6y agoThat does not seem to be the typical definition of intelligence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence#Definitions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence#Definitions Intelligence is usually defined in terms of adaptability, ability to learn, solve problems, etc.
- panzagl 6y ago18 Intelligence, 3 Wisdom.
- mdgrech23 6y agoDon't understand this comment? Did SF encourage tech companies to locate in the Tenderloin?
- chrisseaton 6y ago> I just find it so ironic that San Francisco is a bastion of liberalism, yet in Tenderloin every day for decades tech bros step over needles and homeless people on their way to make their 200k a year Why's that ironic? Isn't that exactly liberalism? Accepting and tolerating different people behaving in different ways and not forcing them to change? Individual rights and responsibilities, limited government intervention, freedom of way of living, rejecting authoritarianism and the nanny state? I feel like tons of people don't know what the word 'liberalism' means.
- young_unixer 6y agoThat's a lost battle. Liberal in the US means almost the complete opposite of the original definition.
- rcpt 6y ago> the city is so mismanaged it's a joke > I genuinely have no clue where the high taxes go. > tech bros step over needles and homeless people on their way to make their 200k a year. > Why didn't they build more houses here? I don't think you've learned about Prop 13 yet. Ignorance is bliss here. Yes there are answers to your questions, but California is more enjoyable when you're just confused about these things.
- kwdc 6y agoThis the one? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_13
- jmgao 6y agoNo, this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13 Basically, home value for property taxes gets assessed once, when you buy the property, and it can only go up by inflation after that.
- imtringued 6y agoJust replace them with land value taxes that are assessed for each block or maybe the entire neighborhood. Then split the tax bill based on the area of land owned so that you get a fixed rate per square foot.
- shagie 6y agoThe "just replace them" requires rewriting/amending the state constitution again. As long as property values are going up across the state, as a whole (of which SF is only a part of), voters tend to have a disincentive to do so.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Lammy 6y agoThe way San Francisco is managed finally made sense to me (in a bad way) once I learned about the Second Great Migration and the fact that there was basically no black population here until World War 2. Making the cost of living as expensive as possible is a wonderfully deniable way to drive out people who have been repeatedly denied the ability to build generational wealth: https://www.forbes.com/sites/priceonomics/2016/05/11/the-african-american-exodus-from-san-francisco/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/priceonomics/2016/05/11/the-afr...
- api 6y agoI've thought this for a while: NIMBYism and other anti-development policies is how liberals implement "red lining" with plausible deniability... even to themselves. They're not trying to exclude the poor and minorities. They're trying to protect the environment! Never mind that these policies encourage sprawl and waste.
- beerandt 6y agoIt's more than that- dodd frank made financing for building spec houses/housing next to impossible unless participating in a hud or similar program. These policies result in the exact opposite of what you would want to build class mobility/ American Dream/ generational wealth: more rentals (without lowering rental costs, since govt guarantees a min return), less home ownership, and a higher barrier to invest in the housing market.
- dd36 6y agoWhat?! Dodd-Frank had nothing to do with it. The housing price crash allowed institutional buyers to make a new asset class out of SFR. They bought hundreds of thousands of houses. They aggressively increase rents because they’re levered and their returns come from rent increases. This has caused rents in the rest of America to sky rocket. Not only do they vacuum up inventory, they never sell it. This hurts would be homeowners two ways. It used to be that SFR was all small funds or investors. These investors hold fixed 30 year notes and don’t have to be aggressive with rent increases. A turn is more of a concern than a rent increase. Dodd- Frank had nothing to do with that. The fix is to require these institutional funds to liquidate to owner-occupants after a decade. Let them cash out the appreciation and wind up the fund.
- mushbino 6y agoWhat do they do in the conservative cities that's more successful?
- dicomdan 6y agoEnforcing quality of life laws. It doesn't even have to be a conservative city. Both Boston and Miami look like first world cities compared to SF and LA.
- azinman2 6y agoI would classify neither as conservative cities.
- yuppie_scum 6y agoBoston? Conservative? You have no clue what you’re talking about
- carmen_sandiego 6y agoThey said Boston _wasn’t_ conservative.
- mushbino 6y agoThese cities are considerably larger and the homeless can be corraled somewhere out of sight. The difference is that in SF you have to see them.
- api 6y ago
- nathanvanfleet 6y ago> "I just find it so ironic that San Francisco is a bastion of liberalism, yet in Tenderloin every day for decades tech bros have stepped over needles and homeless people on their way to make their 200k a year" What is the irony?
- carmen_sandiego 6y agoThat the most liberal place has such disparity, I assume.
- efnx 6y agoI agree that’s not irony, and cities will often have the highest disparity simply by having more people.
- carmen_sandiego 6y agoTokyo is the biggest city in the world. 10x the population of SF. Not that many homeless addicts lying around, and the average skilled worker doesn't make that much. I can name you 50 cities bigger than SF that don't have this problem. So it seems the correlation between population size and 'rich people literally stepping over needled addicts' is not that strong.
- imtringued 6y agoStepping over needles is considered an acceptable tradeoff in SF. That's where the differences lie.
- carmen_sandiego 6y agoRight, but isn't that exactly the irony, or at least the hypocrisy? That people with the most liberal sensitivities seem willing to accept this level of visible human suffering for whatever personal benefits they get from living there? People will stereotype Texans as rugged individualists ready to shoot you for stealing from a fruit stand, or Chinese as some heartless mass that will run you over and go about their day. But I don't see any cities in those places with such visible social problems. Those drinking the SF Kool-Aid will tell you it's because of the weather being a magnet for homeless people, or some other such nonsense. As if nowhere else in the world keeps temps above freezing year round.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jb775 6y ago> I genuinely have no clue where the high taxes go. I just find it so ironic that San Francisco is a bastion of liberalism, yet... Have you ever stopped to seriously consider if this is the realistic end result of liberalism? This is a very common trend for major cities that have been under liberal control for decades (Philly, Baltimore, Chicago, etc). And yet somehow the politicians convince the population that this time around will be different.
- dehrmann 6y agoWhile I agree, the recent Texas power outage is the result of a free-market system for energy. California hasn't done well with energy either, but for different reasons. My point is that funny things happen when markets fail and when empathy-driven policy goes too far.
- rayiner 6y agoYou’re uninformed about the situation in Texas. Electricity is regulated in Texas more of less the same way as its regulated everywhere else: regulated monopolies control the distribution grid, and power is generated in regulated markets and fed into the grid. That basic mechanism is used not only in the US, but Europe too: https://fsr.eui.eu/electricity-markets-in-the-eu/ https://fsr.eui.eu/electricity-markets-in-the-eu/ (“Please note that while in the EU electricity markets have been deregulated, other regulatory models can be in place in other parts of the world.”). The problem in Texas wasn’t free market for energy specifically, but failure on the part of ERCOT (a quasi-regulatory body that oversees the grid) to impose appropriate reliability requirements in the face of unpredictable climate events.
- dehrmann 6y agoMy understanding is that no one provided incentives to cold harden production or keep surplus capacity on standby. p999 events like that are where markets fail because it's rare for utilities or consumers to have that time horizon, and "we're only sending power during a cold spell to customers already on the premium plan" isn't politically viable.
- predictmktegirl 6y agoWe left about 9 months ago. I'm not going to pontificate and judge people. From our point of view, the policies seemed to be designed to incentivize us to leave, so we left. We'll miss SF, but we were never welcome.
- 29athrowaway 6y agoWhat people call "homelessness", are different (yet overlapping) problems that can be mitigated separately: 1) Public urination / defecation: There is a need for more public bathrooms. That's cheaper than spending millions of dollars cleaning poop and urine from the streets. 2) Public intoxication and substance abuse: Decriminalizing drugs and letting people get as intoxicated as they want is not a responsible approach. The responsible approach would be to treat drug addiction as a health problem. That means, prescribing medications to help the addicts manage the reasons behind their addiction (anxiety, depression, PTSD and other conditions), their addiction, and making sure they do not overdose. 3) Littering: sentence people to do community service cleaning the litter. 4) Homelessness: Many homeless people do not want to comply with shelter rules, so they live in the streets. The shelters won't allow intoxication, drugs, etc.
- nrp 6y agoThe public bathroom issue is in part due to corruption in the city government: https://missionlocal.org/2020/02/citing-mohammed-nuru-charges-resolution-urges-san-francisco-to-flush-jcdecaux-toilet-contract/ https://missionlocal.org/2020/02/citing-mohammed-nuru-charge...
- 3131s 6y agoPublic intoxication and substance abuse: Decriminalizing drugs and letting people get as intoxicated as they want is not a responsible approach. You won't stop me or anyone else with your nanny-state laws. It's easy to get bricks in Cali, good luck!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 29athrowaway 6y agoThere are 2 types of states: states that people complain about, and states that nobody cares about.
- nradov 6y agoI support opening up more public restrooms but those are extremely expensive to maintain and secure in areas with large homeless populations. People use them for drug dealing and prostitution, and vandalism is constant.
- randoramax 6y agoDid you vote at past elections? If you didn't, you're partially responsible for the shit we walk on.
- carmen_sandiego 6y agoFor very small values of ‘partial’, maybe.
- bogomipz 6y agoThe article states: >"Most who left San Francisco stayed in the Bay Area economic region, according to the study, and some 80% remained in the stateMost who left San Francisco stayed in the Bay Area economic region, according to the study, and some 80% remained in the state" I'm curious where you fall on the exodus spectrum? Are you leaving California or just SF? Where did you decide to relocate to?
- Redoubts 6y agoNot OP, but I left SF for NYC.
- Trias11 6y ago>> Despite suggestions of a California exodus to other states in recent months, most who leave that region do not move far << Right. I left CA to Vegas and it’s like every second car on a stoplight has CA license plates. Houses in decent areas are overbidding. What Covid didn’t do - liberal policies finished. SF flooding with feces, rising crime, exorbitant taxes and lockdown nonsense. We had enough. Voting with my feet
- dkdk8283 6y ago> I genuinely have no clue where the high taxes go. I worked on a public project. The funds were misappropriated in my opinion. Your tax dollars are wasted like in every other state. Therefore: lower taxes.
- KirillPanov 6y agoSir, you are gravely mistaken about the 'Loin. People do not shit in the street there. They shit in 20-pound bags left upon the street: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemcneal/bag-of-poop-san-francisco https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemcneal/bag-of-... Important distinction. Take note.
- byOf4 6y agoIt’s pretty fascinating how in a country “by of, for the people” they’ve chosen to sit on social media, complain about wanting freedom from social ills, but also the freedom to optimize their time to avoid dealing with it. Y’all want to disrupt something? Extreme ownership models really seem like the last social structure to disrupt.
- SergeAx 6y agoMy knowledge of SF zoning and housing problems is quite limited, but how in your opinion building new residential property will help the problem of homelessness and drug abusing? For homeless and drug abusers to be able to afford housing, prices must fall by a couple of orders of magnitude.
- myrandomcomment 6y agoMy wife and I used to enjoy going into SF for shopping, dinner, Opera or a show. It has become a shit hole and even before the pandemic we just stop going. To be clear I feel a great deal of sympathy for the homeless population and I believe the policies of the local government as well as the failure of our mental health system are the cause. Providing housing and mental health support would really help.