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Comment by vecinu | Hacker News Reader

This article is a rehash of existing information and an insult to tech workers that were forced out (such as myself).

If the day to day living conditions were actually acceptable, many people would have stayed during the pandemic. The real problem is the sky high cost of housing with a low quality of life.

I put up with increasing crime, dangerous grime (such as needles in bike lanes) and tent cities on sidewalks all over the place for a decade until my brain couldn't take it anymore.

I have no problem paying Zurich level prices to live in SF due to its surrounding beauty, great opportunities and people but the mismanagement of the city has proven the high costs do not come with high quality of life.

I would share more but I'm typing on my phone, I'm just disappointed to see "techies" still being blamed and called money hungry just because people are looking the other way at other problems.

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I was in SF a couple times for work and i was absolutely shocked at how disgusting it was. Granted, i'm not a city person.. insanely so - i hate cities.. but this was a new level for me. The amount of raw sewage alone that i smelt blew my mind.

I'm shocked how much people put up with there.

I spent nearly every other week in SF from 2011 until COVID hit in February. Went to NY for a conference last year and immediately thought 'holy shit this city is CLEAN'.

>Went to NY for a conference last year and immediately thought 'holy shit this city is CLEAN'

Heh, and here I am in Chicago thinking "holy shit this city is filthy!" when I go to New York. I haven't been to San Francisco in awhile, it must have deteriorated.

The harsh winters alone send Chicago's homeless places like SF.

The city's municipal workers used to wash down the surviving homeless encampments hiding from the cold on Lower Wacker with bleach and a fire hose without notice. You could differentiate Chicago's genuine homeless from the career panhandlers downtown by the bleach-stained clothes.

Not sure if they still use this practice, but it wouldn't surprise me.

It's easy to criticize SF for its negligence, but the homeless challenges are real and the affordable solutions tend to be severely lacking empathy. And SF lacks a rude force of nature doing most of the work every winter. Damp and chilly, sure, but still relatively comfortable. Chicago has it easy in this department, and its occupants aren't exactly the most empathetic towards the homeless either.

No its politics. NYC if anyone sets up a tent you can report and it'll get dumped the same day. https://portal.311.nyc.gov/article/?kanumber=KA-02253

> NYC if anyone sets up a tent you can report and it'll get dumped the same day.

Are you implying that's the right thing to do to someone living on the streets with nothing more than a tent for shelter?

Yes its better for the rest of the people who live there and probably better for the homeless guy too.

> its occupants aren't exactly the most empathetic towards the homeless either.

It's .. interesting, since i generally have no clue what to do here. I'm a super .. socialist _(or w/e)_ in that i believe in tons of government programs, but homelessness is something i almost don't believe in. It feels either a problem of:

1. Social safety nets to support working individuals experiencing tough times (i support tons of safety programs).

2. Or.. more controversially, mental health issues that shouldn't be allowed to exist in this state. Ie, if we had #1 then "no one" would be homeless - and those that are despite that, are too mentally unwell to be allowed the freedom to make such a decision.

Though, i know nothing on the subject - and advertise as much. Nevertheless, i feel far less supportive of the homeless as a result - i split it mentally as either people i want to support via social nets - or mentally unwell people needing of hospitalization. A bit off topic perhaps, but i'm always interested in peoples opinion on the subject.

I've been following the SF homeless situation pretty closely.

The numbers are that of the $300-350 million/year SF budget for homeless, 60% goes to permanent rent subsidies (low-income long-term residents.)

That leaves $120-140 million/year for actual street homeless of the reported 5,000 people. $30 million/year is given out as $500/month vouchers, leaving $90 million-$110 million unaccounted for (ie. likely social workers and bureaucrats.)

Other cities have reported:

- 100% of street homeless are on substances

- 50% of street homeless are mentally ill

That means 50% could still be treated/rehabilitated/re-employed with inexpensive programs (mailing address, internet access, showers, transitional housing.)

SF has a couple problems though:

- homeless migrate here, so it's really a federal problem

- SF rents are so high that there will be a surging tide of homeless from the city residents post-2020. The lower-middle class individuals really need to emigrate in an orderly fashion beforehand.

FYI you're shadow banned, basically all your comments are currently defaulting to [dead] and you're talking to yourself and HNers like me with showdead=yes. The comments stay that way until someone like me comes along, reads your invisible text, and vouches for it - which I've done in this case.

You must have angered the mods.

I don't (think?) i have that setting - but i read the persons message. Does it work different if it's a directly reply?

Could be, if you view their comments through their profile though you'll see what I'm referring to.

> The numbers are that of the $300-350 million/year SF budget for homeless, 60% goes to permanent rent subsidies (low-income long-term residents.)

Any idea how much effort goes into converting these individuals to productive members? Ie, getting jobs/education/etc to then exit this system?

It depends heavily on where in the city you are. There are parts of SF that definitely makes me very uncomfortable (I've lived in Hong Kong and know my way around NYC) but SF is kind of interesting in it almost feels like a collection of small cities. Union Square is very, very different from Sea Cliff and because SF is relatively small physically, it doesn't take long to go from one part to another. I think people who live here tend to get used to seeing these things and also know to avoid spending too much time in some parts of the city.

Nobody is questioning that there are good neighborhoods. Every city has good neighborhoods. What has people scratching their heads is that the worst parts of lot of cities are still a lot better than the bad parts of SF. When the comparison is between Bangalore or Sao Paulo and Zurich it's easy to write off the difference as simply wealth. But when the American "shithole cities" like Detroit, Buffalo, Gary, Reno, etc that the people of SF like to sneer at are in fact better in their worst parts than the crown jewel of "muh fifth largest economy" it really makes people wonder what the heck went so wrong.

I really don't know anyone in SF who thinks Detroit, Buffalo, etc in that way. They just tended to think of employment, amenities and available services lacking in those other cities.

If work is remote (unsure if this will remain after vaccine allows us to work in offices again) then it opens up a lot of doors.

For 98% of Californians, "muh fifth largest economy" has actually been a profound net-negative. I'm amazed people who pay $3k/month to rent to one-bedroom apt still trot this out as a brag point. "Fifth largest economy" has worked out well for the 1%, people who bought homes forever ago, and really no one else.

If WFH really gains long term traction then the SV salaries are not going to hold up either. There are really smart people in eastern europe, south america, southeast asia, etc. who will work for a fraction of the salary that a locally-domicled worker would require.

5th largest economy is the one employing all the people that are coming here in droves so not sure your argument holds up. No one would be coming here if the jobs were in Montana. $3K/mo is pennies when you're getting offers to move here to make half a million.

>But when the American "shithole cities" like Detroit

The majority of Detroit is shitty. Sure, downtown and surrounding branches (Corktown) have come back, but Detroit itself is physically huge, and can house Boston, the island of Manhattan, and San Fransisco within its borders[0]. If you don't believe me, use Streetview on Google Maps and click you way around the city. It's eyeopening.

[0] https://detroitography.com/2015/04/10/map-can-detroit-really...

Honestly laughed out loud reading GP compare the shittyness of San Francisco to how unbelievably awful and abandoned parts of Detroit are.

> when the American "shithole cities" like Detroit,

Detroit is shitty in a way that SF is not shitty. Have you ever been to the parts of Detroit that are just straight up abandoned?

Just an absurd comment altogether.

SF is the greatest city in the world in the same way that the USA is the greatest country of the world. Both of them have insanely wealthy people in extremely nice enclaves, surrounded by plenty of sub-3rd-world filth. When you put together a glossy spread of greatest places to live, you can cherrypick the wealthy parts and gloss over the folks barely eking out a subsistence living. In the meantime tons of people will be attracted to the idea of "making it" into the upper 0.1%, thus fueling the economic strength that builds those fortunes.

Selection bias is the greatest force known to man. Things get publicized by their best case, not by their average case.

The income distribution, housing ownership, education, etc. stats for the USA would seem to disagree. The 3rd world level dilapidation surrounding rich enclaves is very specific to liberal-run cities as far as I can tell (my favorite quote from a Nob Hill condo owner - "It's only nice here because the homeless are too lazy to walk uphill").

Even super depressed places I've been to, like Spokane, WA, or rural Illinois by Kentucky border, look far more orderly, safe and well-run. Clearly you've never been to the actual 3rd world ;)

A quick google search about Spokane turned up this[1] and this[2]. Maybe the only difference between SF and Spokane is that the real estate prices means it is easier to hide the problems from public view.

Pretty much every city and state, liberal or conservative, has a fair share of population that is struggling with drug addiction, mental health issues, and poverty. The difference between SF and other areas, is we have higher real estate prices and better weather, so these issues are much more visible than else where.

[1] https://www.safewise.com/blog/most-dangerous-cities/ [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Spokane/comments/bchlna/how_ghetto_...

I guess Spokane went downhill, I've last been there several years ago and the comments also seem to say the last couple of years homeless population exploded. Still, they seem to be describing abandoned parts of a shrinking city, not the entire place. In SF it's all over (I've lived in SOMA and Inner Richmond, and worked near Union Square). I'd expect the fact that SF is swimming in money (compared to Spokane) would have an opposite effect. So I don't think it's that "every city has problems". Even the cities on the same train line as SF don't have the same problems, nor do better run cities with less money with good weather (Texas, Utah, Florida). Same deal with Seattle, quickly going downhill with increasingly progressive City Council and major, while less-progressive cities across the bridge are doing just fine; and even stereo-typically poorer cities to the North and South don't look nearly as bad.

The supreme levels of wealth is largely specific to liberal-run cities as well. Home cities of the top 10 billionaires in the U.S. are Seattle, Bay Area, Seattle, Bay Area, Omaha, Bay Area, Seattle, Bay Area, Bay Area, Bentonville. The list of metro areas by per capita income is DC, San Jose, Seattle, San Francisco, Boston.

I think you may have causality backwards: liberal policies are enacted as a way to paper over the huge income disparities that are generated by having a dominant global industry. Regional wealth and inequality cause liberal policies, liberal policies don't cause wealth & inequality.

I don't think so; the 3rd-world-like situation is limited mostly to SF, many other cities in the same area are not as progressive and doing better. Ditto for Seattle - the East Side has greater wealth, more expensive housing, is less progressive, and is doing much better. Tacoma has far less wealth, is less progressive and is doing better anyway. There's a common pattern here...

There's a grain of truth in what you say in terms of progressive policies used to "paper over" stuff - some places prevent the problem via non-progressive policies, and those stupid enough to use progressive ones are left with the 3rd world conditions in need of papering over.

I have a pet theory... I think compassion is the worst basis for policy, proven by study after study to be irrational, scope insensitive, biased in many ways. The 2nd worst basis for policy are slogans. However, most people are compassionate and are fired up by slogans, so they vote for compassionate simple policies. That predictably causes horrible results, at which point the smarter/richer people become a bit more likely to leave, and the less smart/less rich people stay, or are not able to leave financially; that causes more compassionate and slogan-based policies; rinse, repeat.

The fact that rich places also have a corresponding rise in poverty is not a new problem, and it's one people have thought about and "solved" over a 100 years ago. See Progress and Poverty [0] by Henry George, named to capture the idea that poverty often follows progress. The core idea is that as a society's productivity increases, this just gets captured by higher land values and rents, leaving labour having to pay even more rent to just survive.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_and_Poverty

The worst parts of LA, Chicago, Detroit, etc. are just as bad as the Tenderloin. The only weird thing about SF is that the office/financial district is the worst part of the city. In Chicago, a white collar worker can live their entire life without going to Englewood, but in SF, you're actually forced to see it (which is... maybe a good thing?)

> are just as bad as

And much larger than

> It depends heavily on where in the city you are.

I suspect this is the case in nearly every city in the world: some nice areas, some dirty areas, some dangerous areas, etc. What always struck me as unusual in SF is that the bad areas are finely interlaced with or even overlapping with the "nice" commercial/dining/shopping areas. It's not like "oh, avoid this dark corner of town," but instead it's like "there's some nice high-end shopping here with naked bleeding people injecting drugs literally in front of the door."

Yes! But, you can basically avoid that by avoiding Soma and the Tenderloin. There are no naked bleeding people in Dogpatch, Potrero Hill, the Sunset and Richmond, the Marina, etc. etc.

> I'm just disappointed to see "techies" still being blamed and called money hungry just because people are looking the other way at other problems.

If anything the problem is renters and their zoning laws...

How is the problem tenants?

> dangerous grime (such as needles in bike lanes)

Is where you moved to safer to cycle in overall?

Great question, I have yet to discover the safety of the bike lanes spread around here but local cyclists I've talked to feel comfortable cycling on the semi-protected bike lanes on main roads here because they're so wide.

I admit, the fully protected bike lanes that have recently come up on Embarcadero with concrete barriers had me excited for my safety, until I had to deal with the grime and odd person jumping in the bike lane randomly (Generally mentally ill folks).

As far as biking infrastructure, if you ignore the other problems, SF has really stepped up its game, mostly due to the effort by the SF Cycling coalitions, I believe (And a number of cycling related deaths).

Cycling is inherently more dangerous than either walking or driving, no matter what.

Cycling is more dangerous in America because of bad cycling infrastructure.

Put another way, cycling is only more dangerous than driving if you consider an SUV running over a bike to be an example of cycling being the more dangerous form of transport.

No, riding around on two wheels with no protection besides a foam helmet is just obviously more risky (to the rider) than riding in a steel frame, 4-wheeled vehicle with crumple zones, air bags, and safety restraints. Even given an isolated bike infrastructure with no interaction between bikes and cars, if you hit a rock or a pedestrian or another cyclist and fall, you are going to sustain some type of injury. It takes a pretty major collision to sustain an injury in a modern automobile.

There don't appear to be great statistics on bicycle deaths per mile and by cause but what I found is in line with my contention. "Cyclists are either 3.4x or 11.5x as likely to die as motorists, per passenger mile." And that's only fatalities, not injuries.

And over 80% of cycling crashes are falls, running into fixed objects, or running into another cyclist. Collision with a moving motor vehicle is only about 11%.

https://bicycleuniverse.com/bicycle-safety-almanac/

> There don't appear to be great statistics on bicycle deaths per mile and by cause but what I found is in line with my contention. "Cyclists are either 3.4x or 11.5x as likely to die as motorists, per passenger mile." And that's only fatalities, not injuries.

That's in the US, notorious for bicycling infrastructure that varies between not-great and abysmal.

If you compare cycling fatalities per mile in Denmark or Norway with MV fatalities per mile in the US, things are approximately a wash.

Don't disagree with anything you said, but do take issue with the stat equating 1 mile of bike distance with 1 mile of automobile distance. Surely the stat should be normalized on a "per commute" basis. At the very least throw out long-haul car trips.

At least for the purposes of comparing relative safety of commuting by bike vs. car.

> (to the rider)

But this is my (maybe protracted, admittedly) point about an SUV hitting the bike: if you account for injuries to others outside the vehicle, driving becomes a more dangerous form of transportation. If you only value the lives of those in the vehicle, you're right that it's probably safer per mile.

> Cycling is inherently more dangerous than either walking or driving, no matter what.

Not necessarily more dangerous than driving. More than walking, sure, you are usually faster. But the problem tends to be more about infrastructure.

However, if you adjust for "lifestyle" diseases, cycling becomes more attractive.

When I'm driving I'm way more worried about hurting someone else then actually getting hurt myself.

When I'm on a bike it's the exact opposite.

Now maybe my perception is wrong and perhaps my perception of the absolute risk is incorrect but it sure doesn't feel that way.

I live near the Southwest Corridor bike trail in Boston. I've never seen used needles on the bike path. Homeless people camping out near the bike path? Totally. The occasional broken glass on the pavement? Unfortunately. But nothing like what is, supposedly, so typical in San Francisco.

i routinely see drug needles on the ground or junkies shooting up in Seattle too.

I've wondered if this is something the entire west coast from Vancouver to San Diego is experiencing.

For what its worth, I ride my bike to work 8 miles each way every day in SF (sunset to exploratorium) and haven't seen a needle since I stopped riding on Division St (literally under the overpass) a couple years ago. Anecdotes go both ways I guess

I visited SF late last year and it seemed pretty nice to me. Note that I live in Baltimore.

The high cost of the city comes from people having money; which recently has been primarily because of the influx of us in tech.

The high cost exacerbates all those other problems! People are pushed out and have fewer opportunities.

So why not blame the money and the people who brought it?

How do you suggest the city "fix it"? What are your policy suggestions? How will you get the residents of the city on board with all of them?

The high cost comes from a city that basically makes it impossible to build housing. The bureaucracy drives out developers, leaving only those who are willing to deal with nightmarish levels of legal hurdles. The legal headaches make the housing insanely expensive to build.

Exactly. Econ 101. Lots of demand and no supply means prices rise. SF and other bay area cities are more than happy to build tons of office space for tens of thousands of office jobs, but when it comes to building the housing those new workers need to live... Nope. Office jobs mean revenue, houses mean costs. When you have to be a home owner to be on a city council, your incentives get a little perverse.

It's not some abstract "bureaucracy". It's the fact that "build nothing and make the undesirables leave SF" is the popular position on housing in San Fran. The only thing different political factions disagree about is whom to deport.

Exactly, even many "progressive" groups are okay with a situation where many people who want to live in SF won't be able to.

The difference from the status quo is that they don't think it should be the price mechanism that decides who gets to stay and who has to leave.

> I put up with increasing crime, dangerous grime (such as needles in bike lanes) and tent cities on sidewalks all over the place for a decade until my brain couldn't take it anymore.

But this is exactly a consequence of catering to wealthy tech: infrastructure is left to collapse while development focuses on the wealthy. Rather than addressing transportation issues, tech just built their own exclusive network. Rather than addressing cost-of-living inequity, tech just drove up real-estate prices.

It sounds to me what you really want is for someone to alleviate your discomfort by shoveling off the riff-raff so that you can enjoy your bike ride, rather than having to address the systemic issues, which might impact your net worth.

Another issue I suggest is also that systemic issues are harder to solve- I don't live in SF but I understand there is corruption, NIMBYism, and waste that takes the considerable budget SF has and doesn't actually improve lives for the neediest who live there. Tech people haven't in general been highly politically involved, but political involvement- real political involvement, the kind that go to town halls as well as protests, the kind that build communities, etc. has been dying nationwide. The whole infrastructure of holding politicians accountable is rotting out from the country.

It's your claim that it's "tech"'s job to solve these issues, rather than the city government, the people whose actual job it is to solve these issues?

Flush with extra cash from the taxes paid by "tech", to boot.

Like, what do you want here? Should "tech" appropriate a significant part of the government's job in addressing these issues? I'm sure you don't actually want that.

I agree with you, but I am also a person that just wants someone to do it. Anyone at all, really. City governments are failing fantastically in major tech hubs, I kind of just think fuck it. Let some chowderhead tech goon take a shot at solving housing/homelessness/whatever. Nobody else is going to.

That's if you can get the government out of the way. The problem isn't just that the government is doing nothing; it's that they actually block progress.

> Rather than addressing transportation issues, tech just built their own exclusive network. Rather than addressing cost-of-living inequity, tech just drove up real-estate prices.

This feels like misplaced blame? Is one expected to believe that "tech" should be doing the government's job? If anything, one could argue that tech did do its part by paying higher taxes on average </two-cents>

> It sounds to me what you really want is for someone to alleviate your discomfort by shoveling off the riff-raff so that you can enjoy your bike ride, rather than having to address the systemic issues, which might impact your net worth.

I am not seeing anything in the grandparent that suggests they are not willing to pay for cleaner streets and better housing and homeless services through taxes to a well managed city.

You are correct, I am actually asking to pay more taxes if some of these problems could be solved.

What good is having a lot of money if you're surrounded by problems and are unhappy? I would gladly spent it to make my community more egalitarian.

The problem is that in reality, paying more taxes just creates more problems.

I doubt more taxes would help. If you're in California and San Francisco, your taxes are already higher than they would be in most other places in the USA. Before I'd agree to paying even more, I'd want to know what exactly my existing taxes are paying for, and why those things are more important than cleaning up literal shit from the sidewalks.

Development always focuses on the top of the market and there is nothing wrong with that. New houses are better and cost more. Their creation depresses the price of older houses. It is exactly analogous to the car market. You can't lower the price of used cars by outlawing new cars.

It sounds like to me that you're saying that the city and surrounding governments couldn't handle the new, unruly kid on the block that is "tech", so the kid gets blamed for having bad parents? "Tech" drove up real estate prices? That's a second order effect at best.

address the systemic issues, which might impact your net worth

That's a hell of an unsupported stretch. But it is typical of the mindset: "rich people just want to stay rich, that's all want, net worth, blah, blah, blah." Look, there have to plenty of tech people like me that wonder why I'm not being taxed more to address these issues. I've got money to burn, take some of it, Local Government. (Uh, oh, here comes the jackass to suggest I voluntarily write a check to the government coffers; thanks, that was helpful.) Park some of those assumptions about people that fell into money, and maybe some solutions can be implemented together. Otherwise the alternative is to listen to the sound of our own voices.

These issues are all political issues, so I'm not sure what people expect the tech minority to do ― become even more politically powerful, and even more influential in matters of civic life? Furthermore, the wealth of tech is completely different from the voting base of tech.

This is a democratic city situated in a democratic state in a democratic country. So, like, either the people on any level want to do something or... do they want the Andrew Carnegie of tech to punch through the "red tape"?

What is the city/state/federal political mood on matters of big homeless, housing, or infrastructure projects? Isn't it depressed or pessimistic?

I would take issue with this assumption as I had moved from a pretty socialist country to SF, where I paid much higher taxes and didn't complain. Nay, I celebrated the taxes I paid because I saw where they went all around me. Fantastic infrastructure (SF roadways are littered with potholes and terrible quality), affordable housing and supported citizens.

We have a very tech heavy scene in the city I moved from where people earn 6 figures, with a much higher population and the situation on the ground was nowhere near what it was in SF.

I also take issue with your last statement because it implies I want "the poors" removed purely for my own enjoyment. I do not, I realize the suffering they go through and I want to help support them for their own sake and mine so that I don't have to see them suffer daily.

I have posed this question to other SF residents but how does allowing people to pitch tents on the sidewalk and suffer visibly help them or people just passing through? People that are not vulnerable are suffering because they're visibly seeing these people suffer. Who is winning here?

>But this is exactly a consequence of catering to wealthy tech:

It wasn't tech that passed Prop 13 and imposed permanent austerity and deflationary budgeting on California's local governments.

Most places don't do any "shoveling off the riff-raff", yet they don't have that problem. It appears that the huge per-person budget San Francisco has for homeless people is actually generating homeless people.

> Most places don't do any "shoveling off the riff-raff", yet they don't have that problem.

In most major cities on the East coast at least, this is definitely routine practice but they just hide it from you.

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