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Comment by jimmywanger | Hacker News Reader

San Francisco was a no-go zone in the 80s. Soma was mainly warehouses and unpaved lots, and the Mission was dangerous at nights.

What are the "downsides of the technology boom"? The mission was originally german-irish, and then became latino. Now a lot of young technology professionals live there, cause, you know, cities evolve.

I remember in the 80s you had to hopscotch over human feces when walking in SF. Why are politicians so short sighted that they want wealthy, well educated people out of their city?

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> The mission was originally german-irish, and then became latino. Now a lot of young technology professionals live there, cause, you know, cities evolve.

This is absolutely correct. My family has lived in the SF area since the 1930s. My grandfather saw it evolve through many stages: working class German-Irish Catholic city, military city during WWII with a huge influx of soldiers from all over the country, center of counterculture in the 1960s, influx of gay culture, dot-com boom, second tech boom...

All of those changes happened in one person's lifetime. Before then, there were other huge changes -- the gold rush, the influx of Chinese immigrants as well as the German and Irish working class that comprised much of the population in the early 20th century, the great earthquake and fire.

Every time the city changed, the people who were already there were pretty unhappy about it.

WAS dangerous at night? I have a friend who had his head stomped on by a group of roving thugs and spent weeks in the hospital. When I visited a year ago, one guy wouldn't leave me alone asking for money and when I told him to get lost, he tried to call over his buddies from the other corner to come attack me.

The Mission is still dangerous at night, for people who don't look like techies, and you still have to hopscotch over human feces.

The downside of the technology boom is that it's turning a living city into a bedroom community for high-income people. And the city has not been able to harness any of this wealth to fix the old problems that plagued it.

The best thing to happen to SF urban planning, and I say this without hyperbole, was the Loma Prieta earthquake. Otherwise the city seems paralyzed and incapable of action.

> The Mission is still dangerous at night, for people who don't look like techies, and you still have to hopscotch over human feces.

The mission is far safer now than it used to be. And if you look like a "techie" (What does that mean exactly?) you're more likely to be victimized. The criminals are probably thinking that you have some assets, and won't fight back. I've never felt unsafe in the mission in the past ten years.

The west side of Chicago is a pretty safe place to be if you're a white dude on a bicycle with a backpack. But it's an incredibly dangerous neighborhood for the locals, who are among the poorest people in the region.

> But it's an incredibly dangerous neighborhood for the locals, who are among the poorest people in the region.

Yes, that's because a lot of the locals are caught up in some shady activities.

Gang violence and drug violence generally don't bother outsiders. Being poor doesn't have much to do with it, except to make you want to get caught up in the life to make some money for your family.

He's arguing by example that your idea that the Mission being more dangerous for someone with "assets" doesn't play out in other parts of major American cities.

I don't know anything about the mission but in my southside Chicago neighborhood having assets will not get you targeted. Being a young black kid from the wrong block will.

This thread is basically all about the idea that rich techies deciding if a neighborhood is more safe from their perspective is flawed, because they are likely to be the least impacted. From my experience, that's true.

> Being a young black kid from the wrong block will.

Why are you inserting age and race into this discussion? Either you're caught up in street drama or you're not. If you're not, people generally don't mess with you unless you have assets, there's nothing in it for them.

> This thread is basically all about the idea that rich techies deciding if a neighborhood is more safe from their perspective is flawed, because they are likely to be the least impacted. From my experience, that's true.

Agreed, not because they're "rich" or "techie", but because they haven't been around long enough to take sides and get targeted by a particular group of people. "Rich techies" is just a dog whistle to try to get sympathy.

> Why are you inserting age and race into this discussion?

Because by every metric you can come up with young black men in my neighborhood are in more danger than any one else & it has nothing to do with their criminal affiliation. It is a trivial excercise to find kids that grew up just like me but black, who experience violence levels unheard of where I grew up & the only demographic difference is race. The idea that its only "criminals" who suffer from American urban violence is so trivially refuted that no one who studies it seriously considers it credible. Yet on one of the most affluent tech boards in the world its considered normal to argue the opposite.

> It is a trivial excercise to find kids that grew up just like me but black, who experience violence levels unheard of where I grew up & the only demographic difference is race. The idea that its only "criminals" who suffer from American urban violence is so trivially refuted that no one who studies it seriously considers it credible.

Spend the trivial effort and show me.

> Yet on one of the most affluent tech boards in the world its considered normal to argue the opposite.

What does affluent and tech have to do with anything?

Let's spin this another way. By every metric you can come up with, young black men are more likely to commit homicide, deal drugs, skip out on child support, and be incarcerated than any one else, and the only demographic differnce is race. It has nothing to do with their criminal affiliation.

Once you start going against the social narrative, things get interesting.

Spend a lot of time in bad neighborhoods?

One of my son's classmates, Elijah Sims, was just shot in the head and killed less than a mile from our high school. He used to live east of Austin Blvd, which divides Oak Park (our wealthy suburb) from the neighborhood Austin on the west side of the city. He and his family moved into Oak Park to get access to our school district. But of course he had friends in Austin, and he'd ride his bike 5 minutes or so over to Columbus Park to hang out with them.

He wasn't a white dude on a bicycle with a backpack with a $2000 laptop in it. If he had been, the car that drove alongside him and his friends and opened fire on them would have driven right by. They're not interested in "victimizing" "techies".

Can you tell me more about the "street drama" Elijah was caught up in?

You think his story is unique? You're right! It is! His family had moved to Oak Park, and students at OPRF don't routinely get murdered. It was newsworthy. You can search "Oak Park student murdered" and get story after story.

But kids in South Austin and for fuck's sake Englewood and god help you if you live in or around Gary --- they're in "street drama" as soon as they set foot out of the house every morning. We techies in Oak Park and Logan Square don't hear so much about it when they got shot.

I go to Gary every so often; there's a couple of really good beer bars out near there. You know how scared I am to be there? Really not scared at all. White dude. Nobody has to guess if I'm affiliated, and I'm not there long enough to catch a stray, like Zariah Muhammad did in Park Manor --- near Uncle John's Barbecue, a Chicago foodie destination. The white dudes who venture out for hot links and rib tips don't seem to get shot. I guess they're better at "not taking sides" and "getting targeted by a particular group of people". Zariah got caught up in street drama, too, I guess. She's 6 years old.

Come to think of it, when I lived in an apartment in Bayview in '98 --- when the murder rate in SF was, it looks like, 50% higher --- I was never worried either. And I was the dumbass parking a BMW on the street.

So I guess long story short is, I'm questioning the logic you're applying to rough neighborhoods. Are you sure you know what you're talking about? I mean: maybe you do. I'm really seriously asking.

> Are you sure you know what you're talking about? I mean: maybe you do. I'm really seriously asking.

That's a good question. Chicago is a very racially segregated city, but so is the San Francisco Bay Area.

You bring up several anecdotes, mainly involving a killing and a feeling of safety. The plural of anecdote of is not data.

I've lived in some bad areas, but never anywhere with the racial tension that seems prevalent in Chicago. But I will say, if you're not in the East Bay, if you walk into a bar full of black people, if you're not black or with black friends, you walk back out again real quick.

I'm sure you do.

You still have to hopscotch over human feces. And now you have to hopscotch over the people who have been pushed out of their homes, too.

The homeless in SF are almost all mentally ill, not working people who were displaced by high rents. In fact, a lot of them come to SF from elsewhere, where they were already homeless, because SF is simply more tolerant of homeless people than any other city in the area.

The homeless in SF are not all mentally ill. They are people who are in precarious housing situations to begin with.

A lot of the homelessness in SF is not visible. You see the ranting person in the street off their meds, but not the families who are in and out of shelters.

https://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Fran...

The survey shows that the precariously housed people, which it defines as "chronically homeless", have significantly higher rates of drug and alcohol abuse than the general homeless population (pages 52 - 53).

Obviously higher rents are making it harder to get out of homelessness (and the survey acknowledges that many times), but they are not the reason most of the chronic homeless ended up being homeless in the first place, by their own account: "Nearly one-third of chronically homeless respondents reported alcohol or substance abuse as the primary cause of their homelessness; this was in contrast to 14% among non-chronic respondents. Fewer chronically homeless respondents reported economic factors as the primary cause of their homelessness. For example, 19% reported job loss as a primary cause compared to 27% of non-chronic respondents."

According to the survey (same pages), the chronically homeless are less likely to be in shelters and accept government assistance than the general homeless population. They therefore comprise a significant number of the homeless seen on the streets.

Also, according to the survey, among the chronically homeless in San Francisco, there were only 18 families in 2015 (page 50).

So which is it? Were they displaced by high rents, or already homeless somewhere else?

And let's not sugar coat it. Some are mentally ill, but many others have serious drug/alcohol addictions. You only need to stroll through the Tenderloin or Civic Center at any time of day to see that first hand.

Mental illness and drug/alcohol addiction are highly correlated.

But read the SF survey linked twice in this thread. It's got lots of actual answers. The homeless you see on the street are not really representative of the problem. There's a bigger population of precariously housed people who cycle in and out of homelessness.

Actually, only 35% of San Francisco's homeless population has some sort of Psychiatric condition. According to a survey of SF's homeless the biggest barriers to finding work (as of 2015) were:

  28% said no permanent address
  20% said alcohol or drug use
  17% said disability
  14% said age
  13% said need for clothing/shower facilities
  ...
  9% said mental health concerns

So it does seems like lack of housing is the largest barrier for SF's homeless population. Additionally, mental illness is most prevalent amongst the chronically homeless, which only make up about 25% of the homeless population in SF. The vast majority of homeless people are homeless for months not years, and the many programs to aid them in finding housing and preventing homelessness in the first place have a significant measurable effect on the average number of homeless shelter entries and length of stay.

Source: https://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Fran...

Asking mentally ill people if they are mentally ill is not a reliable way to determine if they are mentally ill. The same is true for alcoholics and drug addicts.

Many people will deny their circumstances because they are mentally ill and don't realize it, or are simply in denial, or because they think they will get more help if they hide their problems.

Yes this is true of any mental health issue in any population, we can only rely on self-reporting. If you have any sources that show "almost all" homeless people in SF are mentally ill, I'd be interested to read them.

From what I've read, at the national level the incidence of serious mental illness in the homeless population are around 20 - 25%. So the numbers for San Francisco seem reasonable.

we can only rely on self-reporting

There's another option - we can not rely on self-reporting and just acknowledge that we don't know. It's not satisfying, but it sucks less than creating public policy based on bad/misleading information. I doubt very much we can fix 28% of homelessness by handing out free PO boxes.

Except we do know, we have a pretty darn good idea. We know how many people self-report mental illness. We know how many people actually seek treatment for mental illness. We know the self-reported rate of mental illness amongst other populations and can compare the two.

It's literally like any other disease. We don't know how many people actually get the flu every year. We only know how many people self-report getting the flu, and how many people seek treatment. Self-reported surveys are used all the time in epidemiology and we manage to form effective public policy based on that.

So sure, there's definite bias when it comes to self-reporting, but your suggestion is to ignore what data we do have and form public policy based on what? How you feel? First principles?

Somebody failed statistics...

Please provide evidence that the people living on the streets in SF, were the same people who occupied residences SF and were displaced.

I genuinely would like to see that.

I'd encourage you to look at http://48hills.org/2016/02/16/five-myths-about-the-homeless-... :)

Being priced out of an area doesn't make you homeless; it makes you move to a cheaper area.

Homeless people move to SF (and California in general) because it's relatively rich and temperate and tolerates homeless people crowding thoroughfares and shitting on the streets.

The vast majority of homeless people in SF are long-term residents. Please stop spreading this malicious rumor.

Source? I've lived in CA for over 12 years, and most of the homeless I talked to were out of state (a lot of NV and AZ).

How is this claim "malicious"?

Source is in this SF survey linked multiple places in this thread: https://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Fran....

The reason I call it malicious is that it serves a Malthusian argument where doing more to help the homeless will just attract more homeless people to San Francisco, so we might as well not do anything.

People like to quote the "living in San Francisco at the time they most recently became homeless" numbers but they include people who were in subsidized housing or crashing on friends' couches. I believe we'd get much lower stats from a better survey that focused on how many of them had an effective plan to support themselves when they moved here.

> I remember in the 80s you had to hopscotch over human feces when walking in SF.

This hasn't changed. Not as prevalent but it's not gone either. I will give you the point that the primary excretion is now vomit, and not feces.

Vomit most likely from some 20 something kid who just drank way too much with their expendable income. :)

Because young technology professionals are dull(er than the average demographic), and communities with too many of them are boring and soulless.

Source: am young technology professional.

TIL careers define peoples of personality "shine".

Sounds like you're dull - stop making generalizations without facts.

As one young technology professional to another, get a hobby unrelated to tech and you too can start being interesting to people outside of tech.

I'm not dull, but the vast majority of the people in my industry are.

Pokemon Go does not count as a hobby, btw.

"Unrelated to tech."

Why do you think the city should hold the needs of the wealthy few more important than the needs of its other citizens?

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