SF Mayor crafting a plan to push more downtown office workers to return in March | Hacker News Reader

SF Mayor crafting a plan to push more downtown office workers to return in March

sfchronicle.com

16 pointsderwiki20 comments

How about they cleanup the streets first? Last time I visited, I was literally assaulted by a vagrant, and I'm not exactly a person of small stature, so I couldn't imagine being smaller size or female and needing to walk around. There was also human feces everywhere. The place is gross and is the burnt out shell of a bunch of bad ideas.

It's funny, sometimes it seems they try their hardest to accommodate people who create problems and ignore the people who actually add to the city coffers... and now they are essentially telling the people they ignored "please come back."

City centers are nice when the atmosphere is nice, but if you get a lot of quality of life crime --like 1980's SF and NYC, people will stop coming. With a remote work option, now there is even less reason to venture into places where you don't know if an addict or ruffian will go off on you unexpected.

Think SF has a long way more to fall before it will have a renaissance, people forget how recently Detroit was on top too.

Only loosing 15% of office workers seems like a pipe dream when the largest employer in the city (Salesforce) and many other large employers have switched to permanently remote/remote friendly. Who wants to go into the office when the bars and restaurants are closed and the only people on the street are having a psychotic episodes.

Now that an annual SF convention isn't the status-quo, the billions in Convention spending aren't going to come flooding back either. The crime, homelessness, drug use, high cost & lack of hotel capacity make it an odd choice.

LOL. Once a worker has demonstrated job mastery online and has also shown he can communicate by zoomery etc, it is just an exercise in control by force - slavery by another name. Some bosses are bullies and have optimised their employee oppression, browbeating, etc on a face to face basis and in office packs where the well know 'pecking order' hierarchy can hold sway. These guys are fish out of water, peckers with no 'peckees'. These people yearn for the control of old - which is gone forever. Managers who insist, like this thinly veiled urge to move the workers back under control to save the restaurants and empty parking lots and other shops, I feel is doomed to partial failure. Some will come back, some will not, some will quiet to avoid coming back - SF will adapt, office rents will lower, as will house prices and vacancy rates will inch up.

Or worse, people will wake up and realize that being in SF isn’t necessary, and then it’ll start to dry up entirely.

If the office you never go to is in Austin instead of SF, who will care?

I would much rather live in SF than Austin.

There are plenty of people who chose to live in SF not for work, but because it's an awesome city.

Not everyone bases their entire life around work, and the perception of what it will or won't allow.

Just choose where and how you want to live, then find a job that supports that. Not the other way around.

But the challenge is that SF finances are built on the assumption of a lot of office workers and a growing tax base. And if you upend either of these assumptions, then managing the city (with a lot of present challenges) becomes a lot harder.

Yes, New York City is also begging corporate heads to force people to start to commute again. Once large numbers of people as well as offices have witnessed the savings and happiness that ensue from remote work they will balk. Many offices have already exited and signed cheaper leases at new digs, others have had lease terms renegotiated on a smaller footprint(often with a termination payment demanded) - the landlords have a weakened hand. Others just moved to new cheaper spaces when obdurate landlords blinked - and they were gone.

Agreed, but this problem is not unique to SF as compared to other major cities like NYC, etc. Therefore it shouldn't be a decoding factor in where to live, because it exists in each option.

This provides a perverse incentive for cities like SF to not work to allow efficient high-speed rail commutes into them, as it would harm their tax base ...

Annoying.

Exactly! Those who love the city should be glad to see those who don’t want to be there find a way to escape.

SF is also a really shitty city. Parking is impossible, public transit is a nightmare, traffic everywhere at all times, useless street cleaning (it exists solely to force people to move their cars and it probably doubles the amount of particulate pollution in the air). You literally have to discover some trick to go to any of the events in the city (what’s your strategy for bay to breakers?), taxes and cost of living are sky high. Housing prices are insane so people with normal jobs like grocery clerk, teacher, bus driver can’t afford to live in the city (which increases traffic again)

Don’t get me wrong, there are good things, but there are also plenty of reasons to leave. Not having to be here for work is a blessing. Maybe if everyone who can leave does, there’ll be a bit of room for every who’s left.

These are all things that apply to every major city. SF is no different. When comparing places to live it's important to focus on the differences between the options, what makes each place unique. Not negative truisms about the world. I've lived in Denver, NYC (both Manhatten, Yonkers and Brooklyn), NJ, Sacramento, and traveled extensively around the world. SF is not unique in facing these problems. It is unique in the weather, public spaces and parks (including the world class federal amd state parks within half a days drive), incredible shorelines, culture, history, on and on. Those are what I focus on when choosing where to live. Not the fact that parking will be hard, parking is hard in every city.

>> These are all things that apply to every major city. SF is no different.

7 square miles. Water on 3 sides.

Which, to many, is a big plus.

Since you have a very negative view of sf, Perhaps you should move out. You seem to dislike the city so much and also criticize housing prices which are sky high due to more people living here than there is housing. You could help solve that issue and at the same time stop living a place you dislike by moving if you haven’t yet.

As the negative views expressed are your opinions, I’m not going to correct some disjoint logic.

I'll never forget my time in SF. Like the time I ruined a pair of sneakers stepping in a pile of human sh*t. Or the time I saw a young woman fleeing from a bum chasing her down the sidewalk. Also the spoiled bougie girls arguing over who could more easily talk their way into The Battery. Peak SF was 10 years ago.

With similar news from NYC, it will be quite interesting to watch these cities struggle to convince people to return over the next year. Unless I literally cannot find employ, I will never be commuting into a major city again.

Are mayors doing this because of they are being told to? u know, by those who “donate to” politicians to have a say in law making process.

Assuming the mayor has an interest in balancing the city’s income and expenses, then that is not necessary. Previous spending may have been done assuming the city will have a certain amount of income growth, which comes from sales, payroll, and other taxes that may not come to fruition if expected levels of economic activity do not materialize.

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