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> But San Francisco’s problems go far beyond drugs. The Bay Area is home to four of the 10 most valuable companies in the world — Apple, Alphabet, Nvidia and Me

by proc0 3y ago

> But San Francisco’s problems go far beyond drugs. The Bay Area is home to four of the 10 most valuable companies in the world — Apple, Alphabet, Nvidia and Meta — titanic producers of wealth, but a staggering one per cent of the city’s population is homeless, compared to less than 0.2 per cent across the US. Nice try, but this isn't as big as a problem outside of SF and Oakland. Other cities have a semblance of order and while there are still people outside they are not out of control and they seem to be in a relatively normal state of mind. The main question for me is will anybody be held accountable for this at all.

user_named 3y ago
The article is talking about San Francisco and you say, "except for San Francisco"...?
- proc0 3y ago
  That specific line seems to conflating Silicon Valley with SF. They're close, but it's not the same, especially on this issue.
LarsAlereon 3y ago
The size of the visible homeless population in a city is mostly determined by the cost of housing and how cold it gets in the winter. SF is basically a worst case scenario of being insanely expensive but also warm enough that they don't feel an obligation to build shelters so people aren't freezing to death. People are homeless because it's too expensive to live, not because we're not punishing them harshly enough for being poor.
- nicenewtemp84 3y ago
  How much would housing have to fall, for a homeless person to get themselves a 1br? 75%? Are there really people on the streets because they had a spare $1000 a month, but couldn't find anything, so they said screw it I'll shoot up heroine from a tent instead?
  - throw9away6 3y ago
    The cost to rebuild would have to be insanely cheap to house people that destroy everything. Like derilect rv cheap 5-10k
    - nicenewtemp84 3y ago
      A home Depot shed isn't crazy. Just need a communal bathroom area and honestly that's about what most houses were like for most people just a century ago.
      - throw9away6 3y ago
        I think it’s fine but having sufficient separation from other sheds is hard because a lot of people are smoking and cooking meth/lith so fires are happening a lot.
    - AlbertCory 3y ago
      We have a natural experiment going on just 50 miles to the south, in San Jose. New mayor Matt Mahan won by promising "pragmatic" solutions to homelessness, including building very cheap housing for them, and putting them to work cleaning up the city
    - inglor_cz 3y ago
      Compared to homelessness, a park of refurbished naval cargo containers with common bathrooms/kitchens would be livable, plus steel containers are really hard to destroy.
  - LarsAlereon 3y ago
    Look at it this way, there are definitely people homeless because it's not possible to afford somewhere to live on the wages they can earn. It's also really hard to keep a job when you're living out of your car. People in a situation like that often give up, or experience depression that they try to self-medicate using addictive substances.
    - 3y ago
nicenewtemp84 3y ago
Can anyone explain to me why a nice rich suburb will not even allow a panhandler to stand in a center divide at an intersection, but SF basically allows open air drug use? Is it just a matter of scale? You can stop 1 panhandler, but if you had 100 people to stop you couldnt? If that's the case, once problems reach critical mass, is there any going back?
- TurkishPoptart 3y ago
  > “Five years ago, it wasn’t like this,” he says about the people openly using drugs around us on Market Street, just outside the Urban Alchemy headquarters, where he sells souvenir photographs of local liquor stores. “Five years ago, a black guy with a pipe got arrested; now the police walk past a white guy with a needle in his arm,” he says. So, as of the past 5-10 years there are these really progressive district attorneys who really do not like to prosecute people. I'm not going to say who generally funds their campaigns, because I'm tired of being downvoted, but you can find out pretty easily.
  - Avshalom 3y ago
    5-10? that's a weird fucking range, gascon was 12-4 years ago (and a cop) and boudin was 3-1 years ago.
- blagie 3y ago
  The US is hyper-polarized. There are crazies on both sides. The bigger the city, the more political processes select for crazies. In a village of 100 people (1) more people are involved, since individual influence is felt (2) there are fewer crazies, since you can only go 2-3 std. div. out. In a bigger city, (1) fewer people follow politics, since there's no direct influence on their lives; civics is dominated by crazies. (2) The absolute number of crazies is higher. If you have 100,000 people, just by statistics, the craziest crazies will be crazier. Having a small number of very bad crazies can ruin civics, since they often operate outside of civic processes. If just one person is willing to tarnish your reputation, smash your windows, or send a death threat, that can have a chilling effect. The worst cities in the US are near-100% blue or near-100% red, since there's no moderating factor. Transient cities also tend to be worse (where a lot of the population don't expect to keep living there in five years), since no one cares about civics. SF is the sort of place people most people move out from when they decide to start a family. SF is close to a million people, VERY blue, and that leads to extremist politics. Note: I'm extrapolating from what I see with cities where I live, as well as accounts from SF. I don't have first-hand experience there. But I think there are a lot of reasons why SF politics might get particularly broken.

by proc0 3y ago

user_named 3y ago

The article is talking about San Francisco and you say, "except for San Francisco"...?

proc0 3y ago
That specific line seems to conflating Silicon Valley with SF. They're close, but it's not the same, especially on this issue.

LarsAlereon 3y ago

The size of the visible homeless population in a city is mostly determined by the cost of housing and how cold it gets in the winter. SF is basically a worst case scenario of being insanely expensive but also warm enough that they don't feel an obligation to build shelters so people aren't freezing to death. People are homeless because it's too expensive to live, not because we're not punishing them harshly enough for being poor.

nicenewtemp84 3y ago
How much would housing have to fall, for a homeless person to get themselves a 1br? 75%? Are there really people on the streets because they had a spare $1000 a month, but couldn't find anything, so they said screw it I'll shoot up heroine from a tent instead?
- throw9away6 3y ago
  The cost to rebuild would have to be insanely cheap to house people that destroy everything. Like derilect rv cheap 5-10k
  - nicenewtemp84 3y ago
    A home Depot shed isn't crazy. Just need a communal bathroom area and honestly that's about what most houses were like for most people just a century ago.
    - throw9away6 3y ago
      I think it’s fine but having sufficient separation from other sheds is hard because a lot of people are smoking and cooking meth/lith so fires are happening a lot.
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    We have a natural experiment going on just 50 miles to the south, in San Jose. New mayor Matt Mahan won by promising "pragmatic" solutions to homelessness, including building very cheap housing for them, and putting them to work cleaning up the city
  - inglor_cz 3y ago
    Compared to homelessness, a park of refurbished naval cargo containers with common bathrooms/kitchens would be livable, plus steel containers are really hard to destroy.
- LarsAlereon 3y ago
  Look at it this way, there are definitely people homeless because it's not possible to afford somewhere to live on the wages they can earn. It's also really hard to keep a job when you're living out of your car. People in a situation like that often give up, or experience depression that they try to self-medicate using addictive substances.
  - 3y ago

nicenewtemp84 3y ago

Can anyone explain to me why a nice rich suburb will not even allow a panhandler to stand in a center divide at an intersection, but SF basically allows open air drug use? Is it just a matter of scale? You can stop 1 panhandler, but if you had 100 people to stop you couldnt? If that's the case, once problems reach critical mass, is there any going back?

TurkishPoptart 3y ago
> “Five years ago, it wasn’t like this,” he says about the people openly using drugs around us on Market Street, just outside the Urban Alchemy headquarters, where he sells souvenir photographs of local liquor stores. “Five years ago, a black guy with a pipe got arrested; now the police walk past a white guy with a needle in his arm,” he says. So, as of the past 5-10 years there are these really progressive district attorneys who really do not like to prosecute people. I'm not going to say who generally funds their campaigns, because I'm tired of being downvoted, but you can find out pretty easily.
- Avshalom 3y ago
  5-10? that's a weird fucking range, gascon was 12-4 years ago (and a cop) and boudin was 3-1 years ago.
blagie 3y ago
The US is hyper-polarized. There are crazies on both sides. The bigger the city, the more political processes select for crazies. In a village of 100 people (1) more people are involved, since individual influence is felt (2) there are fewer crazies, since you can only go 2-3 std. div. out. In a bigger city, (1) fewer people follow politics, since there's no direct influence on their lives; civics is dominated by crazies. (2) The absolute number of crazies is higher. If you have 100,000 people, just by statistics, the craziest crazies will be crazier. Having a small number of very bad crazies can ruin civics, since they often operate outside of civic processes. If just one person is willing to tarnish your reputation, smash your windows, or send a death threat, that can have a chilling effect. The worst cities in the US are near-100% blue or near-100% red, since there's no moderating factor. Transient cities also tend to be worse (where a lot of the population don't expect to keep living there in five years), since no one cares about civics. SF is the sort of place people most people move out from when they decide to start a family. SF is close to a million people, VERY blue, and that leads to extremist politics. Note: I'm extrapolating from what I see with cities where I live, as well as accounts from SF. I don't have first-hand experience there. But I think there are a lot of reasons why SF politics might get particularly broken.