My family has lived in SF since the 1800s. I recently moved because it has gotten so bad. I hate what the government has done to my city.
There are no GOP members in City government, and haven't been for a long, long time. This is the result of progressive policies. Accept that or this will continue.
https://sfbgarchive.48hills.org/sfbgarchive/2014/08/05/last-...
Hey now, I was addressing this part of the comment "In a democracy, you are the government"
I am speaking as someone who lives in a red state where our abortion laws have been rolled back and have seen the impact of the gerrymandering first hand. This is the result of conservative policies and will likely have a negative effect on our state; whether by an exodus of those who don't see the point in staying or by increasing poverty for forced birth for those who can't afford to skirt the laws
>This is the result of progressive policies. Accept that or this will continue.
I don't live in SF so I can't speak with any authority to how much worse it has become. I can say that my city's murder rate is almost 50% higher than SF while being much smaller. From what I've read, SF is at least trying something in terms of harm reduction instead of just outright criminalizing or ignoring, which is what we're do and isn't working.
I don't have the answers and it seems to be a difficult task to come up with plans without violating a person's autonomy.
No one forced you to interact with me and I think we're both worse off that you chose to do so.
It's a commonly promoted trope to blame all of SF's problems on wealth inequality and the housing market. But it could be an oversimplification that hand-waves a difficult discussion, which only ends up exacerbating the problem.
Can you articulate how housing policy leads to drug addiction, open air drug markets, high rates of property crime, and general non-enforcement of criminality?
To address your question, it's incredibly difficult to cope with mental illness or overcome addiction while homeless. It's also difficult to hold down a job. Drug use and joblessness lead to property crime and open air drug markets.
Well, people could become homeless outside of San Francisco (possibly after becoming addicted to drugs), and then migrate to San Francisco. Even in the hypothetical scenario where houses cost nothing but are unavailable in San Francisco, it would seem misleading to blame that SF housing shortage for the homelessness of someone who migrated there after becoming homeless.
Is there data available for how many people currently homeless in San Francisco became homeless in San Francisco? That is, where did they last rent property? I'm not being snarky; I'm curious what the percentages are like. My guess is that a significant majority of homeless people in San Francisco were previously renting in another location, then got evicted, and then eventually moved to SF.
> it's incredibly difficult to cope with mental illness or overcome addiction while homeless. It's also difficult to hold down a job.
Yes, that's true, once you're homeless. My question is about how the housing shortage in San Francisco causes homelessness. That is, how does housing policy in a jurisdiction lead to people becoming homeless after they were previously living in a property within that jurisdiction?
Also, consider what might make a city an appealing destination for someone who becomes homeless while addicted to drugs. If your heroin addiction gets you kicked out of your apartment in Reno, and you're looking to score some smack, why not catch a $15 Greyhound to San Francisco? It's an easy place to buy drugs, and it's a city well known for its citizens and authorities tolerating people openly using drugs and sleeping on the street. And when you run out of money, you can smash a few car windows until you find some cash, then walk a few blocks to exchange it for drugs from your nearest heroin dealer.
Or just let the inevitable earthquake take care of it.
Housing is certainly an ingredient in the soup. So is inequality. And corruption. A culture that is anti-family, consumerist, pro-drug, individualist.
What else? There's so many factors. A lack of cohesive identity. The American attitude of narcissism and the fuck-you mentality. A lack of willingness to call out ghetto behavior as bad. Neutered teachers and schools preaching that all things are equally good and gradually lowering standards. Entire generations of families that basically feed into gangs. A lack of government ability/will to break up gangs. Incessant, unmitigated advertising. Government controlled media serving white-washed bullshit. Liberalism gone off the rails, generally.
It's a mess.
Housing policy decreases supply which increases costs beyond the means of low-wage workers.
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_San_Fran....
Some other interesting points I noticed:
> Nearly half (48%) of youth survey respondents reported living in San Francisco when they most recently became homeless. Thirty-nine percent (39%) reported living in another county in California and 14% reported living out of state.
So 53% of youth respondents became homeless outside of San Francisco, compared to only 30% of overall respondents. This skew possibly indicates a trend of younger people becoming homeless outside of San Francisco and moving there. That also implies the number of homeless people in San Francisco will continue to increase.
> Previous living arrangements: 30% Home Owned or Rented by Self or Partner, 33% With Friends or Family.
This implies there's a gradual transition to homelessness. Maybe there's a chance for early intervention when someone starts living with friends or family.
> Primary Cause of Homelessness (Self-reported): 25% Lost Job, 18% Alcohol or Drug Use, 13% Eviction
Unfortunately it's hard to separate these causes, since e.g. alcohol or drug use can lead to lost job. But again, 18% citing drug use is lower than I would have expected. I wonder how many non-addicts become addicts while homeless.
[0] https://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2019HIRDRep...
Maybe if you're a moneyed donor.
People are desperate. Tbh the whole US system is so messed up, it's generations upon generations of PTSD among the working masses. I hate to get into these discussions but it makes my blood boil to see how people are left stranded with no safety net and just more and more money gouging corporations around them.
This could have been premeditated or a random attack. No one knows yet.
I never directly blamed the citizens, but they are the ones who live there, work there, and elect the government, so at least indirectly, they are to blame. It's a wealthy city - there's no reason (beyond apathy or greed) that the government can't implement policies that make the city a better place.
I don't understand why this lie keeps getting repeated. The US has a very generous social safety net, even compared to wealthy western-European countries. Most especially San Francisco, which has rent assistance, free healthcare, stipends, and countless other things.
At the same time as New York's crime was falling, the same thing was happening everywhere -- San Diego and Austin and San Jose had basically identical trajectories as NYC under Giuliani, but obviously did not have Giuliani (tho perhaps they had also brought in their own?
Just Googling now, and it seems San Diego brought in Susan Golding (R) in 1992 to replace Maureen O'Connor (D), and they didn't flip back until 2005.
Austin had Bruce Todd (which one article refers to as an "establishment Democrat") from 91-97, and Kirk Watson (D) from 97-01.
San Jose has had consecutively Democratic mayors from 1971 to now.
TLDR, I don't think party alignment is as indicative as we might hope it would be, however much policy preferences might tend to overlap with party. Perhaps that was different way back in the 90s, when polarization wasn't as high, and/or party marching orders weren't quite as unified nationally as they seem to be now -- or I'm just missing something obvious elsewhere
For example, prior to going national, Kamala Harris was a relatively tough-on-crime prosecutor despite being a Democrat.
Citizens in SF can elect local reps who will fund things shown to help reduce crime (mental health care, cheaper housing, etc). Or whatever else.
Local to me, it's pretty much all Democrats as well. Within the party, I can pick candidates who want to build condos over both local golf courses. Or, I can pick candidates who want to keep that open green space. Granted, I have to vote in the primary here, as the general is almost guaranteed to go to a D.
There are far more dangerous cities than SF, which isn’t even in the top 20 in terms of crime. SF does have problems but there’s been a kind of relentless right wing attack on SF and CA in general that simply is not objective and it’s a rea irony because many of the red states have the highest murder rates.
We’ve got a serious problem in this country in many areas but it’s never going to be fixed by getting hysterical over crime.
This was an awful awful awful tragedy, but statistically, all of the people talking about how bad things have gotten apparently didn’t live through the 80s and 90s. We literally had vigilante groups like the Guardian Angels in the 80s because crime was so high. I’d like it if SF takes action to reduce crime of course but I’m skeptics of simplistic claims without knowing the core reasons crime dropped dramatically from 1980-2000.
[people voting it down but providing no rebuttal that the “gotten bad” claims are subjective and don’t map to actual violent crime stats. What has objectively gotten worse is property crime. If someone can provide stats that show violent crime has objectively gotten worse over the last decade or two, I’d be curious]
Compare to other societies now.
There’s supposed to be progress, and in other places, there has been.
I work in SF but don't live there, but over the past few years (especially under Chesa Boudin, the previous District Attorney) they've moved towards "soft on crime" policies that may have contributed to what friends who live there are referring to as 'lawlessness'
Some policies that likely have contributed include:
Bail Reform: They've prohibited cash bail, meaning most offenders who are arrested have no incentive to stand trial or prevent fleeing. No idea what the effect has been here, and as I understand it, offenders deemed violent are asked to forego bail. Again, no information on whether that's a voluntary ask or an imposed demand, but the impression is that people are arrested and back on the streets the same day to potentially reoffend.
Decriminalized theft up to $950: It is now quasi-legal to walk into a store in San Francisco, steal up to $949 in merchandise, and walk right back out. Allegedly, police won't respond to such incidents, and there's no deterrent from doing so. This has led to gangs who take turns, each walking in and snagging almost a thousand dollars worth of merchandise, then pooling the goods and reselling them. Pharmacies seem to have been particularly affected.
This was walked back somewhat, as shoplifting is now considered a felony again, especially if done as part of a ring, but police are apparently still extremely unlikely to respond.
Reduced sentences: Due to budgetary concerns, California as a whole is now imprisoning offenders for less time, issuing shorter sentences and early release as much as possible so that they do not have to bear the cost of imprisonment.
They defunded the police: Or, at least they pretended to? They promised to redirect $120 million of police funding away from law enforcement to support other social initiatives, and I remember a remark at the time that this was to fund reparation initiatives that they seem to be aiming to implement, but I have no idea as to the sincerity of that. That said, in the years since this promise, police budgets are up from where they were, so they seem to have either reversed course or possibly never gave it more than lip service. I'm not sure.
All together, if those are to be believed as causes (rather than say, wealth inequality, general social unrest, etc.) then it's worth looking into. Crime is up 110% in San Francisco relative to the American average, and is up 91% relative to the average in California.
Two additional notes: I'm just relaying what I think might have been OP's causes for attributing this to government action. I have no idea. I don't live there. Also, it seems that residents aren't particularly happy with it, as there was a (failed) attempt to recall Gavin Newsom, and a (successful) attempt to recall Chesa Boudin, and there are efforts underway to recall Mayor London Breed as well. No idea how that will fare.
Edit: It's probably worth remembering that someone can be stabbed anywhere, and if the fact that this happened in San Francisco confirms a bias you had, it's probably worth reframing it as somewhere else. Confirmation bias is our common enemy, and one that we don't have to succumb to just because our brains insist on it. Ask yourself if your tirade applies if you replace "San Francisco" with Zurich, Tokyo, Toronto, or Frisco Texas.
$950 is a completely reasonable threshold for felony theft. Before this state-wide, not city-specific, reform was introduced California had the lowest threshold in the nation. It is still fairly low. In Texas, the threshold for what you inaccurately call "quasi-legal" is $2500.
Shorter sentences is a solid reform because longer sentences are not associated with better outcomes and it costs $100k/yr to keep someone in prison, and that's money that could be spent on community policing instead.
I believe the difference is that district attorneys in Texas will actually prosecute misdemeanor theft, while this isn't true in the Bay Area.
All your dashboard says to me is that the DA presses charges in the majority of misdemeanor petty theft arrests, and the trend in the absolute decline of such cases is driven by the lack of arrests, which declined more than half from 2011 to 2022, which is consistent with my point that it doesn't have anything to do with the DA, it is caused by poor police productivity.
Not that it matters, but these were the collected thoughts of my resident friends and colleagues who live there, none of which you could remotely consider anywhere close to "right wing."
Zero percent of that allegation is true.
I'm not sure what can be done to fix the more systemic issues in SF; I'm assuming this will continue until we magically get a republican mayor and once that mayor fails to realize they can't ship the homeless westward, nor melt them into biofuel we can start to take a look at some of the policies that has absolutely gutted the ability for anyone to afford to live in SF and a couple well off people living in houses and the mentally incapacitated living in the street.
Cash bail isn't "tough on crime" policy — it's a "keep penniless people in jail" policy, since non-violent crimes like petty larceny are more likely to be committed by poor people.
But they generally do have shorter sentences for the same crimes than the US.
I don't know the prevalence of back-to-back life sentences in Germany (or in America, really) but we have some oddities like the Green River Killer, who got a life sentence for every murder he pled guilty to committing, so he's serving 48 life sentences consecutively.
I am as impressed with France's low percentage of life (indefinite) sentences as I am shocked that California's 160+% life detention rate despite having almost half the population.
I don't think long sentences work as a deterrent if there's just a low expectation of the chaps in uniforms even putting in any work.