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Comment by baby | Hacker News Reader

I’m one of them. Left San Francisco due to the shitty weather, high crime, high rent, not much to do there, everybody is absorbed by their work, etc.

I’ve been travelling and I’m currently wondering if I should come back or not...

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This is a genuine question: have the tech companies done much to help out with the homelessness and crime rate? For example, through funding homeless shelters?

I ask because I thought SF wasn’t a very nice city, due to the large scale of homelessness. Seeing how much money there was, I wondered why tech companies didn’t just throw money at the problem so that they’d have a nicer environment to live in.

I know that homelessness is a multifaceted problem, but (especially in the states) high housing costs and lack of public services are major, solvable, factors.

In my home city in the U.K. we have a major homelessness problem, but we don’t have the wealth to do much about it. Looking at SF it’s not clear that generating wealth helps. And my overriding impression of Americans is that they’re far more generous with their cash than the English.

Yes, they threw a huge amount of money at the problem.

https://rsmus.com/what-we-do/services/tax/state-and-local-ta...

There's an assumption that if you pay taxes, then you have no social responsibilities beyond that. It's subjective perhaps, but to me that's such a weird way to look at the world. Helping people is one of the main purposes to life, and - particularly if you're partly to blame for the problem - why wouldn't you want to help as much as you could? In this case, it'd even be partly selfish to help, as your employees would presumably be happier if they didn't have to step over homeless people on their way to work.

We can't rely on the "system" to be perfect. You can't say "As long as it's legal it's good" and you can't say "so long as I pay the tax I have to all is well." You have to develop a conscience.

Perhaps you are part of the problem? Maybe leaving would be best for both you and SF.

I was born and raised in the area, and have watched as friends and family are forced out due to rising costs. These are folks who legitimately loved the area and were actively involved in their communities. And they get replaced by people who seem to only care about big paychecks and spend more time complaining about the area than actually doing anything to improve it.

The rise in remote work due to COVID seems like a perfect opportunity to correct this misalignment. For those that don't like it here, I think everyone would be better off if you moved to somewhere that suits you better. And as a bonus you can take your big paycheck with you. I don't mean to offend, it just gets a little old seeing people complain about a place when they are perfectly capable of leaving.

People are not leaving SF because tech employees are coming in. If nobody moved in, the economy would just get worse, housing wouldn't get any more available.

The problem is that your parents go to every community meeting and get all the housing projects shut down to prevent "greedy developers". That's been happening consistently since the 70s.

> People are not leaving SF because tech employees are coming in

I didn't say that. I literally said they are "forced out due to rising costs".

I am all for tech workers moving to the bay area if it suits them. What I don't like, is tech workers who show up and then just complain about how much they hate it here. If you don't like it here, either leave or get involved with your community and help us fix things (including YIMBY, which all of my friends and family support, for the record).

One day you too will move somewhere else, and realize that either you love it or that it’s pretty bad and... think “why should I try to improve this place when I can just move elsewhere?”

Housing is cheaper when the economy is worse. See Berlin.

That's not sustainable, you're just living on scraps because a lot of other people have made bad decisions in your favor. They're not going to keep investing after that, and of course it's bad for the people who moved out - this is a cause of gentrification.

Tokyo, Vienna, Singapore are examples of cities with good housing policies. Although for Vienna's to get started all the landlords had to die in WW1, and then the planners died in WW2.

It's not SF but I did leave Seattle because of tech employees coming in. They destroyed my beloved city of excellent, cheap music played out of our parents' basements and in any of the bars on Capitol Hill and replaced it with shining citadels of emptiness. Seattle was a bright little miracle before Amazon set itself down right in the middle and disgorged its peoples flown in from far and wide.

The knock-on effects of Amazon moving in included a flurry of real estate speculation which directly led to the closing of a restaurant that had been continuously operating for over a decade and close family losing their job there they had worked since its beginning.

I firmly lay the blame of this wanton appropriation at the hands of the tech companies. Amazon didn't need to move directly into the heart of Seattle: they could have done as Microsoft and moved next door to Redmond. But hey, eff the residents who grew up there, right?

I have a great little story of a waiter who had lived in his apartment in the Belltown neighborhood for many years: somebody had come in to look at apartments for all the new tech hires. Person is getting the tour of a unit, pauses to look around at all the other units, "Great, we'll take it!" It was every unit in the building including the occupied. Waiter got the boot.

Seattle had and continues to hold onto the cultural evil of the "Seattle Freeze" but I sure do miss the music and to hear the punky cries of Alice Glass: "Down, down, cities fall down on me."

I’m totally part of the problem! I actually had that theory that most people in SF are just temporarily here to get as much money as possible before leaving. Knowing that why would they try to improve anything? To improve homelessness you need both a national effort and a local effort. Both are embarrassingly small compared to the seriousness of the crisis.

I can't figure it out. I'm fairly well travelled in the world, and San Francisco is my least favorite of any city I've ever encountered.

But some tell me I just don't understand, which, in fairness, is also a true statement.

But San Francisco isn't Silicon Valley. For most of the history of Silicon Valley, SF wasn't any part of it. It is only in the last decade (roughly) that a handful of high profile companies have established in SF, so arguably, perhaps, SF is today part of Silicon Valley.

Even today, none of FANG is HQ'd in San Francisco.

That feels unfair, they can’t be HQ’ed in SF because there’s no space for an HQ.

There's a lot more to Silicon Valley than San Francisco. It's just as expensive with a lot of people absorbed in their work, but does away with the bad weather and crime.

I've never understood why so many tech companies over the last decade went up to SF. Before that most were down the peninsula and in San Jose. I'd pick the lower peninsula over SF no question.

Because the younger talent they’re trying to attract prefers a lively city to the suburban sprawl with good schools

The younger talent they are trying to recruit prefers a lively city with broad culture and opportunities, which exist in many places outside of SV - and in different forms than just the tech mono-culture that SF is today.

Sure but the person I was replying to was talking specifically about Silicon Valley versus SF.

There are many cities out there that will attract people certainly. I don’t live in the Bay Area anymore so I can relate.

The South Bay is either boring or very expensive. SF still feels very genuine and has a lot more going on compared to Sunnyvale. Not to say there is no reason to live there, but it seems to mostly attract families who like suburban living

South Bay has much better restaurants than most suburbs, if you like food, and it's not hard to get out to nature. Weather's better than SF and it's a lot cleaner. But if you want nightlife there isn't any, no.

There is even less to do there.

If you like office parks upon office parks and parking lots then yea sure... go to Sunnyvale or Santa Clara etc...

Everything else is pretty dead imo, for people in their 20-30 who prefer a city vibe SF is sort of the only solution here.

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