10 ms·

Speaking as an immigrant - Worked in SF most of last decade. Left in 2018. Crime was on a steady uptick while I was there. Once in the Bart, a young man grabbed

by dxbydt 4y ago

Speaking as an immigrant - Worked in SF most of last decade. Left in 2018. Crime was on a steady uptick while I was there. Once in the Bart, a young man grabbed a cellphone from the guy seated right next to me & bolted out of the train. The train started, and the cellphone owner gave chase. The Bart police arrived soon after, with guns pointed straight at the passengers. The robber was fast and jumped over the turnstile & got away with the cellphone. I felt like I was like in a cops and robbers movie. People are trying to peacefully commute to work and instead you are subjected to guns in your face because of some shiny iphone. Rest of the train trip was some heated political debate between the left & the left-left, arguing what should be done. The left wanted to integrate the youth into the tech community by offering free coding classes so they wouldn't rob cellphones. The left-left argued for free iphones for everybody. I was like, hey how about catching the robber & some jailtime, which is what they'd have done where I come from. Ofcourse I didn't actually say anything, I don't feel comfortable talking about your politics. I work in a suburb in the rural midwest now. Neighborhoodscout says my odds are 1 in 1100. So my chances of being a victim have improved from 1 in 18 to 1 in 1100. How does it feel ? 8 year old kids here bike to school a mile away, snow or shine, no cps, nothing. As to property crime - once we went away for the weekend & the garage door acted up in our absence. So for a whole 3 days, the garage was wide open & anybody could have walked in & grabbed whatever. Nothing was taken. On the contrary there was a nice note from the neighbor about applying grease on the railing so the garage door stays closed. So if you are an immigrant & safety is a priority, yeah there are many towns in the midwest southwest etc. where you can be very safe. Houses are quite cheap & I was able to buy my house with straight cash, but ironically that cash was earned in SF! Indeed, I now get paid 4x less than what I made as a programmer back in SF. So yeah, from an immigrant pov, it looks like in this country you first have to pay your dues. Work in some high-crime zone like SF,NYC etc, accumulate capital. Then move to some peaceful rural place in the midwest with no crime & no nothing. We don't even have a mall.

s5300 4y ago
>> Houses are quite cheap & I was able to buy my house with straight cash, but ironically that cash was earned in SF! So… you came to the MidWest just to contribute here to the very problem you were trying to escape This is going to end well for society. Remind me in 20 years.
- throwaway049 4y ago
  The problem they escaped was high crime rates. Do you think they came to the Midwest to commit crime?
  - s5300 4y ago
    No, they’re coming & heavily disrupting the local economy which will lead to the current population unable to afford their lives after some time, which will lead to crime. Do you disagree? Call me crazy, but perhaps if those in SF could afford a home/ to live/ the basic necessities of a U.S. citizen, they wouldn’t be out on the streets being low lifes. Not all of them, some people are truly irredeemable - but truly irredeemable people are typically doing much harder crimes than property theft & petty break-ins.
    - cscurmudgeon 4y ago
      So you are against migration?
      - anigbrowl 4y ago
        I think the gp is referring to coming in and buying a house for cash, something which is likely unaffordable for people who grew up in that community (because op says that pay scales are about 1/4 of what they are in tech metros).
        cscurmudgeon 4y ago
        Yes, so against migration. Migration always introduces these factors.
        anigbrowl 4y ago
        No, not necessarily.
silisili 4y ago
Do you mind if I ask whereabouts you moved to?
- dxbydt 4y ago
  suburb 2 hours from chicago. i have a few friends i visit in illinois, also in indiana and in columbus,ohio. its all very similar here, hard to tell apart. full of corn fields, windmills, large homes with giant basement, poorly funded schools with an outdated syllabus that lags behind asian schools by 5+ years, looking at my kids textbooks. people are quite poor out here. median household income stats is like 60k. if you like water view you can try michigan, otherwise its basically landlocked. again, i am just an average asian immigrant. i am not trying to "disrupt the local economy" like the person below claims. i am sorry he feels that way.
  - Yhippa 4y ago
    Do you feel that the trade-off is worth it? I constantly go back-and-forth over my head about whether or not, it’s better to deal with what you’re doing in the rural areas or if the amenities are worth the pain of living near a big city.
    - silisili 4y ago
      Not OP, but can provide my insight. It all depends on you, your age, and what you like. If you're a people person who loves and needs interaction, shopping, coffee/beer nightly, absolutely don't move out there. If you are a homebody who just wants to be left alone, move far, far away. I'm somewhere in between. I like to get out once or twice a week, then be left alone most of the other times. What I strongly prefer is a place in a small town/city that's within 30 mins or so of a bigger city. And that town/city needs to have its own shopping, groceries, restaurants, post office, etc, because having to drive 30 minutes every time you need a battery or something gets old really, really fast.
  - smsm42 4y ago
    > median household income stats is like 60k That's pretty much average for the US.
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
> So for a whole 3 days, the garage was wide open & anybody could have walked in & grabbed whatever. Nothing was taken. On the contrary there was a nice note from the neighbor about applying grease on the railing so the garage door stays closed. Everyone seems to be missing a piece of critical non-political information. One setting is rural, everyone owns the house, lives there long-term, everyone knows neighbours. You don't want to ruin relationship with neighbours for $100. The other setting is Urban, you don't know neighbours, you don't care what they think. Everyone appears out of nowhere and disappears into obscurity. The social dynamics is totally different, and the housing crisis has a big role to play in it. Also you do not Have_To own the house to feel like you live there long term and know neighbours - many European countries have social housing, or massive restrictions on landlords kicking out tenants. So tenants stay in the same place for decades, and there is a real community.
- robopsychology 4y ago
  Have you ever been to Tokyo? One of the largest cities in the world yet has way way lower robberies/homicides than US cities.
  - za3faran 4y ago
    Also many Gulf states and cities (Dubai, Sharjah, etc.).
  - ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
    Japan is one of the most racially homogenous countries on earth.
    - eastbound 4y ago
      No relation to criminality, there are many countries with racially diverse backgrounds and peaceful communities. Sydney is one of them and Sydney has both Whites and Asians. Singapore has a lot of all of them. It’s not the homogeneity.
smsm42 4y ago
Yeah, that's what I did too. SF has the money, but once you get certain amount of money you start to ask yourself if it's time to get some quality of life, and whether to have to wade around drug addicts and excrement on the street is worth a chance of having more money. SF area (not only SF, same for San Jose) has gone downhill a real lot last ~15 or so years. And somehow people there are completely fine with it, judging from their voting patterns. I don't understand that, but I can't do anything about it, just move out to a place where people value quality of life more. Ironically, covid helped a lot here - many more companies became ok with remote work, and developed processes that allow to accommodate people working outside of the physical office.
BonoboIO 4y ago
Free iPhones for everyone so nobody would steal anymore … Hahaha. What a joke. Unbelievable. So disconnected from reality.
- joseph_grobbles 4y ago
  Do you really believe that this public discourse occurred on a public train after a theft? Do you think they had a lively debate in the commons about how to solve crime? I'm a bit surprised people are seriously believing this. This is someone's shower thoughts six hours later when they strawmanned some ridiculous positions to caricaturize "opponents". I will go further and say that everything the person said seems...dubious, and are claims that are unverifiable. Like, where is this low-income "suburb" (two hours from a major center...) that has no crime? As someone who grew up in a smaller town in the rust belt, I find their claim hysterical.
  - girvo 4y ago
    Yeah that story was amusing at best. I half expected it to end with “That residents name? Albert Einstein” or something equally silly, and yet everyone here is falling for it hook, line and sinker because it confirms their beliefs. HN is supposed to be better than this.
    - joseph_grobbles 4y ago
      [dead]
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    > Do you really believe that this public discourse occurred on a public train after a theft? Do you think they had a lively debate in the commons about how to solve crime? > I'm a bit surprised people are seriously believing this. This is someone's shower thoughts six hours later when they strawmanned some ridiculous positions to caricaturize "opponents". You're trying to portray the story as fabricated, but that's likely wrong. IMHO, it's more likely exaggerated (e.g. there probably wasn't a "lively debate in the commons," more likely comments directed at no one in particular morphing two opinionated randos getting mad at each other). >> So if you are an immigrant & safety is a priority, yeah there are many towns in the midwest southwest etc. where you can be very safe. Houses are quite cheap & I was able to buy my house with straight cash, but ironically that cash was earned in SF! > Like, where is this low-income "suburb" (two hours from a major center...) that has no crime? As someone who grew up in a smaller town in the rust belt, I find their claim hysterical. He didn't say it was "low-income," just cheaper compared to SF. I grew up in a smaller city in the Midwest (four hours from a major center), and his account rings true to me. There's more to the Midwest than the rust belt.
Shocka1 4y ago
I'm born and raised Midwest. I've lived in smaller cities and have absolutely zero desire to go back to that environment. Midwest living is one of the best kept secrets in the US, even though the secret is definitely out now. I make coastal money - it can be done although it takes some negotiating skills.
- TehShrike 4y ago
  did you mean "larger cities"?
  - Shocka1 4y ago
    Good point I probably should have clarified a little better. I meant smaller as in slightly smaller than NYC/Seattle, etc.
muyuu 4y ago
the wealthier cities won't remain wealthier forever with rampant crime and civil disarray once upon a time, not that long ago from a historical PoV (the 1950s), Detroit was THE wealthiest city in the USA and it's now among the poorest and if you look at the decay of those once-wealthy cities, the pattern is that they took it for granted and stopped caring and competing hard times make good men, etc etc
908B64B197 4y ago
> Rest of the train trip was some heated political debate between the left & the left-left, arguing what should be done. The left wanted to integrate the youth into the tech community by offering free coding classes so they wouldn't rob cellphones. The left-left argued for free iphones for everybody. I was like, hey how about catching the robber & some jailtime, which is what they'd have done where I come from. What I wonder is where are the fathers in this scenario. I can't imagine the conversation about the son's income coming from stealing phones going very well with his father.
- TMWNN 4y ago
  >What I wonder is where are the fathers in this scenario. All the fathers stepped out for a pack of smokes some years ago and didn't come back.
heartbreak 4y ago
> The left wanted to integrate the youth into the tech community by offering free coding classes so they wouldn't rob cellphones. The left-left argued for free iphones for everybody. I was like, hey how about catching the robber & some jailtime For what it’s worth, these are solving two different problems. The reported train discussion was a disagreement on a solution to the systemic problem. Jailing the perpetrator only treats the problem with that specific person. Both problems need solutions.
- maratbn 4y ago
  Jailing the perpetrator also warns other potential perpetrators that they might also be jailed if they perpetrate the same crime.
  - heartbreak 4y ago
    Local SF politics notwithstanding, criminals figure they won’t get caught, not that they won’t get punished. But sure, jailing individuals can be considered a systemic fix, too.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
djfobbz 4y ago
As an immigrant myself who moved here in the early 90s, I can no longer recognize certain parts of US as they’ve completely degraded (in terms of quality of life) at an exponential rate. My general observation is that it’s mainly been wealthy urban cities with ultra liberal policies which in-turn directly affect the local middle class…causing them to flee out to suburbs if not another state.
wolverine876 4y ago
> The left-left argued for free iphones for everybody. A little implausible? > Work in some high-crime zone like SF,NYC etc, accumulate capital. People love living in these cities, as real estate prices show. It's not 'paying dues'; those are much more preferred than small towns, as those real estate prices show. You of course are free to prefer whatever you like.
dang 4y ago
I've detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35454781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35454781 and moved it to the top level (just for technical reasons - the first page of the thread is currently too comment-heavy).

by dxbydt 4y ago

s5300 4y ago

>> Houses are quite cheap & I was able to buy my house with straight cash, but ironically that cash was earned in SF! So… you came to the MidWest just to contribute here to the very problem you were trying to escape This is going to end well for society. Remind me in 20 years.

throwaway049 4y ago
The problem they escaped was high crime rates. Do you think they came to the Midwest to commit crime?
- s5300 4y ago
  No, they’re coming & heavily disrupting the local economy which will lead to the current population unable to afford their lives after some time, which will lead to crime. Do you disagree? Call me crazy, but perhaps if those in SF could afford a home/ to live/ the basic necessities of a U.S. citizen, they wouldn’t be out on the streets being low lifes. Not all of them, some people are truly irredeemable - but truly irredeemable people are typically doing much harder crimes than property theft & petty break-ins.
  - cscurmudgeon 4y ago
    So you are against migration?
    - anigbrowl 4y ago
      I think the gp is referring to coming in and buying a house for cash, something which is likely unaffordable for people who grew up in that community (because op says that pay scales are about 1/4 of what they are in tech metros).
      - cscurmudgeon 4y ago
        Yes, so against migration. Migration always introduces these factors.
        anigbrowl 4y ago
        No, not necessarily.

silisili 4y ago

Do you mind if I ask whereabouts you moved to?

dxbydt 4y ago
suburb 2 hours from chicago. i have a few friends i visit in illinois, also in indiana and in columbus,ohio. its all very similar here, hard to tell apart. full of corn fields, windmills, large homes with giant basement, poorly funded schools with an outdated syllabus that lags behind asian schools by 5+ years, looking at my kids textbooks. people are quite poor out here. median household income stats is like 60k. if you like water view you can try michigan, otherwise its basically landlocked. again, i am just an average asian immigrant. i am not trying to "disrupt the local economy" like the person below claims. i am sorry he feels that way.
- Yhippa 4y ago
  Do you feel that the trade-off is worth it? I constantly go back-and-forth over my head about whether or not, it’s better to deal with what you’re doing in the rural areas or if the amenities are worth the pain of living near a big city.
  - silisili 4y ago
    Not OP, but can provide my insight. It all depends on you, your age, and what you like. If you're a people person who loves and needs interaction, shopping, coffee/beer nightly, absolutely don't move out there. If you are a homebody who just wants to be left alone, move far, far away. I'm somewhere in between. I like to get out once or twice a week, then be left alone most of the other times. What I strongly prefer is a place in a small town/city that's within 30 mins or so of a bigger city. And that town/city needs to have its own shopping, groceries, restaurants, post office, etc, because having to drive 30 minutes every time you need a battery or something gets old really, really fast.
- smsm42 4y ago
  > median household income stats is like 60k That's pretty much average for the US.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago

> So for a whole 3 days, the garage was wide open & anybody could have walked in & grabbed whatever. Nothing was taken. On the contrary there was a nice note from the neighbor about applying grease on the railing so the garage door stays closed. Everyone seems to be missing a piece of critical non-political information. One setting is rural, everyone owns the house, lives there long-term, everyone knows neighbours. You don't want to ruin relationship with neighbours for $100. The other setting is Urban, you don't know neighbours, you don't care what they think. Everyone appears out of nowhere and disappears into obscurity. The social dynamics is totally different, and the housing crisis has a big role to play in it. Also you do not Have_To own the house to feel like you live there long term and know neighbours - many European countries have social housing, or massive restrictions on landlords kicking out tenants. So tenants stay in the same place for decades, and there is a real community.

robopsychology 4y ago
Have you ever been to Tokyo? One of the largest cities in the world yet has way way lower robberies/homicides than US cities.
- za3faran 4y ago
  Also many Gulf states and cities (Dubai, Sharjah, etc.).
- ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
  Japan is one of the most racially homogenous countries on earth.
  - eastbound 4y ago
    No relation to criminality, there are many countries with racially diverse backgrounds and peaceful communities. Sydney is one of them and Sydney has both Whites and Asians. Singapore has a lot of all of them. It’s not the homogeneity.

smsm42 4y ago

Yeah, that's what I did too. SF has the money, but once you get certain amount of money you start to ask yourself if it's time to get some quality of life, and whether to have to wade around drug addicts and excrement on the street is worth a chance of having more money. SF area (not only SF, same for San Jose) has gone downhill a real lot last ~15 or so years. And somehow people there are completely fine with it, judging from their voting patterns. I don't understand that, but I can't do anything about it, just move out to a place where people value quality of life more. Ironically, covid helped a lot here - many more companies became ok with remote work, and developed processes that allow to accommodate people working outside of the physical office.

BonoboIO 4y ago

Free iPhones for everyone so nobody would steal anymore … Hahaha. What a joke. Unbelievable. So disconnected from reality.

joseph_grobbles 4y ago
Do you really believe that this public discourse occurred on a public train after a theft? Do you think they had a lively debate in the commons about how to solve crime? I'm a bit surprised people are seriously believing this. This is someone's shower thoughts six hours later when they strawmanned some ridiculous positions to caricaturize "opponents". I will go further and say that everything the person said seems...dubious, and are claims that are unverifiable. Like, where is this low-income "suburb" (two hours from a major center...) that has no crime? As someone who grew up in a smaller town in the rust belt, I find their claim hysterical.
- girvo 4y ago
  Yeah that story was amusing at best. I half expected it to end with “That residents name? Albert Einstein” or something equally silly, and yet everyone here is falling for it hook, line and sinker because it confirms their beliefs. HN is supposed to be better than this.
  - joseph_grobbles 4y ago
    [dead]
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > Do you really believe that this public discourse occurred on a public train after a theft? Do you think they had a lively debate in the commons about how to solve crime? > I'm a bit surprised people are seriously believing this. This is someone's shower thoughts six hours later when they strawmanned some ridiculous positions to caricaturize "opponents". You're trying to portray the story as fabricated, but that's likely wrong. IMHO, it's more likely exaggerated (e.g. there probably wasn't a "lively debate in the commons," more likely comments directed at no one in particular morphing two opinionated randos getting mad at each other). >> So if you are an immigrant & safety is a priority, yeah there are many towns in the midwest southwest etc. where you can be very safe. Houses are quite cheap & I was able to buy my house with straight cash, but ironically that cash was earned in SF! > Like, where is this low-income "suburb" (two hours from a major center...) that has no crime? As someone who grew up in a smaller town in the rust belt, I find their claim hysterical. He didn't say it was "low-income," just cheaper compared to SF. I grew up in a smaller city in the Midwest (four hours from a major center), and his account rings true to me. There's more to the Midwest than the rust belt.

Shocka1 4y ago

I'm born and raised Midwest. I've lived in smaller cities and have absolutely zero desire to go back to that environment. Midwest living is one of the best kept secrets in the US, even though the secret is definitely out now. I make coastal money - it can be done although it takes some negotiating skills.

TehShrike 4y ago
did you mean "larger cities"?
- Shocka1 4y ago
  Good point I probably should have clarified a little better. I meant smaller as in slightly smaller than NYC/Seattle, etc.

muyuu 4y ago

the wealthier cities won't remain wealthier forever with rampant crime and civil disarray once upon a time, not that long ago from a historical PoV (the 1950s), Detroit was THE wealthiest city in the USA and it's now among the poorest and if you look at the decay of those once-wealthy cities, the pattern is that they took it for granted and stopped caring and competing hard times make good men, etc etc

908B64B197 4y ago

> Rest of the train trip was some heated political debate between the left & the left-left, arguing what should be done. The left wanted to integrate the youth into the tech community by offering free coding classes so they wouldn't rob cellphones. The left-left argued for free iphones for everybody. I was like, hey how about catching the robber & some jailtime, which is what they'd have done where I come from. What I wonder is where are the fathers in this scenario. I can't imagine the conversation about the son's income coming from stealing phones going very well with his father.

TMWNN 4y ago
>What I wonder is where are the fathers in this scenario. All the fathers stepped out for a pack of smokes some years ago and didn't come back.

heartbreak 4y ago

> The left wanted to integrate the youth into the tech community by offering free coding classes so they wouldn't rob cellphones. The left-left argued for free iphones for everybody. I was like, hey how about catching the robber & some jailtime For what it’s worth, these are solving two different problems. The reported train discussion was a disagreement on a solution to the systemic problem. Jailing the perpetrator only treats the problem with that specific person. Both problems need solutions.

maratbn 4y ago
Jailing the perpetrator also warns other potential perpetrators that they might also be jailed if they perpetrate the same crime.
- heartbreak 4y ago
  Local SF politics notwithstanding, criminals figure they won’t get caught, not that they won’t get punished. But sure, jailing individuals can be considered a systemic fix, too.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

djfobbz 4y ago

As an immigrant myself who moved here in the early 90s, I can no longer recognize certain parts of US as they’ve completely degraded (in terms of quality of life) at an exponential rate. My general observation is that it’s mainly been wealthy urban cities with ultra liberal policies which in-turn directly affect the local middle class…causing them to flee out to suburbs if not another state.

wolverine876 4y ago

> The left-left argued for free iphones for everybody. A little implausible? > Work in some high-crime zone like SF,NYC etc, accumulate capital. People love living in these cities, as real estate prices show. It's not 'paying dues'; those are much more preferred than small towns, as those real estate prices show. You of course are free to prefer whatever you like.

dang 4y ago

I've detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35454781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35454781 and moved it to the top level (just for technical reasons - the first page of the thread is currently too comment-heavy).