If things are actually the way some of you are describing them, it sounds like SF particularly is about to collapse completely. Yikes. I can't imagine living there, much less having kids there.
But now... I haven't been there in over 10 years but from what I'm hearing it sounds like a terrible place to visit, much less live. I really hope I'm wrong about that, or, at least they can turn things around. I'd like someday to take my kids there and show them the places I loved to visit.
It's all very sensationalist - all of it.
There are very small grains of truth (about needles and homeless and feces and car break-ins) that are spun out of all proportion.
As a resident of the SFBA and somebody that spends a fair amount of time in, and all over, the city, I can confirm all of it[1] ... but at the same time, SF is quite nice overall and I repeatedly have complete, multi-day interactions in the city with zero dysfunction.
[1] I have been the victim of one car break-in, I have had run-ins with people using the tenderloin as a toilet, etc.
I will echo the poster you replied to you. The fact that you're celebrating that you've experienced more than a single day without seeing crime (in a 1st world country) sounds like madness to much of the rest of the world.
Every time I've heard someone defending the Bay Area recently it sounds like utter normalization of the insane. You've been the victim of 'only' one car break-in yourself, have seen people shitting in the street, view the homeless and drug epidemic daily, and yet expect people to think these issues are overblown because they haven't happened for multiple days at points?
As someone from the outside looking in, I truly hope the U.S. gets their shit together, because it's looking pretty bleak at this point.
The insane is in every city in the U.S., whether or not you find it during your daily life is another thing. It depends on whether you live in the rich city or the parallel working class city, and whether those two cities interface.
In cities where the rich are well separated from the working class (most of the east where the rich live in suburbs separated by distances only traversable by private car due to chronically poor transit), homeless is ignored because it's never seen way out in the suburbs.
In cities like the west cost and the few growing cities in the east, where rich people are moving into formerly working class inner city neighborhoods, of course there is now friction. The rich and working class cities are suddenly face each other directly and constantly, and the end result is the working class is pushed out as housing prices increase, or the rich leave again and it all collapses again.
Take LA. Way more homeless. Yet you get neighborhoods like hancock park, smack dab in the middle of the city, where you will just not see any homeless people, because there is no reason for anyone working class to set foot in that neighborhood. You are priced out of housing and priced out of even lattes. It's a rich suburb full of mansions, you aren't gonna get much panhandling done and will stand out like a sore thumb to police and private security who love doing favors to nagging rich white women without jobs.
But there are parts like downtown la, that used to have flophouses where drunks and addicts could actually rent housing. Or echo park that was a gangland in the 90s or a thriving working class latino community depending on whose reality you consult. Now 1brs cost 2k, the flophouses are bulldozed or renovated (or just get a new coat of paint), people commanding high salaries now interface with homeless and working class people and compete for the same apartments; the two cities merge in DTLA and echo park, as well as other neighborhoods in LA with increasing gentrification.
NYC has the most homeless of anywhere, 90k, and nearly half a million more living in public housing below market rents, but you don't see homeless encampments because NYC builds shelters and housing without NIMBY fuss; something like 95% of homeless are housed in NYC.
In any city you see these problems, and in cities with any semblance of demand that refuse to build supply to match, resulting in unaffordable housing for everyone not pulling >60k a year, you can see how this problem can grow exponentially larger. Never forget that the problem is present in every city, be it Columbus, NYC, LA, or Tulsa. The solutions are there and accepted in academic circles, but whether or not you see these solutions and their effect is directly reflective on the local political climate.
Translation: "I have up to 5 days a week where I experience dysfunction in SF"
Like, if your benchmark for "quite nice overall" is "I can go multiple days without seeing someone breaking into a car or shitting in the street", then your niceness-o-meter is whacked, to say the least.
In New York state, January 1, 2020 a set of law changes take effect that reclassify many crimes to misdemeanors, turn arrests into desk tickets, and help expunge records. They want to go further than that (eliminate cash bail, and more). It's not quite as bad as California, but it's getting there.
In New York City specifically, the City Council / Mayor have in the past few years decriminalized quality-of-life crimes. In the (non-right-wing) press, they put it in quotes like this, "quality-of-life crimes" like it's some game, some ruse, or like quality of life is a meaningless sin or privileged pursuit. We should all suffer equally, is the implication. Meanwhile, the city has gotten noticeably less safe, with homeless people becoming more aggressive, open urinating / drug use (of the needle variety), and incidents inside the subway.
There's nothing worse than being forced to take an underground car, being locked with other people, and having other people screaming schizophrenic fantasies, or walking back and forth trying to hustle for money. Every day. Twice a day. 30-50 minutes+. It's an enforced suffering.
Guess what? If you're wealthy, you have a driver and/or you live near work, you live in a doorman building, and many other amenities. Dealing with street quality-of-life issues affects poor and middle-class people, which is what is personally so enraging about these so-called progressive ideals.