Hacker News Reader

Comment by themanmaran | Hacker News Reader

I'd love to see some real action here, but it seems more like general pre-election optics than anything. The sidewalk situation in SF is absurd. At least in Mission every few blocks I need to step out in the street to walk around camps.

The bus policy has been going on for a while, just declined during covid. It always comes under scrutiny, but the actual offer is to reconnect homeless people with family and cover bus/train costs to fulfill that. Not always as heartless as the critics make it out to be.

View on HN

The problem is that homeless are unreliable and can use bussing programs as free transportation without proper verification that they actually have family in the other side. Ya, they get someone to vouch for them, but when they arrive, that was always a farce only lasts a week or so. Bussing isn’t really a solution, their drug or whatever problems actually need to be solved.

The real issue is that cities are expected to solve its homeless problems with local resources when they are never local at all (homeless are pretty mobile, and wind up in liberal fair weather cities for good reasons).

Pre-election optics? Governor Newsom cited this summer’s SCOTUS ruling against homeless encampments and issued an executive order to clean them up statewide. (Cities have some level of autonomy in complying.)

I can enjoy unfalsifiable beliefs as much as the next zealot, but not when such a clear provable reality exists too.

In the US, it's always election season, so political cynicism doesn't rest either. But do note that while state politics are largely single-party, local municipalities are much more varied (California, like the rest of the country, is an archipelago of blue cities in a sea of red). Rest assured that this hardline approach will be the norm throughout much of the state even if SF doesn't swing hard right overnight.

Yeah Los Angeles (just the city, not the rest of the county and other municipalities within) is one of the only places actively not complying with the EO

Even blue cities have variation. Witness Seattle’s left wing city council getting decimated in the last election with largely moderates replacing them. Within a city, you have moderate districts of mainly home owners and more left wing districts of mainly renters.

I would also add in California’s case that California isn't that liberal/progressive

Its conservative laws get struck down by the 9th circuit and its progressive laws stick

could probably just move the 9th circuit courthouse out of San Francisco and everything would drift to centrist quickly

Back when I lived in Portland 20+ years ago, just as it was starting to turn into the version of itself that would be sent up in Portlandia, I used to tell relatives back east that culturally Oregon is to California what California is to the rest of the country.

Not sure how true that remains these days, it's been a while since I've been up there.

I would argue that California really isn't that progressive even in the blue cities. And when things get really progressive, like with SF's school board, voters take it back. Actually the SF schoolboard election where non-citizens are allowed to vote probably helped that swing, since Asians and Latinos (more likely to lack citizenship) are more conservative on average (try telling a Chinese parent that math is racist...).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com