San Francisco Troubles – 19,000 Highly Paid City Employees Earned $150k

Is that what you see in this story? To me, it just seems like overtime abuse.

I care what the gov't pays people, because that's my money.

Usually the argument is that hiring one more employee would be more costly, but I'm not familiar with the exact numbers.

A lot of Democrats are just as selfish, Republicans tend to be more open about it. Deep blue cities have the same corruption and social segregation as red ones do.

A lot of "hot" cities outside SV are Democratic mayors in Republican states. The mix keeps corruption low and forces compromises.

The homeless issue is a city scale prisoners dilemma. By offering better services you attract homeless. Homeless people aren't stupid and will move to places that suit their lifestyle better, just like we do. The only way to avoid it is better policies on a national level. Otherwise cities that treat homeless better just become a magnet for them.

The climate is fairly hospitable year round in the Bay Area. If I were homeless I doubt that I'd choose to live in Arizona or Texas in Summer or Winter. The concentration of disposable wealth and a generally liberal population in San Francisco probably makes panhandling easier, I would guess.

Uhhhh, wut? I think everyone in Austin is dying to see this wonderful infrastructure you speak of, considering we're fairly well known for our inadequate-to-non-existant public transportation system.

One obvious answer is age. It's cheap to build greenfield infrastructure.[1] It's expensive to rebuild infrastructure in dense areas, and that's before factoring in NIMBY pushback. (BTW, that expense is why the wealthy often live in older housing stock in cities. Maintaining an older home is expensive and thus a way to signal wealth. Once enough wealthy people move in you can start to condemn properties that aren't maintained to the same standard. Old money understands this dynamic very well. New money people conflate wealth with newness, which is poor people thinking.)

Regarding homeless: in dense, high-cost of living areas the homeless will be concentrated and adjacent and thus highly visible. As someone who grew up relatively poor, on occasion briefly homeless and often housing insecure, I assure you there are a ton of such people in suburbia, but they're spread out and hidden--couch surfing, pushed to the rural edges, and either scattered around or concentrated in hidden areas (e.g. trailer parks). And of course housing is generally cheaper in less dense areas--the middle classes build new neighborhoods in greenfield areas, then vacate them in a decade or two, making them available for the working classes and the poor. Suburban neighborhoods don't get recycled back up the income ladder like they do in cities. Gentrification in suburbia is rare; rather a new neighborhood is destined to be abandoned and forgotten by the middle classes.

Of course, much could be said regarding Portland's, Seattle's, and San Francisco's licentiousness regarding drug use and other aspects beyond geography and pricing that draw and concentrate the homeless, but those are somewhat unique to those cities, not a general phenomenon.

Regarding potholes: Those older suburban neighborhoods above are just as pothole-filled (if not more so) as any city downtown, but you won't see it because you have no reason to go there! While cities are highly income segregated--often much more so than suburbia--proximities are closer and infrastructure expenditures more equitable so you're far more likely to see the seedy underbelly of your regional community.

Regarding potholes in SF specifically, the city is halfway through a 20 year, multi-billion dollar water & sewer refurbishment plan. The roads are torn up across the city because of this. The Van Ness/Mission and Geary BRT projects are compounding the problem on two of the busiest thoroughfares, and since COVID-19 the city seems to have taken the opportunity to rip open the streets all over the place simultaneously, presumably (hopefully!) to get some of the most inconvenient segments and intersections out of the way earlier.

[1] Not just cheap, but often free. Alot of suburban infrastructure--streets, water, power--is built by the real estate developer. The cost is hidden in the original purchase price. Afterward the cost can't be hidden. Faced with the prospect of having to pay out of pocket, directly or through higher taxes, the middle class will elect to simply move on to greener pastures.

SF has been updating 100+ year old sewer system. The roads will suck until that is done.

It does really suck how we don’t criminalize homelessness and mental illness in CA like good Christian Red States do. I do wonder who filled up those 20000 SROs in the last ten years. Just where did all those homeless come from?