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Can someone very briefly wrap this whole "SF is broken"-situation up for somebody from Europe? I only ever read that it's "because of the policies" and there a

Can someone very briefly wrap this whole "SF is broken"-situation up for somebody from Europe? I only ever read that it's "because of the policies" and there are lots of rather disturbing videos about SF making its rounds on YouTube. But what exactly happened? Did they just remove all the police? Did they gave out free drugs to everybody? I'm not interested in blaming political parties, I just want to get a quick grasp of what exactly has happened.

bestbuyer__ 4y ago
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tomandrews88 4y ago
> I just want to get a quick grasp of what exactly has happened TLDR: there are far fewer consequences for crime now in large cities like SF, NY, LA. The results are as expected.
- gwd 4y ago
  I think GP was looking for at least a bit more context. How did it come to pass that there are fewer consequences for crime in SF?
  - revelio 4y ago
    The prevailing world view of SF and that part of California in general states that the root cause of crime is society at large, and not so much the individual criminal. In this world view a criminal is to be pitied and improved or perhaps just left alone rather than victimized by the state, not locked up. Due to the absolute dominance of voters with this mentality, and the practice of electing prosecutorial positions that in other parts of the world would be professional appointees, they have repeatedly ended up with prosecutors that ran on a campaign of refusing to prosecute. This isn't specific to SF, it can also be seen in LA and New York. In fact one of the criticisms levelled at the Trump inditement is that the prosecutor in question campaigned specifically on prosecuting Trump (for whatever) and has now upgraded what would normally be a misdemeanor, whilst simultaneously downgrading many other types of crime. In other words: politics, ideology, the usual suspects.
- fogzen 4y ago
  “After reaching a peak of 1,115 per 100,000 residents in 1992, California’s violent crime rate steadily fell, reaching a 50-year low of 392 in 2014.” “While the violent crime rate has fluctuated year-over-year, it has remained relatively stable this past decade—between 428 and 466, hovering near its 2010 level (440), when California embarked on major criminal justice reforms.” “While violent and property crime rates increased in 2021, both remain relatively low” https://www.ppic.org/publication/crime-trends-in-california/ https://www.ppic.org/publication/crime-trends-in-california/
  - tomandrews88 4y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448899#35450735 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448899#35450735
- tomandrews88 4y ago
  Another thing you should know as a European about SF is that saying the truth will get you downvoted if the truth doesn’t sound nice
cft 4y ago
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rainy59 4y ago
In fairness, downtown SF SJ and Oakland were always a tad dicey even back in dot com days so most startups preferred to be in more expensive PA MV Even East PA was the hood. Oakland was famous for riots SF governance has always been terrible. Real estate has gotten so expensive that startups anxious to conserve runway are pushing deeper into bad neighborhoods that were once unthinkable
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  > Real estate has gotten so expensive that startups anxious to conserve runway are pushing deeper into bad neighborhoods that were once unthinkable If the cost of office space were a concern, it'd be difficult to explain why they're anywhere near the Bay Area at all.
  - smabie 4y ago
    More talent ?
  - rainy59 4y ago
    Yes Eastern Europe is much cheaper The nice thing about Bay Area is that everyone is on the "same page" (call it an echo chamber maybe) You can go into any meeting and mention some technical thing like LangChain and everyone knows what u are talking about. No need to waste 15 minutes getting ppl up 2 speed. Outside the Bay Area, Europe etc. you'd mostly get blank stares, even in an accelerator or hub
- inferiorhuman 4y ago
  East Palo Alto is a separate city, in a different county, from Palo Alto.
  - astrange 4y ago
    Cities in California are artificial concepts that mainly exist because the people there decided they didn't want to share property taxes with the poorer people next door. EPA is the worst example, but also see Piedmont which is literally inside Oakland, and then see every single SoCal city that outsiders think are parts of Los Angeles.
threatofrain 4y ago
SF homicide rate is close to the national average.
- Hoyadonis 4y ago
  That strikes me as a cherry-picked statistic. San Francisco is one of the most crime-ridden cities in America. > San Franciscans face about a 1-in-16 chance each year of being a victim of property or violent crime, which makes the city more dangerous than 98 percent of US cities, both small and large. https://www.hoover.org/research/why-san-francisco-nearly-most-crime-ridden-city-us https://www.hoover.org/research/why-san-francisco-nearly-mos...
  - threatofrain 4y ago
    The post article is about the homicide of Bob Lee. It's natural to ask whether this is part of a bigger story of SF homicide. People who want to sort major US cities by homicide, assault, or other crimes can look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
  - maxcan 4y ago
    SF's homicide rate is low, lower in fact than Miami. But, its non-violent crime and property crime numbers are through the roof which makes it feel incredibly unsafe. Miami, on the other hand, actually has a higher homicide rate than SF but because the streets are clean and property crime is much much lower it feels far safer than SF. Also, to be honest, for people reading hacker news, homicides are an incredibly rare black swan event, unlike property crime which you experience almost daily in SF. So, it makes sense for this crowd to have a place higher utility on low property crime than on low homicides. And I'm not judging, I moved to Miami and couldn't be happier with that decision.
    - WanderPanda 4y ago
      It also matters a lot how the parties in the homicide are related, no? If it is people not knowing each other it is much more scary (and worse I would argue) than if it is something like iside circles of organized crime.
Dreako 4y ago
They have stopped prosecuting repeat offenders, and reduced the size of the police force People are slowly realizing that it was a mistake, but its gonna take some time to fix the situation.
- rainy59 4y ago
  If startups were really worried about avoiding crime, they would be in high rent Mill Valley Sausalito etc In startup world, you tolerate the crime to get cheap office space Salesforce went downtown for the cheap rent. Otherwise it was always foggy chilly and a commute mess. Amazon's original offices in Seattle were near some really spooky stuff too. In startup grind you do what you do
- KptMarchewa 4y ago
  >They have stopped prosecuting repeat offenders, and reduced the size of the police force Ok, but apparently it was shit even before that, so this can't be full answer.
  - waihtis 4y ago
    The uncomfortable answer which no one wants to speak about is that an overtly liberal policy doesn't translate to the best possible society, or necessarily even an acceptable one, regardless of how well off the city or state is. Compare San Francisco to somewhere like Singapore, and ask yourself where would you rather live - and if the freedoms available in SF are worth the trade offs. BTW I'm not taking a stance here as I live in neither location.
    - Hamuko 4y ago
      Is San Francisco more liberal than major European cities?
      - luckylion 4y ago
        Hamburg just started enforcing that pan-handlers mustn't sit down. They haven't outlawed it, but they're pretty actively trying to not make it a common occurrence in the city center. Tent cities, completely open drug consumption, ignoring theft < 1000€, ignoring car break-ins etc would absolutely not fly here. You might get some of that on a local level in a very progressive district of Berlin, but not in other major German cities. So at least for Germany: yeah, I think it is.
deleted 4y ago
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squokko 4y ago
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ddevault 4y ago
Many of the other comments are missing the point. It's ultimately because there are a lot of desperate people in SF. The bay area has the highest homelessness incidence in the country. Mental health services are poor to non-existent. The city is full of people with no options, no healthcare, and no support system. We could criminalize homelessness even more, and brutalize the desperate with more police interventions, but that's a lazy and unsympathetic explanation for why this is happening. Society has failed the poor and SF is exhibit A.
- subsistence234 4y ago
  In addition to the year-round mild climate, SF's local laws (and enforcement or lack thereof, e.g. legalizing theft of less than $1000 or intentionally spreading HIV) attracts desperate people, as well as people who simply enjoy the lifestyle, from all over the US, by rewarding them for doing what they do. Basic "supply and demand" also applies to crime, playground needles and sidewalk turds: if you lower the "price" (punishment) at constant demand (people who want to steal or shoot up in public), the supply increases.
- five_alive 4y ago
  You’re putting a lot of stock into SF’s failures, but keep in mind that other cities ship their homeless to SF, and as a result, SF gets a disproportionate share of homeless.
- fifticon 4y ago
  This. In europe we treat sick people, in the US they leave them on the streets, and then task the police with beating them regularly. I live in europe, in a nice house. We don't have any guns in our house, and we don't fear random weirdos trying to break into our house, because our society takes care of and treats sick people. Because we are not scaring and harrassing them all over the place, they aren't running rampant around areas of our city. I don't care about having health insurance, because I already have it as a citizen, paid for with my taxes. If I'm fired from my job, I still have health insurance.
  - rejectfinite 4y ago
patife 4y ago
I see a lot of comments about how it’s gotten terrible recently etc. I’m not from the US, but I’ve been to SF a number on times (>5). The first time was in 2006 for apple WWDC, as a student, and back then I already witnessed a number of people wandering in the streets, mostly passed out or wandering, but I also saw peopoe shouting at the air, and defecating and throwing stuff. At the time I was told this was a legacy from the post-Vietnam era, where many veterans flocked there due to the dem leaning of the city which provided an expectation of help, and also mostly the nice weather, but ultimately they did not get support. From that point on things developed. Veterans from other wars, and then generally any people with life issues, were attracted to that location which fits their unfortunate, crazy situation - drugs, a barebones support network that provides food (?), and the fact no one bothers them anymore.. At least that’s what I was told. In recent years I’ve noticed more of the situation, but tbh nothing that surprises me from the earlier observations. I didn’t see ANY numbers so that may or may not be the case. I am interested in someone validating or correcting my perception
- deleted 4y ago
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- tedivm 4y ago
  Half of the problem is that San Francisco- and the bay area as a whole- ignores their drug and homeless problem. Ironically the drug rate in San Francisco matches that of most large cities, but you don't see the problem in other cities because most of the drug users do it in the homes rather than on the street. The bay area has the lowest rate of homeless shelters per capita of any major metro in the united states. Whether you're talking Atlanta, Miami, or Boston (regardless of weather), every other city has more homeless shelters and programs to house people. This gets people off of the streets and, at a minimum, gets them in a place where they can take advantage of other programs to deal with health and addiction problems. In the bay area these people stay on the streets while hundreds of charities get small amounts of money to help, but with no real central coordination or group that's in charge of spending that money effectively. As a result you've got a ton of people on the streets, as well as all the consequences of that.
  - 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
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Rob_Middleton84 4y ago
As a UK resident, I asked this very same question the other day on Twitter. I didn't get a reply. I'd be interested to hear a precis too
- rejectfinite 4y ago
  Why did this get downvoted? HN is truly hilarious sometimes.
Fradow 4y ago
I'm from Europe too, but I've following what's been happening, so here's a very detached account of what happened. First, it's not a single reason but several going hand in hand. The main one, as far as I understand, is the sky-rocketing price of housing, coupled with little social safety net for which the US is well-known, produced a lot of homelessness that has not been addressed and ballooned. With that also came crime and drug abuse (that's not new: I've been there 10 years ago and was shocked by the amount of homeless people in the streets, and I live in Paris, which has its fair share of homeless people, so that's saying something) The second main one is that racism, which has always been a thing, especially in the police force, produced some very high profile events (George Floyd) and high backlash against the police, perceived as racist and not being on the side of "the people". There has been a big "defund the police", which resulted in less policing, police force demoralization, a lot of officers quitting. Coupled with the previous issue, a lot of small crimes happened, mainly perpetuated by poor people. It's important to note that due to the US history, being poor correlate strongly with skin color. I don't really know if it's the fact that the people appearing the court were black and it was deemed racist or if the court were overloaded (probably an unhealthy mix of both), but at some point, shoplifting under a certain amount (was it $950? Somewhere in the $1000 ballpark) was changed from a felony to a misdemeanor. In practice, that means you could do that without fear of retribution, which predictably had awful results, and might be the disturbing videos you are talking about. There you go, hopefully I didn't misrepresent the situation and didn't forget any other important factor, though I'm sure someone will correct me if I did.
- inferiorhuman 4y ago
  I don't really know if it's the fact that the people appearing the court were black and it was deemed racist or if the court were overloaded (probably an unhealthy mix of both), but at some point, shoplifting under a certain amount (was it $950? Somewhere in the $1000 ballpark) was changed from a felony to a misdemeanor. In practice, that means you could do that without fear of retribution, which predictably had awful results, and might be the disturbing videos you are talking about. In most states the felony threshold gets adjusted periodically if for no other reason than to keep up with inflation. Texas bumped theirs to $2,500 and Alabama to $1,500 back in 2015.
glerk 4y ago
The truth is we are letting antisocial criminal trash walk freely around downtown and terrorize the local population. I think a lot of people live in their nice neighborhood bubble and have never stepped foot in FiDi or SOMA. Since I moved here, I have sen people break into cars (numerous times), fill suitcases with products from Target and Walgreens and leave without paying, casually smoke meth in a crowded bus, empty their bladder and bowels in the middle of the sidewalk, etc. all of this brazenly and in broad daylight. In other cities, this type of behavior usually earns you at least a good beating and a night in jail. The negative feedback is very important for conditioning antisocial people to behave in a civilized community, but for some reason, SF has decided to not bother with it. Some other comments conflate this with the "homeless problem". This is not a "homeless problem". Homeless people living in a shelter or pitching a tent under a bridge are not the problem in SF. Criminal antisocial nutcases getting no consequences for their actions are the problem.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  > at least a good beating In what cities does any of this earn you a good beating?
  - tormeh 4y ago
    Very few rich cities, formally speaking. I know Singapore uses formal physical punishment. In worldwide practice, however, police will often be a bit rougher than they perhaps have to (or have the right to) be when arresting if they feel someone deserves it. Many judges also silently tolerate this.
    - blackwateragent 4y ago
      > Very few rich cities, formally speaking. I know Singapore uses formal physical punishment. For extremely serious crimes, not his list of public indecency. For instance: * Under the Environmental Public Health Act, it is an offence to urinate or defecate "in or upon any street, arcade, vacant land, river, canal, ditch, drain or watercourse or in any place to which the public has access except in any sanitary convenience provided for such purpose." The penalty is a fine of up to $1,000 for a first offence, and up to $2,000 and $5,000 for the second and third offence respectively. [1] [2] [1] https://www.asiaone.com/singapore/totally-unacceptable-man-pees-grass-near-bus-stop-public-toilet-only-metres-away https://www.asiaone.com/singapore/totally-unacceptable-man-p... [2] https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/nea-issues-warning-woman-who-defecated-outside-mrt-station https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/nea-issues-warning-wom...
scoofy 4y ago
I will do my best, but it's important for people to know that I mean this as respectfully as I can. It's my honest assessment, and I will try to make few-to-no normative claims. I tend to refer to what's happening in SF as SF-Stockholm syndrome (I do not mean this as disrespectful, only that I don't know any other way to describe the normalization of what happens here). I grew up in Texas, spent time on the East Coast, with a reasonable stint in NYC, and spent just over a year Scotland. I really have never seen the openness and acceptance of severe substance abuse like I have on the West Coast of the United States (not just in SF). Portland, SF, LA, Oakland, Berkeley, pretty much every major city here, there are areas of the city where serious drug use, and some crime, is effectively just tolerated. SF is particularly unique, because, by a wide margin, it's the smallest in area and most walkable. Other cities tend to be automobile-centric, so non-organized crime tends to stay in small areas of the city (though, from my understanding, this is changing in Portland for the worse). This is combine with a fairly strong anti-police culture. I don't know the veracity or history, but people here, even perfectly law abiding people, tend to think the police forces are generally corrupt-and-racist, or have a history of corruption and racism. I'm regularly shock that everyone here seems to be disgusted with the police, but nearly nobody has any intention or desire to reform, normalize, or even overhaul the institution. Many seem to see very idea of police as just a bad thing. Combine this with the out-of-control opiate epidemic, and what this seems to have created is a pretty nuts, but not actually abnormally dangerous, environment in San Francisco in particular. There is little enforcement of any laws, except parking enforcement. When my friends from Germany visited, they were very curious about this "opiate and crime thing" after reading about book about Fentanyl, so as part of their visit, I showed them the open drug markets around midnight at UN Plaza, at Civic Center BART station. They were horrified. It's hard to describe the scene of crowds of people, many just shuffling around, obviously high, often with pretty obvious other complications from living in squalor. I call it Stockholm Syndrome because people have genuinely convinced themselves that this is normal. People here legitimately believe that leaving anything at all in your car, even small things, in any major city in America, will likely lead to a break in. Obviously this is incredibly untrue, and SF is an outlier in theft (to the point that the stats are laughably inaccurate because nobody even reports car break-ins to the police anymore), but people have acclimated to the culture, and just assume it's normal, if they don't leave the region on a regular basis. Ironically, the city is actually fairly safe with regards to violent crime. Not especially safe, but the homicide figures show that things aren't "out of control" in the violent crime aspect. The thing that's shocking is how in-your-face it all is. The signs of severe substance abuse, are ever-present in a shockingly large amount of the commercial districts of the city (though most of the city is perfectly safe, quite and residential). The city does absolutely nothing about it. They do not mandate addiction treatment, because, for the most part, the people with substance abuse issues never see a court room. Primarily, because the court system cannot handle the case load. My roommate is a Public Defender, so I'm acutely aware of the backlog of cases that are genuinely violent crime. Not that it matters, because in election-after-election, the candidates tend to be pretty much on the same page that nothing really will be done. Again, much of the populous has a very strong distaste for any policing action. I honestly believe that most people here legitimately don't like the idea of forcing people into treatment if they don't want it. It is incredibly complex, and I've only just scratched the surface of the nuance in what's happening here. There are housing issues, inequality issues, nativist issues, agency issues, and even a bizarre idealization poverty and squalor. To cover everything would be more appropriate as an hour-long discussion over drinks at a bar where you can see what's actually happening with your own eyes, because I think most Europeans would be quite speechless at it all. This tragedy did not happen in a bad part of town, and I honestly walk through worse areas at similar hours regularly, and it's generally fine.
mlcrypto 4y ago
I thought Europe is the same way. In France you get stabbed too and burned in the street by the riots
deleted 4y ago
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DoreenMichele 4y ago
1. Due to the temperate weather, California has largely become the dumping ground for America's chronic homeless. This is rooted in longstanding housing policies causing a shortfall of affordable housing nationwide. 2. On top of that, California has additional broken tax policies and other policies that deepen the shortage of affordable housing. 3. Big cities are where the services are, such as soup kitchens. If you are homeless in the US and have nothing, going to the nearest big city is your best bet for trying to eat regularly. 4. California and big cities are both expensive. Once you go to California as a homeless person or the big city as a homeless person, it's quite hard to get off the street because housing is so expensive. 5. Being LGBTQ puts one at high risk of being homeless due to homophobia. San Francisco has a reputation for being more LGBTQ-friendly than average even for a big city. So you have desperate people hearing high-minded nonsense that lures them into a bad situation and we aren't really dealing effectively with such issues generally, so we aren't giving people real solutions. Desperate, hopeless people with no options is not a good population type to foster the growth of if you value a civilized social climate. /2 cents
- chockablock 4y ago
  The narrative that most homeless people in SF come there from other places is contradicted by data. In annual surveys, ~70+% of people who are homeless in SF lived in SF when they became homeless. https://sfstandard.com/public-health/latino-homelessness-surged-in-sf-during-covid-according-to-new-data/ https://sfstandard.com/public-health/latino-homelessness-sur...
  - DoreenMichele 4y ago
    Well, I didn't say that. You inferred that. There are also lots of reasons to question exactly how such numbers are determined and what they really mean, which is a long discussion I don't care to have.
    - HDThoreaun 4y ago
      No, you said SF was a "dumping ground" for the homeless.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
I'd summarize it as BS. This will receive howls of disapproval. It's so obvious, like climate change being fake and Trump secretly battling a cabal of pedo vaccine-peddling warmongers. How could you possibly believe something different? But I've heard similar about Chicago, Paris and Bradford. https://www.politico.com/amp/news/2020/07/29/trump-chicago-guns-violence-385798 https://www.politico.com/amp/news/2020/07/29/trump-chicago-g... > Conservative media for decades have painted America’s third-largest city as a national hub of gun violence and gang activity, crippled by what they see as political correctness thwarting real solutions. https://blog.geographydirections.com/2015/02/02/fox-news-no-go-zones-and-british-muslim-negotiations-of-urban-citizenship/ https://blog.geographydirections.com/2015/02/02/fox-news-no-... > Emerson stated, “In Britain, it’s not just no-go zones, there are actual cities like Birmingham that are totally Muslim where non-Muslims just simply don’t go… In parts of London, there are actually Muslim religious police that actually beat and actually wound seriously anyone who doesn’t dress according to religious Muslim attire.” >These segments were widely mocked across social media and the station eventually issued an apology, stating that there was “no credible information to support the assertion”. As a European you just have to look at all the claims of how "communist" California is to get an idea how detached from reality these people are.
blondie9x 4y ago
Homeless is just the wrong word. It should be something else.
- mrits 4y ago
  I'm imagining running through a WW2 field doing triage and telling the battle wounded that the doctors are behind you but you are making sure that no one offends them verbally. If you take the issue seriously it is more offensive to waste energy on what we decide is an appropriate label for other people.
m463 4y ago
I visited the tourist area near the piers a few months ago, and it seemed a little lawless. Why are there so many people on unlicensed dirt bikes doing wheelies down the street?
kiviuq 4y ago
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hayst4ck 4y ago
There's 100s of different hypothesis for the cause, but it's all just a different flavor of wealth inequality. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. This promotes all types of corruption. The rich can usually avoid the stench and filth of the poor so they don't invest their money in solving it. Now the poorness is festering. This is a problem that will not get solved without taxes, and it probably won't get solved without taxes at the federal level. Americans will not let themselves be taxed more and so the consequences are more of this for the foreseeable future.
- logicchains 4y ago
  >There's 100s of different hypothesis for the cause, but it's all just a different flavor of wealth inequality This is simply untrue. There are cities with more wealth inequality (Singapore, Shanghai, Dubai..) that have no such crime or filth, because the police deal with it aggressively.
  - modo_mario 4y ago
    I think Singapore has a very notable affordable housing system (There's some short docus on youtube that should be easy to find) which probably holds back a lot of such problems. In Dubai I believe the locals are also pretty damn well off whilst an insane amount of the population is expatriates which I'd imagine get kicked out the moment they're seen as a problem or lose their job, etc. No clue about Shangai. I know Chinas police in other cities can be rather heavy handed (beating people out of bars with batons where words could have probably done the trick for example) Plenty of other factors can play a role tho. From Chinas political patronage system leading to leaders having their jobs/prospects tied to not letting such issues go too far to a less individualistic culture or simply lots of low bar employment options and housing. Better a run down cramped place shared with too many people (You can find some shocking images of this from shangai) than the street.
- fallingknife 4y ago
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- Dig1t 4y ago
syntheweave 4y ago
I have lived in SF my whole life. It's not that anything specific has changed in SF - it's more a case of, the political machine has been running very smoothly in a way that does little to help anyone in particular, and occasionally it manifests as an "oopsie we let someone die". The designated narrative role of SF since the 70's, as a Democratic Party stronghold, is to be praised from the left for progressive policies, and pilloried from the right for being a failing dystopia. And the narrative has simply intensified both ways over time, while the actual ground level conditions are way more varied. There used to be more overt violence, gang shootings and the like. Now it's mostly drug use and property crime. Mostly. After all, someone did just get stabbed. But in any case, the existence of the narrative allows every concrete fact to be shouted over by paid advocates for some cause. To get at the truth you have to dig into the details neighborhood by neighborhood, department by department, year by year. The problems are not something that manifests from electing one wrong leader or voting yes on one wrong ballot proposition, but from the city openly allowing itself to court a menagerie of institutions that do no good other than to allow money to be shuffled between bank accounts. There are nice neighborhoods, mostly on the west side of the city, where if anything bad is happening, it's kept tucked out of sight. But go downtown and you get the apocalyptic scenes, which are supported by this "NGO industrial complex". For one example, I present Urban Alchemy. Urban Alchemy describes itself like this: We’re a social enterprise that engages with situations where extreme poverty meets homelessness, mental illness and addiction. When a neighborhood, street or intersection earns a reputation as a place to avoid, we turn it around. Urban Alchemy is a peaceful and supportive presence, inviting communities to rebuild and restore a sense of pride and respect in urban spaces. UA has a logo that looks like a cult symbol, and they hire former prisoners as "ambassadors"(i.e. they beat up and harass people, mostly homeless). This does nothing to fix the visible drug use problem next door to their building, of course. It would not surprise me to learn that UA itself has drug addicts in its ranks. In essence, they seem to be doing the kind of thing you would expect the police to be doing, but the police aren't doing it, so they're going to do it very badly and say it is helping. What are the police doing? Not a whole lot, it seems. They were very happy to say it was the progressive district attorney making things unsafe. But even if that were the case, they just haven't been enforcing, not even traffic. They weren't defunded at all. After Covid, people started speeding around the empty streets and they didn't stop even after traffic picked up again. They need to fire the department and start over, like what happened in Georgia in 2004. Tech actually did a measure of good for the city, at the expense of making it a really expensive place to live and bringing in a highly transient population of tech workers who "put in a few years" for a career launchpad. The tech companies threw their weight around and got some things built. However, a lot of the surplus funds that went into the government went into "programs" of the Urban Alchemy sort, and tech workers weren't in it for the long term and voted with the national narratives, not for direct investment in the neighborhoods. So, mostly, measures that favored landowners under progressive guises passed. And that brings us to today, where it might actually come to pass that the city has to cut something for once. But they've made so many things in the budget earmarked that it'll probably be the wrong things that get cut first.
harimau777 4y ago
There's a combination of issues. In general, the US has a major crime/homlessness problem due to the lack of a social safety net, poor drug & mental health policy, and homophobia. California has much nicer weather than much of the US so homeless people move their or are just able to survive there. In some cases, right wing states purposely relocate their homeless to California. America is currently experiencing a backlash against a broken justice system that tolerates police brutality, favors the rich, and is often racist. Unfortunately, this has probably resulted in an overcorrection in many places. The previous point is exasperated by the fact that the Republican party, which in recent decades has been more oriented around "law and order", has become a far right party. Therefore, even if someone agrees with their candidate on crime, they may disagree with them on economics, LGBTQ rights, etc. I don't know if this is true, but I've been told that unlike most other cities, much of SF's resources for helping homeless people is located in their downtown. That then results in the homeless problem being much more visible there.
JeremyNT 4y ago
Only millionaires can afford to live in SF now due to the tech money. This displaces the middle class and poor, and leads to homelessness and increased crime.
- mrits 4y ago
  It may lead to homelessness but certainly not the only thing that does. In Austin you don't need to be a millionaire and the city takes 1 step forward 2 steps back with our homelessness problem.
amrocha 4y ago
Arresting people doesn't address the reason they committing crimes in the first place. The issue is poverty and wealth inequality. The truth is tech ruined the city. SF used to be a city of misfits, who don't usually have high income. Tech workers started flooding the city, drove up rents, and these misfits ended up homeless. Once you're homeless it's a struggle, some get back on their feet but some start abusing drugs. Government support programs are terribly run, so nobody uses them. Let the situation go on for a few years and you get SF. It's not just SF though, it's any city in North America that has had booming rents the past couple decades. Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, SF. If you look at Tokyo, rents are low and jobs are plentiful. The biggest city in the world has less than 4000 homeless people living in it.
- yurikoif 4y ago
  It’s just simply false. Crimes in SF were bad even before the dot com era. Remember the roof top Koreans? I’d give police & drug policies more credit for this
  - faanghacker 4y ago
    Roof Koreans were in LA not SF.
  - amrocha 4y ago
    As the other comment pointed out, you got your cities mixed up. I hope this serves as a wake up call to you that your biases are preventing you from seeing the whole picture.
    - yurikoif 4y ago
      ya you guys are right ab this one
    - yurikoif 4y ago
      but still, it does not prove much of a bias in my point of view. SF was known for homelessness & crime & drug crisis back before the tech boom. it used to be the veterans with mental illness and nowadays teens or common people with such.
polski-g 4y ago
You can put bad people in an insane asylum, or you can put them in prison. But you cannot leave them in society: https://twitter.com/KaseyKlimes/status/1632096902022832130 https://twitter.com/KaseyKlimes/status/1632096902022832130 The left decided that regulating society's behavior was racist so they stopped doing it since 2014.
fed_up_ca 4y ago
part of the problem is the city is refusing to arrest Honduran fentanyl dealers due to sanctuary city laws the other part of the problem is there's a certain minority demographic who are responsible for 80% of the violent crime. Yes, it is racist to point this out but reality is racist. Europe doesn't have much of this demographic. There's no good solution to this. 3-strikes laws from the 90s kept this in check but they all got rolled back as racist. Current progressive thinking is be lenient on violent crime and treat the perpetrator better than the victim. This is proving disastrous Either American cities go back to harsh enforcement or they will continue to descend into Mogadishu-like chaos
seaourfreed 4y ago
Two factors: a) They cut officers and drive them away. They had 2,160 officers and needed them. They are down to 1,651 officers (Sept 2022) Source: abc7news.com b) The San Francisco DA allows many arrested to allowed to go free. They elected a special DA to allow people to go free. Not for all crimes, but many. This emboldens people because they see so many people released without trial or sentencing for their crimes, so they are emboldened to commit crimes. The number of murders is very sad to see increased to such high levels.
- Jochim 4y ago
  > The number of murders is very sad to see increased to such high levels. Why just make things up? The absolute number of murders is basically flat over the last decade and per-capita it's decreased[1]. [0] https://sfgov.org/scorecards/public-safety/violent-crime-rate-and-property-crime-rate https://sfgov.org/scorecards/public-safety/violent-crime-rat... [1] https://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-San-Francisco-California.html https://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-San-Francisco-Californ...
tlogan 4y ago
There are a few unrelated problems: - Sf closed schools for one year and half during the COVID causing large number of families to move out. And these are people who are contrablance to ultra liberals. - Housing crisis: Corruption within the city's permit process has resulted in the need to hire "accelerators," which exacerbates the housing crisis. - Public education: The public school system is facing significant difficulties and is in desperate need of improvement. - Drug policy: The implementation of safe drug consumption sites has inadvertently worsened the city's drug problem. - Street closures: Restricting vehicle access on certain streets has negatively impacted businesses and inadvertently facilitated the spread of homeless encampments. - Small business challenges: Overly stringent regulations, often driven by the "virtue signaling" of the super wealthy, have created a hostile environment for small businesses. - Progressive District Attorney: The DA's policies have led to policing issues, resulting in a surge of crimes such as robberies. - Homelessness: Despite significant spending on homelessness, inefficiencies and corruption have hindered progress. Furthermore, "virtue signaling" has taken precedence over effective solutions. - BART safety: Following a police shooting on BART several years ago, a reduction in policing has made the transit system less safe, deterring people from using it to visit San Francisco. These issues may be interrelated or independent, but each contributes to the city's current struggles.
- TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
  > The implementation of safe drug consumption sites has inadvertently worsened the city's drug problem. "Inadvertently." Nice one. > These issues may be interrelated or independent, but each contributes to the city's current struggles. I don't see how any reasonable person could not see that these things are all closely related. The inequality, due to the unaffordable housing, leading to rampant homelessness, drug use, and crime, to an almost-complete abdication of prosecution for these crimes, in an effort to be "equitable," and now... considering paying reparations for slavery!? You really don't see a thread here? Really!?
  - tlogan 4y ago
    I was trying to be politically correct here on HN. Even though I really tried to tone down my anger (yes anger) and be political my post is still downvoted to hell. There are some really really strong forces preventing change in SF.
jonfw 4y ago
It's a great location on the coast, with public transit, interesting architecture and culture. So people want to be there. The weather is great and the housing is incredibly expensive, so living on the street, in a tent, or out of a car is more appealing comparatively speaking than most places. San Francisco has tended to view aggressive law enforcement against poor or homeless people as immoral (they don't want to criminalize being poor) which has had an unintended affect of making it a good place to be a homeless person or criminal.
- naremu 4y ago
  It's interesting to see California really embrace socially progressive policies while simultaneously staying heavily invested in economics that nobody but some quiet, far off yacht owner seems to be happy about As someone from the general northeast US, it's amazing how local views of california have changed as they continue to kind of...drag their feet along and keep up this "highly based" outward appearance.
rib3ye 4y ago
Perspective of an SF homeowner and resident for 20 years. I also raise young kids here. In 2000, there was observably more crime everywhere, but rents were cheap and as a young person I enjoyed the relative lawlessness. Market St used to be nothing but adult theaters and shady import shops. Things are 1000% NICER in ALL areas of the city. The transformation of China Basin has been incredible. But you have to put all the down-and-out people somewhere. We squeezed them out of many central refuge areas (Tenderloin, 6th St., Fillmore, Mission) and then expected instant gentrification. TL;DR... SF: far from perfect, but definitely not on a downward slope.
honkycat 4y ago
It comes from a few things: 1. Rent has become insanely expensive such that a lot of people end up no the streets. This is the cause of the tent cities popping up, and really are a small part of what people have a problem with. The "invisible" homeless. 2. We do not have any resources for people who are too mentally ill or too sick to be of any "use" to society. A lot of those people end up on the street, where they are vulnerable to manipulation to start using heroin. A lot of them have mental disabilities. No, we do not have mental hospitals, and the ones that do exist are full, and they are not hurrying to build more. 3. We have a massive heroin addiction epidemic. These are the people who are crawling all over the place trying to get their fix, mugging people in the fugue states between scraping enough money together to get their next fix. The "highly visible" homeless. So. Something like 0.17% of our population is homeless. That is like 600k people. Imagine what it will take get these people off the streets and reintegrated into society, if that is even possible. They need: 1. Shelter. 2. Food. 3. Medical professionals to help them come down from the high, and help them get on a better path to stop using drugs. 4. Security to prevent re-victimization. 5. Legal authority to detain them without their consent ( a lot of homeless people have schizophrenia and are extremely paranoid and do not trust anyone ). Imagine how much that will cost. The US government is extremely austere around funding this stuff, so it has been left up to the cities and states, which do not have the resources to tackle the problem. So that is really it. It's too expensive, and all the money is pooled into the top .1% of the population, and we don't tax them, and they are busy building rocket ships, so we don't have any money to fix the issue. Some people want the cops to arrest them but that is actually MORE expensive and MORE prone to failure, other ethical issues aside. ( of which there are many )
- prottog 4y ago
  > It's too expensive, and all the money is pooled into the top .1% of the population, and we don't tax them, and they are busy building rocket ships, so we don't have any money to fix the issue. There may be more impactful things for the likes of Bezos to invest in than rocketships, but the idea that more wealth redistribution via taxation here would help things needs evidence to back it up. In 2021, when the stock market was at its peak and therefore the net worths of billionaires were the most inflated (for which you can blame government policy, anyway), the wealth of all billionaires in the US were around $4T. Even if you confiscated it all and were magically able to sell all of their interests in various holdings without affecting the price, it would pay for two, maybe three years of Social Security and Medicare; forget the rest of the federal government, let alone all the other levels of government. It's been pointed out elsewhere that San Francisco already spends over a billion dollars a year on programs related to homelessness, or around $57k per homeless person. To put it in context, if the whole country spent the same amount on welfare per capita, it would be $19T, which is 3x the current federal budget and over 80% of the GDP. It's a mind-boggling amount of money which would be completely untenable to sustain over time. You would have to rely on a lot of faith to think that lack of money is what is preventing these problems from being fixed.
thefourthchime 4y ago
It's difficult to determine the precise policies that have led San Francisco to its current state. Having lived there a decade ago, I can attest that certain areas, such as the Loin, were unlike anything I had seen in other cities. When I returned a few years ago, I observed that those areas had deteriorated even further and were spreading like a cancer. Since then, I have relocated to Austin, where homelessness has always been more prevalent than in other southern cities but never to the same extent as in LA or SF. However, a few years ago, our mayor chose not to penalize public camping, and as a result, homeless camps began to spring up throughout the city, including a tent city beneath a highway near my home. This led to a host of issues, including campfires, public defecation, and needles, necessitating constant intervention by EMS. Fortunately, a proposition to make public camping illegal again passed with ease. While the city council was initially slow to enforce the ban, they eventually did so, and one by one, the tent cities disappeared. Occasionally, a tent pile of belongings still appears, but these are also cleared out promptly. It's unclear where the former residents of these tent cities have gone. Some may have relocated to the creeks or woods out of sight, while others may have taken a bus to SF or LA. Alternatively, perhaps the change in policy inspired some of them to reach out to family members or other support networks to try and get back on their feet. Ultimately, all I know is that enforcing basic laws had a positive impact on the non-homeless population, and I hope that those experiencing homelessness can find a way to improve their situation without making the city worse for everyone else.
RC_ITR 4y ago
What happened is as follows: 1) Various US policies have driven up rates of destructive drug use (i.e. it's easier to get truly toxic drugs like Meth and Fent than it is to get lower harm, but equally potent drugs) 2) Various US policies have made life miserable for people who fall victim to that drug use 3) SF has nice weather and is generally more tolerant of people on drugs (California is the capital of working professionals with hard-drug habits) 4) Given the above, if you're down on your luck and drug addicted in the US, SF, Seattle, and LA are the only logical places to live in 5) For political reasons (SF is the home of leading progressives like Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, Kamala, etc.), there is a well-funded cultural apparatus trying to label SF as a failed state due to its own policies
emmelaich 4y ago
Perhaps just read the book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Fransicko https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Fransicko by Michael Shellenberger
tayo42 4y ago
> Can someone very briefly wrap this whole "SF is broken"-situation up for somebody from Europe? Id be really careful of taking anything people here say seriously. Its a politically divisive topic and the stuff ive seen in the comments are people getting riled up. The right wing loves to hate san francisco, the media loves to hate it too. Please consider there are multiple sides, people are being manipulated by media and outrage
carapace 4y ago
California is only about a hundred and fifty years old. It was like Siberia, but with an awesome climate. Gold was discovered and a hundreds of thousands of 49ers flooded the state and San Francisco became a major port city overnight. For the next hundred and fifty years, right up until about 2001, the city has served as the "drain" for the rest of the country. San Francisco is and always has been an open-air lunatic asylum (e.g. His Imperial Majesty Emperor Norton I.) The Tenderloin is bedlam, a little slice of hell raised to the surface of the Earth and allowed to fester in broad daylight. In short, nothing happened to make SF this way, it's always been this way. The idea that SF is some left-wing exemplar is just as foolish as the idea that is was a good place to start start-ups. It's all hype. SF is kinda nasty. (Go check out what was going down here a few decades ago. But be warned, it's pretty fucked up. It's a story that culminates in the events at Jonestown. If you don't already know what that is, then you probably should not look it up.)
srcreigh 4y ago
Mark Rober has a series where he builds fake packages with cameras, stink bombs, etc. Goal is to get vengeance against car thieves in SF since police do nothing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWeu2dxHRDg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWeu2dxHRDg
throwaway292939 4y ago
Just a few notes I quickly thought of: - SF has policies that encourages homeless to emigrate there, one of which is being pretty lenient to anyone who sets up camp on the streets - SF allows open drug markets that has become a hotbed of criminal activity - Police aren't fully empowered, and many people because of their ideology tend to hate police - Lots of catch and release going on, both anecdotally and on news - They offer drug kits (think needles, pipes, and other tools). The kit looked to be worth around $100 - They gave free alcohol/marijuana to homeless during lockdown - A large subset of the population seem to give no shits about the city or other people: public urination, defecation, harassment, drug use, property theft, vandalism is common. The lack of enforcement has allowed these activities to increase

bestbuyer__ 4y ago

[flagged]

tomandrews88 4y ago

> I just want to get a quick grasp of what exactly has happened TLDR: there are far fewer consequences for crime now in large cities like SF, NY, LA. The results are as expected.

gwd 4y ago
I think GP was looking for at least a bit more context. How did it come to pass that there are fewer consequences for crime in SF?
- revelio 4y ago
  The prevailing world view of SF and that part of California in general states that the root cause of crime is society at large, and not so much the individual criminal. In this world view a criminal is to be pitied and improved or perhaps just left alone rather than victimized by the state, not locked up. Due to the absolute dominance of voters with this mentality, and the practice of electing prosecutorial positions that in other parts of the world would be professional appointees, they have repeatedly ended up with prosecutors that ran on a campaign of refusing to prosecute. This isn't specific to SF, it can also be seen in LA and New York. In fact one of the criticisms levelled at the Trump inditement is that the prosecutor in question campaigned specifically on prosecuting Trump (for whatever) and has now upgraded what would normally be a misdemeanor, whilst simultaneously downgrading many other types of crime. In other words: politics, ideology, the usual suspects.
fogzen 4y ago
“After reaching a peak of 1,115 per 100,000 residents in 1992, California’s violent crime rate steadily fell, reaching a 50-year low of 392 in 2014.” “While the violent crime rate has fluctuated year-over-year, it has remained relatively stable this past decade—between 428 and 466, hovering near its 2010 level (440), when California embarked on major criminal justice reforms.” “While violent and property crime rates increased in 2021, both remain relatively low” https://www.ppic.org/publication/crime-trends-in-california/ https://www.ppic.org/publication/crime-trends-in-california/
- tomandrews88 4y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448899#35450735 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448899#35450735
tomandrews88 4y ago
Another thing you should know as a European about SF is that saying the truth will get you downvoted if the truth doesn’t sound nice

cft 4y ago

[flagged]

rainy59 4y ago

In fairness, downtown SF SJ and Oakland were always a tad dicey even back in dot com days so most startups preferred to be in more expensive PA MV Even East PA was the hood. Oakland was famous for riots SF governance has always been terrible. Real estate has gotten so expensive that startups anxious to conserve runway are pushing deeper into bad neighborhoods that were once unthinkable

thaumasiotes 4y ago
> Real estate has gotten so expensive that startups anxious to conserve runway are pushing deeper into bad neighborhoods that were once unthinkable If the cost of office space were a concern, it'd be difficult to explain why they're anywhere near the Bay Area at all.
- smabie 4y ago
  More talent ?
- rainy59 4y ago
  Yes Eastern Europe is much cheaper The nice thing about Bay Area is that everyone is on the "same page" (call it an echo chamber maybe) You can go into any meeting and mention some technical thing like LangChain and everyone knows what u are talking about. No need to waste 15 minutes getting ppl up 2 speed. Outside the Bay Area, Europe etc. you'd mostly get blank stares, even in an accelerator or hub
inferiorhuman 4y ago
East Palo Alto is a separate city, in a different county, from Palo Alto.
- astrange 4y ago
  Cities in California are artificial concepts that mainly exist because the people there decided they didn't want to share property taxes with the poorer people next door. EPA is the worst example, but also see Piedmont which is literally inside Oakland, and then see every single SoCal city that outsiders think are parts of Los Angeles.

threatofrain 4y ago

SF homicide rate is close to the national average.

Hoyadonis 4y ago
That strikes me as a cherry-picked statistic. San Francisco is one of the most crime-ridden cities in America. > San Franciscans face about a 1-in-16 chance each year of being a victim of property or violent crime, which makes the city more dangerous than 98 percent of US cities, both small and large. https://www.hoover.org/research/why-san-francisco-nearly-most-crime-ridden-city-us https://www.hoover.org/research/why-san-francisco-nearly-mos...
- threatofrain 4y ago
  The post article is about the homicide of Bob Lee. It's natural to ask whether this is part of a bigger story of SF homicide. People who want to sort major US cities by homicide, assault, or other crimes can look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
- maxcan 4y ago
  SF's homicide rate is low, lower in fact than Miami. But, its non-violent crime and property crime numbers are through the roof which makes it feel incredibly unsafe. Miami, on the other hand, actually has a higher homicide rate than SF but because the streets are clean and property crime is much much lower it feels far safer than SF. Also, to be honest, for people reading hacker news, homicides are an incredibly rare black swan event, unlike property crime which you experience almost daily in SF. So, it makes sense for this crowd to have a place higher utility on low property crime than on low homicides. And I'm not judging, I moved to Miami and couldn't be happier with that decision.
  - WanderPanda 4y ago
    It also matters a lot how the parties in the homicide are related, no? If it is people not knowing each other it is much more scary (and worse I would argue) than if it is something like iside circles of organized crime.

Dreako 4y ago

They have stopped prosecuting repeat offenders, and reduced the size of the police force People are slowly realizing that it was a mistake, but its gonna take some time to fix the situation.

rainy59 4y ago
If startups were really worried about avoiding crime, they would be in high rent Mill Valley Sausalito etc In startup world, you tolerate the crime to get cheap office space Salesforce went downtown for the cheap rent. Otherwise it was always foggy chilly and a commute mess. Amazon's original offices in Seattle were near some really spooky stuff too. In startup grind you do what you do
KptMarchewa 4y ago
>They have stopped prosecuting repeat offenders, and reduced the size of the police force Ok, but apparently it was shit even before that, so this can't be full answer.
- waihtis 4y ago
  The uncomfortable answer which no one wants to speak about is that an overtly liberal policy doesn't translate to the best possible society, or necessarily even an acceptable one, regardless of how well off the city or state is. Compare San Francisco to somewhere like Singapore, and ask yourself where would you rather live - and if the freedoms available in SF are worth the trade offs. BTW I'm not taking a stance here as I live in neither location.
  - Hamuko 4y ago
    Is San Francisco more liberal than major European cities?
    - luckylion 4y ago
      Hamburg just started enforcing that pan-handlers mustn't sit down. They haven't outlawed it, but they're pretty actively trying to not make it a common occurrence in the city center. Tent cities, completely open drug consumption, ignoring theft < 1000€, ignoring car break-ins etc would absolutely not fly here. You might get some of that on a local level in a very progressive district of Berlin, but not in other major German cities. So at least for Germany: yeah, I think it is.

deleted 4y ago

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squokko 4y ago

[flagged]

ddevault 4y ago

Many of the other comments are missing the point. It's ultimately because there are a lot of desperate people in SF. The bay area has the highest homelessness incidence in the country. Mental health services are poor to non-existent. The city is full of people with no options, no healthcare, and no support system. We could criminalize homelessness even more, and brutalize the desperate with more police interventions, but that's a lazy and unsympathetic explanation for why this is happening. Society has failed the poor and SF is exhibit A.

subsistence234 4y ago
In addition to the year-round mild climate, SF's local laws (and enforcement or lack thereof, e.g. legalizing theft of less than $1000 or intentionally spreading HIV) attracts desperate people, as well as people who simply enjoy the lifestyle, from all over the US, by rewarding them for doing what they do. Basic "supply and demand" also applies to crime, playground needles and sidewalk turds: if you lower the "price" (punishment) at constant demand (people who want to steal or shoot up in public), the supply increases.
five_alive 4y ago
You’re putting a lot of stock into SF’s failures, but keep in mind that other cities ship their homeless to SF, and as a result, SF gets a disproportionate share of homeless.
fifticon 4y ago
This. In europe we treat sick people, in the US they leave them on the streets, and then task the police with beating them regularly. I live in europe, in a nice house. We don't have any guns in our house, and we don't fear random weirdos trying to break into our house, because our society takes care of and treats sick people. Because we are not scaring and harrassing them all over the place, they aren't running rampant around areas of our city. I don't care about having health insurance, because I already have it as a citizen, paid for with my taxes. If I'm fired from my job, I still have health insurance.
- rejectfinite 4y ago

patife 4y ago

I see a lot of comments about how it’s gotten terrible recently etc. I’m not from the US, but I’ve been to SF a number on times (>5). The first time was in 2006 for apple WWDC, as a student, and back then I already witnessed a number of people wandering in the streets, mostly passed out or wandering, but I also saw peopoe shouting at the air, and defecating and throwing stuff. At the time I was told this was a legacy from the post-Vietnam era, where many veterans flocked there due to the dem leaning of the city which provided an expectation of help, and also mostly the nice weather, but ultimately they did not get support. From that point on things developed. Veterans from other wars, and then generally any people with life issues, were attracted to that location which fits their unfortunate, crazy situation - drugs, a barebones support network that provides food (?), and the fact no one bothers them anymore.. At least that’s what I was told. In recent years I’ve noticed more of the situation, but tbh nothing that surprises me from the earlier observations. I didn’t see ANY numbers so that may or may not be the case. I am interested in someone validating or correcting my perception

deleted 4y ago
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tedivm 4y ago
Half of the problem is that San Francisco- and the bay area as a whole- ignores their drug and homeless problem. Ironically the drug rate in San Francisco matches that of most large cities, but you don't see the problem in other cities because most of the drug users do it in the homes rather than on the street. The bay area has the lowest rate of homeless shelters per capita of any major metro in the united states. Whether you're talking Atlanta, Miami, or Boston (regardless of weather), every other city has more homeless shelters and programs to house people. This gets people off of the streets and, at a minimum, gets them in a place where they can take advantage of other programs to deal with health and addiction problems. In the bay area these people stay on the streets while hundreds of charities get small amounts of money to help, but with no real central coordination or group that's in charge of spending that money effectively. As a result you've got a ton of people on the streets, as well as all the consequences of that.
- 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

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Rob_Middleton84 4y ago

As a UK resident, I asked this very same question the other day on Twitter. I didn't get a reply. I'd be interested to hear a precis too

rejectfinite 4y ago
Why did this get downvoted? HN is truly hilarious sometimes.

Fradow 4y ago

I'm from Europe too, but I've following what's been happening, so here's a very detached account of what happened. First, it's not a single reason but several going hand in hand. The main one, as far as I understand, is the sky-rocketing price of housing, coupled with little social safety net for which the US is well-known, produced a lot of homelessness that has not been addressed and ballooned. With that also came crime and drug abuse (that's not new: I've been there 10 years ago and was shocked by the amount of homeless people in the streets, and I live in Paris, which has its fair share of homeless people, so that's saying something) The second main one is that racism, which has always been a thing, especially in the police force, produced some very high profile events (George Floyd) and high backlash against the police, perceived as racist and not being on the side of "the people". There has been a big "defund the police", which resulted in less policing, police force demoralization, a lot of officers quitting. Coupled with the previous issue, a lot of small crimes happened, mainly perpetuated by poor people. It's important to note that due to the US history, being poor correlate strongly with skin color. I don't really know if it's the fact that the people appearing the court were black and it was deemed racist or if the court were overloaded (probably an unhealthy mix of both), but at some point, shoplifting under a certain amount (was it $950? Somewhere in the $1000 ballpark) was changed from a felony to a misdemeanor. In practice, that means you could do that without fear of retribution, which predictably had awful results, and might be the disturbing videos you are talking about. There you go, hopefully I didn't misrepresent the situation and didn't forget any other important factor, though I'm sure someone will correct me if I did.

inferiorhuman 4y ago
I don't really know if it's the fact that the people appearing the court were black and it was deemed racist or if the court were overloaded (probably an unhealthy mix of both), but at some point, shoplifting under a certain amount (was it $950? Somewhere in the $1000 ballpark) was changed from a felony to a misdemeanor. In practice, that means you could do that without fear of retribution, which predictably had awful results, and might be the disturbing videos you are talking about. In most states the felony threshold gets adjusted periodically if for no other reason than to keep up with inflation. Texas bumped theirs to $2,500 and Alabama to $1,500 back in 2015.

glerk 4y ago

The truth is we are letting antisocial criminal trash walk freely around downtown and terrorize the local population. I think a lot of people live in their nice neighborhood bubble and have never stepped foot in FiDi or SOMA. Since I moved here, I have sen people break into cars (numerous times), fill suitcases with products from Target and Walgreens and leave without paying, casually smoke meth in a crowded bus, empty their bladder and bowels in the middle of the sidewalk, etc. all of this brazenly and in broad daylight. In other cities, this type of behavior usually earns you at least a good beating and a night in jail. The negative feedback is very important for conditioning antisocial people to behave in a civilized community, but for some reason, SF has decided to not bother with it. Some other comments conflate this with the "homeless problem". This is not a "homeless problem". Homeless people living in a shelter or pitching a tent under a bridge are not the problem in SF. Criminal antisocial nutcases getting no consequences for their actions are the problem.

jacquesm 4y ago
> at least a good beating In what cities does any of this earn you a good beating?
- tormeh 4y ago
  Very few rich cities, formally speaking. I know Singapore uses formal physical punishment. In worldwide practice, however, police will often be a bit rougher than they perhaps have to (or have the right to) be when arresting if they feel someone deserves it. Many judges also silently tolerate this.
  - blackwateragent 4y ago
    > Very few rich cities, formally speaking. I know Singapore uses formal physical punishment. For extremely serious crimes, not his list of public indecency. For instance: * Under the Environmental Public Health Act, it is an offence to urinate or defecate "in or upon any street, arcade, vacant land, river, canal, ditch, drain or watercourse or in any place to which the public has access except in any sanitary convenience provided for such purpose." The penalty is a fine of up to $1,000 for a first offence, and up to $2,000 and $5,000 for the second and third offence respectively. [1] [2] [1] https://www.asiaone.com/singapore/totally-unacceptable-man-pees-grass-near-bus-stop-public-toilet-only-metres-away https://www.asiaone.com/singapore/totally-unacceptable-man-p... [2] https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/nea-issues-warning-woman-who-defecated-outside-mrt-station https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/nea-issues-warning-wom...

scoofy 4y ago

I will do my best, but it's important for people to know that I mean this as respectfully as I can. It's my honest assessment, and I will try to make few-to-no normative claims. I tend to refer to what's happening in SF as SF-Stockholm syndrome (I do not mean this as disrespectful, only that I don't know any other way to describe the normalization of what happens here). I grew up in Texas, spent time on the East Coast, with a reasonable stint in NYC, and spent just over a year Scotland. I really have never seen the openness and acceptance of severe substance abuse like I have on the West Coast of the United States (not just in SF). Portland, SF, LA, Oakland, Berkeley, pretty much every major city here, there are areas of the city where serious drug use, and some crime, is effectively just tolerated. SF is particularly unique, because, by a wide margin, it's the smallest in area and most walkable. Other cities tend to be automobile-centric, so non-organized crime tends to stay in small areas of the city (though, from my understanding, this is changing in Portland for the worse). This is combine with a fairly strong anti-police culture. I don't know the veracity or history, but people here, even perfectly law abiding people, tend to think the police forces are generally corrupt-and-racist, or have a history of corruption and racism. I'm regularly shock that everyone here seems to be disgusted with the police, but nearly nobody has any intention or desire to reform, normalize, or even overhaul the institution. Many seem to see very idea of police as just a bad thing. Combine this with the out-of-control opiate epidemic, and what this seems to have created is a pretty nuts, but not actually abnormally dangerous, environment in San Francisco in particular. There is little enforcement of any laws, except parking enforcement. When my friends from Germany visited, they were very curious about this "opiate and crime thing" after reading about book about Fentanyl, so as part of their visit, I showed them the open drug markets around midnight at UN Plaza, at Civic Center BART station. They were horrified. It's hard to describe the scene of crowds of people, many just shuffling around, obviously high, often with pretty obvious other complications from living in squalor. I call it Stockholm Syndrome because people have genuinely convinced themselves that this is normal. People here legitimately believe that leaving anything at all in your car, even small things, in any major city in America, will likely lead to a break in. Obviously this is incredibly untrue, and SF is an outlier in theft (to the point that the stats are laughably inaccurate because nobody even reports car break-ins to the police anymore), but people have acclimated to the culture, and just assume it's normal, if they don't leave the region on a regular basis. Ironically, the city is actually fairly safe with regards to violent crime. Not especially safe, but the homicide figures show that things aren't "out of control" in the violent crime aspect. The thing that's shocking is how in-your-face it all is. The signs of severe substance abuse, are ever-present in a shockingly large amount of the commercial districts of the city (though most of the city is perfectly safe, quite and residential). The city does absolutely nothing about it. They do not mandate addiction treatment, because, for the most part, the people with substance abuse issues never see a court room. Primarily, because the court system cannot handle the case load. My roommate is a Public Defender, so I'm acutely aware of the backlog of cases that are genuinely violent crime. Not that it matters, because in election-after-election, the candidates tend to be pretty much on the same page that nothing really will be done. Again, much of the populous has a very strong distaste for any policing action. I honestly believe that most people here legitimately don't like the idea of forcing people into treatment if they don't want it. It is incredibly complex, and I've only just scratched the surface of the nuance in what's happening here. There are housing issues, inequality issues, nativist issues, agency issues, and even a bizarre idealization poverty and squalor. To cover everything would be more appropriate as an hour-long discussion over drinks at a bar where you can see what's actually happening with your own eyes, because I think most Europeans would be quite speechless at it all. This tragedy did not happen in a bad part of town, and I honestly walk through worse areas at similar hours regularly, and it's generally fine.

mlcrypto 4y ago

I thought Europe is the same way. In France you get stabbed too and burned in the street by the riots

deleted 4y ago

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DoreenMichele 4y ago

1. Due to the temperate weather, California has largely become the dumping ground for America's chronic homeless. This is rooted in longstanding housing policies causing a shortfall of affordable housing nationwide. 2. On top of that, California has additional broken tax policies and other policies that deepen the shortage of affordable housing. 3. Big cities are where the services are, such as soup kitchens. If you are homeless in the US and have nothing, going to the nearest big city is your best bet for trying to eat regularly. 4. California and big cities are both expensive. Once you go to California as a homeless person or the big city as a homeless person, it's quite hard to get off the street because housing is so expensive. 5. Being LGBTQ puts one at high risk of being homeless due to homophobia. San Francisco has a reputation for being more LGBTQ-friendly than average even for a big city. So you have desperate people hearing high-minded nonsense that lures them into a bad situation and we aren't really dealing effectively with such issues generally, so we aren't giving people real solutions. Desperate, hopeless people with no options is not a good population type to foster the growth of if you value a civilized social climate. /2 cents

chockablock 4y ago
The narrative that most homeless people in SF come there from other places is contradicted by data. In annual surveys, ~70+% of people who are homeless in SF lived in SF when they became homeless. https://sfstandard.com/public-health/latino-homelessness-surged-in-sf-during-covid-according-to-new-data/ https://sfstandard.com/public-health/latino-homelessness-sur...
- DoreenMichele 4y ago
  Well, I didn't say that. You inferred that. There are also lots of reasons to question exactly how such numbers are determined and what they really mean, which is a long discussion I don't care to have.
  - HDThoreaun 4y ago
    No, you said SF was a "dumping ground" for the homeless.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

I'd summarize it as BS. This will receive howls of disapproval. It's so obvious, like climate change being fake and Trump secretly battling a cabal of pedo vaccine-peddling warmongers. How could you possibly believe something different? But I've heard similar about Chicago, Paris and Bradford. https://www.politico.com/amp/news/2020/07/29/trump-chicago-guns-violence-385798 https://www.politico.com/amp/news/2020/07/29/trump-chicago-g... > Conservative media for decades have painted America’s third-largest city as a national hub of gun violence and gang activity, crippled by what they see as political correctness thwarting real solutions. https://blog.geographydirections.com/2015/02/02/fox-news-no-go-zones-and-british-muslim-negotiations-of-urban-citizenship/ https://blog.geographydirections.com/2015/02/02/fox-news-no-... > Emerson stated, “In Britain, it’s not just no-go zones, there are actual cities like Birmingham that are totally Muslim where non-Muslims just simply don’t go… In parts of London, there are actually Muslim religious police that actually beat and actually wound seriously anyone who doesn’t dress according to religious Muslim attire.” >These segments were widely mocked across social media and the station eventually issued an apology, stating that there was “no credible information to support the assertion”. As a European you just have to look at all the claims of how "communist" California is to get an idea how detached from reality these people are.

blondie9x 4y ago

Homeless is just the wrong word. It should be something else.

mrits 4y ago
I'm imagining running through a WW2 field doing triage and telling the battle wounded that the doctors are behind you but you are making sure that no one offends them verbally. If you take the issue seriously it is more offensive to waste energy on what we decide is an appropriate label for other people.

m463 4y ago

I visited the tourist area near the piers a few months ago, and it seemed a little lawless. Why are there so many people on unlicensed dirt bikes doing wheelies down the street?

kiviuq 4y ago

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hayst4ck 4y ago

There's 100s of different hypothesis for the cause, but it's all just a different flavor of wealth inequality. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. This promotes all types of corruption. The rich can usually avoid the stench and filth of the poor so they don't invest their money in solving it. Now the poorness is festering. This is a problem that will not get solved without taxes, and it probably won't get solved without taxes at the federal level. Americans will not let themselves be taxed more and so the consequences are more of this for the foreseeable future.

logicchains 4y ago
>There's 100s of different hypothesis for the cause, but it's all just a different flavor of wealth inequality This is simply untrue. There are cities with more wealth inequality (Singapore, Shanghai, Dubai..) that have no such crime or filth, because the police deal with it aggressively.
- modo_mario 4y ago
  I think Singapore has a very notable affordable housing system (There's some short docus on youtube that should be easy to find) which probably holds back a lot of such problems. In Dubai I believe the locals are also pretty damn well off whilst an insane amount of the population is expatriates which I'd imagine get kicked out the moment they're seen as a problem or lose their job, etc. No clue about Shangai. I know Chinas police in other cities can be rather heavy handed (beating people out of bars with batons where words could have probably done the trick for example) Plenty of other factors can play a role tho. From Chinas political patronage system leading to leaders having their jobs/prospects tied to not letting such issues go too far to a less individualistic culture or simply lots of low bar employment options and housing. Better a run down cramped place shared with too many people (You can find some shocking images of this from shangai) than the street.
fallingknife 4y ago
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Dig1t 4y ago

syntheweave 4y ago

I have lived in SF my whole life. It's not that anything specific has changed in SF - it's more a case of, the political machine has been running very smoothly in a way that does little to help anyone in particular, and occasionally it manifests as an "oopsie we let someone die". The designated narrative role of SF since the 70's, as a Democratic Party stronghold, is to be praised from the left for progressive policies, and pilloried from the right for being a failing dystopia. And the narrative has simply intensified both ways over time, while the actual ground level conditions are way more varied. There used to be more overt violence, gang shootings and the like. Now it's mostly drug use and property crime. Mostly. After all, someone did just get stabbed. But in any case, the existence of the narrative allows every concrete fact to be shouted over by paid advocates for some cause. To get at the truth you have to dig into the details neighborhood by neighborhood, department by department, year by year. The problems are not something that manifests from electing one wrong leader or voting yes on one wrong ballot proposition, but from the city openly allowing itself to court a menagerie of institutions that do no good other than to allow money to be shuffled between bank accounts. There are nice neighborhoods, mostly on the west side of the city, where if anything bad is happening, it's kept tucked out of sight. But go downtown and you get the apocalyptic scenes, which are supported by this "NGO industrial complex". For one example, I present Urban Alchemy. Urban Alchemy describes itself like this: We’re a social enterprise that engages with situations where extreme poverty meets homelessness, mental illness and addiction. When a neighborhood, street or intersection earns a reputation as a place to avoid, we turn it around. Urban Alchemy is a peaceful and supportive presence, inviting communities to rebuild and restore a sense of pride and respect in urban spaces. UA has a logo that looks like a cult symbol, and they hire former prisoners as "ambassadors"(i.e. they beat up and harass people, mostly homeless). This does nothing to fix the visible drug use problem next door to their building, of course. It would not surprise me to learn that UA itself has drug addicts in its ranks. In essence, they seem to be doing the kind of thing you would expect the police to be doing, but the police aren't doing it, so they're going to do it very badly and say it is helping. What are the police doing? Not a whole lot, it seems. They were very happy to say it was the progressive district attorney making things unsafe. But even if that were the case, they just haven't been enforcing, not even traffic. They weren't defunded at all. After Covid, people started speeding around the empty streets and they didn't stop even after traffic picked up again. They need to fire the department and start over, like what happened in Georgia in 2004. Tech actually did a measure of good for the city, at the expense of making it a really expensive place to live and bringing in a highly transient population of tech workers who "put in a few years" for a career launchpad. The tech companies threw their weight around and got some things built. However, a lot of the surplus funds that went into the government went into "programs" of the Urban Alchemy sort, and tech workers weren't in it for the long term and voted with the national narratives, not for direct investment in the neighborhoods. So, mostly, measures that favored landowners under progressive guises passed. And that brings us to today, where it might actually come to pass that the city has to cut something for once. But they've made so many things in the budget earmarked that it'll probably be the wrong things that get cut first.

harimau777 4y ago

There's a combination of issues. In general, the US has a major crime/homlessness problem due to the lack of a social safety net, poor drug & mental health policy, and homophobia. California has much nicer weather than much of the US so homeless people move their or are just able to survive there. In some cases, right wing states purposely relocate their homeless to California. America is currently experiencing a backlash against a broken justice system that tolerates police brutality, favors the rich, and is often racist. Unfortunately, this has probably resulted in an overcorrection in many places. The previous point is exasperated by the fact that the Republican party, which in recent decades has been more oriented around "law and order", has become a far right party. Therefore, even if someone agrees with their candidate on crime, they may disagree with them on economics, LGBTQ rights, etc. I don't know if this is true, but I've been told that unlike most other cities, much of SF's resources for helping homeless people is located in their downtown. That then results in the homeless problem being much more visible there.

JeremyNT 4y ago

Only millionaires can afford to live in SF now due to the tech money. This displaces the middle class and poor, and leads to homelessness and increased crime.

mrits 4y ago
It may lead to homelessness but certainly not the only thing that does. In Austin you don't need to be a millionaire and the city takes 1 step forward 2 steps back with our homelessness problem.

amrocha 4y ago

Arresting people doesn't address the reason they committing crimes in the first place. The issue is poverty and wealth inequality. The truth is tech ruined the city. SF used to be a city of misfits, who don't usually have high income. Tech workers started flooding the city, drove up rents, and these misfits ended up homeless. Once you're homeless it's a struggle, some get back on their feet but some start abusing drugs. Government support programs are terribly run, so nobody uses them. Let the situation go on for a few years and you get SF. It's not just SF though, it's any city in North America that has had booming rents the past couple decades. Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, SF. If you look at Tokyo, rents are low and jobs are plentiful. The biggest city in the world has less than 4000 homeless people living in it.

yurikoif 4y ago
It’s just simply false. Crimes in SF were bad even before the dot com era. Remember the roof top Koreans? I’d give police & drug policies more credit for this
- faanghacker 4y ago
  Roof Koreans were in LA not SF.
- amrocha 4y ago
  As the other comment pointed out, you got your cities mixed up. I hope this serves as a wake up call to you that your biases are preventing you from seeing the whole picture.
  - yurikoif 4y ago
    ya you guys are right ab this one
  - yurikoif 4y ago
    but still, it does not prove much of a bias in my point of view. SF was known for homelessness & crime & drug crisis back before the tech boom. it used to be the veterans with mental illness and nowadays teens or common people with such.

polski-g 4y ago

You can put bad people in an insane asylum, or you can put them in prison. But you cannot leave them in society: https://twitter.com/KaseyKlimes/status/1632096902022832130 https://twitter.com/KaseyKlimes/status/1632096902022832130 The left decided that regulating society's behavior was racist so they stopped doing it since 2014.

fed_up_ca 4y ago

part of the problem is the city is refusing to arrest Honduran fentanyl dealers due to sanctuary city laws the other part of the problem is there's a certain minority demographic who are responsible for 80% of the violent crime. Yes, it is racist to point this out but reality is racist. Europe doesn't have much of this demographic. There's no good solution to this. 3-strikes laws from the 90s kept this in check but they all got rolled back as racist. Current progressive thinking is be lenient on violent crime and treat the perpetrator better than the victim. This is proving disastrous Either American cities go back to harsh enforcement or they will continue to descend into Mogadishu-like chaos

seaourfreed 4y ago

Two factors: a) They cut officers and drive them away. They had 2,160 officers and needed them. They are down to 1,651 officers (Sept 2022) Source: abc7news.com b) The San Francisco DA allows many arrested to allowed to go free. They elected a special DA to allow people to go free. Not for all crimes, but many. This emboldens people because they see so many people released without trial or sentencing for their crimes, so they are emboldened to commit crimes. The number of murders is very sad to see increased to such high levels.

Jochim 4y ago
> The number of murders is very sad to see increased to such high levels. Why just make things up? The absolute number of murders is basically flat over the last decade and per-capita it's decreased[1]. [0] https://sfgov.org/scorecards/public-safety/violent-crime-rate-and-property-crime-rate https://sfgov.org/scorecards/public-safety/violent-crime-rat... [1] https://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-San-Francisco-California.html https://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-San-Francisco-Californ...

tlogan 4y ago

There are a few unrelated problems: - Sf closed schools for one year and half during the COVID causing large number of families to move out. And these are people who are contrablance to ultra liberals. - Housing crisis: Corruption within the city's permit process has resulted in the need to hire "accelerators," which exacerbates the housing crisis. - Public education: The public school system is facing significant difficulties and is in desperate need of improvement. - Drug policy: The implementation of safe drug consumption sites has inadvertently worsened the city's drug problem. - Street closures: Restricting vehicle access on certain streets has negatively impacted businesses and inadvertently facilitated the spread of homeless encampments. - Small business challenges: Overly stringent regulations, often driven by the "virtue signaling" of the super wealthy, have created a hostile environment for small businesses. - Progressive District Attorney: The DA's policies have led to policing issues, resulting in a surge of crimes such as robberies. - Homelessness: Despite significant spending on homelessness, inefficiencies and corruption have hindered progress. Furthermore, "virtue signaling" has taken precedence over effective solutions. - BART safety: Following a police shooting on BART several years ago, a reduction in policing has made the transit system less safe, deterring people from using it to visit San Francisco. These issues may be interrelated or independent, but each contributes to the city's current struggles.

TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
> The implementation of safe drug consumption sites has inadvertently worsened the city's drug problem. "Inadvertently." Nice one. > These issues may be interrelated or independent, but each contributes to the city's current struggles. I don't see how any reasonable person could not see that these things are all closely related. The inequality, due to the unaffordable housing, leading to rampant homelessness, drug use, and crime, to an almost-complete abdication of prosecution for these crimes, in an effort to be "equitable," and now... considering paying reparations for slavery!? You really don't see a thread here? Really!?
- tlogan 4y ago
  I was trying to be politically correct here on HN. Even though I really tried to tone down my anger (yes anger) and be political my post is still downvoted to hell. There are some really really strong forces preventing change in SF.

jonfw 4y ago

It's a great location on the coast, with public transit, interesting architecture and culture. So people want to be there. The weather is great and the housing is incredibly expensive, so living on the street, in a tent, or out of a car is more appealing comparatively speaking than most places. San Francisco has tended to view aggressive law enforcement against poor or homeless people as immoral (they don't want to criminalize being poor) which has had an unintended affect of making it a good place to be a homeless person or criminal.

naremu 4y ago
It's interesting to see California really embrace socially progressive policies while simultaneously staying heavily invested in economics that nobody but some quiet, far off yacht owner seems to be happy about As someone from the general northeast US, it's amazing how local views of california have changed as they continue to kind of...drag their feet along and keep up this "highly based" outward appearance.

rib3ye 4y ago

Perspective of an SF homeowner and resident for 20 years. I also raise young kids here. In 2000, there was observably more crime everywhere, but rents were cheap and as a young person I enjoyed the relative lawlessness. Market St used to be nothing but adult theaters and shady import shops. Things are 1000% NICER in ALL areas of the city. The transformation of China Basin has been incredible. But you have to put all the down-and-out people somewhere. We squeezed them out of many central refuge areas (Tenderloin, 6th St., Fillmore, Mission) and then expected instant gentrification. TL;DR... SF: far from perfect, but definitely not on a downward slope.

honkycat 4y ago

It comes from a few things: 1. Rent has become insanely expensive such that a lot of people end up no the streets. This is the cause of the tent cities popping up, and really are a small part of what people have a problem with. The "invisible" homeless. 2. We do not have any resources for people who are too mentally ill or too sick to be of any "use" to society. A lot of those people end up on the street, where they are vulnerable to manipulation to start using heroin. A lot of them have mental disabilities. No, we do not have mental hospitals, and the ones that do exist are full, and they are not hurrying to build more. 3. We have a massive heroin addiction epidemic. These are the people who are crawling all over the place trying to get their fix, mugging people in the fugue states between scraping enough money together to get their next fix. The "highly visible" homeless. So. Something like 0.17% of our population is homeless. That is like 600k people. Imagine what it will take get these people off the streets and reintegrated into society, if that is even possible. They need: 1. Shelter. 2. Food. 3. Medical professionals to help them come down from the high, and help them get on a better path to stop using drugs. 4. Security to prevent re-victimization. 5. Legal authority to detain them without their consent ( a lot of homeless people have schizophrenia and are extremely paranoid and do not trust anyone ). Imagine how much that will cost. The US government is extremely austere around funding this stuff, so it has been left up to the cities and states, which do not have the resources to tackle the problem. So that is really it. It's too expensive, and all the money is pooled into the top .1% of the population, and we don't tax them, and they are busy building rocket ships, so we don't have any money to fix the issue. Some people want the cops to arrest them but that is actually MORE expensive and MORE prone to failure, other ethical issues aside. ( of which there are many )

prottog 4y ago
> It's too expensive, and all the money is pooled into the top .1% of the population, and we don't tax them, and they are busy building rocket ships, so we don't have any money to fix the issue. There may be more impactful things for the likes of Bezos to invest in than rocketships, but the idea that more wealth redistribution via taxation here would help things needs evidence to back it up. In 2021, when the stock market was at its peak and therefore the net worths of billionaires were the most inflated (for which you can blame government policy, anyway), the wealth of all billionaires in the US were around $4T. Even if you confiscated it all and were magically able to sell all of their interests in various holdings without affecting the price, it would pay for two, maybe three years of Social Security and Medicare; forget the rest of the federal government, let alone all the other levels of government. It's been pointed out elsewhere that San Francisco already spends over a billion dollars a year on programs related to homelessness, or around $57k per homeless person. To put it in context, if the whole country spent the same amount on welfare per capita, it would be $19T, which is 3x the current federal budget and over 80% of the GDP. It's a mind-boggling amount of money which would be completely untenable to sustain over time. You would have to rely on a lot of faith to think that lack of money is what is preventing these problems from being fixed.

thefourthchime 4y ago

It's difficult to determine the precise policies that have led San Francisco to its current state. Having lived there a decade ago, I can attest that certain areas, such as the Loin, were unlike anything I had seen in other cities. When I returned a few years ago, I observed that those areas had deteriorated even further and were spreading like a cancer. Since then, I have relocated to Austin, where homelessness has always been more prevalent than in other southern cities but never to the same extent as in LA or SF. However, a few years ago, our mayor chose not to penalize public camping, and as a result, homeless camps began to spring up throughout the city, including a tent city beneath a highway near my home. This led to a host of issues, including campfires, public defecation, and needles, necessitating constant intervention by EMS. Fortunately, a proposition to make public camping illegal again passed with ease. While the city council was initially slow to enforce the ban, they eventually did so, and one by one, the tent cities disappeared. Occasionally, a tent pile of belongings still appears, but these are also cleared out promptly. It's unclear where the former residents of these tent cities have gone. Some may have relocated to the creeks or woods out of sight, while others may have taken a bus to SF or LA. Alternatively, perhaps the change in policy inspired some of them to reach out to family members or other support networks to try and get back on their feet. Ultimately, all I know is that enforcing basic laws had a positive impact on the non-homeless population, and I hope that those experiencing homelessness can find a way to improve their situation without making the city worse for everyone else.

RC_ITR 4y ago

What happened is as follows: 1) Various US policies have driven up rates of destructive drug use (i.e. it's easier to get truly toxic drugs like Meth and Fent than it is to get lower harm, but equally potent drugs) 2) Various US policies have made life miserable for people who fall victim to that drug use 3) SF has nice weather and is generally more tolerant of people on drugs (California is the capital of working professionals with hard-drug habits) 4) Given the above, if you're down on your luck and drug addicted in the US, SF, Seattle, and LA are the only logical places to live in 5) For political reasons (SF is the home of leading progressives like Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, Kamala, etc.), there is a well-funded cultural apparatus trying to label SF as a failed state due to its own policies

emmelaich 4y ago

Perhaps just read the book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Fransicko https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Fransicko by Michael Shellenberger

tayo42 4y ago

> Can someone very briefly wrap this whole "SF is broken"-situation up for somebody from Europe? Id be really careful of taking anything people here say seriously. Its a politically divisive topic and the stuff ive seen in the comments are people getting riled up. The right wing loves to hate san francisco, the media loves to hate it too. Please consider there are multiple sides, people are being manipulated by media and outrage

carapace 4y ago

California is only about a hundred and fifty years old. It was like Siberia, but with an awesome climate. Gold was discovered and a hundreds of thousands of 49ers flooded the state and San Francisco became a major port city overnight. For the next hundred and fifty years, right up until about 2001, the city has served as the "drain" for the rest of the country. San Francisco is and always has been an open-air lunatic asylum (e.g. His Imperial Majesty Emperor Norton I.) The Tenderloin is bedlam, a little slice of hell raised to the surface of the Earth and allowed to fester in broad daylight. In short, nothing happened to make SF this way, it's always been this way. The idea that SF is some left-wing exemplar is just as foolish as the idea that is was a good place to start start-ups. It's all hype. SF is kinda nasty. (Go check out what was going down here a few decades ago. But be warned, it's pretty fucked up. It's a story that culminates in the events at Jonestown. If you don't already know what that is, then you probably should not look it up.)

srcreigh 4y ago

Mark Rober has a series where he builds fake packages with cameras, stink bombs, etc. Goal is to get vengeance against car thieves in SF since police do nothing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWeu2dxHRDg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWeu2dxHRDg

throwaway292939 4y ago

Just a few notes I quickly thought of: - SF has policies that encourages homeless to emigrate there, one of which is being pretty lenient to anyone who sets up camp on the streets - SF allows open drug markets that has become a hotbed of criminal activity - Police aren't fully empowered, and many people because of their ideology tend to hate police - Lots of catch and release going on, both anecdotally and on news - They offer drug kits (think needles, pipes, and other tools). The kit looked to be worth around $100 - They gave free alcohol/marijuana to homeless during lockdown - A large subset of the population seem to give no shits about the city or other people: public urination, defecation, harassment, drug use, property theft, vandalism is common. The lack of enforcement has allowed these activities to increase