11 ms·

Goodbye, San Francisco

89 points by bhyolken 3y ago

the_mar 3y ago
[flagged]
whimsicalism 3y ago
People should consider moving to a different neighborhood first, pretty much none of these problems apply to me where I am in lower haight SF also has way fewer drug murders than cities I have lived in on the east coast
- hudon 3y ago
  That is addressed at the end of the article. > Why didn’t you just move to a different part of SF? > I wanted to live in a dense, central area and not in a single family house that’s 4 miles from downtown. Also, my neighborhood was perfectly nice when I moved in, and then got bad. What’s to prevent that from happening to other places in the city as well?
  - whimsicalism 3y ago
    Lower haight is dense and fewer than 2 miles from downtown. I dont perceive the area OP is describing as one I would expect to be free from drug crime even four years ago, whereas I do have that expectation for this region of SF.
    - Arelius 3y ago
      Agreed, I had lived in that same neighborhood from about 6 years ago to 1 year ago, and while it took a turn for the worse on March 2020, it has always had a significant drug, homeless and fecees problem.
    - nordsieck 3y ago
      > Lower haight is dense and fewer than 2 miles from downtown. I dont perceive the area OP is describing as one I would expect to be free from drug crime even four years ago, whereas I do have that expectation for this region of SF. The history of Detroit suggests that that can change very quickly.
    - ghaff 3y ago
      The area the OP is discussing is basically a couple blocks from the Civic Center. That's been a pretty sketchy area for pretty much as long as I can remember. Obviously OP lived there (by choice) but one of the reasons many business visitors get a bad impression of SF is that they're probably staying and attending an event in, shall we say, not the greatest part of town.
    - SavageBeast 3y ago
      TL;DR - SF proper was a dumpster fire 10 years ago - I have no idea why its taken people so long to catch on to the fact. OP's story tracks 100%. My experience is now 10 years old so factor that in. Even then the Lower Haight was still very bad, its just that it wasn't quite as bad as so many other areas. I lived there, trust me. If automatic gunfire, seeing women beaten on the sidewalk by guys jumping out of cars to steal their phones/purses, people pissing everywhere in clear view and vagrants yelling at you trying to start shit sound "normal" to you then you will love the place. Hayes Valley turned to poo in the time I was there or so it appeared to my eyes. I've been chased by drug addicts who looked like they had leprosy in Columbus area (curiously they operated as a pack with one of them running distraction while the others tried to come up from behind - organized such that we had to literally run from the bunch of them). Even then I didn't like SOMA in general and doubly so for Market street. Walking around in the mornings seeing the cars that had been broken into on the daily. Stepping over people on the sidewalks on my way home at night. Kicking a vagrant out of my girlfriends parking garage (Bay Street - Marina area - the Nice Part). Want to sit at some out door place with a coffee and be left alone? Forget about that. There were people coming into coffee shops and beating people out of their laptops even. At the time I was a 220 lb male who spent much time in the gym and it was obvious. That didn't stop multiple lunatics from trying to start trouble with me. The BART? Forget about the BART. One lunatic accosted my girlfriend right in front of me and his day ended poorly (this didn't happen just once either). Want a nice walk through Golden Gate Park - HA!!! Surrounded by the roughest looking bunch of vagrants you've ever seen such that there's no way in hell I'm walking in there. Try walking out of the Safeway grocery market at 2020 Market St sometime with a decent haul of supplies (they're waiting for you). I suppose if you wanted to live in Cow Hollow/The Marina area and literally never leave it you might have a minimally invasive experience. Not "nothing" mind you, just less than other areas nearby. A friend invited me to join her on a trip to The City in August and I gave it a hard pass. I'm sure someone here will pipe up and say Im hyperbolizing here but this was my experience - no - this was a fraction of my experience. 10 years ago it was every bit as bad as this and I have every reason to believe it kept on getting worse after I threw in the towel. Im shocked the pain tolerance of the city has been so high that its just getting attention in the past few years.
      - davidivadavid 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- kneebonian 3y ago
  People should have a right to feel safe and secure in their home and possessions and not have to move because the state refuses to fulfill it's function.
  - veec_cas_tant 3y ago
    Every area of sufficient size, at least in the US, has rough neighborhoods
    - kneebonian 3y ago
      And yet not ever area in the US has literal piles of human sh* laying all over the sidewalk.
  - htag 3y ago
    There's no way "feeling safe" is a legal right
  - whimsicalism 3y ago
    Sorry but I am anti- rights predicated on feeling. I can't even control my own feelings, not sure why you expect the state to be able to do so.
oldstrangers 3y ago
"dense, central area and not in a single family house that’s 4 miles from downtown." This is kind of funny to me considering I'd guess for the majority of America, 4 miles is remarkably close.
- maerF0x0 3y ago
  It's remarkably close by car, and though it was common for me when I lived in SF, I do not know many people who enjoy 2.25ish hour (round trip) walks. And doing $25 a day in ubers adds up fast too.
  - whimsicalism 3y ago
    The Muni is effectively a donation based system and can take you much further and faster if you live in the right neighborhoods.
    - maerF0x0 3y ago
      Super agree that living within a 5 minute walk of 9th and market, Civic Center, Powell, Montgomery, or embarcadero stations is peak public transit experience from a distance perspective. I loved being able to get on the train at SFO and then hop off essentially at my home. But of course those spots also mean avoiding poops, drug deals, a homeless person in the 1% group that assaults people, and other general shadiness. Generally fine for a huge man, much worse for a dainty woman.
      - whimsicalism 3y ago
        I live in lower haight, less than a two minute walk from the muni and thus less than 15 mons from downtown and I dont really encounter any of these things, except dog poops
        maerF0x0 3y ago
        Nice! Yeah there are definitely lower poop/riff raff density if you're willing to walk 15 mins each way. In my experience Muni+Bart is required to have good coverage of places I wanted to go (including Oakland and berkeley). Edit: and I'm a 0 transfer kind of person. Albeit I tolerated switching from Muni to Bart in same station on market street. And because my own personal tolerance for walking was higher than average, I'd often just look for the route that allowed me to ride one ride even if I had to walk 60 minutes across the round trip.
dm78 3y ago
[flagged]
zer0-c00l 3y ago
your article doesn’t include the term “doom loop”, you may want to edit it to add that in
- smoovb 3y ago
  How many "doom loops" equal one "death spiral"?
orangepurple 3y ago
The local crime statistics are saying that San Francisco is a safe city with crime trending downwards.
- whiddershins 3y ago
  “ Each time I reported these incidents to the police, they never responded. I got the sense that as long as no one was physically harmed, they didn’t really care. “
  - orangepurple 3y ago
    You can also expect this treatment in Washington D.C. and Houston. I speculate it is true of most cities in America these days.
- __blockcipher__ 3y ago
  The article says as such: > My biggest problem with SF was simply not feeling physically safe while walking down the street or sitting in a train. SF has a pretty low violent crime rate, at least by US standards, so I wasn’t worried about getting shot or robbed or anything like that. > Instead, the problem was that SF had (and still has today), thousands of people wandering around who are suffering from untreated substance abuse and/or severe mental illness. The vast majority of these folks were completely harmless, but a small percentage were hostile, threatening, and, in some cases, violent. > In multiple cases over the last few years, I was followed, screamed at, and threatened in broad daylight. Thankfully, nothing physically happened to me, but it’s a really jarring experience to have this happen. Each time I reported these incidents to the police, they never responded. I got the sense that as long as no one was physically harmed, they didn’t really care. Thus, there were no mechanisms in place to control, contain, or treat this behavior.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- whiddershins 3y ago
  Also “ Then, a few years ago, the city made a conscious decision to stop nearly all traffic enforcement. As a result, the behavior of some drivers got terrible, to the point of being dangerous. “
minimaxir 3y ago
I lived at the 7th and 8th / Mission block before OP did and it was pretty bad then. What's weird is that there's been a lot of development and modernization in that area (completion of Trinity Place and a nice Whole Foods) yet in 2023 it's still extremely unsafe around there. And the Whole Foods is now leaving.
- jeffbee 3y ago
  I think it's a lot better than it used to be. From 2001-2005 I walked from work at 2nd St to home at Guerrero and there were only a few blocks on that walk when I wasn't braced for action. With all the new buildings and the BRT on Van Ness and other changes it seems way better now.
codemonkeysh 3y ago
I lived in San Fran back in 2012 for 6 months. I personally didn't feel unsafe; I'm a big guy and have a physical presence so I understand why others may feel unsafe. So why did I leave? There were a few events that really upset me. 1) I almost stepped on a shit snake some human left outside my building. 2) A homeless person stopped in front of a mother and child to urinate. 3) The weather sucked; cold and hot. I went there for the tech scene, but it was just too dirty for me to want to live there.
- casion 3y ago
  No matter your size, all of those things violate safety. It's not always about being attacked, but general welfare being violated.
  - codemonkeysh 3y ago
    The only welfare being violated was the bottom of my shoes.
    - prottog 3y ago
      Surely the "general welfare" is still being violated by the shit on the street and homeless people urinating in public, whether or not the shit or the piss actually got on your person.
Pigalowda 3y ago
[flagged]
- KwisatzHaderack 3y ago
  They also like to throw out the phrase “root causes” as an excuse to not to do anything now.
  - Pigalowda 3y ago
    The root cause is of course people who work for a living and pay taxes. How dare they want a family home. Pieces of garbage!
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    Yes, who ya gonna believe, the Chron or your lying eyes? They threw out Boudin. They threw out the Board of Education Three. It's going to take a lot more than that, apparently.
pelagicAustral 3y ago
Drugs and Homelessness are political problems now. It's been a while since they are treated as health issues, that's why nobody can do anything, it's because like anything in politics it has become a pissing contest between people that are far too removed from the actual problem.
- rossdavidh 3y ago
  Spot on. In most previous decades, the city government (no matter the party) would have been able to take whatever action (probably more $$ for police and more enforcement) seemed appropriate to the problem, and that would be a non-partisan issue. Now even admitting that there is an actual issue seems to be a partisan stance.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    On a non federal level, imprisoning people and hence goading them elsewhere is the only solution. No city/county/state has the resources to be able to offer healthcare or housing. Freedom of movement across the country means net benefit recipients would move in, and net payers into the system would move out.
    - thebooktocome 3y ago
      Imprisonment is far more expensive than housing. SLC ran a pilot program years ago proving the concept. Of course, if one is the retributive sort, nothing grinds one’s spleen more than someone worse off getting something “they don’t deserve”. I personally don’t understand why the some exceptionally wealthy billionaire in California doesn’t solve the homelessness problem themselves, expending some mere fraction of their net worth (i.e., the value of a couple bucks to the rest of us).
      - lotsofpulp 3y ago
        Imprisonment is to keep people moving along, or deter them from coming. Housing is more expensive because of the opposite, it incentives everyone to come get it. On a federal level, housing and healthcare might be cheaper than imprisonment. But what is even cheaper (in the short run) is ignoring it altogether. >I personally don’t understand why the some exceptionally wealthy billionaire in California doesn’t solve the homelessness problem themselves, expending some mere fraction of their net worth (i.e., the value of a couple bucks to the rest of us). Because the problem is far more expensive than any single billionaire or even group of billionaires entire net worth. Even if they could handle just California's population. there are 290M people in the rest of the country, and a significant portion who would not mind coming to California for free housing.
maerF0x0 3y ago
> Thankfully, I escaped with only scrapes and bruises, but that was really upsetting for me, and I felt that it was only a matter of time before something worse happened. Lately, with my observation that much of American life is getting much much worse. I often think about leaving America entirely, attempting to hold my breath a little longer to get what America most has to offer these days -- superior compensation/salary. That being said I also have had a very minimal slice of living in America, for all I know there is some amazing pocket somewhere that I can have it all. But I have yet to find it in California or Texas.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  If you don't need diversity, year-round hot weather, and sky-rocking housing prices - there's tons of nice affordable places near The Great Lakes. Also, Philadelphia has some quite nice areas that are pretty affordable. And it's an easy train ride away from NYC.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    The great lakes region doesn't have a great tech scene. Maybe Chicago, but otherwise you would be eeking out opportunities in college towns. You might have better luck in SLC or Denver.
    - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
      Google, Amazon, & Microsoft are all in Detroit. I'm pretty sure Facebook is, too. Plus it has a decent startup ecosystem. IBM has tons of jobs in upstate NY - offices in Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse (not exactly a dream employer). And remote jobs are always an option... The nice parts of Denver are quite expensive. Detroit has much more to offer in terms of jobs than SLC.
      - maerF0x0 3y ago
        I will say, without knowing the ins/outs of it, that bellevue looked appealing for the variety of roles I could hold and live there.
ecshafer 3y ago
They mention in this the rebuttal "Other cities in the US are just as bad. Why are you picking on SF?" which matches my experience. The west coast cities are much much worse with regards to random violence than any of the cities in east coast or midwest I've been to in the last 5 years. Detroit, Chicago, Philly, NYC, Baltimore, sure they have violence and homeless people. But they feel much safer and back to normal than SF or Portland.
- causi 3y ago
  The common explanation I've heard is that on the east coast the poverty and violence is more condensed into ghetto areas whereas on the west coast the misery is spread around by having poor areas interleaved with rich ones. You might consider that more fair, but it also makes it much less predictable. Personally I like being able to choose to stay way the hell away from it.
- jamroom 3y ago
  I don't know how accurate this list is, but it sure seems like most of the high crime cities in the US are NOT in the west: https://www.safehome.org/resources/crime-statistics-by-state/ https://www.safehome.org/resources/crime-statistics-by-state...
  - javanissen 3y ago
    This article cites an LA Times article as justification that “New York is one of the most violent cities in America,” but that cited LA Times article states that NYC is safer than the next six most populous cities and that the situation is far worse in other cities - and therefore, by their own logic, NYC isn’t one of the most violent cities in America. I wouldn’t put too much stock in it.
jbscpa 3y ago
I am sincerely curious: Where is the OP moving to? What criteria will be (was) used to make the selection?
shsachdev 3y ago
Downtown SF (and especially OP's neighborhood of 7th/8th Mission Street) is not the place to be. It's a bit like complaining about LA and living right near downtown. Upper Market, North Beach, Hayes Valley, Valencia St, Mission Dolores, Polk Street, Upper Nob Hill, Haight Ashbury -- all fun locations. I've lived near Dolores Park for the past 15 months now and have had a great experience. I've found community, made new friends, and have never felt unsafe whilst walking around at night. We don't have highrise buildings or a thriving "downtown" like other urban cities, but we do have plenty of lively, energetic neighborhoods around the city and the best food & weather in the country. I agree with the author that changes need to be made and that the homelessness problem is bad. But I think you can still have an overwhelmingly positive experience in the city if you pick one of the neighborhoods I mentioned above to live in.
- bushbaba 3y ago
  It used to be the place of low-innovation. But Covid destroyed the South Park soma tech scene, with this moving remote. However the high-tech work remains vibrant in Silicon Valley, because well moving a r&d lab isn’t trivial or work easily doable which can be done at home.
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  Yeah he picked probably among the worst neighborhoods to live in. I have noticed this is a recurring pattern among single male tech friends I have to move to Soma due to office proximity and then end up hating the city.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - likpok 3y ago
    People move to SOMA because the apartments are both close to their office and easily accessible online. Finding apartments in the rest of the city can be something of an adventure. But then, as you note, SOMA is kinda bad to live in. Lots of homelessness, not a whole lot of services, everything shuts down outside of business hours.
xyzzy4747 3y ago
[flagged]
yieldcrv 3y ago
Everyone: leaves OP: stays , writes whole essay about obvious things everyone left for 4 years ago, leaves
rossdavidh 3y ago
I am interested to hear from any HN readers who live in SF, as to whether or not this sounds factually accurate.
- xvedejas 3y ago
  It is somewhat true for the few blocks around where the author lived. But it's confusing to me when people say it's worse now than it was in 2016/2017, say. The pandemic made everything worse for a couple years, but I think we're just back to the same level of misery that had me avoiding many blocks in that area back in 2016. That part of the city was clearly already gone and neglected then.
- scarmig 3y ago
  Factually, there aren't any glaring errors. The way it frames things is weird, though. Not to say SoMa and downtown aren't shitholes that will make you feel unsafe multiple times per day; they are. But most other neighborhoods have a much safer vibe, and many of them are literally a 10 minute bus ride to downtown. His pooh-poohing the idea of moving to a different neighborhood is just weird. (If he were complaining about the school system or something being disfunctional or cost of living being too high, then his critique of SF as a whole would make a lot more sense.) He can't really take his experiences living a block from 6th Street and apply them to the whole of SF, and he must be aware of that, or be particularly clueless.
  - prottog 3y ago
    > many of them are literally a 10 minute bus ride to downtown Is that 10-minute bus ride a pleasant experience on a daily basis? If you live in a quiet part of the city but must commute back and forth to downtown during which you run a non-negligible risk of a particular unpleasant encounter, then you don't gain a whole lot by being in that quiet part.
    - scarmig 3y ago
      Depends on the particular bus line. Yes, they can be unpleasant. However, you do gain a whole lot living in a quiet area compared to living in the middle of the shitshow, and it's not close to comparable.
goaaron 3y ago
Mission between 7th and 8th is one of the worst parts of town, and no one lives there for the community. I’m guessing this person moved there for professional reasons if they didn’t even consider moving to any of the other dense parts of San Francisco. The neighborhoods of San Francisco are: 1. Much more alive than downtown, 2. Safer, 3. Even more “dense” in certain areas given the decline in downtown foot traffic.
ajross 3y ago
Unbelievable how embedded this meme is in our community. The article has to call it out explicitly right at the top, admit it's a fallacy, and then just... plows ahead anyway: > My biggest problem with SF was simply not feeling physically safe [...] SF has a pretty low violent crime rate [...] Instead, the problem was that SF [has] thousands of people wandering around who are suffering from untreated substance abuse and/or severe mental illness So... I guess the idea is that this is leaning extremely hard on "feeling". Author admits they're not unsafe. Author admits that their real issue is that they don't like being near people with drug habits or mental illness. But they still express it in the lede as "physical safety" anyway! Because that's how they "feel"? Come on folks. Aren't techies like us supposed to be rationalists? Why are we lying to ourselves (and, in this blog post, others) about what we really want?
- yuliyp 3y ago
  Hook up a heart rate monitor to someone walking down the street on University Ave. in Palo Alto, then hook it up walking down Market Street. Those feelings are real.
  - ajross 3y ago
    But they're not about safety! And the author (and presumably you too?) admit as much. Again, aren't we supposed to be better than arguing about policy issues via reference to our personal emotions? Isn't that what the woke hippies on the school board are doing?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - yuliyp 3y ago
      That's a pretty big stretch to claim that everything related to emotion is equally suspect. Safety is something which naturally has a very strong perception element to it. A lack of a feeling of safety causes people to change their behavior in ways which tend to destroy a community (by moving away, avoiding public spaces, not shopping in certain areas, etc). Those harms to the community are tangible. Dismissing them because they don't show up in violent crime statistics is choosing to ignore reality.
m0llusk 3y ago
> First, the city is incredibly wealthy and has a massive budget ... This is true at a surface level, but looking deeper at City services and obligations the situation is more complex than simply declaring numbers large. San Francisco also has a much larger population of immigrants from all over including other states. > Second, and even worse, the people in charge including the mayor, the police leadership, and a majority of the Board of Supervisors (the legislative body for SF), really just don’t seem to care one bit about what’s happening. Sure, they will occasionally rant in public and promise to fix things ... Don't seem to care apart from occasionally promising to fix things. This is classic San Francisco attitude. Difficult longstanding problems are clearly incompetence, disinterest, a conspiracy of corruption, or perhaps all of these. Records and meetings are typically fully public, but actually attending any of that is too much for a member of the public to bear. Maybe so, but then you also are skipping out on your responsibilities and potential to contribute to some kind of positive solution.
electroagenda 3y ago
From a European perspective (from Spain) it is so weird to read this kind of texts... Quite often here, the US and silicon valley are presented as the paradise for tech people, but now it seems to me that it is a paradise only if you can afford a really wealthy area. Here in Spain salaries can be terrible compared to the US, but even the more "dangerous" cities (like Barcelona or Madrid) are way safer than the SF described by the OP.
- bombela 3y ago
  And the experience of the OP is actually mild at that. I lived 2 blocks from Union Square, on Geary st, back in 2011/2012. I witnessed Sin City. Dead bodies, naked and drugged prostitute offering services, homeless woman blowing a homeless man for hit of his crack pipe, pimps beating a prostitute. Gangs shooting at each others a killing a tourist... At the time I couldn't afford to live in the nice neighborhood. But even then, it's insane that all of that happens 400m away from Macy's, jewelery stores, expensive and fancy restaurants etc.
- foogazi 3y ago
  > the US and silicon valley are presented as the paradise for tech people, The value comes from colocation - there is a LOT of tech value here - and that makes the location expensive it’s a bet that doesn’t pay off for everyone Also, the conflicted areas of SF are not the whole Bay Area by a long shot
ren_engineer 3y ago
I wonder what the net productivity loss is due to the dysfunction of SF? You've got companies paying huge money to smart employees who then have to worry about problems that are generally reserved for developing nations on a daily basis. That stress has to impact work performance I work remote and it's wild how SF people don't realize how insane they sound to others when they talk about what they deal with and try to downplay it as normal or not that bad. There's just something wrong to me about the entire population of a city having to adjust what they do to cater to the small criminal population, like not being able to leave stuff in your car or your windows will be smashed and your stuff stolen.
- scruple 3y ago
  It's some form of Stockholm Syndrome but for people who live in dysfunctional places.
johnea 3y ago
Yea, don't let the door hit on the way out... Now, if only 10 or 20 million more people would get out of California, then maybe the population would be back to a reasonable level... Everyone who can't tell the difference between CA and TX should really just move to TX...
jansan 3y ago
My personal (European) view of what places are of the USA are considered "cool" has completely changed in the last 10 years or so. Before this year I had only been once to the USA, which was as a teenager in Detroit's suburbs many years ago. This year I decided to travel the USA with my wife and kids, but places like San Francisco and New York, which I would have sacrificed a leg to visit not too many years ago, were quite at the bottom on our ranking of places to see. We instead decided to go to Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia, which friends of us described as "boring", which we decided may actually be what we want in these turbulent times. So we went there, had a great time, met wonderful people, and certainly did not regret not going to the "progressive" parts of the USA.
- throwaway202351 3y ago
  Oh yes, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia are great as long as you don't need to get an abortion, aren't religious, gay, or non-white.
  - kneebonian 3y ago
    I'm curious have you been to many of these areas or are you just repeating the things you've read on reddit?
    - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      I lived in Vicksburg MS for four years. Mississippi is as bad as everyone says it is, at least. No idea about the other states.
      - prottog 3y ago
        I'd wager that most rural places about the size of Vicksburg (~20k population) are "bad" in that same way. I'm sure there are a few exceptions, but none come to the top of my head.
        seanmcdirmid 3y ago
no1groyp 3y ago
[dead]
238947687066782 3y ago
I wish there was a single source of truth website that was like a status page for this whole issue. A dashboard of the stats and what is being done about it. From the outside it seems blatantly obvious that it's simply a lack of policing. I really don't get the animosity of the left-wingers about police, and the way everyone has to pussy-foot around these issues. No one is having issues with police if they aren't breaking the law. This view of the police is so distorted. The unwavering KPI of every city should be: citizen safety. This is the basic human need, and it should override every other concern. Here is the solution: 1. You are not allowed to setup a tent on the street. You must stay in housing provided by the government outside of the city in a cheap area. You will be given free transporation there. 2. If you are a repeat offender found to be sleeping on the street, then you will be arrested, and imprisoned. 3. A mental health disorder is not an excuse. If necessary, build a jail that is a mental health treatment center. I don't get what is so hard about this. Just make it clear: it's illegal to sleep on the street, loiter, do drugs on the street. What is the worst thing that happens from this policy implemented fully?
- test098 3y ago
  > No one is having issues with police if they aren't breaking the law yes, they are. that's why there's "animosity of the left-wingers about police." > 1. You are not allowed to setup a tent on the street. You must stay in housing provided by the government outside of the city in a cheap area. You will be given free transporation there. and what about the residents that already live in that "cheap area"? who pays for the construction of the housing - the people within the city limits or the people living in the cheaper area? > 2. If you are a repeat offender found to be sleeping on the street, then you will be arrested, and imprisoned. what if it's a family who lost their home? do you separate the children from their parents for the crime of being too poor? > 3. A mental health disorder is not an excuse. If necessary, build a jail that is a mental health treatment center. great - how long are you imprisoned if you have a mental health crisis? > What is the worst thing that happens from this policy implemented fully? abuse by law enforcement; imprisoning people who need mental health services, not to be locked up with actual criminals; the separation of families who have fallen on hard times; criminalization of poverty; short-sighted solutions which don't actually address the core issues.
s1mon 3y ago
They moved to Mission between 7th and 8th and realized that it was full of people with substance and mental issues. It's kinda like moving into a block with a lot of bars or nightclubs and then complaining about the noise at night. Just because some real estate developers have built some nice-ish condos on that block does not mean that the zombies which hang out in the neighborhood are going to go away. UN Plaza in civic center and the first block of 7th have been a bit of a hell hole for many years. The only way buildings like Mission at Trinity or Soma Grande make any sense is if you drive in and out of your garage for the most part. For me the walk score of those places is close to zero since you are guaranteed to deal with shit (human feces and/or altercations) if you walk a block or two in any direction from those locations. I've lived in SF for 29+ years all in lower Nob Hill. When I moved into my place the neighborhood was a little rougher. Over that time it's gotten more and more gentrified, but the Tenderloin/Civic Center area has been getting worse. From 2012 to 2021 I worked in Potrero Hill and commuted back and forth. It was a little too far to walk so I almost never did, but it was also a completely shitty walk since there was no good path that didn't go through the Tenderloin/Civic Center. There's no way I would consider living in that area. The area thrives on misery. Many of the city's SROs and other services for the homeless are concentrated in the area. All the "non"-profits which benefit from homeless clients are based there. And Civic Center BART seems to be a great place to score drugs and for drug dealers to commute into the city for work. SF either needs to go all in on a universal basic income, building housing, mental health services and decriminalization of drugs, OR they need to make it clear that shooting up, breaking into cars and shitting on the streets is not ok. Instead we have this half-assed in between approach where we give $1.6 Billion to over 700 different "community based organizations" to try to make the situation better, but instead it's just a big uncoordinated mess. https://sfgov.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=11635453&GUID=55515F00-D3EF-49E7-9F1A-2325D0B5CEDF https://sfgov.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=11635453&GUID=55...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
RickJWagner 3y ago
If you listen carefully, San Francisco, Seattle and Portland are whispering messages to you about local politics and policies.
- _blz2 3y ago
  Those who caused this (voters) will simply leave and blame everyone else but their own political views.

89 points by bhyolken 3y ago

[flagged]

People should consider moving to a different neighborhood first, pretty much none of these problems apply to me where I am in lower haight SF also has way fewer drug murders than cities I have lived in on the east coast

hudon 3y ago
That is addressed at the end of the article. > Why didn’t you just move to a different part of SF? > I wanted to live in a dense, central area and not in a single family house that’s 4 miles from downtown. Also, my neighborhood was perfectly nice when I moved in, and then got bad. What’s to prevent that from happening to other places in the city as well?
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  Lower haight is dense and fewer than 2 miles from downtown. I dont perceive the area OP is describing as one I would expect to be free from drug crime even four years ago, whereas I do have that expectation for this region of SF.
  - Arelius 3y ago
    Agreed, I had lived in that same neighborhood from about 6 years ago to 1 year ago, and while it took a turn for the worse on March 2020, it has always had a significant drug, homeless and fecees problem.
  - nordsieck 3y ago
    > Lower haight is dense and fewer than 2 miles from downtown. I dont perceive the area OP is describing as one I would expect to be free from drug crime even four years ago, whereas I do have that expectation for this region of SF. The history of Detroit suggests that that can change very quickly.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    The area the OP is discussing is basically a couple blocks from the Civic Center. That's been a pretty sketchy area for pretty much as long as I can remember. Obviously OP lived there (by choice) but one of the reasons many business visitors get a bad impression of SF is that they're probably staying and attending an event in, shall we say, not the greatest part of town.
  - SavageBeast 3y ago
    TL;DR - SF proper was a dumpster fire 10 years ago - I have no idea why its taken people so long to catch on to the fact. OP's story tracks 100%. My experience is now 10 years old so factor that in. Even then the Lower Haight was still very bad, its just that it wasn't quite as bad as so many other areas. I lived there, trust me. If automatic gunfire, seeing women beaten on the sidewalk by guys jumping out of cars to steal their phones/purses, people pissing everywhere in clear view and vagrants yelling at you trying to start shit sound "normal" to you then you will love the place. Hayes Valley turned to poo in the time I was there or so it appeared to my eyes. I've been chased by drug addicts who looked like they had leprosy in Columbus area (curiously they operated as a pack with one of them running distraction while the others tried to come up from behind - organized such that we had to literally run from the bunch of them). Even then I didn't like SOMA in general and doubly so for Market street. Walking around in the mornings seeing the cars that had been broken into on the daily. Stepping over people on the sidewalks on my way home at night. Kicking a vagrant out of my girlfriends parking garage (Bay Street - Marina area - the Nice Part). Want to sit at some out door place with a coffee and be left alone? Forget about that. There were people coming into coffee shops and beating people out of their laptops even. At the time I was a 220 lb male who spent much time in the gym and it was obvious. That didn't stop multiple lunatics from trying to start trouble with me. The BART? Forget about the BART. One lunatic accosted my girlfriend right in front of me and his day ended poorly (this didn't happen just once either). Want a nice walk through Golden Gate Park - HA!!! Surrounded by the roughest looking bunch of vagrants you've ever seen such that there's no way in hell I'm walking in there. Try walking out of the Safeway grocery market at 2020 Market St sometime with a decent haul of supplies (they're waiting for you). I suppose if you wanted to live in Cow Hollow/The Marina area and literally never leave it you might have a minimally invasive experience. Not "nothing" mind you, just less than other areas nearby. A friend invited me to join her on a trip to The City in August and I gave it a hard pass. I'm sure someone here will pipe up and say Im hyperbolizing here but this was my experience - no - this was a fraction of my experience. 10 years ago it was every bit as bad as this and I have every reason to believe it kept on getting worse after I threw in the towel. Im shocked the pain tolerance of the city has been so high that its just getting attention in the past few years.
    - davidivadavid 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
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kneebonian 3y ago
People should have a right to feel safe and secure in their home and possessions and not have to move because the state refuses to fulfill it's function.
- veec_cas_tant 3y ago
  Every area of sufficient size, at least in the US, has rough neighborhoods
  - kneebonian 3y ago
    And yet not ever area in the US has literal piles of human sh* laying all over the sidewalk.
- htag 3y ago
  There's no way "feeling safe" is a legal right
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  Sorry but I am anti- rights predicated on feeling. I can't even control my own feelings, not sure why you expect the state to be able to do so.

oldstrangers 3y ago

"dense, central area and not in a single family house that’s 4 miles from downtown." This is kind of funny to me considering I'd guess for the majority of America, 4 miles is remarkably close.

maerF0x0 3y ago
It's remarkably close by car, and though it was common for me when I lived in SF, I do not know many people who enjoy 2.25ish hour (round trip) walks. And doing $25 a day in ubers adds up fast too.
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  The Muni is effectively a donation based system and can take you much further and faster if you live in the right neighborhoods.
  - maerF0x0 3y ago
    Super agree that living within a 5 minute walk of 9th and market, Civic Center, Powell, Montgomery, or embarcadero stations is peak public transit experience from a distance perspective. I loved being able to get on the train at SFO and then hop off essentially at my home. But of course those spots also mean avoiding poops, drug deals, a homeless person in the 1% group that assaults people, and other general shadiness. Generally fine for a huge man, much worse for a dainty woman.
    - whimsicalism 3y ago
      I live in lower haight, less than a two minute walk from the muni and thus less than 15 mons from downtown and I dont really encounter any of these things, except dog poops
      - maerF0x0 3y ago
        Nice! Yeah there are definitely lower poop/riff raff density if you're willing to walk 15 mins each way. In my experience Muni+Bart is required to have good coverage of places I wanted to go (including Oakland and berkeley). Edit: and I'm a 0 transfer kind of person. Albeit I tolerated switching from Muni to Bart in same station on market street. And because my own personal tolerance for walking was higher than average, I'd often just look for the route that allowed me to ride one ride even if I had to walk 60 minutes across the round trip.

dm78 3y ago

[flagged]

zer0-c00l 3y ago

your article doesn’t include the term “doom loop”, you may want to edit it to add that in

smoovb 3y ago
How many "doom loops" equal one "death spiral"?

orangepurple 3y ago

The local crime statistics are saying that San Francisco is a safe city with crime trending downwards.

whiddershins 3y ago
“ Each time I reported these incidents to the police, they never responded. I got the sense that as long as no one was physically harmed, they didn’t really care. “
- orangepurple 3y ago
  You can also expect this treatment in Washington D.C. and Houston. I speculate it is true of most cities in America these days.
__blockcipher__ 3y ago
The article says as such: > My biggest problem with SF was simply not feeling physically safe while walking down the street or sitting in a train. SF has a pretty low violent crime rate, at least by US standards, so I wasn’t worried about getting shot or robbed or anything like that. > Instead, the problem was that SF had (and still has today), thousands of people wandering around who are suffering from untreated substance abuse and/or severe mental illness. The vast majority of these folks were completely harmless, but a small percentage were hostile, threatening, and, in some cases, violent. > In multiple cases over the last few years, I was followed, screamed at, and threatened in broad daylight. Thankfully, nothing physically happened to me, but it’s a really jarring experience to have this happen. Each time I reported these incidents to the police, they never responded. I got the sense that as long as no one was physically harmed, they didn’t really care. Thus, there were no mechanisms in place to control, contain, or treat this behavior.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
whiddershins 3y ago
Also “ Then, a few years ago, the city made a conscious decision to stop nearly all traffic enforcement. As a result, the behavior of some drivers got terrible, to the point of being dangerous. “

minimaxir 3y ago

I lived at the 7th and 8th / Mission block before OP did and it was pretty bad then. What's weird is that there's been a lot of development and modernization in that area (completion of Trinity Place and a nice Whole Foods) yet in 2023 it's still extremely unsafe around there. And the Whole Foods is now leaving.

jeffbee 3y ago
I think it's a lot better than it used to be. From 2001-2005 I walked from work at 2nd St to home at Guerrero and there were only a few blocks on that walk when I wasn't braced for action. With all the new buildings and the BRT on Van Ness and other changes it seems way better now.

codemonkeysh 3y ago

I lived in San Fran back in 2012 for 6 months. I personally didn't feel unsafe; I'm a big guy and have a physical presence so I understand why others may feel unsafe. So why did I leave? There were a few events that really upset me. 1) I almost stepped on a shit snake some human left outside my building. 2) A homeless person stopped in front of a mother and child to urinate. 3) The weather sucked; cold and hot. I went there for the tech scene, but it was just too dirty for me to want to live there.

casion 3y ago
No matter your size, all of those things violate safety. It's not always about being attacked, but general welfare being violated.
- codemonkeysh 3y ago
  The only welfare being violated was the bottom of my shoes.
  - prottog 3y ago
    Surely the "general welfare" is still being violated by the shit on the street and homeless people urinating in public, whether or not the shit or the piss actually got on your person.

Pigalowda 3y ago

[flagged]

KwisatzHaderack 3y ago
They also like to throw out the phrase “root causes” as an excuse to not to do anything now.
- Pigalowda 3y ago
  The root cause is of course people who work for a living and pay taxes. How dare they want a family home. Pieces of garbage!
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  Yes, who ya gonna believe, the Chron or your lying eyes? They threw out Boudin. They threw out the Board of Education Three. It's going to take a lot more than that, apparently.

pelagicAustral 3y ago

Drugs and Homelessness are political problems now. It's been a while since they are treated as health issues, that's why nobody can do anything, it's because like anything in politics it has become a pissing contest between people that are far too removed from the actual problem.

rossdavidh 3y ago
Spot on. In most previous decades, the city government (no matter the party) would have been able to take whatever action (probably more $$ for police and more enforcement) seemed appropriate to the problem, and that would be a non-partisan issue. Now even admitting that there is an actual issue seems to be a partisan stance.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  On a non federal level, imprisoning people and hence goading them elsewhere is the only solution. No city/county/state has the resources to be able to offer healthcare or housing. Freedom of movement across the country means net benefit recipients would move in, and net payers into the system would move out.
  - thebooktocome 3y ago
    Imprisonment is far more expensive than housing. SLC ran a pilot program years ago proving the concept. Of course, if one is the retributive sort, nothing grinds one’s spleen more than someone worse off getting something “they don’t deserve”. I personally don’t understand why the some exceptionally wealthy billionaire in California doesn’t solve the homelessness problem themselves, expending some mere fraction of their net worth (i.e., the value of a couple bucks to the rest of us).
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      Imprisonment is to keep people moving along, or deter them from coming. Housing is more expensive because of the opposite, it incentives everyone to come get it. On a federal level, housing and healthcare might be cheaper than imprisonment. But what is even cheaper (in the short run) is ignoring it altogether. >I personally don’t understand why the some exceptionally wealthy billionaire in California doesn’t solve the homelessness problem themselves, expending some mere fraction of their net worth (i.e., the value of a couple bucks to the rest of us). Because the problem is far more expensive than any single billionaire or even group of billionaires entire net worth. Even if they could handle just California's population. there are 290M people in the rest of the country, and a significant portion who would not mind coming to California for free housing.

maerF0x0 3y ago

> Thankfully, I escaped with only scrapes and bruises, but that was really upsetting for me, and I felt that it was only a matter of time before something worse happened. Lately, with my observation that much of American life is getting much much worse. I often think about leaving America entirely, attempting to hold my breath a little longer to get what America most has to offer these days -- superior compensation/salary. That being said I also have had a very minimal slice of living in America, for all I know there is some amazing pocket somewhere that I can have it all. But I have yet to find it in California or Texas.

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
If you don't need diversity, year-round hot weather, and sky-rocking housing prices - there's tons of nice affordable places near The Great Lakes. Also, Philadelphia has some quite nice areas that are pretty affordable. And it's an easy train ride away from NYC.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  The great lakes region doesn't have a great tech scene. Maybe Chicago, but otherwise you would be eeking out opportunities in college towns. You might have better luck in SLC or Denver.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
    Google, Amazon, & Microsoft are all in Detroit. I'm pretty sure Facebook is, too. Plus it has a decent startup ecosystem. IBM has tons of jobs in upstate NY - offices in Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse (not exactly a dream employer). And remote jobs are always an option... The nice parts of Denver are quite expensive. Detroit has much more to offer in terms of jobs than SLC.
    - maerF0x0 3y ago
      I will say, without knowing the ins/outs of it, that bellevue looked appealing for the variety of roles I could hold and live there.

ecshafer 3y ago

They mention in this the rebuttal "Other cities in the US are just as bad. Why are you picking on SF?" which matches my experience. The west coast cities are much much worse with regards to random violence than any of the cities in east coast or midwest I've been to in the last 5 years. Detroit, Chicago, Philly, NYC, Baltimore, sure they have violence and homeless people. But they feel much safer and back to normal than SF or Portland.

causi 3y ago
The common explanation I've heard is that on the east coast the poverty and violence is more condensed into ghetto areas whereas on the west coast the misery is spread around by having poor areas interleaved with rich ones. You might consider that more fair, but it also makes it much less predictable. Personally I like being able to choose to stay way the hell away from it.
jamroom 3y ago
I don't know how accurate this list is, but it sure seems like most of the high crime cities in the US are NOT in the west: https://www.safehome.org/resources/crime-statistics-by-state/ https://www.safehome.org/resources/crime-statistics-by-state...
- javanissen 3y ago
  This article cites an LA Times article as justification that “New York is one of the most violent cities in America,” but that cited LA Times article states that NYC is safer than the next six most populous cities and that the situation is far worse in other cities - and therefore, by their own logic, NYC isn’t one of the most violent cities in America. I wouldn’t put too much stock in it.

jbscpa 3y ago

I am sincerely curious: Where is the OP moving to? What criteria will be (was) used to make the selection?

shsachdev 3y ago

Downtown SF (and especially OP's neighborhood of 7th/8th Mission Street) is not the place to be. It's a bit like complaining about LA and living right near downtown. Upper Market, North Beach, Hayes Valley, Valencia St, Mission Dolores, Polk Street, Upper Nob Hill, Haight Ashbury -- all fun locations. I've lived near Dolores Park for the past 15 months now and have had a great experience. I've found community, made new friends, and have never felt unsafe whilst walking around at night. We don't have highrise buildings or a thriving "downtown" like other urban cities, but we do have plenty of lively, energetic neighborhoods around the city and the best food & weather in the country. I agree with the author that changes need to be made and that the homelessness problem is bad. But I think you can still have an overwhelmingly positive experience in the city if you pick one of the neighborhoods I mentioned above to live in.

bushbaba 3y ago
It used to be the place of low-innovation. But Covid destroyed the South Park soma tech scene, with this moving remote. However the high-tech work remains vibrant in Silicon Valley, because well moving a r&d lab isn’t trivial or work easily doable which can be done at home.
whimsicalism 3y ago
Yeah he picked probably among the worst neighborhoods to live in. I have noticed this is a recurring pattern among single male tech friends I have to move to Soma due to office proximity and then end up hating the city.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- likpok 3y ago
  People move to SOMA because the apartments are both close to their office and easily accessible online. Finding apartments in the rest of the city can be something of an adventure. But then, as you note, SOMA is kinda bad to live in. Lots of homelessness, not a whole lot of services, everything shuts down outside of business hours.

xyzzy4747 3y ago

[flagged]

yieldcrv 3y ago

Everyone: leaves OP: stays , writes whole essay about obvious things everyone left for 4 years ago, leaves

rossdavidh 3y ago

I am interested to hear from any HN readers who live in SF, as to whether or not this sounds factually accurate.

xvedejas 3y ago
It is somewhat true for the few blocks around where the author lived. But it's confusing to me when people say it's worse now than it was in 2016/2017, say. The pandemic made everything worse for a couple years, but I think we're just back to the same level of misery that had me avoiding many blocks in that area back in 2016. That part of the city was clearly already gone and neglected then.
scarmig 3y ago
Factually, there aren't any glaring errors. The way it frames things is weird, though. Not to say SoMa and downtown aren't shitholes that will make you feel unsafe multiple times per day; they are. But most other neighborhoods have a much safer vibe, and many of them are literally a 10 minute bus ride to downtown. His pooh-poohing the idea of moving to a different neighborhood is just weird. (If he were complaining about the school system or something being disfunctional or cost of living being too high, then his critique of SF as a whole would make a lot more sense.) He can't really take his experiences living a block from 6th Street and apply them to the whole of SF, and he must be aware of that, or be particularly clueless.
- prottog 3y ago
  > many of them are literally a 10 minute bus ride to downtown Is that 10-minute bus ride a pleasant experience on a daily basis? If you live in a quiet part of the city but must commute back and forth to downtown during which you run a non-negligible risk of a particular unpleasant encounter, then you don't gain a whole lot by being in that quiet part.
  - scarmig 3y ago
    Depends on the particular bus line. Yes, they can be unpleasant. However, you do gain a whole lot living in a quiet area compared to living in the middle of the shitshow, and it's not close to comparable.

goaaron 3y ago

Mission between 7th and 8th is one of the worst parts of town, and no one lives there for the community. I’m guessing this person moved there for professional reasons if they didn’t even consider moving to any of the other dense parts of San Francisco. The neighborhoods of San Francisco are: 1. Much more alive than downtown, 2. Safer, 3. Even more “dense” in certain areas given the decline in downtown foot traffic.

ajross 3y ago

Unbelievable how embedded this meme is in our community. The article has to call it out explicitly right at the top, admit it's a fallacy, and then just... plows ahead anyway: > My biggest problem with SF was simply not feeling physically safe [...] SF has a pretty low violent crime rate [...] Instead, the problem was that SF [has] thousands of people wandering around who are suffering from untreated substance abuse and/or severe mental illness So... I guess the idea is that this is leaning extremely hard on "feeling". Author admits they're not unsafe. Author admits that their real issue is that they don't like being near people with drug habits or mental illness. But they still express it in the lede as "physical safety" anyway! Because that's how they "feel"? Come on folks. Aren't techies like us supposed to be rationalists? Why are we lying to ourselves (and, in this blog post, others) about what we really want?

yuliyp 3y ago
Hook up a heart rate monitor to someone walking down the street on University Ave. in Palo Alto, then hook it up walking down Market Street. Those feelings are real.
- ajross 3y ago
  But they're not about safety! And the author (and presumably you too?) admit as much. Again, aren't we supposed to be better than arguing about policy issues via reference to our personal emotions? Isn't that what the woke hippies on the school board are doing?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - yuliyp 3y ago
    That's a pretty big stretch to claim that everything related to emotion is equally suspect. Safety is something which naturally has a very strong perception element to it. A lack of a feeling of safety causes people to change their behavior in ways which tend to destroy a community (by moving away, avoiding public spaces, not shopping in certain areas, etc). Those harms to the community are tangible. Dismissing them because they don't show up in violent crime statistics is choosing to ignore reality.

m0llusk 3y ago

> First, the city is incredibly wealthy and has a massive budget ... This is true at a surface level, but looking deeper at City services and obligations the situation is more complex than simply declaring numbers large. San Francisco also has a much larger population of immigrants from all over including other states. > Second, and even worse, the people in charge including the mayor, the police leadership, and a majority of the Board of Supervisors (the legislative body for SF), really just don’t seem to care one bit about what’s happening. Sure, they will occasionally rant in public and promise to fix things ... Don't seem to care apart from occasionally promising to fix things. This is classic San Francisco attitude. Difficult longstanding problems are clearly incompetence, disinterest, a conspiracy of corruption, or perhaps all of these. Records and meetings are typically fully public, but actually attending any of that is too much for a member of the public to bear. Maybe so, but then you also are skipping out on your responsibilities and potential to contribute to some kind of positive solution.

electroagenda 3y ago

From a European perspective (from Spain) it is so weird to read this kind of texts... Quite often here, the US and silicon valley are presented as the paradise for tech people, but now it seems to me that it is a paradise only if you can afford a really wealthy area. Here in Spain salaries can be terrible compared to the US, but even the more "dangerous" cities (like Barcelona or Madrid) are way safer than the SF described by the OP.

bombela 3y ago
And the experience of the OP is actually mild at that. I lived 2 blocks from Union Square, on Geary st, back in 2011/2012. I witnessed Sin City. Dead bodies, naked and drugged prostitute offering services, homeless woman blowing a homeless man for hit of his crack pipe, pimps beating a prostitute. Gangs shooting at each others a killing a tourist... At the time I couldn't afford to live in the nice neighborhood. But even then, it's insane that all of that happens 400m away from Macy's, jewelery stores, expensive and fancy restaurants etc.
foogazi 3y ago
> the US and silicon valley are presented as the paradise for tech people, The value comes from colocation - there is a LOT of tech value here - and that makes the location expensive it’s a bet that doesn’t pay off for everyone Also, the conflicted areas of SF are not the whole Bay Area by a long shot

ren_engineer 3y ago

I wonder what the net productivity loss is due to the dysfunction of SF? You've got companies paying huge money to smart employees who then have to worry about problems that are generally reserved for developing nations on a daily basis. That stress has to impact work performance I work remote and it's wild how SF people don't realize how insane they sound to others when they talk about what they deal with and try to downplay it as normal or not that bad. There's just something wrong to me about the entire population of a city having to adjust what they do to cater to the small criminal population, like not being able to leave stuff in your car or your windows will be smashed and your stuff stolen.

scruple 3y ago
It's some form of Stockholm Syndrome but for people who live in dysfunctional places.

johnea 3y ago

Yea, don't let the door hit on the way out... Now, if only 10 or 20 million more people would get out of California, then maybe the population would be back to a reasonable level... Everyone who can't tell the difference between CA and TX should really just move to TX...

jansan 3y ago

My personal (European) view of what places are of the USA are considered "cool" has completely changed in the last 10 years or so. Before this year I had only been once to the USA, which was as a teenager in Detroit's suburbs many years ago. This year I decided to travel the USA with my wife and kids, but places like San Francisco and New York, which I would have sacrificed a leg to visit not too many years ago, were quite at the bottom on our ranking of places to see. We instead decided to go to Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia, which friends of us described as "boring", which we decided may actually be what we want in these turbulent times. So we went there, had a great time, met wonderful people, and certainly did not regret not going to the "progressive" parts of the USA.

throwaway202351 3y ago
Oh yes, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia are great as long as you don't need to get an abortion, aren't religious, gay, or non-white.
- kneebonian 3y ago
  I'm curious have you been to many of these areas or are you just repeating the things you've read on reddit?
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    I lived in Vicksburg MS for four years. Mississippi is as bad as everyone says it is, at least. No idea about the other states.
    - prottog 3y ago
      I'd wager that most rural places about the size of Vicksburg (~20k population) are "bad" in that same way. I'm sure there are a few exceptions, but none come to the top of my head.
      - seanmcdirmid 3y ago

no1groyp 3y ago

[dead]

238947687066782 3y ago

I wish there was a single source of truth website that was like a status page for this whole issue. A dashboard of the stats and what is being done about it. From the outside it seems blatantly obvious that it's simply a lack of policing. I really don't get the animosity of the left-wingers about police, and the way everyone has to pussy-foot around these issues. No one is having issues with police if they aren't breaking the law. This view of the police is so distorted. The unwavering KPI of every city should be: citizen safety. This is the basic human need, and it should override every other concern. Here is the solution: 1. You are not allowed to setup a tent on the street. You must stay in housing provided by the government outside of the city in a cheap area. You will be given free transporation there. 2. If you are a repeat offender found to be sleeping on the street, then you will be arrested, and imprisoned. 3. A mental health disorder is not an excuse. If necessary, build a jail that is a mental health treatment center. I don't get what is so hard about this. Just make it clear: it's illegal to sleep on the street, loiter, do drugs on the street. What is the worst thing that happens from this policy implemented fully?

test098 3y ago
> No one is having issues with police if they aren't breaking the law yes, they are. that's why there's "animosity of the left-wingers about police." > 1. You are not allowed to setup a tent on the street. You must stay in housing provided by the government outside of the city in a cheap area. You will be given free transporation there. and what about the residents that already live in that "cheap area"? who pays for the construction of the housing - the people within the city limits or the people living in the cheaper area? > 2. If you are a repeat offender found to be sleeping on the street, then you will be arrested, and imprisoned. what if it's a family who lost their home? do you separate the children from their parents for the crime of being too poor? > 3. A mental health disorder is not an excuse. If necessary, build a jail that is a mental health treatment center. great - how long are you imprisoned if you have a mental health crisis? > What is the worst thing that happens from this policy implemented fully? abuse by law enforcement; imprisoning people who need mental health services, not to be locked up with actual criminals; the separation of families who have fallen on hard times; criminalization of poverty; short-sighted solutions which don't actually address the core issues.

s1mon 3y ago

They moved to Mission between 7th and 8th and realized that it was full of people with substance and mental issues. It's kinda like moving into a block with a lot of bars or nightclubs and then complaining about the noise at night. Just because some real estate developers have built some nice-ish condos on that block does not mean that the zombies which hang out in the neighborhood are going to go away. UN Plaza in civic center and the first block of 7th have been a bit of a hell hole for many years. The only way buildings like Mission at Trinity or Soma Grande make any sense is if you drive in and out of your garage for the most part. For me the walk score of those places is close to zero since you are guaranteed to deal with shit (human feces and/or altercations) if you walk a block or two in any direction from those locations. I've lived in SF for 29+ years all in lower Nob Hill. When I moved into my place the neighborhood was a little rougher. Over that time it's gotten more and more gentrified, but the Tenderloin/Civic Center area has been getting worse. From 2012 to 2021 I worked in Potrero Hill and commuted back and forth. It was a little too far to walk so I almost never did, but it was also a completely shitty walk since there was no good path that didn't go through the Tenderloin/Civic Center. There's no way I would consider living in that area. The area thrives on misery. Many of the city's SROs and other services for the homeless are concentrated in the area. All the "non"-profits which benefit from homeless clients are based there. And Civic Center BART seems to be a great place to score drugs and for drug dealers to commute into the city for work. SF either needs to go all in on a universal basic income, building housing, mental health services and decriminalization of drugs, OR they need to make it clear that shooting up, breaking into cars and shitting on the streets is not ok. Instead we have this half-assed in between approach where we give $1.6 Billion to over 700 different "community based organizations" to try to make the situation better, but instead it's just a big uncoordinated mess. https://sfgov.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=11635453&GUID=55515F00-D3EF-49E7-9F1A-2325D0B5CEDF https://sfgov.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=11635453&GUID=55...

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

RickJWagner 3y ago

If you listen carefully, San Francisco, Seattle and Portland are whispering messages to you about local politics and policies.

_blz2 3y ago
Those who caused this (voters) will simply leave and blame everyone else but their own political views.