San Francisco: The Worst-Run Big City in the U.S. | Hacker News Reader

San Francisco: The Worst-Run Big City in the U.S.

sfweekly.com

105 pointsmiked115 comments

The biggest problem in San Francisco is not the city government nor the government workers but its the voters.

SF is a city of really well meaning people who will sign any petition when they leave Safeways and vote yes to every single idiotic ballot issue.

What this means is that every single interest group gets people to vote them funding.

Of course the people voted in are all of the same political flavor so rather than having devils advocates amongst the commissioners you get each of them pushing for spending on their particular special interest groups.

Unless the voters start voting no to these idiots and ballot measures I don't see anything changing in SF in the foreseeable future.

San Franciscans have the same problem Mike Huckabee has: they're naive. They want to believe that anyone espousing the same moral values as them must be honest and trustworthy. They want to believe that acting with good intentions produces good outcomes.

This thinking is worthy of an eight-year-old. This is why we love children. The innocence, the wonder. This is why growing up is painful. You do something with good intentions and end up breaking something or hurting someone. You meet someone who seems nice and believes all the same things you do, and they lie to you and steal from you.

Nobody connected with any deep religious or artistic tradition should need to be so naive. Believing in evil is compatible with mercy. Believing in betrayal is compatible with trust. Believing in waste, inefficiency, and rent-seeking is compatible with a determination to apply the resources of government to improve people's lives.

I dunno, i think this is too reductive, putting all the blame on a unique aspect of San Franciscan character. It sounds like the ballot system there allows for this kind of chaos, and so of course it ensues. It would happen anywhere. It might not always have the same generally lefty bent that San Fran's does, but otherwise I think its bad governance structure, not bad people.

While governance and a flawed ballot system are definitely a big issue, the real reason it has been exploited the way it is is that there is no real opposition in SF. And that I'm afraid is because of this particular aspect of San Francisco group think.

Don't worry - San Francisco has a solution to all their problems, DC's limitless pot of stimulus gold:

Standing among racks of freshly dry-cleaned clothes in the Bayview, Mayor Gavin Newsom today touted San Francisco's early grab at federal stimulus dollars which have put 1,200 unemployed city residents to work - including sprucing up dirty clothes at Laundry Locker.

But there are, um, a couple of wrinkles that Newsom wants to iron out. The program, part of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, provides $5 billion nationally to fully subsidize the hiring of unemployed workers. But they must have at least one child under age 18, leaving out many jobless and childless San Franciscans. And the money is due to run out in September 2010, meaning the newly hired could soon be back in the unemployment line.

Newsom said he's headed to Washington, D.C. next week to lobby House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for an extension of the money and to include people without children. He said he wants to see 2,500 or even more San Franciscans hired, and that the majority of California's $1.8 billion pot is still sitting waiting to be grabbed by cities since so few are participating.

"This is limitless. It's just a matter of who draws down the money fastest," Newsom said. "We discovered a pot of gold in the stimulus money."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/cityinsider/detail?entry...

A few comments:

- SF's massive spending on the needy would seem to attract more needy people, so the point of comparison to the rest of the bay area could be misleading. SF also has a more consistent climate than the rest of the bay area, useful if you're homeless and sleeping on the street.

- Whole sections of the city are overrun with homeless people (tenderloin, golden gate park near Stanyan) such that passers by may be attacked, etc. I am aware of 3 people who have been attacked by homeless people.

- The MUNI system is decent, but there is little enforcement of fare violations. Not sure if this is really a problem.

- The mom and pop restaurants in SF are the best I've tried in any city, including New York.

- The level of tolerance in SF is fairly remarkable. You can dress however you want, men can wear nail polish, etc., and nobody bats and eyelash. One should not underestimate the importance of this sort of tolerance.

- I agree that rent control is a big problem. It's just bad policy and unfortunately it plagues lots of big cities.

- I don't know why there is a housing project in Hayes Valley. It's hard not to feel poor in SF if you earn over $100K Per year, and so one can imagine how it must feel to actually be poor.

This last item hits me rather personally. Last year I was paying $1,500/month for a room in a tiny apartment to live across on Laguna and Hayes, right across from the housing project. It was like somebody drew a big line and put all of the yuppies on the Octavia side of the street, and all of the drug addicted permanently unemployable old women on the other side of the street .. Quite a dichotomy.

Webster and Page here. Yeah, it's crazy. Cars on Webster St get consistently broken into, but cars on Filmore are safe.

You can dress however you want, men can wear nail polish, etc., and nobody bats and eyelash. One should not underestimate the importance of this sort of tolerance.

Ah, but try wearing a "Bush/Cheney 04" t-shirt and see what kind of reaction you get. One should not underestimate the importance of this kind of intolerance. Who cares about wearing nailpolish when you'll be ostracized for having political opinions which anywhere else would be perfectly mainstream?

You are absolutely right about that.

I think the homeless and gay populations reveal that SF has an above average amount of tolerance for differences (in general, but with heated disapproval by vocal minorities) but that certainly doesn't mean that if you choose a SF resident out of a hat and show him a GWB t-shirt, that he won't reveal himself to have utterly un-nuanced (even boneheaded) views on topics such as the differences between the parties, relevant details of the Bush administration's policies, even things that he ostensibly supports like gay rights, clean environment, and nationalized healthcare.

I think the bottom line is that there are some very dumb people who thoughtlessly parrot what they perceive as "enlightened" views, who couldn't explain why if asked... essentially "dittoheads" of the left.

Note: I'm a libertarian (small L) so I find fault with a lot of ways that people reason (or more often bleat) about political issues.

Having made an attempt to live there, and having then left, here is my summary: San Francisco is a city populated entirely by 2 kinds of people: adult children, and public servants/long-term welfare cases.

that's about it. people who are, or become grownups move away in disgust that such a wildly beautiful and rich place is such a sewer at the same time. sad really.

I'd agree if you didn't use the word "entirely." I grew up in the south/west half of San Francisco, which is still, remarkably enough, populated largely by families who struggle, with eyes wide open, in the same way that most middle-class families do (their incomes would appear to be high, but the cost of living means that they're not all that different from someone making a third of that salary in a less expensive city).

I have two young children here, and I've started to watch the beginning of the exodus (there are many families with small children in SF, even the trendy parts... they generally start to leave when the first, and especially the second, hit school age. Space, schools, all that stuff).

Many of the people who stay in SF have extended family here. There are also the people who love it, but my wife and I have a new theory - the people who express unqualified love for SF will probably leave. Its the ones who mix it a grim recognition that, for whatever reason, they'll never get to check out of this place - those are the ones who will still be here in 30 years. Hell, my parents have been complaining about it since I was born.

You know, welcome to the hotel san francisco, if not hotel california.

Ah, I see why SF attracts so many homosexuals, cost of living is much lower when you don't have to provide for children. So, homosexuals both get a nice living area, and all the heterosexuals who form families and might look down on their choices are filtered out. Best of both worlds for them.

That's a weird way of looking at it.

1) The cost of living is still outrageous even for couples without children, and the gayest areas are among the most expensive. SF attracts homosexuals due to the culture and history.

2) What does raising a family have to do with "looking down" on anyone? All the parents I know in SF raise their kids to be as gay-friendly as they are.

Also: you are aware that some kids are gay, right? Most of them figure it out very early, it's only homophobia that makes them suppress it until university.

You're right that there is a political side effect of de-prioritizing children, since most gay or lesbian couples are childless. But that's also fueled by the high concentration of childless professionals in SF. It is a snowball effect that will accelerate until the city's unlivable for people with children.

I just don't think it's a conspiracy. One might argue that the real conspiracy is gentrification, where family-friendly neighborhoods are swept away to provide yuppie housing.

I don't think it's a conspiracy, just the result of a couple variables.

At any rate, #1 supports my point. Since they are the most expensive areas, they'll be even less likely to host families. On the other hand, if gay people tended to live in low income areas, that would invalidate my hypothesis.

#2 doesn't really cause problems for my argument either. I suspect that if anyone is going to be gay-unfriendly, it is going to be heterosexual couples who have children. Especially if they have a large family they likely belong to a religious tradition that considers homosexual sex to be immoral. So, if most people, invariant over whether they have families or not, make an effort to be gay-friendly, I still suspect a random sample of families vs singles will turn up more gay-unfriendlies.

Finally, childlessness may also cause people to choose homosexuality. Most people want sexual intimacy, but they don't want the risk of having children. They can use a bunch of unreliable methods to avoid producing children in a heterosexual relationship, or they can take the easy way out and choose a homosexual relationship.

one more point - at times, the people who become grownups and move away in disgust were, at one point, part of the political group that created the things that now disgust them.

People have started to call this the "Chris Daly" phenomenon. This is in response to the recent actions of sup Daly, who has been a very lefish and fierce advocate for the homeless, rent control and tenants rights, etc...

Well, recently he purchased two houses in Vallejo, one which was a forclosure. He moved his family, including his Children, to vallejo. He maintains a residence in SF, and does indeed live in it (with roomates). But evidently, he doesn't want to be a landlord in the city where he fights for tenants, preferring to purchase property elsewhere in places that are more landlord-friendly. Nor does he want his kids living around the people whose interests he defends so aggressively.

This is a pattern - people move to SF when they are young and idealistic, and then leave when they are older and have children.

They don't even have to be all that idealistic. I have a buddy who lived in SF while he was a young and well off budding lawyer. He's definitely a moderate/liberal by US standards, but you have to understand that this puts you to the moderate right in SF. Anyway, when he lived here, he was livid about regulations on where he was allowed to run his dog off leash. He cared in theory about schools, playgrounds, kids, and so forth, but these issues didn't affect him personally. He cared about kids, but he became an activist about his dog.

Now he lives in Marin with his two kids and dog, where kid issues impact him personally. I'm sure he'll still love his dog, but no doubt his priorities will change.

Some good points, but a whole lot of outright bullshit as well.

San Francisco can't point to progress on many of the social issues it spends liberally to tackle

Oh really? Maybe you should take a look at the healthy San Francisco program, which basically arranges medical insurance for the indigent. That works. I like to grumble about Muni, the public transit system, but the fact is that it covers the entire city, is (mostly) available around the clock, and every vehicle is GPS tracked so you can find out when the next one is coming. I've called in problems on a bus by phone before and had an inspector board the bus a few stops later to resolve the issue.

Although many of the criticisms in the article are individually valid, many of them are divorced from context, eg not considering the facts of state politics. There are a bunch of things that need reforming in San Francisco, but this article is hit piece rather than serious journalism.

There are two free weekly newspapers in San Francisco. For years the Bay Guardian has been the standard bearer for grumpy hippy activism (and by 'grumpy' I mean an interest in basic fiscal rectitude). The SF Weekly, by contrast, has done much better out of promoting entertainment and lifestyle with some human-interest stories sprinkled in as news; indeed, for several years they've had a policies of not even offering endorsements at election time or putting any resources into election coverage. Now both papers have seen a calamitous drop in advertising, both classified and display, and have shrunk from tabloid to magazine size. And the SF weekly is desperately churning out what it regards as hard-hitting journalism in a bid to stay relevant, after years of coverage that amounted to little more than 'LOL politics'.

> Maybe you should take a look at the healthy San Francisco program, which basically arranges medical insurance for the indigent.

Maybe that increases the number of indigent? Why, in one of the richest, most beautiful cities in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, are there large numbers of feral humans roaming around? Why are entire neighborhoods off-limits to law-abiding citizens?

"Why, in one of the richest, most beautiful cities in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, are there large numbers of feral humans roaming around?"

Maybe because in other cities in the country those "feral humans" would simply be allowed to die off (or even helped on their way to extinction).

I've read that this is how NYC has "taken care of their homeless problem": they simply let the homeless die, which is quite easy to do in NYC during the winter by forcing the homeless to sleep outdoors, where the weather is much more deadly than it ever gets in San Francisco.

Also, it's pretty clear that many (if not most) of the homeless people in San Francisco are mentally ill. During the Reagan era the mental institutions were emptied, and the mentally ill were basically thrown out on the street. It's possible that San Francisco just has more mentally ill people than your typical American city (maybe because of the prevalence of drugs in the city, I don't know).

That's a lot of guess work on my part, but I've yet to hear a better explanation for why there are hordes of homeless in SF.

Saying that these people are "just lazy" because of their dependence on handouts and would just "get over it" if the help was taken away is just the sound of resentment without an ounce of compassion or understanding of the people who are really suffering.

Compassion doesn't mean you have to throw away buckets and buckets of money. You can't claim San Francisco is doing a good job of taking care of its less fortunate unless you can back that up with some data. Even the city can't.

That's a lot of guess work on my part, but I've yet to hear a better explanation for why there are hordes of homeless in SF.

Translation: I like my guess better than the explanation I'm responding to, so I'm going to label it as "better", even though I've just admitted that I have no data or idea of what I'm talking about.

The original post had no more data than the response. This post simply demonstrated that you could draw the exact opposite conclusion given the same amount of data (or lack thereof). Thus, it serves to invalidate the original remark without necessarily itself being correct.

There are lots of homeless people in San Francisco because San Francisco is a good place to be homeless.

Which makes it a popular target of Greyhound therapy, along with LA.

What is wrong with letting the homeless die, though? We don't have any problem with letting rats die, or pigeons, if they can't manage to support themselves. Why do I have an obligation to help another animal just cuz it happens to be the same species as me?

Thank you for being honest. I only wish more advocates of cutting off aid to homeless people were even half as honest as you.

I also appreciate your honesty, and I'll try to address your points.

Many people would save the life of a pigeon. They're just not very consistent about it.

One issue is how we measure progress.

We would generally think that a school program that increases the average performance of a school is a good thing. If it does this by expelling the low scoring students, then it is not an educational program. It does not make the school better, it just makes it look better.

So having no homeless in a city doesn't necessarily make that city a nicer place to be. It can still have the same weak economy and bad infrastructure. It's the difference between rebuilding a wall and repainting it.

A hypothetical city that achieves zero homeless with a great job market, low cost housing, and easy access to perfect psychological treatment is clearly better than a city that eats everyone making under 50k.

I think a more realistic city that reduces some of the impact of homelessness by having adequate shelters is better than a city without that net.

The first city solves the problems of the people in the city, while the second city does not. In the end, we have cities because they are tools. Better tools work more consistently.

Your Species is Irrelevant.

Personhood matters though, I think a person dying is a tragedy. I'm not sure 'obligation' is the right term, but I think if you were actually faced with the death of a person, you would value their life more. I'm not trying to make an 'I know better than you' argument here, just saying that a lot of our values are context sensitive and inconsistent. (as with pigeons)

I must say, congrats on outing yourself as an utter asshole. I do hope that you never require help from another person.

Feral humans are people too.

Can you explain to me why only rich people ought to live in cities?

On a side note: Congrats for taking HN in to the 10^6

what!?! this! ;)

2 minutes between bkudria's comment and pg's submission.

Been watching the odometer? ;)

Ding!

Grats!

I asked a feral human (which really, takes some doing) and he explained that by corralling the rich people into the cities, and getting them to help push out the feral -- well, it made the rich people easier to harvest or, more commonly, cull for meat. I offered that, well, if that is the motivation, then you can hardly call yourselves feral any longer for, clearly, you've developed animal husbandry. He conceded that I was probably right and that, for pointing out his error, I deserved some reward. So he gave me an approved lease on this apartment in the city! And I'm not even rich!

It's a darwinist thing.

I'm definitely not talking about poor people. I'm talking about people who are literally incapable of living in a civilized society. People such as:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/02/... (multiple random stabbings on Muni and the streets)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Ramos (Triple drive-by gang murder against people he erroneously thought were in a rival gang)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/24/... (Murdered a pizzeria employee apparently because she didn't like his beard)

That guy I saw defecating on Haight Street (ok, maybe that one was my fault for going to the Haight).

BTW congrats on item 10^6 :-)

I could cherry pick some senseless violence stories from any large American city. They don't prove anything.

While I do think San Francisco is poorly managed, it's naive to think that its homeless problem is caused solely by bad governance. It's a combination of a lot of different things: the hippies that turned into deranged homeless people, the strong lure of California for those down on their luck, the strong drug culture, the very consistent temperatures, the size of Golden Gate Park, etc.

...Not to mention that Giulani bought bus and train tickets for huge numbers of homeless in NYC and sent them out West....

It's actually very difficult to forcibly put someone in a mental health facility in California since the 1970s, when a lawsuit by the ACLU succeeded in giving many mentally ill people the right to discharge themselves from care (this was a reaction against past abuses within the mental health system). Many facilities subsequently closed down for lack of sufficient patients, and in fact California lags in the provision on mental health services today.

Then, San Francisco is relatively tolerant of 'weirdos' and always has been...while many other cities, especially to the south, are not and give the homeless a fairly hard time. San Diego, for example, is reputed to keep itself free of homeless people by giving them a bus ticket out of town, and I've heard the same thing about other jurisdictions. And so they end up here.

This is only one reason among why the city has problems. Look back through the history of SF and you'll find it's always had a seamy underbelly, right back to the days of the gold rush.

San Diego, for example, is reputed to keep itself free of homeless people by giving them a bus ticket out of town, and I've heard the same thing about other jurisdictions. And so they end up here.

Ah, yes, the time-tested principle of solving problems by pushing them off onto someone else. Didn't work so well for me as a kid when I tried to clean my room by piling all the crap in a different room, but I guess it's okay for cities to do it.

Of course, the problem isn't having poor or mentally ill people living on the streets, the problem is that middle-class people might have to see the homeless which is obviously unacceptable.

Interesting line on non-sequiteurs you have there. I like how you seque from suggesting that providing health care to those without insurance makes poorer, to discussions of feral humans and crimes, as if these were all somehow caused by extending medical coverage to people.

Muni is a piece of shit. The buses come at irregular intervals and are regularly clumped together in order to maximize the time between service. nextmuni is unreliable more than about 5 minutes in advance. A trip which takes 18 minutes in a car requires me to leave 50 minutes beforehand in order to reliably arrive at work on time. The drivers let any drugged out piece of shit on board, so you aren't particularly safe (I've been involved in two fights on muni, neither of which I started, both of which I was involved in simply for being on the bus). The public transport is so poorly laid out that you not only have to plan your entire life around the schedule, but there are relatively close pieces of the city -- eg 20 minute walks -- that require 60+ minutes to reach via public transport. Tthe lazy morons that run muni can't even get displays on market -- down which run many bus lines -- announcing the next buses.

This city -- and I never thought anything could do this -- is going to drive me to buy a car. Or to move back to NYC.

Edit: I missed this in my first read. Muni available around the clock? hah.

Ps -- the healthy SF program? Stops at the borders. Hope you never leave sf or require medical care outside the city. Particularly including emergency care.

"It's time to face facts: San Francisco is spectacularly mismanaged and arguably the worst-run big city in America. This year's city budget is an astonishing $6.6 billion — more than twice the budget for the entire state of Idaho — for roughly 800,000 residents."

That comparison is so disingenuous. They're comparing a city with one of the highest costs of living in the country to the second poorest Western state? The cost of living in SF is about double that of Idaho. The median value of a home in SF is $656,700, while in Idaho it's $138,190. So why the "astonishment" at SF's budget being only twice that of Idaho?

Then there's the population issue. The whole of Idaho has 1.5 million people, while SF alone has 0.8 million. That's a huge concentration of people in one city. Compare SF to Boise, the largest city in Idaho: SF has 4 times the population. That kind of concentration of people brings lots of problems just by itself.

I'm not saying SF doesn't have problems. It clearly does. But this particular comparison isn't exactly the fairest they could have come up with. How about a direct comparison between the budget of SF and, say, NYC?

It is a poor comparison, because the services provided by the state of Idaho and the city of San Francisco are so different. The author should have compared the sum of budgets of all cities in Idaho, or better yet found cities that are individually similar to San Francisco in ways other than spending (such as San Jose or Jersey City).

I think you're wrong about population and density though. I'd expect that the huge concentration of people would lower per-capita infrastructure costs and enable other economies of scale. Comparing San Francisco to New York City, we find that NYC, with 8.3 million residents [1] in 305 sq. mi [2] has budgeted $43.4 billion for FY2010 [3]. San Francisco has 47 sq. mi [4], so it's much less dense and yet spends over 50% more per capita.

[1] http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/census/popcur.shtml [2] http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/landusefacts/landusefactsho... [3] http://www.nyc.gov/html/omb/downloads/pdf/sum1_09.pdf [4] http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:pRkHCezT76IJ:www.ci.sf.c...

Density lowers per capita infrastructure cost, but it also decreases tax revenues per capita. High density cities have to support the infrastructure used by commuters but can only capture a little of their tax value. During the day DC's population nearly doubles so they have to provide infrastructure for 1,000,000 people with a tax base of 600,000.

...Except for the fact that in California, with the inability to increase Property Taxes quickly (Thank you Prop 13), an inordinate amount of revenue actually comes from commercial taxes (Sales Taxes being a large one). As a result, counties engage in a game of _discouraging_ residential zoning, and encouraging commercial zoning. I'll find a citation. [Edit - http://www.caltax.org/MEMBER/digest/feb2000/feb00-4.htm - See: What are some of these side effects? ]

Fascinating article. Perhaps it's a lesson in what happens when you lack political balance? It's been fashionable in the last few years to talk about cooperation between the major parties, but to me, it's the scuffle between Right and Left that produces a government that isn't too crazy in either direction.

If a sizable number of Libertarian Nutjobs were there to fight with the Socialist Nutjobs, they'd probably be better off.

NYC has good city government and one of the worst state governments in the nation. Guess it could be worse.

NYC government is high cost and plagued by unionization.

All of which may be true, but considering the scale of the city (population, buildings, economy, public infrastructure like the subway), it runs like clockwork.

SF isn't even a borough of NYC in comparison.

Why are people modding this guy down? I know people who are employees in the NYC system, and despite being the underlings, they complain about the unionization.

The MTA, for example, apparently has more management/support than they have actual engineers working to fix things. If you went to a public school, you would have definitely heard a good number of top teachers and administrators complaining about both the BoE and the teachers union.

NYC's system is much worse than you'd think, but they've had two business and efficiency mayors in charge, back-to-back, trying to fix these things.

There are plenty of poorly run and corrupt city govs. A few I've had close exposure to: Atlanta, D.C., Miami (most of south FL), Jacksonville FL (they've had a highway construction project running for over 20 years!!), Savannah GA. SF can simply get in line for the crown.

Much as I hate to diss my poor suffering state all you need to look at is the five terms of Detroit mayor Coleman Young if you want to see poor leadership.

Time magazine said he is 'singularly responsible for the demise of Detroit'. San Francisco's leadership could be better, a lot better but it has a ways to go before they reach the level of Detroit's mayors and city council.

Here's a sample from a council meeting less than a year ago http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqOSNI7l0bQ

How many of the San Francisco's mayors or council have been imprisoned for selling influence?

Oh man, thats funny. I know very little about SF, other than it has lots of "causers". Seems to me they keep voting for this terrible managment, so there are plenty of causes to rally for/against. Seriously half of those examples solve one problem (sending the causers home with a "we fought the good fight" feeling) only to create 2 more cause-able problems (e.g. the old-folks-home/mental hostpital overflow -- cause A: save the old people from criminals, cause B: mentally ill are people too, they need homes).

I know very little about SF

Pluses: It's a gorgeous city, the people are generally nice, the weather in the whole Bay Area tends to stay pretty close to perfect year round, lots of cultural variety, lots to do and see.

Minuses: the parking sucks, the traffic sucks, the myriad one-way streets suck.

In short, its a great tourist destination, but you probably wouldn't want to live there.

That's a rather generous description of the downsides of San Francisco. Parking and traffic suck in a lot of places, and the one-way streets aren't so bad once you get used to them.

The two worst problems of San Francisco are still the filth (both the rubbish-in-the-streets form of filth and the human form of filth) and the ridiculously high cost of living. The first means that you can't walk down the street for more than a couple of minutes without some weirdo either pestering you for money or trying to sell you drugs. The second means that having a reasonably nice place to live (say, a three or four bedroom detached house with a backyard -- the kind of modest middle-class dwelling that most modest middle-class families inhabit) is completely out of reach for all but the super-rich.

San Francisco is a great place to be at a certain stage in your life, but unless you do become super-rich it's an awful place to stay.

Having a car in SF does suck. But you wouldn't think of having a car in NYC would you?

Fix: Ride a bike / use public transit / live near work.

This is because results don't matter under liberalism, only intentions.

edit: Well there are lots of reasons, actually, but I think that's one of them. I think the article makes a really profound point in passing: "Government is now paying the tab for services that used to be undertaken by families, churches — or, frankly, no one."

Now, I'm sure some of this can be attributed to the fact that San Francisco attracts a lot of out-of-towners, because of its beauty, history, jobs, etc. But I think part of it is also due to the ruling liberal ethos of radical individualism, where everyone must be free to do as he wishes without constraint (as long as he doesn't infringe on anyone else's right to do the same). Such radical autonomy must invariably involve the rejection of social obligations. After all, no one chooses into which family to be born, and most people don't choose the church they will grow up with, either. Follow this logic to its conclusion and all you're left with is democratically elected government, expressing the "will of the people".

"The intrusion of politics into government ..." Yeah, I know they're not exactly the same thing, but that statement still made me laugh.

I think that could be better said as "intrusion of politics into governance"

So, what's an example of a big city in the US that's run exceptionally well?

I read in the economist a few years ago that Atlanta is run well. Though they were comparing it to New Orleans.

Atlanta is a reasonably well run city. It gets cited a lot as a black city run by blacks that's a good place to do business.

Miami?

I sadly agree

Came in here just to post this, so I'm glad someone else already has. Miami might as well be another country. (I am from Miami and completely agree with that congressman who said this place was a 3rd world country)

I moved from SF to Miami and the government is surely corrupt here as well, but not in the same way and scale as SF.

Miami has strong opposition inside the town's political factions (new Cubans, old Cubans, retirees, etc). As far as I can tell, SF has only "radical" and "more radical" groups.

Oh absolutely. Miami's corruption is of the old school type with groups battling it out over who gets a piece of cake.

Actually there is some race factions in SF as well, mainly with the african american and chinese groups who seem to compete a bit for lucrative positions.

Ironically the lack of real difference of opinion in SF is what enhanced the failure of the city. An opposition no matter how corrupt has the incentive to call out the corruption of the other party. If all are on the same side there is no such incentive.

Former Miamian. sadly have to agree. it is, unfortunately. I can't ever remember a time when it wasn't. Maybe back in the moonshine and Al capone days. But this city just goes from one corrupt trend to another.

Uh, Detroit?

Perhaps it's better run considering they have much less resources in the first place.

I don't know much about how SF is doing, but I find that highly doubtful.

San Francisco seems to be complaining about waste and bureaucracy. Those aren't healthy things.

But Detroit has been suffering massive crime, drug violence, depopulation, failing city services, depression-level unemployment, steadily falling revenue, skyrocketing illiteracy, public safety problems presented by the rotting infrastructure, plummeting graduation and has been flirting with bankruptcy for years.

Most of those problems were recognized problems decades ago, and have only worsened.

>But Detroit has been suffering massive crime, drug violence, depopulation, failing city services, depression-level unemployment, steadily falling revenue, skyrocketing illiteracy, public safety problems presented by the rotting infrastructure, plummeting graduation and has been flirting with bankruptcy for years.

Of these, only flirting with bankruptcy and failing city services are things for which city hall is responsible. The rest are not things city hall can solve. Compare it to soccer. The goalie is there to stop the other team from scoring, but is in no way responsible for his/her team to score goals. You can't win with just a good goalie. Likewise, a lot of what you described are problems the citizenry, and not city hall, are responsible for. I challenge the best city hall in the world to go see what it can do in Detroit; that place is a disaster anyway.

The quality of City hall is orthogonal to most of Detroit's problems, but not to San Francisco's.

Most of the other problems, the ones which I agree are not direct responsibilities of the mayor and council, have grown as symptoms of those failing city services.

If you can't get your street plowed or your trash picked up, you move. If your kid isn't safe walking to, or being in school, you move. If there are no jobs in the city, you move.

The more people move, the less revenue the city gets, the more blight it acquires, the less incentive businesses have to stay in the city. Then they move. The blight accelerates and exacerbates the problem of keeping those places from becoming havens for criminals, drug dealers and vandals.

Did you know there isn't a single grocery store chain in the city of Detroit? Yeah, the Eastern market and a few community gardens are stepping up to fill the void for their neighbors. But even with those, there remains a very real and serious protein problem that's only solved by leaving the city.

So, is the city directly responsible for things like the unemployment rate and drop-out rate? No. But year after year after year they've ignored these problems. Refused change. Literally shouted down people who have raised these issues at council meetings. Let their hatred, bigotry, sense of entitlement and corruption waylay any and every attempt to turn things around.

So, no. They're not directly responsible for kids dropping out. They are however responsible for having essentially ignored the problems in schools for the last few decades as the graduation rate has sunk to 25%. They are responsible for being so incredibly inept that the entire system was taken over by the State.

If I'm responsible for a division of programmers and our output is so consistently bad that higher-management needs to step in and address the problems - while it may not have been my personal responsibility to get code written, clearly I've not been doing a good job.

Under Kwame, I'd agree. The new guy seems like he's doing ok considering the hand he was dealt.

The problem doesn't exist solely in the mayor's office, so unfortunately Detroit is still horribly run. Bing's making a hell of an effort -- but so did Archer.

But that's neither here nor there. There are plenty of worse-run cities in America than San Francisco. Cities where more serious problems result from the mismanagement, corruption and dysfunction (crime, decay, ineffective city services, etc).

Shameless plug:

http://www.zazzle.com/free_kwame_t_shirt-235175928761389846

Detroit's been great since OCP took over. Didn't you see that documentary?

"In Houston, the exact opposite of San Francisco, I assume you'd get shot"

switch that to 'small town texas' and I would agree. Houston proper tends to vote to the left, not to mention we have our own budget problems now.

Houston "proper" is a fraction of the City of Houston. (I assume you mean inside the loop.)

I would assume he meant the legal boundaries of the City of Houston, which is what the term "proper" usually means in that case.

Actually, most people in Houston tend to refer to the area inside the 610 loop in a way like the oc did. People outside 610 do not vote to the left.

I disagree with your hyperbole. I live in Montrose (very 'in the loop') and generally vote Republican. Much of my family lives in Spring (a suburb outside the loop) and vote Democrat/Green.

Houston is generally a more conservative city than SF. Overall, I feel that Houston is generally well run.

I also live in Montrose. A lot of Houston is well run. Public Transportation is a laggard, however. I spend half of my time in Minneapolis, and despite their using the same physical equipment, their public transit system is 5X better than Houston's.

I think the reason, is that in Minneapolis, it's considered a vital part of the city infrastructure. In Houston, it's a concession to the poor people.

Here in San Francisco, "Proper" means "I'm from the suburbs and I'm gearing up to bitch about San Francisco's parking and one-way streets"

Useless hyperbole from both you and the the Joel Kotkin. Just because people are conservative doesn't mean they believe violence is the answer to all problems.

You're right; let my comment be stricken from the record...

US federal government? DC government?

It seems a culture has developed where "good" intentions justify anything. There is also a complete causal disconnect between those intentions and the results, and this appears to be happening world-wide. If you say the right words, you can sell any program, regardless of what those same words may have led to in the past in terms of other failed programs. History is evaded and forgotten, it's only intentions that count, not results. sigh.

The DC government, while still terrible, has vastly improved in the last decade, so much so that it's not even recognizable. This is reflected in the city as well, which in very large swaths are not even recognizable compared to 10 years ago (in a good way).

I don't think the actual government improved. The city turned around, but that's just because loads of crack heads finally died off, many gangsters are permanently incarcerated, and then yuppies moved in and pushed up property values.

"The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution."

Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XIX, 1782. ME 2:230

(yes I will probably get down-voted on this one)

I don't know if the Author has ever been to Milwaukee...

I know this is schadenfreude, but I love this. As I see it, a city of people with backwards values is getting its just deserts.

Unfortunately for me, when the city eventually goes bankrupt, I'll probably end up footing the bill via my federal taxes.

Kindly elaborate why San Francisco has "backwards values". I bet you think it's an accident it's a tech innovation hub.

> I bet you think it's an accident it's a tech innovation hub.

Actually this is an accident; San Francisco's reputation as a tech hub is due to its accidental proximity to San Jose and silicon valley.

That is definitely not true. The atmos in the Bay Area is part of the reason SV is where it is.

It may well be a coincidence that SF's government is so inefficient though. Portland has the same tolerant attitude, and their city government doesn't seem to be inefficient.

> That is definitely not true. The atmos in the Bay Area is part of the reason SV is where it is.

Right. And the "atmos" of Boston is why the high-tech hub around route 128 is where it is, having of course nothing to do with its proximity to a couple of world-class universities... The "Bay Area" may help sustain SV, but San Francisco proper is a pretty small part of that -- it is a hub of night-life/clubs, an overly pretentious literature and arts scene, and a completely dysfunctional city government. SF is a fun place to live for people of a certain age, but as the better known city in a large metropolitan region it gets far more credit than it deserves for the "atmos" that gives the region its flavor.

As in Boston, the atmos of the Bay Area is probably the main reason the universities here are so good. Universities planted in Boston and the Bay Area thrive. Those planted in cities that are bigger and richer, but have the wrong sort of culture, don't do as well. E.g. NYC vs Boston, LA vs SF.

You keep conflating San Francisco with the greater Bay Area. This mistake was my central point. San Francisco proper is a small part of the Bay Area. It has a more storied history and is the more widely-known, but it is far from being the most significant city when it comes to defining the culture and norms of the area. SF gets the press, but Berkeley, San Jose, and numerous cities up and down the peninsula contribute just as much to this tech hub as San Francisco.

When the universities' reputations were established, SF dominated the Bay Area. Till suburbia spread down the peninsula in the 1950s, what we now call Silicon Valley was mostly agricultural land.

San Jose's population in 1940 was 69,000. SF's was 635,000.

Shockley did not come to the bay area for San Francisco, he came to be close to his ailing mother in Palo Alto. From Shockley Semiconductor came the traitorous eight and Fairchild and from this cluster came most of what we now know as silicon valley. Hewlett and Packard both came from Stanford, etc.

SF may have dominated the bay area for quote a while, but none of the seminal events that can be pointed to as the seeds of what became silicon valley have a very direct link to what you and everyone else seems to consider the San Francisco "culture." The marine geography that makes San Francisco a great anchorage and led to a strong naval presence in the area probably had a bigger impact on silicon valley than anything you can point to an as a uniquely "San Francisco" impact on the valley.

The critical moment in that story was not when Shockley moved back to the Bay Area, but when the traitorous eight decided they wanted to find a way to remain here, even though they couldn't stand working for Shockley anymore. Of the eight, I believe only Moore had family here. The rest wanted to stay simply because they liked it.

> The atmos in the Bay Area is part of the reason SV is where it is.

I don't think you addressed evgen's point - Let's assume that the atmosphere in the Bay Area is part of the reason SV is where it is (having read Steve Blank's "Secret History of Silicon Valley" I'm not sure I'd agree) - to refute his point you would have to show that San Francisco is indeed a tech hub. Otherwise it could be the case the the tolerant attitude of the entire Bay Area caused SV to happen where it did, and San Francisco picked up its reputation as a tech hub because it is in the area and shares the atmosphere, even though San Francisco itself had nothing to do with the tech hub forming. I suppose you could argue that San Francisco and its history were indispensable in forming the Bay Area atmosphere and attitudes, but you did not say that.

The atmos in the Bay Area is part of the reason SV is where it is.

I would say it's more to do with money than atmosphere.

The Bay area is uber-rich because of a) gold and b) highly favorable geography. The natural harbor created by the bay made San Francisco the major port on the west coast until the early 20th century. At the time that the US wrested California from Mexico, SF was effectively the capital city in the state. Add to that the beneficial agricultural conditions stretching down from the Sacremento Delta (where the city's water still comes from) and it's the kind of perfect setup you read about in books like Guns, Germs and Steel.

I beg to differ. Twitter is a block away from me. Within 8 blocks:

* iskoot * slideshare * rapleaf * wikia * ubisoft * google * gogrids * pivotallabs * technorati * dropbox * justin.tv * engineyard * heroku * socialcast * heyzap * yammer * sauce labs * shopittome * zenddesk * gigaom * twilio * bigtent * topsy * scribd * quantcast * cnet * lolapps * videoegg * snapfish * instructables * currenttv * vark * Sega * Dolby Research Labs * zipcar * kink.com

It feels rather hublike to me. That is just a small subset of the tech companies in my neighborhod that I happen to know about.

You forgot Ubisoft, and, of course, Younoodle.

I didn't forget ubisoft, actually. Younoodle, however, I apparently missed.

Google is not a San Francisco company. It has offices there, but no one can honestly claim that it is anything but a SV peninsula company. Nice list, but other than Dolby (and maybe, just maybe Twitter) these are all small companies whose significance in the long-term is quite questionable. Your list is about what one would see walking through any SV office park...

Silicon Valley became a tech hub because it's near San Francisco, which is the biggest financial center on the west coast, going back to the days of the gold rush. Leland Stanford was a director of the Pacific Union Railroad company, Wells Fargo, and became governor of CA as well as one of the state's US Senators. Stanford university used to be a farm property he owned, and the university was created as a charitable act after his own son died young.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leland_Stanford

The backwards values are solely in regards to how they view the proper role of government. Not their beliefs regarding things like gay marriage or other social values.

The only backward value apparent from this article is an extreme defecit in holding people accountable. One could argue that every other value must be phenomenal since it is still a thriving city despite this impairment.

I live in SF, where do I get my deserts?

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