I've lived in SF for ~12 years and the way my mother speaks about SF from what she sees in the news you would think I'm living in Mad Max. My own 2 cents: 1. T

I've lived in SF for ~12 years and the way my mother speaks about SF from what she sees in the news you would think I'm living in Mad Max. My own 2 cents: 1. The problems with crime and homelessness is not particularly worse than it was 11 years ago. When I first moved here my boss, an SF native, proudly told a story of being bit by a homeless guy on Market while protecting his date and getting tested for every disease. Many parts of the Mission, SOMA and Market used to be _worse_ before they gentrified. Today most people consider 6th street to be rough, but when I moved here, 6th street all the way 10th street was rough. The day I landed in SF I was told by multiple people not to leave items in the car or they would be broken into (again, this was in 2011). 2. What has changed is the media reception of San Francisco; drastically. During the Obama years there was no effort to paint any city as falling over to crime. I remember back in 2014 or so, there a guy who wrote a post complaining about having to step over poop on his way to work on Medium and he was practically exiled. Now the atlantic can post the same story without worry. My own feelings are that San Francisco effectively priced out 20-somethings and all that's left is jaded 30-somethings who are tired of living in the city and are just sour grapes about it. Without the younger crowd to constantly defend how magical it is everyone is free to shit on the city. Anyone who's telling you about how much better San Jose/Mountain View/Palo Alto probably wouldn't have liked San Francisco 10 years ago either. My ongoing gripe with the city isn't crime; it's housing. Almost everyone interesting, even in tech, who was working on getting their weird startup ideas off the ground can no longer do that in SF. Likewise the city is filled with spick and span elite school grads who work for FAANG but would have never considered Facebook over Deloitte 10 years ago. The cost of housing has made experimentation impossible.