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Downtown San Francisco is at a tipping-point
- zulban 3y agoI wish I could pay 2$ to read the article by clicking a button on an independent service, instead of giving all my info and signing up to a subscription which is probably a nightmare to cancel. Sigh.
- lucaslin 3y agoWhy do you think newspapers/magazines don’t allow people to pay per article (obviously at a steep markup to subscription)? Do you think it’s because they’re afraid of cannibalizing their revenue?
- bombcar 3y agoMy personal theory is that it's a cross of two or three things: 1. They don't want to know or admit the articles that are "worth paying for" 2. They know that hardly anyone would pay 3. Advertisers only care about subscription numbers
- etothepii 3y agoThis is exactly what the 402 HTTP code is for. Such a shame.
- bombcar 3y agoIt seems such a perfect use of Apple Pay online - click a button, pay $1-2, the newspaper gets $0.50-$1 or so (way more than an ad impression) and they get the chance to convince someone to subscribe.
- xyzzy4747 3y agohttps://archive.is/IkYHB https://archive.is/IkYHB
- 23B1 3y agoLet it die. It's the only way for it to be cool again.
- xeromal 3y ago[flagged]
- sien 3y agoSee also the article in the Financial Times "What if San Francisco never pulls out of its ‘doom loop’?" https://www.ft.com/content/71d8013d-9d94-441e-b2d1-3039c04397d6?sharetype=blocked https://www.ft.com/content/71d8013d-9d94-441e-b2d1-3039c0439...
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y agoIsn’t San Francisco a boom and best town all the way back to the gold rush?
- paxys 3y agoSame problem with any region where people don't have roots but rather come for the opportunity. Turns out it's as easy to leave once the opportunity no longer exists.
- jimsimmons 3y agoHotel California
- VWWHFSfQ 3y agoSan Francisco and Oakland are facing combined close to $500 million budget shortfall and are requesting a federal tax payer bailout. The second major federal bailout in eight years. Oakland has one of the highest violent crime rates in the entire country and they just cut more public safety and health jobs. I can't see how anyone can look at the situation in the Bay area and not anticipate anything other than continued decline.
- bombcar 3y agoSounds like someone needs the suburbs to subsidize them.
- onos 3y agoOakland is already gigantic.
- golemotron 3y agoThis is why one party rule is bad.
- RhodesianHunter 3y agoJust look at the bottom ten states for any measurable statistic people care about. Healthcare outcomes, standard of living, GDP per Capita, poverty, educational attainment, obesity, etc. All deep dark red.
- throwaway6734 3y agoExactly. One party rule is bad. The failurs of the GOP to put up viable local candidates in SF and the the Democrats in deep red states are not good for the health of the country
- lotsofpulp 3y agoExactly why we need ranked choice voting.
- i2cmaster 3y ago[flagged]
- papito 3y agoWhat amazes me is that the Valley gazillionaires are not spending their fortunes to fix their own habitat. They can just BUY the city government they want. Instead, they are shoving mountains of cash to turn the United States into some perverted libertarian fantasy, where the government is weak, paralyzed, ineffectual, and out of their way OH WAIT.
- paxys 3y agoDo you think any "valley gazillionaires" are living in the tenderloin?
- papito 3y agoOf course not, I was going to say that, actually - they live on protected, isolated compounds. Logically they should not care about what is happening elsewhere, right? But they do, just not the stuff in their backyard. There are woke people in New York, you see! And they are the real concern.
- bombcar 3y agoYou can see where it's headed by looking at some of the cities in Brazil or Johannesburg. When you have money for security and the ability to travel in what are effectively armored cars, the rest of the city can go to hell.
- quickthrower2 3y agoDon’t you then lose out on something. Feels akin to living in a covid lockdown for life. And a monoculture. What I like about Sydney for example is you can go anywhere and feel safe and do stuff.
- bombcar 3y agoI agree, but some people seem not to - what they apparently do is create safe "enclaves" where they can wander around and pretend not to see the abject poverty right next door.
- MontyCarloHall 3y agoThere are expensive challenges with converting office buildings to apartments that historically made it non-cost effective, since commercial demand was always high enough that building owners could always make a bigger profit leasing to commercial tenants versus converting their buildings to residential. But if remote work has permanently emptied SF’s downtown office buildings, pushing commercial demand to near zero, but demand for housing in the Bay Area is still red-hot, perhaps large-scale conversions will become cost-effective as commercial leases begin to expire, since the alternative for building owners is to just let them rot empty.
- tourgen 3y ago[dead]
- mindvirus 3y agoLook at Detroit. The city hollowed out, but the suburbs are still among the wealthiest in the country.
- contrarian1234 3y agoEvery time I got to SF I'm surprised how far along they've gone in making the city look like Johnny Mnemonic. Just need to neurolink a dolphin to an LLM...
- SirLJ 3y agoThis is good one, thank you for the smile!
- franklampard 3y agoThe amount of tax revenue and budget is still insanely high. Need to be more efficient
- paxys 3y agoSan Francisco spends more on homeless services than most cities its size spend on everything. And the homeless problem is getting worse every year.
- idlewords 3y agoAt the same time, there is a large municipality right next to San Francisco (Colma) that consists entirely of graveyards. Homelessness in SF is not just a housing problem, but the housing crisis amplifies it and could be instantly ameliorated by just building the hell out of things.
- whythre 3y agoBuilding ‘the hell out of things’ doesn’t fix drug induced psychosis.
- idlewords 3y agoNo, but it revitalizes your downtowns and increases density, which keeps city centers from hollowing out and getting taken over by homeless camps. High density also puts pressure on police and city authorities to deal with the violent mentally ill. And abundant, low cost housing gives you blue collar immigrant communities, which have little patience for angry junkies.
- brightball 3y agoThat in itself might be a contributor.
- 0xy 3y agoIt's all embezzled and frauded away. [1] [2] [1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/CEO-of-S-F-nonprofit-accused-of-mishandling-17596479.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/CEO-of-S-F-nonprofit-... [2] https://sfist.com/2023/02/11/saturday-links-lawsuit-alleges-scandal-plagued-bayview-homeless-services-org-funds-went-to-ceos-lavish-lifestyle/ https://sfist.com/2023/02/11/saturday-links-lawsuit-alleges-...
- Mistletoe 3y agoI feel bad for the poor people that moved there for the service industry that supported the startup zero interest rate gold rush. They can’t leave. They didn’t use their stock options to buy a house in the Hamptons or Aspen. They are waiting tables in an empty restaurant and have to make rent and can’t afford to move. The home prices look like this- https://paragonpublic.blob.core.windows.net/dash-v2-blog-images/185972/sf_ca_us_mp-by-year_a.jpg https://paragonpublic.blob.core.windows.net/dash-v2-blog-ima...
- twelve40 3y agoI'm not saying they should, but why can't they leave? even Sacramento a little over an hour's drive away is already much more affordable, let alone other cities and towns in the Central Valley and it only gets cheaper the further you go East. https://www.epi.org/resources/budget/budget-map/ https://www.epi.org/resources/budget/budget-map/
- idlewords 3y agoSadly at this point geology is the last, best hope for West Coast urbanism. Something like BART could not be built today unless the Bay Area was a pile of rubble. Reconstruction is the only way to get Japan-like high density housing and transit infrastructure.
- spaniard89277 3y agoMake housing affordable with denser mixed-use zoning: You solved 50% of the problem. Make public transport convenient. You solved another 30%. People needs to be able to stay frugal in rough times and socialize. It feels to me that many US cities make this impossible. If you had Spain levels of unemployment I have no idea how would you do.
- ioseph 3y agoDensity works but isn't it just kicking the can down the road until population growth and inflation drives prices up again?
- civilized 3y agoIs there supposed to be a one-time eternal solution, a solution that isn't just kicking a can down a road? The only way to keep housing affordable without building more, and have some semblance of fairness, would be to stop new building, impose a price/rent cap, then have a lottery to determine who gets the limited supply of houses. That is a one-time eternal solution that satisfies degrowth ideology, so long as you're willing to ignore the unlucky folks in the lottery.
- spaniard89277 3y agoIm on mobile, so much comments. Yes, but no. The root of the problem is that you cant build land and that's an impossible problem to solve. Supply solutions provide enough time window to think on demand solutions. It is possible, don't get paralized because you'll have a different set of problems in the future.
- seanp2k2 3y agoYou can’t build land, but in cities we deal with that by stacking floors on top of each other, turning one square foot of land into 100 if we want. Trying so hard to preserve rundown two-story crap boxes built in the postwar era just because some folks think that’s what SF should look like isn’t a solution.
- 3y ago
- naillo 3y ago[deleted]
- shrimp_emoji 3y agoinhumane*
- inferiorhuman 3y ago* Cue
- kakapo88 3y agoSF Techie here. Lived and worked here, for many years. Every day I literally step over bodies to get to work. Drugs are openly dealt and consumed. Mentally ill people roam the streets, screaming. People openly use the sidewalks as a toilet. Crime is rampant. And if anyone doubts it's that bad, I invite you to come and look for yourself. Almost all of these people come from elsewhere in the country. They aren't "priced out" local citizens, they're junkies and mentally unwell who come here because they know they will get services and be tolerated. By its own accounting, the city spends over $1b per year on homeless services, for supposedly < 10k "homeless". You do the per capita math. Notice anything strange there? $100k per homeless. Something is off - way off. Meanwhile these people suffer. Even if they have city housing, they are on the streets anyway, because they need drugs, plus they are driven by their mental issues. It's horrific and uncivilized, and it's a creation of a culture that says "all they need is housing", and then enables them in their drug addiction and psychosis. That's go on for years and years, steadily getting worse. Every year more of them come to SF. And every year more of them die, and the city declines further. The solution is obvious: mandatory treatment for drug addiction and mental illness. No more tolerance for crime and drugs. Enforce basic city codes. But somehow, this is "inhumane" to the extreme left that runs SF. They'd rather keep the status quo, and let people suffer and die, while the city falls further into ruin.
- hotpotamus 3y ago> mandatory treatment for drug addiction and mental illness I hope these homeless people have better health insurance than I do.
- higo 3y ago[flagged]
- bilqis 3y agoWell it’s capitalism. End goal of all actors in this economic system is not public good, it’s profit.
- shafyy 3y agoWell. There's capitalism, and then there's whatever the fuck the US is doing.
- throwawaaarrgh 3y agoSuper duper capitalism? Honestly we have a fair bit more regulation than we had in the past, and other capitalist nations don't have the problems we do. It's a lot more than just economic policy. Mostly I think the problem is our death cult of individualism and exceptionalism. Half the country thinks everyone should either pull themselves up by their bootstraps or die.
- shrimp_emoji 3y agoI think it's the giganticness of the country and how that leads to a low degree of education for the average person (among other things, like safety nets). In a developing New World nation, you need individualism because that's how you settle a frontier, even if the individuals eventually become towns and states. The problem is that it's difficult to eventually coalesce that into a system that supports people the way Western European or Asian nations have. It takes loads of resources and hence loads of political will. If the Swiss single-handedly colonized North America, they wouldn't be able to replicate their system across the continent either. It takes a long time. Things are improving, though, I think! It's just a slow-moving process.
- passterby 3y ago[dead]
- truckerbill 3y agoHousing shouldn't be an investment vehicle. It seems pretty obvious but no-one wants to give up their imaginary number. (Imaginary because most people have 1 or fewer houses and will always need to live somewhere, so they can't spend the paper value of their home). The cost of rent feeds into everything, its such a clear drain on everyone's resources (apart from landlords). If you have time to give, please think about how to change things. Though I'm an internet rando so ymmv
- passterby 3y ago[dead]
- riffraff 3y agoThe number is not imaginary if you have kids, the idea of leaving your children some of your wealth is dear to many people, and most often they will have acquired their own place by the time you die. It is arguable that inheritance taxes should prevent accumulation of wealth, but point is, real estate survives you.
- inferiorhuman 3y agoreal estate survives you In California the real estate value survives you. Your children inherit your Prop 13 tax assessment which means your children inherit a tax bill that's a fraction of what it would otherwise be. That's a pretty strong incentive to drive values up and not sell.
- rhaway84773 3y agoAlmost every investment survives you. Bonus, most other safe investments cannot be destroyed by a fire, floods, storm, etc.
- truckerbill 3y agoThe point is they would need less wealth if they also weren't spending the second half of your life saving up for a house... And you can still give them the money Still makes no sense to me
- 3y ago
- elif 3y agoMaybe it's because the friends i used to visit live in the tenderloin but to me San Franskidro tipped a decade ago. I live in the south side of Atlanta and there is constant gun crime, car theft, gang violence, etc. but to me that is wholely different than being harassed in a targeted manner on the streets for being in a perceived "class." There may be an occasional clash of culture in ATL for sure, but not an outright culture war. Oh and no one poops in the street here. That is nice to have.
- rhaway84773 3y agoNo one <anything> in the streets in Atlanta. Because no one uses the streets in Atlanta outside a car. Atlanta has 930 violent crimes per 100k vs SF’s 715 or so. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities... Atlanta is the ultimate out of sight out of mind city.
- colpabar 3y agoIt must be all those damn republican mayors they’ve had over the years :^)
- elif 3y agoYou could be onto something. Maybe infrastructure which supports affordable car ownership would help SF.
- elif 3y agothank you for sharing the wikipedia page. it looks like the only category of crime more prevalent in atlanta than san francisco is aggravated assault. simple assault is not included in violent crime statistics in this chart for whatever reason. I would imagine that this has something to do with atlanta being in an open carry state with no restrictions on gun ownership, and thus more crimes committed involve a gun and would explain why violent crime is statistically higher even though san francisco has 19% more crime overall. you know, out of chart, out of mind.
- PaulHoule 3y agoAs anathema as it may seem to some people I think the real answer has to involve dispersing the homeless population in SF. The SF chronicle did a series on the efforts to house people in shelters and one major problems was that a person who wanted to get clean from opioids is just surrounded by temptation and is just one dose of Fentanyl away from death. Thus these people are more dangerous to each other than they are to anyone else. Not only is there the paradox of warehousing the poor in the most expensive place in America but also that of warehousing them in the most dangerous place in America insofar as fentanyl is concerned.
- mschuster91 3y agoThe problem is that the entire US has zero idea what to do with homeless and mentally ill people, other than "dispersing" them or locking them up. As a result, some (particulary Republican) regions give them one way bus tickets to other (particularly Democrat) regions or deport them outright in sometimes very public stunts - out of sight, out of mind and if it deters others all the better, seems to be the general consensus. Others go where the survival chances are the best on their own, which means somewhere sunny with low rain and snow. The problem is, the very few regions where both conditions match end up overrun - even though no one can seriously expect these regions to solve the homeless problem of an entire continent-spanning country with 330-340M people.
- PaulHoule 3y agoWe've got zero idea how to repair broken brains. People with severe mental illness are hard to live with. When I was growing up there was a homeless man who spent all day at the public library that people called "The Professor" who was said to be unable to live indoors because he'd wake up screaming every night. We took in a friend who I think had schizoaffective disorder in and she threatened my wife with a knife after she'd lived at our place for 18 months. Schizophrenics are more likely to be the victims of crime than the perpetrators but every so often they do something that is "batshit crazy" https://www.mlive.com/news/muskegon/2017/11/look_back_thanksgiving_foundry.html https://www.mlive.com/news/muskegon/2017/11/look_back_thanks... "Housing first" is an improvement over the status quo but people with severe problems are going to make that kind of environment hard to run. "Dispersal" may very well make it possible because that kind of behavior randomly scattered won't break people's ability to cope with it down, whereas concentrating it in one place certainly does. I can't see how anybody who has any moral sensibility at all could stand to go to SF, never mind live there. Just as the rationalists try to break down our moral sensitivities by spamming us with trolley problems, exposure to that filters for a population of people who just don't care. BTW, the one way bus ticket was tried in SF long ago, just like they've tried the other obvious non-solutions, but they came to the conclusion that the offer of bus tickets away just made it more attractive to go there.
- ninjagoo 3y agoSF City had a 2021 GDP of $230 Billion [1]. The City had a budget of $6B in 2007. [2] What do folks on here think - if the City could cut the homeless population in half for $100 Million per year, would it be worth it? How about $50 Million per year to cut it by 25%, would that be worth it? [3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_of_San_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_of_San_Francisco [3] 7800 homeless [4]. $2k rent per month. [4] https://archive.is/IkYHB https://archive.is/IkYHB
- TMWNN 3y agoThe city of San Francisco already spends $70,000 annually per homeless person! <https://abc7news.com/sf-homeless-plan-housing-all-san-francisco-supervisor-rafael-mandelman/12760671/ https://abc7news.com/sf-homeless-plan-housing-all-san-franci...> More money for the Homeless-Industrial Complex is not needed. The homeless there are homeless because severe mental and addiction issues cause them to reject help, not because resources aren't available.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- doo_daa 3y agoOk... I'm travelling to SF (I live in the UK) for a few days for work this August. I was looking forward to it but now I'm mainly scared! Is it still good to visit but just not to live in? The last time I was there was 2007. I've got a couple of days to myself whilst I'm there. What should I do?
- rsync 3y agoI think you will do just fine. I live in the SFBA and I continue to go there weekly and bring my family and children there, etc. I would recommend Jackson square (Cotogna, Blue Bottle, Maison Nico) as a hangout spot, perhaps venturing uphill from there to the Grace Cathedral on the peak of Nob Hill[1] (remember: crime doesn't climb). I would also highly recommend walking the top of the new transit center which is basically a High Line of the west[2] and is well worth your time and trouble. If you want to glimpse, but not immerse yourself, in the angst and tension of post-pandemic SF, you can walk to Union Square. Finally, get yourself to Hayes Valley without crossing through the Tenderloin as that is, without question, ground zero for all of the disturbing headlines. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Cathedral,_San_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Cathedral,_San_Francisco [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transbay_Transit_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transbay_Transit_Center
- avree 3y ago“San Francisco has had what felt like an endless, year-after-year boom,” says Aaron Peskin, president of the Board of Supervisors, the city council. “And now the bubble really burst.” Years of policies that hurt honest people, entrenched landlords and those already here, and made it difficult for new families and groups to come to the city are why the good times are ending. People like Peskin burst the bubble.
- jscipione 3y agoVote Republican to solve the problem, or vote Democrat to make it worse.
- Gunnerhead 3y agoI have no dog in this fight, but curious what policies or plans do Republicans have to fix an issue like this?
- jscipione 3y agoLower taxes, lower regulations especially for home builders, reduce immigration, mass deportation of illegals saving trillions of dollars in education and other costs, end bail reform, end reparations, allocate funds to cleanup homeless encampments, create new job opportunities, grant liability protections for police so they can do their jobs, crack down on crime by empowering judges and district attorneys, end the green energy initiatives that are costing the state billions, do a full audit.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago> reduce immigration, mass deportation of illegals saving trillions of dollars in education and other costs That is actually going to drive home construction rates though the roof. Part of the labor shortage in construction is a result of reduced illegal immigration. Who could ever tell by the day laborers standing in front of Home Depot that illegal immigration was so entangled with construction? > end the green energy initiatives that are costing the state billions, So cede the entire green energy to China? Smart, it would also solve our illegal immigration problem as the USA would be less desirable economically.
- jscipione 3y agoIllegal immigrants take good paying jobs away from Americans. Employers seek illegal immigrants to lower their labor costs which is good for them but bad for the economy. It’s also morally wrong for 2 reasons: immigration is motivated by white genocide, and 2, it is a substitute for slavery by exploiting immigrants for their cheap manual labor. Green energy might be good for the long term but it is crushing the economy right now during the homelessness crisis.
- jdkee 3y agoWhy is this flagged?