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Comment by goda90 | Hacker News Reader

Last night I watched the "San Francisco Streets" video from Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan.[0]

He interviews drug users, a social media anti-drug "influencer", a police officer, a band of retail thieves and car "splashers", an HIV-positive trans woman who is only off the street because of the SRO program, and various other residents of The Tenderloin[1]

It was very interesting. Andrew shares some of his and other's takes on why it's the way it is.

[0]https://youtu.be/URfCwT3UQy4?si=5UaMusK3QwCLV46y

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenderloin,_San_Francisco

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I’ve been visiting SF quite a bit recently and it’s very much overblown in my eyes. Andrew in the video even says that he’s purposefully in the tenderloin, and explains what that is in the video.

I guess here’s what’s overblown: that SF is significantly worse than other large cities in the U.S. ever since Covid. Have you been to certain areas of downtown in Seattle? It’s pretty comparable. Andrew touches on this in the video but essentially when tech workers moved to cheaper cities in America, they left these huge downtowns empty. And what’s going to fill those in? Drugs, unhoused people who used to work in those buildings, etc.

I watched it too few days ago and I wondered if it is as bad as it looks in the video.

I have been there a couple of times in the past before the pandemic and it did not look worst than any other big downtown in USA to me (another interesting topic for an European living in the USA btw), in the video… holly it looks bad. Is it that the video is made in a sensationalist way or is it as bad as it seems to be?

It's obviously biased because he goes to the worst areas and he only interviews "interesting" people.

But it's pretty obvious he's not cherrypicking from weeks of footage across the whole city. It's really very bad in certain areas.

But robberies in stores and bipping (seen in the next one he made) does not seem to be happening in bad areas, is that right?

What he is showing does not seem to be a threat for personal safety to me but I think it definitely shows some cracks in the system.

I stayed in a hostel in SF a few years ago and this guy showed me video he shot of a crazy guy on the corner in some busy street in SF, pulls out a gun and starts firing at people. Next to him. I'd call that a threat to personal safety. I don't have any other second hand accounts of violence but I imagine there would be some between the gangs, police, homeless and residents. Frustrations boiling over leads eventually to assaults

By "worst areas" I mean "areas badly affected by this problem" which is a decent % of the city.

He mentions he's only been talking to people in one area (The Tenderloin) and says that some believe the police take it easy in that area so that crime congregates there and stays out of the richer neighborhoods.

Hamsterdam.

And he talks about mass robberies in stores such as Louis Vuitton which I guess are not located in bad areas.

This is because crime is caused by bad people not by bad real estate.

I don't know where I said it was caused by bad real estate, and if you understood so I did not mean to say it.

But thanks for bringing the point though because I think real estate shows the huge inequality that exists in places like SF, it is interesting to listen to the testimonies from both videos and their thoughts about it.

I haven't seen the documentary, but my anecdotal experience visiting SF annually since 2016 for work is that it's utterly dire.

I live in northern europe, in Germany, so our bar is high, quality of life is good, but i'm no snowflake prude, around Market Street in San Francisco is simply disgraceful.

I witnessed on every trip passers by being harassed sexually by mentally unstable, or drug abusing people. I was offered to buy a stolen gun in broad daylight a block over from the Twitter building. I saw a gang of people storm a hair salon on Market St. and attack the occupants, spilling out into a 10 person brawl on the street. I've seen people jumping turnstyles and being assaulted by police/security personnel.

It's a really desperate situation.

Note that market street around the Twitter building has never been a great area of SF. I think part of the hope was that it would re-vitalize that part a bit. Moving around SF is weird because the difference from street to street can be huge.

I didn't live in SF, but I flew there several times a year for over a decade. Market Street definitely saw a huge decline over that period. By the end, coworkers were refusing to walk it anymore for safety reasons.

> I live in northern europe, in Germany, so our bar is high,

I think seeing western European countries, and more specifically northern ones, should make the Americans ask themselves if something is wrong here. And probably these should be deeper than "how is it possible this happens in the richest country in the world" that I have heard so many times.

Income inequality typically tracks with crime. Of course, policing and criminal penalties are a factor as well, but income inequality is likely primary driver of crime. If so, then it's no surprise the US is worse than Germany.

People generally do not behave as criminals when they have reasonable opportunities to spend their energy in return for a livable wage and relatively comfortable, safe housing. And there are many, many examples of zones in the US where there is effectively no economic opportunity nor safe housing opportunities.

That said, lack of police presence and especially lack of penalties does seem to encourage bad behavior (amongst people who find bad behavior as their best economic activity). The laws and policing have to keep up with the times and situation. Obviously SF cannot solve California's (or the US's) income disparity problem. So even if it were to up the police presence and make stiffer penalties, it wouldn't have the infrastructure to process and imprison the large numbers of people (coming from other cities) who are committing crimes there.

Therefore, it takes a more holistic approach and a number of years to reverse these negative trends. And given the state of US polities, I don't see any real chance for progress for some times (at least until a whole generation of voters die off).

Meanwhile, if you look closely at Europe, you'll notice that politics is shifting and income inequality is increasing. Basically many European states are gradually following the US model. We know where that will lead them.

So even if it were to up the police presence and make stiffer penalties, it wouldn't have the infrastructure to process and imprison the large numbers of people

Rubber hoses and a free ride to the city limits don’t require infrastructure and were an effective solution for decades before progressives took power.

Over the last decade, income disparity has increased dramatically (and correspondingly, cost of living and housing). The poorest 10% barely saw an increase in income, before considering the negative impact of inflation. The top 10% saw their income almost double during the same period. And since much of this had to do with high tech companies setting up shop in an already-full region, cost of housing went up dramatically.

One might ask why all these companies moved into SF, especially into areas known to have more "progressive" leadership, but that's a different topic.

As for rubber hoses, that would be met by large numbers of angry people - many of whom would arm themselves in some way (including guns). Would you then propose just firing live ammunition into crowds as a solution? These types of solutions are like cutting off a limb because of a skin rash; usually that's not the right answer. If you think street drug people are bad for business, just imagine frequent street gun battles.

And driving the people to the city limits and dumping them? We already have evidence that the more organized property criminals are driving in from outside the city. Obviously they can't afford to live in the city anyway.

No, it was sadistic and really not an effective solution to anything at all.

I cannot speak about SF as I have no experience there; but as an American with a lot of recent experience in Netherlands and recent but less lengthy experience in Germany, I have been surprised by how bad the homeless/mentally-ill/drugged-out situation is around train stations in Germany compared to the Netherlands.

It would be expected to encounter such people in the biggest city (Berlin), but I also saw it in half a dozen other cities I spent some time in. It was very confronting and very uncomfortable as I would have compassion on mentally ill or otherwise "hard luck" people, but in some cases there was real risk of aggression. At the very least, I couldn't wait (for a train) outside a station because of the very loud yelling (at invisible enemies) that some of the people would do.

I asked a couple of Germans about this situation, and they said that while there are social services and mental health services available, the state seems to have a problem keeping up with the mentally unstable people. The people will get some time in help but then scatter to the wind, revert to their drug use, and turn up outside a station somewhere (where they will remain, day after day, for some period of time).

I wonder why this seems to be much more of a problem in Germany compared to NL. Perhaps it's just a matter of population scale? General way of life and social services aren't so different between the neighboring countries.

I worked there for a better part of a decade and I have been to very rough places during their worst times, late 90's and early 2000's(east Oakland, east Palo Alto, and south central Los Angeles) and tenderloin in SF is on another level of dysfunction than any of those spots ever were. Its extremely dangerous and the open drug use is like no place I have ever seen anywhere in the US or the world for that matter. I was there early this year and due to the post pandemic office vacancies there are no more "normal" people there anymore, just homeless and drug addicts and an occasional city worker or two.

Not that this topic ever needs more anecdotes, but here is mine.

The bad parts are extremely bad— like, apocalypse level bad. You obviously never go to them, but being a small city some destinations put you near them, or have you drive through them.

It’s sad, and certainly feels way past the point of no return. I only lived in SF for about 12 years, but even that was enough time to see at least part of the change. At the time I moved there, you still avoided the TL, but the area around civic center at least didn’t feel like a war zone.

Was never mugged, robbed, threatened, etc. You have to actively avoid people and places, and get lucky too I guess. Never lived in the rougher parts of town, but visited them. Never make eye contact with crazy people, strategically cross the street, enter shops, etc.

Again though, you just don’t go to the bad parts, like any city, and it’s benign. At least it was before I left (not because of “the crime”, other unrelated reasons).

So idk, yes it is as bad as people say, but also it isn’t at all. The news is about cherry-picking what gets clicks, and that’s rage bait.

> I only lived in SF for about 12 years

And, honestly, the SF of 12 years ago was already greatly degraded compared to the SF a decade or so before then.

Exactly, just don’t go to Powell, Civic Center, 16th or 24th St BART stations, and just don’t visit the main shopping mall, and just don’t park your car on the street, and just don’t store your bicycle in your garage, and you’ll be fine.

>The bad parts are extremely bad— like, apocalypse level bad.

From a May 2023 article on the decline of the city <http://web.archive.org/web/20230510153958/https://www.curbed...>:

>A note to my fellow San Franciscians: I’m sorry. I know. There’s always some story in the East Coast press about how our city is dying. San Franciscians hate—HATE—these pieces. You’re a stooge and a traitor for writing one. When I set out reporting, I wanted to write a debunking-the-doom piece myself. Yet to live in San Francisco right now, to watch its streets, is to realize that no one will catch you if you fall. In the first three months of 2023, 200 San Franciscans OD’d, up 41 percent from last year. “It’s like a wasteland,” the guard said when I asked how San Francisco looked to him. “It’s like the only way to describe it. It’s like a video game — like made-up shit. Have you ever played Fallout?”

>I shook my head.

>“There’s this thing in the game called feral ghouls, and they’re like rotted. They’re like zombies.” There’s only so much pain a person can take before you disintegrate, grow paranoid, or turn numb. “I go home and play with my wife, and we’re like, ‘Ah, hahahaha, this is SF.’”

I found it notable that no one in the Reddit discussion <https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/13dvrjs/san_franci...> mentioned the Fallout comparison despite the fact that, well, this is Reddit. I think it hit too hard.

>but being a small city some destinations put you near them

Yes, this is something that people don't understand. The SF Bay area is as large as any other major metro area, but San Francisco is tiny, at 7 miles by 7 miles. More to the point, the place where most business happens and where most tourists go is right next to the Tenderloin. The only place I can think of in Manhattan that is kind of like this is the Upper East Side at 96th Street, and tourists just don't go there often (and Spanish Harlem isn't that bad, anyway).

>I only lived in SF for about 12 years, but even that was enough time to see at least part of the change. At the time I moved there, you still avoided the TL, but the area around civic center at least didn’t feel like a war zone.

>Was never mugged, robbed, threatened, etc.

Same for me on all counts. But were I a woman my experience would surely have been different.

Apocalyptic seems like a stretch — saw this video of Harlem in 1989 earlier today, and even the worst parts of the TL don’t compare: https://youtu.be/M6WwZLvxV9Q?si=Th0MC1mL4vdLvkE1

Though, of course, the level of human misery is still deplorable.

On the other hand, I was at the other end of Market by the ferry building last week. It was pleasant and clean, and no one stole our car. We parked in SOMA last night for a concert, rode Muni with hundreds of normal people, and came back later to find our car in the same condition we left it in.

Yes: avoid the TL at night. No: the city as a whole isn’t Mad Max with a guarantee that you’ll be assaulted and your car will be broken into.

Just watched the video, that was very interesting, didn't knew about this Youtube Channel, so thank you!

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