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California’s quality of life is the worst in the country?

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Re: California’s quality of life is the worst in the country?

#101

Post by [deleted] »

jogjayr wrote: post #99
DoreenMichele wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. http://michelerebooted.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-lawful-awful...

I have two objections to this post: 1. No numbers provided, in terms of actual impacts on poor people. Just a vague angry waving of fists and calling drafters of bag bans "assholes". 2. Carbon footprint isn't the only thing that's cut down with bag bans. Plastic waste itself is a massive problem - plastic is forever and it's getting everywhere, including our water. In my home city of Mumbai, India, plastic bags choke…

[deleted]

Re: California’s quality of life is the worst in the country?

#102

Post by jeffdavis »

spicymaki wrote: post #66
nodesocket wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Backwards is relative. Being religious, anti-globalization, or conservative doesn't make you a horrible person. The bay area is probably the most intolerant place I've ever been. I've personally seen people unfriend friends because of politics without even being able to have a thoughtful and educated discussion about the issues. The bay area is group thinking "madness of crowds" at its worse. I encourage watching Pet…

Let’s be real. Aren’t you just trading one groupthink (liberal west coast) for another groupthink (conservative south east) that meets your desires? Do you really think a thoughtful and educated discussion would have really helped?

It varies from place to place. The Bay Area is liberal groupthink, but Portland, OR is liberal but not groupthink (when I lived there 10 years ago, anyway).

Re: California’s quality of life is the worst in the country?

#103

Post by DrScump »

mattnewton wrote: post #18

Came back from walking along the beautiful Santa Cruz coast this afternoon and read this. All I can think is this is a genius way to slow down the immigration rate until legislation and housing developments can catch up :)

I take it that you went nowhere near downtown Santa Cruz.

Re: California’s quality of life is the worst in the country?

#104

Post by newnewpdro »

closeparen wrote: post #95
newnewpdro wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having seen how places like Chicago treat the homeless in the interests of keeping the things you're pointing out hidden from sight - I appreciate SF's more tolerant, somewhat live-and-let-live methods, in lieu of better, more compassionate solutions. Hopefully having all this on display in SF will eventually provide enough impetus for the better solutions to emerge. Until then, I hope they don't decide to start bein…

San Francisco had 3,146 sheltered and 4,353 unsheltered homelesss people in 2017 [0]. Chicago had 4,096 sheltered and 1,561 unsheltered. [1] Despite having 3x our population and a more centrist political climate, Chicago has fewer homeless people but provides shelter to both a greater proportion and a greater absolute number of them. Your comment is illustrative of why accelerationism doesn't work here: San Francisca…

The statistics you cite say absolutely nothing of how CPD treats the homeless, or how many of their homeless are off the streets because they're instead incarcerated.

If you applied Chicago's policing practices in San Francisco, you would have a whole lot less homeless people.

Chicago also enjoys the luxury of being relatively unattractive as a destination for the homeless. San Francisco is a magnet for the homeless, which certainly contributes to the disproportionately high numbers for its size.

San Francisco obviously has the resources at its disposal to do good things about it. I look forward to something positive in the future. I am not an SF resident, nor do I own property there, though I have spent quite a few years in the area.

Re: California’s quality of life is the worst in the country?

#105

Post by ihsw2 »

briga wrote: post #31
DavidSJ wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

San Francisco is one beautiful city with one very ugly downtown.

What's so bad about downtown San Francisco?

The stench of urine and feces is dominating, the random exposure to homeless folks mental problems is a daily occurrence, drug paraphernalia (eg: heroin needles) and trash are scattered throughout. SF downtown is an absolute dump.

Go ahead, take a 30 minute walk just north of The Mission. Turn a corner and you'll find a homeless dude standing with a vacant look on his face and pants around his ankles, letting his penis sway in the morning sun.

Turn another corner and you'll find someone shooting up with reckless abandon.

Turn another and you'll be an uninvited witness to a homeless dude verbally and physically assaulting someone for no reason.

LA, NYC, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, etc -- at least these have their size to distribute the problem, SF on the other hand is so small and its city council so progressive that there is a critical mass of it all.

Re: California’s quality of life is the worst in the country?

#106

Post by _blz2 »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #79
ars wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That says more about you than about the study. Have you ever lived in a place like that? With real community? Neighbors that care about you? Who know who you are? Who notice if you are having an issue? Who go out of their way to help you if you need it? Could you, right now, walk over to a neighbor and say "I need to go to xxx for reason xxx, could you watch my kids for 2 days?", and expect them to either say yes, or…

While I don’t have kids, a friend of mine in San Francisco does. She’s good friends with the neighbors who have a son the same age as hers. If she had to leave suddenly, I’m certain they’d do anything they could to help. Outside of Silicon Valley where I grew up, in the Santa Cruz mountains, we also had neighbors we could trust who would help us if they could. I do feel that Silicon Valley is less friendly than nearb…

Knowing a few neighbors is different from knowing entire community, participating in town events, walking around the town and seeing familiar faces everywhere.

Re: California’s quality of life is the worst in the country?

#107

Post by jeffbax »

kelp wrote: post #64
beebmam wrote: post #42

I'm 33. Literally no one my age or younger I know owns a home unless they live in a smaller city somewhere in mid-america. I'm a senior engineer at a large tech company. I cannot afford a home where I live unless I want to live in a shitty condo, which I do not. I cannot work remotely, so moving is not an option unless I want to find another job, which I'm considering. Once baby boomers start retiring and moving to a…

I suggest lobbying your state and local representatives to allow fast and easy approval of building more high-density housing and to upzone your neighborhood. The reason California is so expensive is because the generations who already own homes have long asked to maintain the status quo with low height limits (most of San Francisco is 40 feet!) and density limits. This creates an artificial shortage. And those homeo…

This.

If SB-827 doesn't pass, we'll know that California's priorities are not with the young/it's future - it's with those who were lucky enough to get in the right place at the right time.

I'm not very hopeful, and the insane cost of living/owning a home is the primary reason I've pretty much given up on moving there at this point.

Re: California’s quality of life is the worst in the country?

#108

Post by tzs »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #72
kumarm wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[There is no bag ban here] Seriously? Single-Use Carryout Bag Ban a concern for you?

Yup. http://michelerebooted.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-lawful-awful...

> The people who are hurt by this are people who walk to the store, bike to the store or take public transit. These people now need to buy a backpack or something to carry their stuff.

I don't understand this part. When they leave the store after shopping, they will be carrying full bags, so they have to have some way of carrying full bags when they walk, bike, or take public transit home from the store.

An empty bag is a lot easier to carry than a full bag, so why wouldn't whatever method they use to carry full bags away from the store work for carrying empty bags to the store?

Re: California’s quality of life is the worst in the country?

#109

Post by DoreenMichele »

tzs wrote: post #108
DoreenMichele wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. http://michelerebooted.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-lawful-awful...

> The people who are hurt by this are people who walk to the store, bike to the store or take public transit. These people now need to buy a backpack or something to carry their stuff. I don't understand this part. When they leave the store after shopping, they will be carrying full bags, so they have to have some way of carrying full bags when they walk, bike, or take public transit home from the store. An empty bag…

I was homeless in California at the time the bag ban became law. I did buy a $3 backpack for shopping. In fact, I bought a series of them because I have a serious medical condition and cleanliness is a big issue in my life.

If you are in a car, tossing a bag in the trunk or back seat is no big deal. In fact, you can just leave one there by default. But if you are walking, biking or taking transit, you need to remember to take it, you have to carry it and keep track of it. It requires more organization, more mental energy, and more physical energy. You don't have to plan ahead, keep track of things, etc if there will be free bags provided at the time if purchase. This also means that spontaneous purchases are problematic for those without a car in a way they are not for those with a car.

Even if you aren't homeless and don't have the cleanliness concerns I have, it is sort of a death by a thousand paper cuts for people who are typically already poor, overburdened and struggling to cope.

Re: California’s quality of life is the worst in the country?

#110

Post by TaylorAlexander »

_blz2 wrote: post #106
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don’t have kids, a friend of mine in San Francisco does. She’s good friends with the neighbors who have a son the same age as hers. If she had to leave suddenly, I’m certain they’d do anything they could to help. Outside of Silicon Valley where I grew up, in the Santa Cruz mountains, we also had neighbors we could trust who would help us if they could. I do feel that Silicon Valley is less friendly than nearb…

Knowing a few neighbors is different from knowing entire community, participating in town events, walking around the town and seeing familiar faces everywhere.

Certainly. That just isn’t what was discussed in the original comment. If it’s about knowing lots of your neighbors then I would say I haven’t had that in California.
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