Tech giants have turned San Francisco into a dystopian nightmare
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If you believe that housing is a key concern, then the effect of the presence of tech workers cannot be overlooked.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/the-mir...
That's just one system that can contribute to a changing city, and there are many others. (including city officials like you mention).
I'd encourage you not to dismiss the idea outright and try to fit it with a simple root cause.
Most of the time, when people complain about tech in SF, they're really just complaining about the economy being good. But they can't say that, it sounds silly, so they act like it's something specific to tech.
On a positive note SF’s homicide rate was 41 in 2019. That’s incredibly low, hasn’t been that low since 1961 https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/san-francisco/san-fran....
[0] dealers often are addicts themselves, take their own cut and fill the missing amount with foreign substances and more potent substitutes which then cause multiple orders of magnitude more health issues (including death) than the original drug
[1] when you have to spend $1000 per month on your drugs you are more likely to become homeless, homeless people have to steal or become prostitutes to fund their drug addiction
[2] physical dependency to drugs can be satisfied without becoming high. this means you can have people that go to the clinic every week for the rest of their lives but live completely normal lives but if you shut down the clinic they will die a few weeks later because they overdose on street drugs like every other drug user
The writer of this article should probably also visit Noe Valley, McLaren Park in the Excelsior, Merced, Hayes Valley, visit Salesforce Park. Go on a walk in Golden Gate Park on a Sunday, browse dive bars in the Mission, and see a show at the Castro Theatre. Walk up Potrero Hill at sunset, get some coffee at at Trouble in the sunset, visit the MOMA or Academy of Sciences, and sit around at Washington Square.
Then write your article on how San Francisco is a shit-filled dystopia.
> But one statistic stands out: almost half of homeless people in the United States are in California, according to a recent White House study.
> And San Francisco, a comparatively small city that is home to tech giants such as Twitter, Uber and Airbnb, has the highest rate of ‘unsheltered’ citizens – at ten times the national level.
Rightly so, because we have a crisis. San Fran has a crisis, too.
Your city may be other things to you, but this crisis is coming to define it in both the eyes of outsiders and in the lives of a significant number of its residents.
I suppose I just wish that writers could talk about the issue with a little more nuance.
Then write your article on how San Francisco is a shit-filled dystopia.
Of course SF has a park named after a company.
If anything, people have been complaint that techies are less tolerant and progressive.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
On HN, we go by article quality, not site quality
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=ancient-origins.net
Explanations are always available when people ask, and we answer questions like this every day.
We banned the site you linked to because promotional accounts have been spamming HN with dozens of submissions from it, and because it appears to be mostly blogspam, i.e. lifted from other sources. I just did a spot check, and indeed the most recent submission (https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/med...) was lifted from https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/newport-mediev.... HN readers expect us to ban that kind of thing. This isn't the class of sites I was talking about above (note the word "major").
The root of the cause is they aren't redistributing the wealth well. They should offer the poor, an affordable medical care, a shelter, and just simply hand them the money. The cost should be lower than dealing with daily thefs and drug dealers crowded in the street. Most of them choose theft and illegal drug because they can't afford the foods, houses, and medical care.
Surely, when news get to other poor people in the USA you will jet be rewarded with a new, probably larger, batch of urban poor?
My guess is you will run out of money before the USA runs out of poor people? (And that doesn't include the literally billions elsewhere who will be motivated to join in the fun).
Sadly.
Except you have to get them to care about more than getting high, first. The one man in the article who lost his family started with an addiction to pain killers and progressed downward to heroin and homelessness.
His problem wasn't a lack of the material, it was a lack of meaning. "Handing them the money" reinforces meaninglessness. It won't work.
Throughout history there have been poor people who were virtuous. I grew up poor, and poverty didn't make us turn to stealing. Yes, we actually had too little food. My mother often went hungry as she made sure her children were fed.
There are millions of the poor all over the world, and only a few of them are criminals. Most are good people. The only possible conclusion to draw from this fact is that crime is not caused by poverty, otherwise all or most of the world's poor would be criminals.
It turns out that handing out needles just makes it easier to do hard drugs. Turning a blind eye to crime leads to more crime, it normalizes it.
Getting these people medical care would be a beginning. Ask them to meet some standards. Food if you avoid drugs. Shelter if you help care for it, and avoid drugs. A clean place to bathe and groom yourself, if you help clean it. A shot at getting a job by keeping yourself clean in several senses. Setting the conditions begins providing meaning. Helping others and caring for one's surroundings provides meaning and dignity. That, more than anything, is the strong foundation from which to attack addiction.
The housing issues cannot be disentangled from the buying power and demand of tech workers.
from: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/A-...
"Tourism is still booming, despite San Francisco’s miserable side making headlines around the world. In 2018, 25.8 million people visited San Francisco, up 1.2% from 2017. They spent $10 billion, which was also up slightly."
As an anecdote, my S.O. watches a Youtuber, a Japanese airline stewardess who makes typical travel/foodie content. She had a San Francisco vid a few months ago.....which made the place look like heaven on Earth. I don't think she even once touched on or mentioned some of SF's problems. I wonder how many other foreigners are formulating travel plans based on similarly one-dimensional picture-perfect content.
There is rampant car theft. Don't leave your stuff visible in your car, and don't conspicuously open your trunk with sparkling goodies inside. But that's advice that was reasonable 30n years ago.
It's as safe to bring your family to SF as it is to NY. And, like NY, there are wonderful things to see and do here. You just need to be smart about it.