8 ms·

Two things: 1) San Francisco has suffered from a massive tech exodus during COVID and its lockdowns, exacerbated with many municipal policies: https://sfciti.

Two things: 1) San Francisco has suffered from a massive tech exodus during COVID and its lockdowns, exacerbated with many municipal policies: https://sfciti.org/sf-tech-exodus/ https://sfciti.org/sf-tech-exodus/ 2) The city has only been saved from deep budgetary cuts by a massive federal bailout: https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Federal-stimulus-nearly-wipes-away-San-16010321.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Federal-stimulu... Which is not a sustainable strategy. I interpret this announcement as Breed recognizing many of her administration's policies have have a disastrous effect on the SF tax base, and for the tax base to return, she needs to clean up the city. I'll be watching the numbers to see if the city can turn itself around. A lot of the companies that went remote due to COVID or went to Miami due to politics will never go back.

DoctorNick 5y ago
"clean up the city" = further brutalize the poor and unhoused.
- bostonsre 5y ago
  What would you call positively helping the poor and unhoused that also results in literally cleaner and safer streets?
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    Offering them some form of housing that provides a modicum of humanizing privacy would be a great start.
    - HideousKojima 5y ago
      ~50% of the homeless are severely mentally ill and/or on hard drugs, giving them housing won't fix their behavioral problems.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - woodruffw 5y ago
        I didn’t say it would. I don’t need to advocate for a panacea to think that we should humanize the homeless and offer them permanent, private shelter.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - wolverine876 5y ago
        > giving them housing won't fix their behavioral problems. What is that based on? My understanding from experts is that housing provides people with the stability to address their other problems. It's a valuable first step. Imagine trying to deal with whatever your problems are today if you also were homeless. Now imagine your problems are far worse, food is an issue, and emotionally debilitating. Even well-housed people I know have a hard time dealing with their long-term problems. Add some more stress to their lives and they fall apart. > ~50% of the homeless are severely mentally ill and/or on hard drugs Where does that number come from? AFAIK, medical bills are a leading cause of homelessness.
      - goodpoint 5y ago
        > giving them housing won't fix their behavioral problems Citation needed. Mental illness is very unlikely to improve if someone is sleeping under a bridge. Just like pneumonia. Besides, free mental health services and nationalized healthcare exist for a reason.
    - cmckn 5y ago
      Have there been any recent attempts at providing this? Seattle has had some success creating tiny house communities, I just saw one the other day and it was really cool!
      - diogenescynic 5y ago
        Tiny house communities is good branding for slums. Weird how we are going backwards with property codes and rule of law in general. Ironically it’s the Shitlibs and neo-liberals who seem to be implementing some weird libertarian Ancapistan dystopia which is fine for the rich with private security but everyone else is on their own.
      - woodruffw 5y ago
        I’m not sure about recently, but NYC has had a court-enforced housing mandate for decades now.
  - eyko 5y ago
    Some would probably call it stigmatising poverty or something along those lines.
  - thomasahle 5y ago
    The Tenderloin plan apparently has the following priorities: Preventing violent crime; Streamlining emergency medical calls; Interrupting open air-drug dealing; Interrupting open-air substance abuse; Establishing safe passage and accessibility for citizens; Expanding housing resources; Interrupting illegal vending; Improving neighborhood cleanliness; Only point 6 is about actually helping the homeless.
    - goodpoint 5y ago
      ...and 4 points are about hiding the problems instead of solving them.
    - diebeforei485 5y ago
      What if I told you that there are plenty of people and families in the Tenderloin that face public safety issues on the daily on their way to school? Now that a safe injection site is opening, we need no longer tolerate people injecting needles into themselves on the streets. Maybe you think what's going on in the Tenderloin (and Soma) is acceptable. But if so, you're in the minority now. No one should be subjected to being harassed by psychotic people while picking up household necessities at Target on a Saturday afternoon. After all these years people's patience is wearing thin.
      - thomasahle 5y ago
        > Maybe you think what's going on in the Tenderloin (and Soma) is acceptable. I definitely don't think things are good as they are now. And I would highly appreciate programs that help the homeless as well as cleans things up. > What if I told you that there are plenty of people and families in the Tenderloin that face public safety issues on the daily on their way to school? If you read the post I was replying too, bostonsre was describing this program as mainly about helping the poor, and with cleaning up as a side effect. In reality the program mostly talks about the cleaning up side of things. That's all.
        diogenescynic 5y ago
        What would help the homeless that SF isn’t already doing? City already offers them shelter and services. And most refuse because the pay don’t want to obey any rules. There’s always this constant rhetoric that more needs to be done but frankly SF is already doing a ton but it’s all optional… it needs to be mandator. Either you accept the housing, or we arrest you for blocking public sidewalks. Either you accept drug counseling, or we arrest you for drug possession. If there is no carrot and stick approach, people will just keep using. And now that meth and heroin are decriminalized and theft is decriminalized, it’s obvious why things are only getting worse.
pm90 5y ago
I don’t think the Mayor cares about the Tech exodus as much as about voting residents in the troubled neighborhoods that are mentioned; only in the HN bubble would people think that.
- cbozeman 5y ago
  Voters don't mean shit if they're mostly poor and can't pay enough in taxes to support the city's infrastructure. You don't have to be part of the HN bubble to know that money talks and bullshit walks.
  - cam0 5y ago
    Despite the dubious "tech exodus" there are still a lot of insanely wealthy people in this city. One recent example being a house in a not-particularly-desirable neighborhood selling for $1million over asking price: https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/San-Francisco-home-sells-for-1-million-over-asking-16695641.php https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/San-Francisco-home...
    - isx726552 5y ago
      Wealthy people in SF, particularly “old money” types, don’t really pay significant taxes: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Rich-residents-who-got-SF-street-back-will-pay-12-12402464.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Rich-residents-w... Businesses are what pay it. Hence the payroll tax a few years ago. Hence the relative ease of getting new office space approved vs. new housing. To preserve the tax base, the city govt. will need to keep business around and office space full. Even if the crotchety old money people who pay pennies per year for their semi-private streets don’t like it.
      - cam0 5y ago
        Agreed, and while SF certainly does have a fair amount of old money, I'd argue that most of it is new money. From my point of view, most of the homes selling in my neighborhood over the past year (average sale price of $2.2 million) are young-ish families in their 30s and 40s who have made their money in tech over the past 10 or so years.
jeremyis 5y ago
For many of us who moved from SF->Miami, politics had nothing to do with it. I’ve been in Miami over a year and I LOVE it. Come check it out :-) Ps - I coorganize a software engineer meetup here. We’ve got good representation!
- Aperocky 5y ago
  But what about summers?
  - dougmwne 5y ago
    I spend time north of there and as long as you’re on the ocean summers are awesome. Walking on the beach is just about always great on a hot day since you get sea breeze and can cool off in the water. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but it sure is mine!
  - silisili 5y ago
    Not OP, but speaking from personal experience and preference, summers in So Fl aren't that bad. It rarely goes above 90, and there's a constant sea breeze. Don't get me wrong, it is hot, but never unbearable.
- 762236 5y ago
  What about moonlighting? I can do that in CA, and own my output from my own time.
  - ed25519FUUU 5y ago
    “Own your output” what does this mean?
    - 762236 5y ago
      In most employment contracts in the US, the employer owns anything you create, including what you do in your personal time. But not in California, which happens to have a thriving startup culture, many of which were created after work hours.
wolverine876 5y ago
Lots of cities have had remote workers leave, permanently or temporarily, for obvious reasons. Is there anything showing that SF is somehow worse? What I do believe I see is a strong relationship between reactionary/GOP political messaging and what is repeated about cities. The Republican National Convention's focus was the 'chaos' in cities, IIRC, though few noticed because other issues dominated. Reactionary messaging seems inredibly effective; whatever they say, people of all stripes are soon repeating. The emotionally intense, repetitive style also seems to match it - I don't see many reasoned arguments. It can absolutely be self-fulfilling. Perception is reality. Look at many Americans worried about crime in cities, while crime is low and dropping. Homicides (a small portion) are up, but all over the place, not cities in particular. (Source: Recent FBI/DoJ report.) I live in a place with low crime, yet people say they are leaving because of it. > A lot of the companies that ... went to Miami due to politics will never go back. As of a few months ago, most people leaving SF went to the greater Bay Area, next elsewhere in CA, next the state of Washington. Most companies go to SF for politics (or policy), but it's the norm and therefore unremakrable. You don't see a lot of leading companies outside the leading cities, maybe for a reason. Politics, especially when one group advocates ignorance, hate, and disrupting the rule of law, correlates with intelligent policy. Also, most people don't like living around ignorance, hate, and chaos.
- refurb 5y ago
  No matter your politics, the quality of life is going downhill in SF. Property crime is up, racial attacks are up and more concerning are the brazen daylight looting of stores which shows criminals have little fear of consequences.
  - miked85 5y ago
    What consequences?
- dougmwne 5y ago
  This is a sensible argument, but there is absolutely a reality on the ground. San Francisco has horrid problems compared to all other US cities I have been to. It is even more extreme when you compare it to international cities. The crime, homelessness and excrement is extremely visible, in the statistics and while walking down the street. It is bad, it is broken, and it doesn’t need to be that way. I spent a month in 5 separate cities this year, one of which was Vienna. Vienna is spectacularly well run through the result of decades of well considered governance. A significant contribution is a yearly investment in public housing which has prevented property speculation bubbles and given marginal people a place to live. The first step to fixing a problem is to admit you have a problem.
rat87 5y ago
Hasn't San Francisco Covid policy been a massive success? I'm pretty sure their numbers are a lot better then most parts of the country especially considering urban density
- pmorici 5y ago
  If your only goal is to minimize deaths from COVID without regard for any other consequence. Most pragmatic people recognize that you need to weigh deaths against economic health and other considerations and strike a balance.
  - trs8080 5y ago
    > Most pragmatic people recognize that you need to weigh deaths against economic health and other considerations and strike a balance. I'll believe this when you offer up yourself and your own family members as a sacrifice to the economy.
    - pmorici 5y ago
      Studies show a correlation between economic down turns and increased mortality rates. I say this as someone who didn't / doesn't have the luxury of routine work from home. Adjusted for population age Florida and California had similar death rates but one was extreme in their measures and the other was very laze fare. Both were very average relative to other states.
  - wahern 5y ago
    Earlier this year there was a lot of reporting about how California recovered much quicker from the first few waves that shut down the country, especially as compared to states like Georgia. Just because other states had fewer restrictions does not mean people actually returned to their routines. Some argued that in California more people were quicker to return to economic life, greater social restrictions notwithstanding, because they felt safer. I have no idea how those trends and theories have actually panned out since then. And the theories weren't necessarily needed. It's not surprising California's economy did relatively well simply because it benefits disproportionately from tech, entertainment, and related industries which were more amenable to work-from-home, and which actually saw growth potential from people spending more time at home.
cipheredStones 5y ago
The departure of tech workers is what springs to mind for us (I too moved out of SF during the pandemic), but don't forget that tourism is also a huge factor in the city economy, and that has also been decimated - though more temporarily. I also think it's over-hasty to attribute many of these things to Breed's policies. Companies in knowledge industries going remote isn't a unique-to-SF thing, and the housing prices and street problems that caused many people to leave the city are rooted in bad housing policy that long predates her mayoral term.
eightysixfour 5y ago
I thought the recent data showed that most of this exodus of workers is overblown? People leaving stayed nearby, and people continued to move in (at a much lower rate than pre pandemic) > About two-thirds of those who left San Francisco last year stayed in the 11-county Bay Area economic region, according to the same California Policy Lab study. About 80 percent stayed in California. https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2021/07/08/uc-report-counters-tales-of-california-exodus.html https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2021/07/08/uc-repor...
kelnos 5y ago
I don't find this argument to be particularly persuasive, at least not unless you are also making the claim that all big cities are screwed. COVID caused many people to leave cities, not just tech workers in SF. The federal stimulus package was just a part of the federal government's efforts to shore things up due to COVID. Of course it's not a sustainable strategy; it's a short-term measure due to the pandemic. Now, certainly things are not going to go back to the way they were once we start pulling out of the pandemic (whenever that will be). But they will go some part of the way back. I don't think it's easy to predict exactly where things will be in 1, 2, or 5 years. Maybe what comes will be enough, maybe it won't. I'm betting that things will work out just fine. There will be some budget shortfalls, and some strife, but life will go on, and the city will rebound, just like most/all of the other cities in the world will. Frankly I don't care why Breed just now feels like she needs to clean up the city, but I'm glad it's happening, finally.
more_corn 5y ago
I’m shutting down my tech company based in SF due to the bad faith accounting practices of their local tax office. (I’ll just open a new one elsewhere) I won’t call it corruption because I don’t know that anyone is personally profiting, but I’m sick of dealing with it. I’m out, I’d never recommend anyone do business in SF. Time and again I’ve seen the same bad behavior when I interact with any department (I once spent a week in the planning office— every day with revised plans, ultimately rejected not because of anything being incorrect but because, and I quote “I don’t like the drawings”). SF city government is run by a bunch of entitled pretentious pricks on arbitrary power trips and no regard for the people they ostensibly represent and serve. I’m not surprised in the least that they can’t figure out how to provide basic safety for their citizens and businesses, or that they’ve lost entire regions to lawlessness.

DoctorNick 5y ago

"clean up the city" = further brutalize the poor and unhoused.

bostonsre 5y ago
What would you call positively helping the poor and unhoused that also results in literally cleaner and safer streets?
- woodruffw 5y ago
  Offering them some form of housing that provides a modicum of humanizing privacy would be a great start.
  - HideousKojima 5y ago
    ~50% of the homeless are severely mentally ill and/or on hard drugs, giving them housing won't fix their behavioral problems.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - woodruffw 5y ago
      I didn’t say it would. I don’t need to advocate for a panacea to think that we should humanize the homeless and offer them permanent, private shelter.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      > giving them housing won't fix their behavioral problems. What is that based on? My understanding from experts is that housing provides people with the stability to address their other problems. It's a valuable first step. Imagine trying to deal with whatever your problems are today if you also were homeless. Now imagine your problems are far worse, food is an issue, and emotionally debilitating. Even well-housed people I know have a hard time dealing with their long-term problems. Add some more stress to their lives and they fall apart. > ~50% of the homeless are severely mentally ill and/or on hard drugs Where does that number come from? AFAIK, medical bills are a leading cause of homelessness.
    - goodpoint 5y ago
      > giving them housing won't fix their behavioral problems Citation needed. Mental illness is very unlikely to improve if someone is sleeping under a bridge. Just like pneumonia. Besides, free mental health services and nationalized healthcare exist for a reason.
  - cmckn 5y ago
    Have there been any recent attempts at providing this? Seattle has had some success creating tiny house communities, I just saw one the other day and it was really cool!
    - diogenescynic 5y ago
      Tiny house communities is good branding for slums. Weird how we are going backwards with property codes and rule of law in general. Ironically it’s the Shitlibs and neo-liberals who seem to be implementing some weird libertarian Ancapistan dystopia which is fine for the rich with private security but everyone else is on their own.
    - woodruffw 5y ago
      I’m not sure about recently, but NYC has had a court-enforced housing mandate for decades now.
- eyko 5y ago
  Some would probably call it stigmatising poverty or something along those lines.
- thomasahle 5y ago
  The Tenderloin plan apparently has the following priorities: Preventing violent crime; Streamlining emergency medical calls; Interrupting open air-drug dealing; Interrupting open-air substance abuse; Establishing safe passage and accessibility for citizens; Expanding housing resources; Interrupting illegal vending; Improving neighborhood cleanliness; Only point 6 is about actually helping the homeless.
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    ...and 4 points are about hiding the problems instead of solving them.
  - diebeforei485 5y ago
    What if I told you that there are plenty of people and families in the Tenderloin that face public safety issues on the daily on their way to school? Now that a safe injection site is opening, we need no longer tolerate people injecting needles into themselves on the streets. Maybe you think what's going on in the Tenderloin (and Soma) is acceptable. But if so, you're in the minority now. No one should be subjected to being harassed by psychotic people while picking up household necessities at Target on a Saturday afternoon. After all these years people's patience is wearing thin.
    - thomasahle 5y ago
      > Maybe you think what's going on in the Tenderloin (and Soma) is acceptable. I definitely don't think things are good as they are now. And I would highly appreciate programs that help the homeless as well as cleans things up. > What if I told you that there are plenty of people and families in the Tenderloin that face public safety issues on the daily on their way to school? If you read the post I was replying too, bostonsre was describing this program as mainly about helping the poor, and with cleaning up as a side effect. In reality the program mostly talks about the cleaning up side of things. That's all.
      - diogenescynic 5y ago
        What would help the homeless that SF isn’t already doing? City already offers them shelter and services. And most refuse because the pay don’t want to obey any rules. There’s always this constant rhetoric that more needs to be done but frankly SF is already doing a ton but it’s all optional… it needs to be mandator. Either you accept the housing, or we arrest you for blocking public sidewalks. Either you accept drug counseling, or we arrest you for drug possession. If there is no carrot and stick approach, people will just keep using. And now that meth and heroin are decriminalized and theft is decriminalized, it’s obvious why things are only getting worse.

pm90 5y ago

I don’t think the Mayor cares about the Tech exodus as much as about voting residents in the troubled neighborhoods that are mentioned; only in the HN bubble would people think that.

cbozeman 5y ago
Voters don't mean shit if they're mostly poor and can't pay enough in taxes to support the city's infrastructure. You don't have to be part of the HN bubble to know that money talks and bullshit walks.
- cam0 5y ago
  Despite the dubious "tech exodus" there are still a lot of insanely wealthy people in this city. One recent example being a house in a not-particularly-desirable neighborhood selling for $1million over asking price: https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/San-Francisco-home-sells-for-1-million-over-asking-16695641.php https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/San-Francisco-home...
  - isx726552 5y ago
    Wealthy people in SF, particularly “old money” types, don’t really pay significant taxes: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Rich-residents-who-got-SF-street-back-will-pay-12-12402464.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Rich-residents-w... Businesses are what pay it. Hence the payroll tax a few years ago. Hence the relative ease of getting new office space approved vs. new housing. To preserve the tax base, the city govt. will need to keep business around and office space full. Even if the crotchety old money people who pay pennies per year for their semi-private streets don’t like it.
    - cam0 5y ago
      Agreed, and while SF certainly does have a fair amount of old money, I'd argue that most of it is new money. From my point of view, most of the homes selling in my neighborhood over the past year (average sale price of $2.2 million) are young-ish families in their 30s and 40s who have made their money in tech over the past 10 or so years.

jeremyis 5y ago

For many of us who moved from SF->Miami, politics had nothing to do with it. I’ve been in Miami over a year and I LOVE it. Come check it out :-) Ps - I coorganize a software engineer meetup here. We’ve got good representation!

Aperocky 5y ago
But what about summers?
- dougmwne 5y ago
  I spend time north of there and as long as you’re on the ocean summers are awesome. Walking on the beach is just about always great on a hot day since you get sea breeze and can cool off in the water. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but it sure is mine!
- silisili 5y ago
  Not OP, but speaking from personal experience and preference, summers in So Fl aren't that bad. It rarely goes above 90, and there's a constant sea breeze. Don't get me wrong, it is hot, but never unbearable.
762236 5y ago
What about moonlighting? I can do that in CA, and own my output from my own time.
- ed25519FUUU 5y ago
  “Own your output” what does this mean?
  - 762236 5y ago
    In most employment contracts in the US, the employer owns anything you create, including what you do in your personal time. But not in California, which happens to have a thriving startup culture, many of which were created after work hours.

wolverine876 5y ago

Lots of cities have had remote workers leave, permanently or temporarily, for obvious reasons. Is there anything showing that SF is somehow worse? What I do believe I see is a strong relationship between reactionary/GOP political messaging and what is repeated about cities. The Republican National Convention's focus was the 'chaos' in cities, IIRC, though few noticed because other issues dominated. Reactionary messaging seems inredibly effective; whatever they say, people of all stripes are soon repeating. The emotionally intense, repetitive style also seems to match it - I don't see many reasoned arguments. It can absolutely be self-fulfilling. Perception is reality. Look at many Americans worried about crime in cities, while crime is low and dropping. Homicides (a small portion) are up, but all over the place, not cities in particular. (Source: Recent FBI/DoJ report.) I live in a place with low crime, yet people say they are leaving because of it. > A lot of the companies that ... went to Miami due to politics will never go back. As of a few months ago, most people leaving SF went to the greater Bay Area, next elsewhere in CA, next the state of Washington. Most companies go to SF for politics (or policy), but it's the norm and therefore unremakrable. You don't see a lot of leading companies outside the leading cities, maybe for a reason. Politics, especially when one group advocates ignorance, hate, and disrupting the rule of law, correlates with intelligent policy. Also, most people don't like living around ignorance, hate, and chaos.

refurb 5y ago
No matter your politics, the quality of life is going downhill in SF. Property crime is up, racial attacks are up and more concerning are the brazen daylight looting of stores which shows criminals have little fear of consequences.
- miked85 5y ago
  What consequences?
dougmwne 5y ago
This is a sensible argument, but there is absolutely a reality on the ground. San Francisco has horrid problems compared to all other US cities I have been to. It is even more extreme when you compare it to international cities. The crime, homelessness and excrement is extremely visible, in the statistics and while walking down the street. It is bad, it is broken, and it doesn’t need to be that way. I spent a month in 5 separate cities this year, one of which was Vienna. Vienna is spectacularly well run through the result of decades of well considered governance. A significant contribution is a yearly investment in public housing which has prevented property speculation bubbles and given marginal people a place to live. The first step to fixing a problem is to admit you have a problem.

rat87 5y ago

Hasn't San Francisco Covid policy been a massive success? I'm pretty sure their numbers are a lot better then most parts of the country especially considering urban density

pmorici 5y ago
If your only goal is to minimize deaths from COVID without regard for any other consequence. Most pragmatic people recognize that you need to weigh deaths against economic health and other considerations and strike a balance.
- trs8080 5y ago
  > Most pragmatic people recognize that you need to weigh deaths against economic health and other considerations and strike a balance. I'll believe this when you offer up yourself and your own family members as a sacrifice to the economy.
  - pmorici 5y ago
    Studies show a correlation between economic down turns and increased mortality rates. I say this as someone who didn't / doesn't have the luxury of routine work from home. Adjusted for population age Florida and California had similar death rates but one was extreme in their measures and the other was very laze fare. Both were very average relative to other states.
- wahern 5y ago
  Earlier this year there was a lot of reporting about how California recovered much quicker from the first few waves that shut down the country, especially as compared to states like Georgia. Just because other states had fewer restrictions does not mean people actually returned to their routines. Some argued that in California more people were quicker to return to economic life, greater social restrictions notwithstanding, because they felt safer. I have no idea how those trends and theories have actually panned out since then. And the theories weren't necessarily needed. It's not surprising California's economy did relatively well simply because it benefits disproportionately from tech, entertainment, and related industries which were more amenable to work-from-home, and which actually saw growth potential from people spending more time at home.

cipheredStones 5y ago

The departure of tech workers is what springs to mind for us (I too moved out of SF during the pandemic), but don't forget that tourism is also a huge factor in the city economy, and that has also been decimated - though more temporarily. I also think it's over-hasty to attribute many of these things to Breed's policies. Companies in knowledge industries going remote isn't a unique-to-SF thing, and the housing prices and street problems that caused many people to leave the city are rooted in bad housing policy that long predates her mayoral term.

eightysixfour 5y ago

I thought the recent data showed that most of this exodus of workers is overblown? People leaving stayed nearby, and people continued to move in (at a much lower rate than pre pandemic) > About two-thirds of those who left San Francisco last year stayed in the 11-county Bay Area economic region, according to the same California Policy Lab study. About 80 percent stayed in California. https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2021/07/08/uc-report-counters-tales-of-california-exodus.html https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2021/07/08/uc-repor...

kelnos 5y ago

I don't find this argument to be particularly persuasive, at least not unless you are also making the claim that all big cities are screwed. COVID caused many people to leave cities, not just tech workers in SF. The federal stimulus package was just a part of the federal government's efforts to shore things up due to COVID. Of course it's not a sustainable strategy; it's a short-term measure due to the pandemic. Now, certainly things are not going to go back to the way they were once we start pulling out of the pandemic (whenever that will be). But they will go some part of the way back. I don't think it's easy to predict exactly where things will be in 1, 2, or 5 years. Maybe what comes will be enough, maybe it won't. I'm betting that things will work out just fine. There will be some budget shortfalls, and some strife, but life will go on, and the city will rebound, just like most/all of the other cities in the world will. Frankly I don't care why Breed just now feels like she needs to clean up the city, but I'm glad it's happening, finally.

more_corn 5y ago

I’m shutting down my tech company based in SF due to the bad faith accounting practices of their local tax office. (I’ll just open a new one elsewhere) I won’t call it corruption because I don’t know that anyone is personally profiting, but I’m sick of dealing with it. I’m out, I’d never recommend anyone do business in SF. Time and again I’ve seen the same bad behavior when I interact with any department (I once spent a week in the planning office— every day with revised plans, ultimately rejected not because of anything being incorrect but because, and I quote “I don’t like the drawings”). SF city government is run by a bunch of entitled pretentious pricks on arbitrary power trips and no regard for the people they ostensibly represent and serve. I’m not surprised in the least that they can’t figure out how to provide basic safety for their citizens and businesses, or that they’ve lost entire regions to lawlessness.