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Comment by CryptoPunk | Hacker News Reader

Yes, San Francisco is lagging cities in Texas in providing social services, which is why its homelesssness/street-disorder/drug-abuse problem is so much worse.

There is a point at which you have to realize/admit that your ideological narrative, and the public sector interests who popularize it, are wrong. The left coast cities, from San Fran to Vancouver, have prioritized decriminalization of drugs, social services, and hands off policing for 'minor' crimes like theft, and have been overtaken by deliquency and squalor as a result.

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As someone whos nowhere near liberal enough to want to live in San Francisco, isn't there some kind of diminishing return effect where the better you're homeless services are, the more homeless come to take advantage, and the worse the problem becomes? Especially with the fantastic weather so less exposure deaths? If Texas spends no money on homeless people who don't help themselves they have to leave or die. What's the ratio of Texas homeless that have been in Texas their whole lives vs San Francisco homeless who have been in California their whole lives?

I don't know all the stats, but I know Waco, TX has a large homeless population since I helped out a bit there when I was younger. A quick search shows that Waco spends $39,000/yr per homeless individual[0], and the famous Church Under the Bridge[1] (an open-air gathering under the I-35 overpass) has been unable to meet normally but is making sure that people still get fed [2]. (They are mention feeding 80 people--there were hundreds when I attended, but there are a number of kitchens around so it sounds like most attendees are getting their food elsewhere).

I don't know why anyone would assume that homeless people are starving in Texas. What do you think all the shelters and kitchens are for?

[0] https://www.waco-texas.com/housing-homelessness.asp#gsc.tab=... [1] https://www.churchunderthebridge.org/ [2] https://www.kwtx.com/content/news/Waco-Church-Under-the-Brid...

If you have better services, you attract more potential workers to your city. If you provide resources to educate them, you grow GDP. If you treat people like trash, then you get a bizarre dystopian landscape.

Last I heard rents were astronomical in SF, which appears to be the opposite of what I was talking about.

San Francisco is lagging cities in Texas because Texas actually has seasons and would rather not have a bunch of rotting corpses under their many overpasses.

That is not why San Francisco is lagging Texas. Texas usually does not have harsh winters.

SF is over 5x denser than Dallas, which is the densest major city in Texas. The problem with homelessness is people can't afford to live in homes. It is a lot easier to avoid homelessness when you have essentially endless space to build housing.

If you and fellow San Franciscans were willing to think in 3 dimensions, you'd realize you've got essentially endless space as well.

SF has additional earthquake protection laws that kick for buildings taller than 8 or 9 stories iirc. I think they're expensive to do, because a lot of buildings stop at that height.

I certainly can't afford to live on Madison Ave in NYC. But instead of living in a tent on the street on Madison Ave, I live in a city that is much cheaper than NYC and I don't live in the most expensive part of town.

Should NYC provide me housing if I start living in a tent on Madison Ave?

NYC actually does have a law where they are required to do just that:

https://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/todays-read-behind-n...

As another commenter linked to, they should and will. (SF, in contrast, will not - homeless advocacy groups in California generally aren't fans of shelters, so there's not much pressure to ensure there are enough beds to go around.)

> SF is over 5x denser than Dallas

San Francisco is also 3x less dense than Paris (Paris, France).

SF could add homes for 1.5 million people and still be as livable as Paris, if it wanted to.

Paris is not on a fault line either. Or built on large portions of land that suffer from liquid faction.

SF like most American cities has suffered poor city planning and no foresight about future population growth.

That isn't a credible argument. We've known how to engineer for seismic risks for a very long time and many dense, tall cities are built on top of faults in seismic risk zones at least as severe as San Francisco without issue.

For example, Tokyo and Seattle. San Francisco even has the advantage of being merely fault adjacent. In cases like Seattle, a major thrust fault runs through the city. It doesn't prevent dense construction.

> It is a lot easier to avoid homelessness when you have essentially endless space to build housing.

This is hyperbole and dramatically wrong. It's one of those statistics that's repeated in Bay Area circles but has no bearing on reality.

Houston metro is almost the same size as the entire 9-county Bay Area metro: 7M population, 10K sq mi.

Bay Area 9 county: 7.4M population, 7K sq mi.

Houston metro pop density = 0.7K people / sq mi. Bay Area 9 county = 1.05K people / sq mi.

So, the Bay Area 9 county is only 1.5 times as dense as Houston, largely because Houston allows many more high rises.

You've taken a statement about SF and applied it to an area 140 times the size of SF. Obviously that will result in it being nonsense.

SF is the size of downtown Houston, and Houston does not have these problems.

Applying statistics from SF, which is effectively the "downtown" of the Bay Area is not a valid comparison. The population density of San Francisco is not impressive, period. Downtown Houston is much more developed than San Francisco, and that would be a more valid comparison for density.

But this also doesn't get to the main point which was cost and housing density. Cost per sq/ft in Houston (excluding the lots, which are enormous compared to the Bay Area) is $107. Median house price in downtown Houston is $310K.

Costs per sq/ft in the Bay Area are anywhere between $280 and $800. It's not a close comparison in price at all, despite being a comparable density.

On an absolute basis, SF has horrifically restricted housing policy that makes it incredibly difficult to build new, denser housing. However, compared to the broader bay area, SF has incredibly progressive housing policy.

It is ridiculous to compare downtown Houston, which is surrounded on all sides by a zillion square miles of suburbs (under city control!), to SF, which is surrounded by a limited number of more expensive and more restrictive enclaves that SF has no power over, and most of those places are a bridge or tunnel away. Obviously there is going to be less demand, and less premium for land if there are 10,000 other plots within 30 minutes. That just isn't the case in SF.

If the bay area as a whole had better housing policy than it would help SF a lot. But they don't, so it makes it worse for SF. And SF has no control over the housing laws passed in other counties. SF is of course partially at fault, as they should have better housing policy themselves, but they are not entirely responsible for the problem.

I'm not even comparing that. I have been to SF all the time. SF--just SF--is not as dense as downtown Houston, where housing is affordable.

According to Google, downtown Houston is 1.84 square miles. Houston is 669 square miles. So downtown Houston represents about 0.3% of Houston. The reason it is affordable in downtown Houston is because the other 99.7% of Houston exists, and if it weren't affordable in downtown people would just live elsewhere.

You don't have the same choices in and around SF, therefore there is a lot of demand on much smaller amounts of land, therefore it's a lot more expensive!

It's the same reason rent is really expensive in NYC, even though they are way more dense than SF. Lots of demand, not many alternatives.

So SF needs to reform their overly restrictive building regulations? Ignore the NIMBYism and do what is better for the city as a whole?

And yet rents remain sky high in those same cities, despite the pandemic shuttering workplaces and slowing local economies, because lots of people still really want to live in them. There is a point at which you have to realize/admit that your ideological narrative, and the interests who popularize it, are wrong.

The thing is businesses can not rebuild and move buildings quickly. When jobs disappear rents will go down. It seems impossible San Francisco could be the next Detroit but it’s actually not that improbable. There is just so much inertia keeping businesses from being able to move that they can’t or won’t. The actually physical cost to spent billions to build a headquarters but also the need to be closely located to other businesses that you will work with. Without this inertia you would see much more businesses leaving than are now, and there are more than ever leaving.

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