Hacker News Reader

Comment by godot | Hacker News Reader

It's somewhat interesting that some numbers are based on the bay area (drop in bay area tech workers inflow/outflow, what percentage of bay area workforce will remain remote), while other numbers based on San Francisco alone (drop in SF residents, SF GDP, business tax revenue, etc.).

I know that outside of California, the world views "SF" and "the bay area" mostly as one and the same. Based on anecdotes I feel like this doesn't tell the full story, though maybe it does give you a high level overview (like this site does).

Among both personal friends and coworkers, ex-coworkers (from a decade+ of working in the bay area) -- surely there are people who move out of state (to Denver, Austin, Miami, etc.); but the more common trend is -- people who used to live in SF are moving out to the east bay / surrounding areas; and people who were already in the east bay before move even further away (Sacramento area, etc.). Another interesting bit -- Sacramento doesn't get talked about in tech circles and sites like this and related articles, because it's not supposed to be the "next sexy tech town", but in reality is a lot of people have moved here since the pandemic, both tech and not. I moved here before the pandemic, and witnessed the housing market rise more than the east bay (where there's already an influx of SF people moving to) this past year.

All I'm saying is there's a lot of nuances in this general exodus!

View on HN

Keep in mind SF.citi is a policy advocate/lobbying group for San Francisco legislation rather than the Bay Area more generally.

But they blend in wider Bay Area population stats because this is really about jobs that generate SF payroll tax which gives these employers a tacit say and leverage. Remember if you live in Oakland or Redwood City but are employed in San Francisco city/county, some of your payroll tax is being generated to benefit the city of San Francisco even if you are not a resident there.

That's why SF City is worried about SF based businesses and SF Bay Area workers.

(BTW this is also why cities such as Mountain View and Cupertino want to attract large business campuses like Google and Apple but don't want to build homes - they get more income from growing payroll tax but don't then have to spend more on schools, services etc for a growing population - they shift the burden onto other cities and counties that house those workers as they then have to generate tax revenue from other means)

> But they blend in wider Bay Area population stats because this is really about jobs that generate SF payroll tax which gives these employers a tacit say and leverage.

SF doesn’t have local payroll tax, it has a local income tax that applies both to residents and to nonresidents on income earned in SF.

EDIT: Actually, this is wrong, too; despite a lot of sources indicating it. Sab Francisco had a 1.5% payroll expense tax, but voted to phase it out in 2012, and then (while it had declined to a much lower but nonzero number), voted to eliminated it last year, both times in favor of a gross receipts tax on business

> SF doesn’t have local payroll tax, it has a local income tax that applies both to residents and to nonresidents on income earned in SF.

This is false. There are some low-quality websites that have incorrect information about a nonexistent 1.50% SF income tax, if that's where you're getting your information.

San Francisco used to have a payroll tax up until last year, when Prop F replaced it with a gross receipts tax. [1]

[1] https://sftreasurer.org/prop-f-overhaul

Do you happen to know the reason for favoring a gross receipts tax over the previous payroll tax? Just curious as someone who previously lived in an area with a Griggs receipt tax, it seems it was universally despised.

Hilariously, it was done because the tech companies, particularly Twitter, which had small gross receipts and high payroll, pushed for it.[0]

Later, Square, founded by the same person as Twitter got pretty badly screwed by this very same tax [1], and it got worse when Prop C passed.

[0]: https://www.spur.org/news/2012-09-28/time-now-business-tax-r...

[1]: https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Square-is-suing...

“pretty badly screwed” = growing to a $90B company.

> Sacramento doesn't get talked about in tech circles and sites like this and related articles, because it's not supposed to be the "next sexy tech town", but in reality is a lot of people have moved here since the pandemic, both tech and not.

Sacramento also has a train line that takes you to Santa Clara, which is better than driving - this has made it a better choice for a few of the folks to consider that over Dublin or Pleasanton in the most recent migration (Amtrak is close to a lot of hardware-lab specific jobs like Nvidia, Lockheed, Marvell, GlobalFoundries and Arista), though that connectivity might shift if BART finally loops around to SJC.

Also Sacramento has good schools, decent federal funding pull (over say Tracy) and an airport with a few direct flights from Seattle or NYC.

The only downside pretty much is the weather in comparison and that too not by much.

> The only downside pretty much is the weather in comparison and that too not by much.

Sports, bars, culture, muni metro, proximity to the ocean, proximity to nature (I can be alone in natural parks with less than 30 minutes of driving from my house in SF), jobs, dating, restaurants, I could go on.

I'm not even someone that plans on staying in SF (I actually don't like it that much), but there are lots of downsides if I left for Sacramento. I realize there are upsides as well, but I think it's disingenuous to say 'Sacramento is as good or better than San Francisco except for the weather'

Endless homeless people and camps, needles on the streets, feces on the streets, yelling drunks, crime and burglaries.

Yeah, SF definitely has a “lot” going for it. Glad I left.

The backlash against homeless people is coming.[1] There's a GoFundMe for a scheme for national homeless concentration camps.[2]

"The plan calls for the construction of 6 Homeless Help Campuses. These would be built on Federal Land by the Army Corps of Engineers and would be funded by the Federal Government through grants to the hosting states. Targeted states are California, Washington, Colorado, Illinois, New Jersey and Georgia. Each campus will hold up to 50,000 residents. The campuses will include all services required by the residents including K-12 education, a trade tech college, physical and mental health care programs and will even include a local community based policing agency."

[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/article/California-s-reope...

[2] https://homelesshelpamerica.com/

You have a substantive point and this is an interesting comment but please don't toss in flamebait like "concentration camps" - it will just create a flamewar and with Godwin-colored flames at that. Thoughtful critique is fine of course.

That’s what a concentration camp is though. It’s not hyperbole it’s literally the idea of them.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment

The historical origin of the term is one thing, the historical associations of it are another, and it's not possible for people to argue about it on the internet without flamewar.

The HN approach is to observe that we don't need to go there, and then not to go there.

I understand that you don't want to use the term "concentration camp" because it's associated with Nazi extermination camps. What term would you prefer instead, "internment camp"? There really needs to be a term which people can use to describe sweeping up classes of people and confining them to an area.

Yes, that is a more neutral term, for the reason you mention—but only if it is used where strictly accurate, and not as an exaggeration to score rhetorical points. When I looked yesterday, it wasn't clear to me what's actually being proposed at the site the GP was linking to. If it really is a proposal for involuntary confinement, then the word internment seems justified, otherwise surely not.

I would disagree with your framing here on two points:

(1) The "backlash" is not "coming," it's always been here. NIMBYs are not a new phenomenon and there will always be cranky people who respond to the plight of the homeless with "won't someone think of the property values." So it goes.

(1) More significantly: that is not remotely a serious organization. It's a few NIMBYs from LA who got sticks up their asses about a city council member proposing a homeless encampment near where they live. Come on, take a look around that web site: the "board of directors" have no bios or information, the "case studies" are nothing of the sort, there's no indication they've done any of the filings necessary to be a real non-profit. The site is, as near as I can tell, built using GoDaddy's free site builder (which is why it has the "Powered by GoDaddy" link in the footer: they're too cheap to pay a few bucks to turn it off), and it still has placeholder text like "Add a footnote if this applies to your business."

I mean, sure, even obvious cranks can get people to take them seriously -- but this is at best a group to keep an eye on. "The plan" you quoted is their pipe dream, not an actual plan any government agency has committed funds for.

Using "NIMBY" to mean "people who don't want to be near homeless camps" is a bit of a stretch.

Incredible timing on their part! They just need to build it as part of SF proper and not Corps of Engineers land and get it done for 2024 and they’ll be right on the mark: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Sanctuary_District

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Past_Tense,_Part_I_(epi...

Where did you go since that's the topic of conversation?

I can't comment on other items on that list, but the amount of nature you can be in within 30 minutes of driving from anywhere in the Sacramento region is drastically more than 30 minutes from anywhere in the bay area. Our family has been able to enjoy the nature a lot more since moving out here.

Certain aspects change in priority drastically as one's life stage changes. Dating is one of those. As one goes from being single to married, dating goes from being just about the highest priority concern to the lowest. Similar for bars/night life. Once those things are out of the picture, I find Sacramento to be infinitely more enjoyable than SF.

Totally agreed but gotta say Ive never lived in a city where my wife and I have enjoyed our dates more.

There seems to be literally no end to the number of world-class coffee shops, breweries, brick oven pizza joints, sushi restaurants and parks out here.

After growing up in SF, living in the desert for a long time and desperately trying to make NY and LA work I can honestly say Sacramento is the healthiest feeling place Ive ever lived. And thats including the weather. Its a dry heat... :)

That said we moved here during COVID so still trying to figure out how to connect with tech folks out here of anyone has any thoughts?

"but the amount of nature you can be in within 30 minutes of driving from anywhere in the Sacramento region is drastically more than 30 minutes from anywhere in the bay area."

Not true at all. The sad truth is there are more hiking trails and options for "stuff" involving nature than a far majority of folks realize. Even in areas like Los Altos, Palo Alto, Cupertino, etc, are dangerously close to non-urban reserves and other spaces, but often have no idea.

Many feel fine driving from Palo Alto to go to Marin for Alamere Falls and brunch in Mill Valley, but have no idea Butano or Purisima or Skeggs and brunch in Woodside or Pescadero or Davenport and is a fraction of the distance and comparatively stunning.

Many people also find the hedonistic, materialist, and vapid culture of SF repulsive. I can understand why many people would want to be arms length to it, using it for the occasional good restaurant or art exhibit and then heading home to a place more fulfilling and community oriented. To not be immersed in it and all of its adjacent dysfunction.

SF is a whore you visit here and there but not often and certainly not one you make a meaningful part of your life - so-to-speak. Get the money and get out when you grow up some and want to take life more seriously than 40 year-olds hopelessly clinging to youth on the muni kickball field.

Dating? I hear that dating is an absolute disaster in San Francisco.

Proximity to nature? Sacramento is near the Tahoe area as well as the rest of the Sierra Nevada range. Proximity to nature is one area where Sacramento resoundingly beats the Bay area. However I agree with the rest of your examples.

Well, as someone who lives in the SF Bay Area but genuinely loves Sacramento, I think it's actually pretty easy to undersell it. Sacramento has some wonderfully walkable, vibrant neighborhoods, particularly around Midtown and downtown. Before the pandemic, it wasn't uncommon for me to have an evening there that went something like this: early drinks at the Jungle Bird, a terrific retro tiki bar; a walk a few blocks to any number of solid restaurants (ones I remember were Cantina Alley, Frank Fat's, Lucca, Camden Spit & Larder, The Press, Broderick, and Centro Cocina Mexicana), maybe off to Temple Coffee afterward, and if we didn't get dessert at the restaurant, a stop at Rick's Dessert Diner or Ginger Elizabeth Chocolates. I've worked in both downtown San Francisco and downtown San Jose, and honestly prefer downtown Sacramento to both (although see the qualifier below).

As for nature, well: obviously Sacramento ain't near the ocean. But it has two rivers running through it, a lot of parks (Sacramento has more trees per capita than any other major city in the United States -- seriously!), and you don't have to drive very far to get into the Sierra foothills. You'd be surprised at what you can find around there.

The qualifier below: obviously San Francisco is, for all of its warts, a "world class" city in ways that few other cities in the United States are. I like Midtown Sacramento more than any neighborhood I spent time in around SF, with the possible exception of Hayes Valley, but many neighborhoods in have great attractions and you can get to all of them via public transit. But unless "a half-dozen world class bars and four three Michelin-starred restaurants" is a make-or-break requirement, Sacramento is...honestly pretty nice. I really wish I'd been able to get things together to move there in 2019, because real estate prices started shooting up during the pandemic.

Sacto is underrated (although I think I'd rather be in sleepier Davis and just train up) and downtown SJ has been overly maligned, often without any direct experience (or any real attempt to look).

I live in the latter now, literally in SoFA (South First Arts district) and certainly before COVID it was a small but damn vibrant area.

I definitely know the place! Haberdasher might be the best whiskey bar in the Bay Area.

Davis seems like a neat place, although real estate was surprisingly expensive the last time I checked. (Okay, sure, welcome to California.)

It used to be half of the Bay Area, but because of the growth in and around Sac, and because its a college town with a pretty well regarded college and mellow attitude (think Berkeley if it was not trying so hard to be so extra; like the show Northern Exposure. but warm).

And Haberdasher is my hood, as is its neighbor Petiscos (I painted the wall mural in there) and Cafe Stritch...great area.

I thought the claim about trees was a bit tenuous so I tried to find a citation. It may be the source for this claim is Treepedia

http://senseable.mit.edu/treepedia/

I had never heard of this site before. It is a fantastic presentation from MIT of an open source project for measuring Urban green space.

Good searching! I've heard the claim about Sacramento before and think I found it somewhere fairly reliable, but it's admittedly been a few years. It would have been safer to say "Sacramento has a lot more trees than you might think it does." :)

disingenuous? it’s just his opinion. having lived both places, i agree. just my opinion

Sacramento to Santa Clara is a 3 hour trip one way. No one is doing that daily.

> Also Sacramento has good schools

There are a number of factors that make the school system so outstanding:

1: The best schools are the public schools. There are some perfectly fine private schools, but the public schools (at least in SJUSD) are even better.

2: There are excellent magnet programs at the elementary, middle, and high school level. These programs do not exist in some other areas, including in Silicon Valley (this has come as an unwelcome surprise to my family). The schools in Sacramento regularly send their kids to national rounds of science competitions, and when I was a student (20 years ago) they regularly placed in the top 5 nationally.

3: Students from throughout the region can 'open-enroll' into magnet programs, regardless of geography. In my high school, we had students who came from 45 minutes away.

So the upshot is there are great schools that are free and that are available to any student (especially the advanced programs).

This for sure. East bay, north bay all getting SF exodus. Then my friends in richmond moved even further away but still extended bay area. The place with the most at risk is SF. Still huge concentration of wealth, but the non- employment factors have been hurt.

Gone very light on crime - super light. At some point folks just get tired of dealing / seeing consequence free crime right in front of them. I think families with kids being impacted there particularly.

What crime? I’ve got complaints about living in SF, but it’s basically crime-free from my experiences.

Not the OP, but while I was living in SF I saw drugs sold on the street, needles left on the ground in public parks, people stealing registration stickers off license plates, smashed car windows, people blocking sidewalks and harassing pedestrians, ridiculously unsafe driving (e.g. running reds including cops, ppl cutting across three lanes to make a left from the right lane, etc), guests who visited me were flashed by randos, a dude was jerking into a newspaper box by the BART, neighbors would smoke inside nonsmoking apartments with shared ventilation, etc.

I'd move back again for work if I have to, but it would take a lot of $$$$ to convince me.

Sounds like parts of just about every big city.

Many of these are absent in New York, including very visible homeless encampments, so no, these are not in “just about every big city”; many of these are specific to West Coast cities due to a failure in public policy.

Year round fair weather is a public policy?

Not building enough shelters and allowing NIMBYism at local levels is public policy: https://medium.com/@josefow/new-york-decided-to-end-street-h...

I have never experienced anything like this living on the east coast (NYC/Boston)

Got off BART at Civic Center station at about 11:00 AM last Saturday. Walked past two guy sprawled in a hallway in the station smoking heroin or something from a piece of tin foil, and past another one doing the same as I climbed the stairs to the street. At the top of the stairs were a handful of guys gathered around a stereo smoking weed and, based on what I was seeing, selling it too. A few minutes later, just as I passed the tent city near City Hall, I ran into another guy torching something on a sheet of tin foil.

More shit than I've ever seen on any city streets. Every doorway, tree, and wall reeks of piss. It's no way to live.

All of what you mentioned is a reason why I only ride 1 station by BART and rest by Caltrain.

"but while I was living in SF I saw drugs sold on the street, needles left on the ground in public parks, people stealing registration stickers off license plates, smashed car windows, people blocking sidewalks and harassing pedestrians, ridiculously unsafe driving" ...things I've also seen in Chicago, NYC, Miami, Cleveland, Los Angeles, and Portland (among others).

Not saying that's ok, just that SF is hardly unique in that regard.

I think it's really easy how normalized a person can get to petty crime. Like a frog in boiling water. You'll talk to people in SF who totally brush off smash-and-grabs. They'll say something like "stupid me, shouldn't have left my AirPods visible in the center console." You don't even realize that it's not normal to have to worry about stuff like that.

It is normal to worry about smash and grabs in every US urban area I've ever lived in or visited.

San Francisco has the worst property crime rate of any major city in America.[1] It's more than three times worse than what you'd find in New York, Boston or San Diego. It's even about twice as bad as Austin, Chicago or Philadelphia, which aren't exactly known as low crime cities. Moreover the discrepancy is likely understated since so much property crime goes unreported in SF.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

Between all my bike thefts, car thefts, window break ins etc- I reported only car theft. Crime is widely understated in SF. People will step over a dying person in SF.

It's not just street crime, either. The first building I lived in had its bike lockers broken into by a pro crew in masks, and tens of thousands of dollars of bikes stolen. I also forgot to mention the man screaming at the top of his lungs at a woman waiting for a bus, the coworker who fought off an attempted mugging, coming back to my car (probably at Lands End) to find one of the screws missing from the license plate, and other stuff I only heard about rather than saw.

Based on this thread, there's a lot going on that people are lucky enough not to notice, or choose not to notice, but it definitely makes SF a risky choice for businesses. I probably fared as well as I did because I'm tall and didn't go out much without other people with me.

But ABQ still wins if you drop the "major" qualification.

Sigh. NM, c'mon, we can do better. Can't we?

I never felt as unsafe in any part of Albuquerque, living there for 5 years, as I do during a visit to pretty much any part of SF.

It beats Baltimore and Chicago by a mile. Those cities are known for bad crime.

You can't directly compare SF to Chicago (I've lived in both).

Chicago is still a very segregated city, and the north side is relatively safe. San Francisco is small, and while the problem areas concentrate around Civic Center / Tenderloin / SOMA, literally everything else is in walking distance, so petty property crime is quite widespread.

It's especially hilarious how this type of people gets offended when people are victim blaming victims of different kinds of crimes and when it comes to property crime around SF it's "oh, you idiot, never leave anything in the car".

My car was broken into multiple times, stolen a few times (I used tickets to find it because the cops wouldn't take even the basic step of matching parking tickets with stolen car reports).

I worked in the tenderloin - so plenty of open air drug dealing (not a huge problem) as well as random attacks on people (a problem). My roommate was jumped and beaten near our place - very disruptive to his life in general.

I actually caught folks who had stolen my car, good response by police, got them in the car too driving it. I asked, if I pressed charges, what's the consequence. A few days in jail if I was lucky and wanted to spend years pursuing the case - these would be guys who I'd then have a beef with in my neighborhood.

I didn't carry a gun or knife and just didn't want to beef with the dudes hanging out. At some point you are like, is this worth it? As you get older, have kids - you just want to let you kid play. Where I am now the kids can play on their own with neighbors on the street - no worries. Much nicer in my view.

And here I am living in one of the places that most of the SF tech crowd would consider synonymous with "failed rust belt shithole" where none of that stuff happens at any appreciable scale.

1. Two people with knives tried to mug my father. Chinatown. 2. Two people tried to mug me. Nob Hill. 3. Car was broken into. Model airplane was taken. Just off Van Ness. 4. Mother had her purse slashed. Chinatown. 5. Brother in law had his bike stolen. He locked it in front of the Exploratorium. 6. One brother had his car stolen (but this was Oakland). 7. Roommate got hit on the head, knocked out, had stuff taken. This was late at night a few blocks from the Haight.

I think families with kids being impacted there particularly.

Yes, one example that is not widely known of what happens when the Lions of the Left have the power to do what they really want is public middle school algebra in SF. ("The Lion of the Left" was the self-given nickname of one of SF's most-loved talk show hosts back in the 90s.)

SF grandees noticed that some races tended to take geometry (the class after algebra I) more than others. The number one goal of public education, they claimed, was to "close the achievement gap", so they eliminated geometry from middle school. If no one took it, no one who didn't take it would be behind, so no gap.

But then they noticed that some races still took algebra I more often than other races. So they eliminated that, too. [1] No one, no matter how well prepared, would be allowed to take algebra in any public middle school. The best students would be required to take the same classes as the worst, for great justice. Achievement gap closed.

Except that better students still had four years in high school to try to catch up to where they would have been if not held back, and not all races were equally likely to do this.

So, for more justice, all public schools in SF were required to keep their best math students in the same classes with the worst all the way from K-10. They are now only allowed to be different individuals the final two years of HS. Anyone who wants to take calculus in a SF high school now has to scramble to cram two years (algebra II/trig & pre-calc) into 11th grade to (poorly) prepare for calculus in 12th--until that miscarriage of justice can be eliminated, too.

Those who can afford it go to work at tech companies where they use various means to silence the "haters" who resist, while sending their own children to private schools that don't have these policies.

Many of those who can't afford it have been moving out of the city to suburbs that have begun the process (lots of districts have now eliminated middle school geometry and advanced placement classes) but are still lagging behind SF in implementing full justice. (Big Tech is working on it, but pockets of resistance remain.)

SF Chronicle, a big proponent of policies like this, describes it as positively as they can: [1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/education/article/SF-schools-mov...

I think there will be some state standards that will get rid of calculus in high school. I'm not actually against that, I never thought it was such as big deal.

Other parts of the standards (focus on group work, and on racial justice work in math) which may be designed in part to help reduce achievement gap do raise some questions around preparedness of some students that would result. This will only work if they get rid of standardized testing I think in later years (college admissions etc).

Group work doesn't exist in the school. It's always 1 person doing everything and others freeloading on their work.

Activists have long history of destroying good schools, all that matters is ideology and feel good activism, consequences be damned. See Dunbar High School history mentioned by Sowell: before and after dismantling segregation. SF Chronicle is pure propaganda.

Anecdotally, my sister moved to SF from the east coast a couple of years ago. After her patio was burgled a few times, she didn't feel safe so she and her husband moved to Santa Rosa, about 90 minutes north. She's happy as a clam there.

> Gone very light on crime - super light. At some point folks just get tired of dealing / seeing consequence free crime right in front of them. I think families with kids being impacted there particularly.

I challenge that statement. Do you have any data support it? It is a myth repeated over and over by certain people and it’s never supported by data.

Violent crime in SF is near all time lows. That’s just the facts.[1]

My neighborhood I’ve lived in for 15 years has gotten so much safer and we are raising kids and loving it.

The crazy thing is the conservative tech activists who moved to Miami.. moved to a city with higher crime! Miami is higher crime than SF. So is Dallas (that was another profile in the local paper).

It’s insane that no one is challenging them on the facts. I think this is all because a bunch of progressive supervisors got elected who are critical of certain elements of the tech industry, and the tech guys don’t have a good response and so they are doing the usual conservative tough-on-crime political ploy to try to get rid of them.

[1] https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/san-francisco/san-fran...

Sure - "'Out of control': Organized crime drives S.F. shoplifting, closing 17 Walgreens in five years"

https://www.sfchronicle.com/local-politics/article/Out-of-co...

If you haven't been seeing this you haven't been watching. It's absolutely brazen - daylight robbery literally - and turns the store workers and folks shopping into cynics.

Chelsea (new DA) took office end of 2019 or early 2020. That really marked a major change.

"A violent year: Bay Area killings spiked 35% in 2020"

https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/A-violent-year-Bay...

You probably don't realize how much crime is simply unreported - it's a massive amount. Go to any car glass shop - they will tell you how "crime free" SF is.

Note that I grew up in an actual low crime city. That means I never had a house key, we never locked the house. We left the keys in our cars. This isn't out in the middle of no where, this was a city (with very low crime).

You say your children can walk to neighbors freely like children can in east bay? You are the exception in SF.

I realized that folks in the city are just so used to crime, to the steps you have to take to avoid it, they don't realize the impact it has on their quality of life. You really don't get to know your neighbors that well (relative to a totally safe neighborhood where everyone is more welcoming). This last bit is anecdotal, but neighbors really look out for each other outside SF. Folks do the block email lists, get togethers.

I did a quick comparison to Lafayette in east bay.

San Francisco 2019 Murders (which was a low) - 4.5 murders per 100K. Lafayette - 0.0 per 100K. Robberies SF - 344 per 100K. Lafayette 11 per 100K. Lafayette had 3 robberies in the entire year. The differences are likely larger as in SF there are so many robberies per day that a fair number just don't get reported, especially in some parts of town where cops are not liked - folks are not calling it all in.

You’re comparing SF, a major city, to Lafayette, a suburb. That is objectively a ridiculous comparison. You will see similar disparities in most comparisons of that nature.

Your only SF specific crime stat is about property crime (shoplifting). Consistent with what I wrote.

Your second stat on murders is regional, not specific to SF, which overall remains near all time lows in violent crime. You then blame the regional Bay Area rise on SF’s district attorney which makes no sense.

This is all consistent with what I’m saying: the “safety” claims are not supported by data. Some folks in the tech community just keep saying it over and over within a specific sphere but I’m calling B.S. SF is safer than it’s been for most of our lives.

And yet compared to New York, Chicago, or any other major city the stats are in the dumpster. [1] Or even San Jose. It is clear that even within the Bay Area SF is disproportionately bad and you have to wonder whose responsibility that is. City leadership - the DA and mayor included - have to have some responsibility?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... (sort by property crime)

> And yet compared to New York, Chicago…

Chicago has massively higher violent crime rate than SF. By your own citation.

> It is clear that even within the Bay Area SF is disproportionately bad

You claim with no data.

This is what I mean — the facts just don’t support the “SF has gotten less safe” argument.

Overall expectations around safety have increased dramatically. Some might say ridiculously? But it is what it is.

Many categories of death have had sustained reductions. Air travel fatalities in the US? Vehicle fatalities (excluding motorcycles etc)? So this is all great news.

However, recently some cities have just taken a crazy turn. Minneapolis? They are going to abolish their police department, but look at their numbers. Portland, Seattle etc. And yes, San Francisco in 2020 in terms of crime.

Is it reasonably possible that faced with closed schools, minimal social life, quality of life issues and yes - crime that while low is substantially higher than the suburbs folks might decide to move out of SF?

I did it, and I would recommend it. You can still visit, go to that favorite restaurant or park or etc. It's a fun date night "on the town". But when you get home, and smell the green in the air, and the neighbor waves at you , and your stuff is where you left it, and you kids can run and play without worry, and the schools are great without hedging (ie, 9's and 10's) and you child can go to the neighborhood school if they want - literally biking with you or walking, all those things add up.

Literally have all those things in the heart of SF. Some people just like living in more segregated communities.

> And yes, San Francisco in 2020 in terms of crime.

Again, no data cited! Even after being called out on it.

I literally just cited data upthread.

Robberies SF - 344 per 100K. Lafayette 11 per 100K.

You are 31!! times more likely to be robbed in a day in SF than in Lafayette. This assumes reporting is equal - in general studies show once crime is up reporting goes WAY down.

The difference in crime rates between urban and suburban is relatively well known. I also linked to articles discussing increase in murder in SF.

Is there something more you want?

Is the question about year over year crime in SF itself?

Property crime contributes substantially to a feeling of unsafety. You can't just ignore it because you didn't get mugged. If your car window gets smashed you're going to feel unsafe too, you know. And you encounter it much more often than violent crime, so it has a larger effect on your feeling of safety of your surroundings.

The data in my link shows SF has disproportionately bad property crime per capita compared to every other wealthy city: NYC, Chicago, San Jose, LA, etc.

> You’re comparing SF, a major city, to Lafayette, a suburb. That is objectively a ridiculous comparison. You will see similar disparities in most comparisons of that nature.

Why? OP's numbers are per capita.

My family and I moved from SF to Lafayette precisely for these reasons: we were subject to assaults and intimidation from strangers in the street in SF (police refused to follow up), our car and garage were broken into once a year on average (police did not report back for any of the 7 police reports we filed), the total losses exceeded $5000. Others have it worse; our doctor had her house burned down by a mentally ill arsonist.

In addition, we were not looking forward to raising our kids in the SF public school system and we don't have enough money to pay for private school, so we moved out. In Lafayette, I can let my kids walk to school without worrying about them getting mugged. (By the way, aside from the neighborhood, you may experience public safety very differently depending on your height, weight, sex, and race. The stats won't tell you any of that, nor the amount of under-reporting going on due to the loss of public trust in the police/DA to do their job.)

We know many other families who followed similar trajectories.

Because the claim is that SF violent crime got worse, which is false. You are resorting to comparing the general disparity in crime rates between major cities and small towns, which is not unique to SF. Therefore it is an illogical argument.

I have no disagreement with you in your general point or personal preference for small exclusive bedroom communities where poor people cannot afford to live, but the same could be said in comparison for Miami, Austin, Dallas or any other major city.

The original claim was

> At some point folks just get tired of dealing / seeing consequence free crime right in front of them. I think families with kids being impacted there particularly.

Having lived in the area for 25 years, I think there is definitely more visible consequence-free crime. The stats do show it's a bit less likely that you'll get killed. And to your point, I'm sure Miami has its own problems. But I think SF has been going light on crime to the detriment of its quality of life.

Anecdotal but this isn't my personal experience at all. Almost everyone I know is moving home to be closer to family like the midwest, east coast, etc or to awesome lifestyle towns like Park City, Truckee, Jason Hole, Boise, SLC, Boulder, etc, etc. Of 20 people I can name off the top of my head who've left SF area, only a couple migrated from SF to Oakland, etc.

I would like to counteranecdote and say that the nice east bay neighborhood I live in is getting flooded by families leaving San Francisco right now.

I'm in same boat. One problem - SF folks are RICH (relatively). It's nuts what tech pays, what stock options have done for folks if they are 10-12 years in at facebook / google etc. Ugh.

> Anecdotal but this isn't my personal experience at all

Yes, but there have been plenty of nonanecdotal studies, and the surge in Bay Area (and broader urban coastal California) outmigration around the pandemic has been overwhelmingly to inland California, particularly (in the Bay Area case) the Sacramento region. (California had a preexisting net domestic outmigration, too, but that’s separate from the more recent “San Francisco tech exodus”, which is specifically part of the pandemic urban outmigration.)

Unfortunately for my finances (being a Sacramento-area homeowner that isn’t going to sell right now), that’ll reverse when the reasons people valued the coastal urban centers are restored with full economic reopening.

While I wait for my employer to finally decide the "full remote" question, we have been low-key looking for homes out there, from Sac to Folsom all the way to Placerville. I think we missed the boat and should have gambled on remote by pulling the trigger earlier. Prices have just shot up since the beginning of the pandemic, and our Bay Area house hasn't risen in value comparatively. Also, inventory is way down. He who hesitates...

This matches my experience as well. Sacramento is underrated IMO. It’s a nice city, and being under 3 hours to both SF and Lake Tahoe is great.

I'm relocating to Bay Area right now, would love to live in SF, but the schools are grossly mismanaged so I'm going to MV instead. I doubt I'm the only person.

"Based on anecdotes I feel like this doesn't tell the full story"

Not even remotely. Within a compact area, the three major poles (SF, Oakland/Berkeley nd San Jose) have different histories, and narrative threads that lead to different spaces between. Even by age, you'll see widely divergent attitudes about what constitutes "home" (SF is the most insular and aloof in general, and not always in a derogatory way), San Jose the most maligned (sometimes legitimately, sometimes very much not) and Oakland (until recently) treated as a crucial but often 'a part, yet apart' microcosm unto itself, with Berkeley its neighboring city-state. People in different stages of life have often moved around and between the three, for varying reasons.

Many who are from here and certainly many who have moved TO here, move "around" the area more than truly exodus out.

So many of our "professional" friends have converged on Sacramento. Lawyers, doctors, accountants, and also tech people. We have a very strong pull towards the area, as a result. Previously, all of these different people and couples were spread all over California and/or the country. They've all moved there in the last 1-5 years and are establishing roots through families, etc... My wife and I intend to join them in the next 1-3 years, relocating from Orange county.

I know three people who separately just moved to sac from the east bay. And a couple who are thinking about it... didn’t realize this was a trend.

As someone who grew up in Sac, don’t do it guys! It might be a quick drive but it’s a different California.

i enjoy it much better than bay area. to each his own

The first sentence of your comment gives away that you grew up in Sacramento.

It was only when I left the area as an adult that people told me they thought it was weird that people referred to it as "Sac" (and "East Sac", "West Sac", etc.). Apparently for the uninitiated, this reminds people (at least young men) of a body part.

> but the more common trend is -- people who used to live in SF are moving out to the east bay / surrounding areas

Emily Badger had an article in the NYT recently showing exactly this. People are moving from the core to the "suburbs".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com