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Comment by bentt | Hacker News Reader

Having been to the Union Square/Market/Moscone are many times for the Game Developers Conference, including this year, this is not surprising.

Simply walking from a hotel to Moscone was very stressful. There were no cops but tons of private security to manage a horde of zombie like addicts and mentally ill homeless.

SF will come back because it is beautiful and the weather is great… it won’t become Detroit. Detroit only had lake transport going for it and grew despite harsh winters.

It won’t happen until there are tons of cops, the homeless dissipate (hopefully to somewhere they can be cared for) and then and only then, people feel safe.

If the Game Developers Conference leaves in the meantime, I will be very happy. I don’t want to go back.

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This was my experience a couple years ago as well. I absolutely love San Francisco and it's my favorite US city outside of my own. I'm used to the general dirt and grime of cities (my child knows to be suspicious of wet ground, especially when it's in corners and it hasn't rained recently) along with the many colorful people that inhabit them. In my recent trip to San Francisco, things were well beyond what I'd expected. One end of the BART car had a pile of human feces, as did the station, and someone had clearly urinated while on the up escalator to make a nice trail. On Market street, there was trash and tents, and at least one person squatting to go to the bathroom. I popped into a store to grab some sundries, and the interior looked more like the store was at the tail end of a going out of business sale.

Outside of downtown it felt a little better, but it was such a shocking difference from my previous trips to the city.

Your mistake was taking the BART and your use of the word "sundries" caused me to chortle.

The same story exists across the US. How does San Francisco fix a national health issue when Congress refuses to do anything but cut taxes on the rich to force us into begging from someone who is obviously more pious given their wealth in a tilted wealth acquisition game.

How does SF fix a public looking to be served rather than serve themselves? Hypernormalization on fiat economics to accomplish anything is destroying everything.

I'm from Boston and there's really just one area (Mass and Cass) with a serious homeless and drug problem. Our downtown is safe and clean. I'm not sure what SF is doing differently, but it's clearly not enough.

What is SF doing different is not bussing their problem to Texas or Florida as Texas and Florida do.

This culture is a joke. An intentionally unaccountable but highly compensated and connected federal political apparatus is ignored and blame placed on local power for its lack of accountability fixing country-wide issues.

Such exceptional neighbors I have across the country that they put up with this.

Honolulu has a bad homeless problem, but they also provide free one-way plane tickets back to the mainland if there is family who says they'll help them get re-adjusted, so "not bussing (away) their problem" is not the issue.

Sorry this is simply impossible to take seriously as a comparison. Hawaii is literally surrounded by the world's most enormous, unswimmable moat. Homeless are thus predominantly going to come from within the islands existing population, with barely a trickle coming from outside. Compare this to California which you can hitchhike to, ride a boxcar to, drive a $300 beater to, take a greyhound to, or even walk to given enough time.

Even comparing the closest analog to Hawaii for california, Catalina Island, the mere 90 minute ferry ride across the channel is enough to cause a disparity in homeless rates between the city of Avalon on the island, and the city of Los Angeles - visible directly across the water from it - of nearly 50% (higher in LA)

Avalon is also part of Los Angeles County, which adds to your moat analogy.

Honolulu's homeless problem is also nowhere near as bad as SF's, by the numbers. And for whatever reason, Honolulu's homeless seem way less addicted to drugs, and with fewer mental health issues.

SF will also provide bus tickets to homeless people if they have family elsewhere who can help care for them, but to me it seems the program is under-utilized.

This is also a question I’m interested in. To what extent is it:

- better services

- 35% more cops per-capita

- lower tolerance of camps

- something else like the street price of drugs

Honolulu has a bad homeless problem, but they also have a strong, visible police force. Honolulu also provides free one-way plane tickets back to the mainland if there is family who says they'll help them get re-adjusted. So it's probably niether one of those things.

A lot of the problem here is that it is just one area (mostly), but that area is very close to the conference, hotel, and tourism heart. The financial district and other parts of downtown are fine. I also routinely (yesterday for example) hear from people who actually visit sf and realized that while it has problems it’s not the hell scape they were told about

Boston has winters that will kill you. Even if you don't die or get frostbite, it's gonna be a bad time. Shelters are often not places to be.

By comparison in SF you can sleep outside all year round with minimum headaches, and tent / camper / van life is an option. Nationally, over time, the homeless will start moving towards places like that.

SF is also more of a cultural fit than Boston.

Sf decriminalized drugs and petty crime. Then was shocked by an explosion in drugs and petty crime, which then started edging into less than petty crime.

The city’s famously progressive policies were, perhaps, not thought all the way through.

Much poorer countries than the US manage their mental health issues better. Could the root of the problem be in political attitudes rather than raw money?

Taxpayer-funded social welfare spending has massively increased across the US since the 1950s, not just in absolute terms, but as a share of GDP:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-long...

Yet you still blame lack of social welfare spending for the deterioration in conditions.

This is a disingenuous comment. Between social security and Medicare, most of this social surrendering is just taking care of old folks

The old folk population has not grown nearly as rapidly as social spending, so your response is what's disingenuous.

Medicare, Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), TANF, SNAP (food stamps), Head Start, WIC, LIHEAP, and EITC didn't exist in 1950, and now they do. Society is vastly more social democratic today than it was then.

The game developers conference is jacking up their prices all the time too. It's super annoying that the Vault wasn't included by default with an all access pass. And the division into summits is confusing and annoying as well.

GDC needs competition.

I think Vancouver or Montreal would be a great destination, cheaper too.

> Vancouver > cheaper

wut.

It's one of the most expensive cities in N. America and routinely outranks other cities like Los Angeles as being more expensive. No shortage of homelessness there, too; don't leave stuff in your car cuz it's gonna vanish.

https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/local-news/vancouver-rank...

MTL is cheaper but there are language barrier issues, and it's just a lot further away. SF was the location of the conference since half of the tech world is in California, or is tied to / interacts with California.

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