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San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

nationalreview.com

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Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#141

Post by orangecat »

atom-morgan wrote: post #22
dawhizkid wrote: post #10

Having lived in SF for a number of years now, I 100% agree that SF is just dystopian as hell. Trash everywhere downtown, human feces/needles/smell of urine all over downtown & SOMA, depressing mix of aggressive and zombie-like homeless, very few kids/families, very few minorities (especially African-Americans), barely functioning public transportation system, high rents forcing six-figure earners to live with 2 roomm…

How is it that so much aggressive political rhetoric related to race and the tech industry is coming from this area if there are very few African Americans there in the first place? I live in Atlanta where the minority population is much higher all around and I don't get the sense at all that there's rampant racism or discrimination. Is this problem unique to the Bay Area or is this largely white guilt?

White progressives are often further left than minorities on issues of identity politics. See https://www.vox.com/2019/3/22/18259865/great-awokening-white...

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#142

Post by dawhizkid »

rib3ye wrote: post #138
dawhizkid wrote: post #10

Having lived in SF for a number of years now, I 100% agree that SF is just dystopian as hell. Trash everywhere downtown, human feces/needles/smell of urine all over downtown & SOMA, depressing mix of aggressive and zombie-like homeless, very few kids/families, very few minorities (especially African-Americans), barely functioning public transportation system, high rents forcing six-figure earners to live with 2 roomm…

Having lived here for 20 years, I can say things are a great deal better than they were before the Downtown tech explosion that happened 10 years ago. Market was filled with pushers you would only now only see on 6th St, and I literally saw a drive-by shooting (resulting in murder) on Mission at 19th (Beauty Bar). Both of those things are unthinkable today. I feel like people are forgetting how bad things use to be.…

There was a double murder in Fillmore 2-3 weeks ago during a busy Sat night.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#143

Post by anbop »

atom-morgan wrote: post #22
dawhizkid wrote: post #10

Having lived in SF for a number of years now, I 100% agree that SF is just dystopian as hell. Trash everywhere downtown, human feces/needles/smell of urine all over downtown & SOMA, depressing mix of aggressive and zombie-like homeless, very few kids/families, very few minorities (especially African-Americans), barely functioning public transportation system, high rents forcing six-figure earners to live with 2 roomm…

How is it that so much aggressive political rhetoric related to race and the tech industry is coming from this area if there are very few African Americans there in the first place? I live in Atlanta where the minority population is much higher all around and I don't get the sense at all that there's rampant racism or discrimination. Is this problem unique to the Bay Area or is this largely white guilt?

Have you paid attention to the “cityhood” movement in Atlanta, where white people are using their friends in state government to split themselves off from the black neighborhoods in their towns?

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#144

Post by rtkwe »

bluGill wrote: post #83
bluejekyll wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what you mean exactly. A lot of the issues are people “protecting their neighborhoods” from development and preserving the “feel”. People generally are voting against policies that would raise inventory of housing, which is really the only way to reduce its cost.

There is the issue: people know how to solve the problem, but to many voters it is directly against their personal interest. They do need to watch out though: there is nothing about San Francisco (or any other area) that means the rich need to live there, or you need to move there to get rich. (unless you are into mining for wealth where you obviously need to be where your mineral is). If some other area becomes hot…

> people know how to solve the problem, but to many voters it is directly against their personal interest.

The thing is voting to preserve the feel of their neighborhood is in their personal interest too. They like the area they live in and simultaneously want to see some of the problems solved. The issue is these are in conflict because pretty much everyone else is also making the same decisions so everyone fights to protect 'their' piece of SF hoping they're not the ones who will have to change and move (because they can't afford to in a lot of cases) to densify SF.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#145

Post by KirinDave »

typon wrote: post #25
dawhizkid wrote: post #10

Having lived in SF for a number of years now, I 100% agree that SF is just dystopian as hell. Trash everywhere downtown, human feces/needles/smell of urine all over downtown & SOMA, depressing mix of aggressive and zombie-like homeless, very few kids/families, very few minorities (especially African-Americans), barely functioning public transportation system, high rents forcing six-figure earners to live with 2 roomm…

The utopia created by hackers on this very site

It's really, REALLY not. I've been here 10 years. I'm post-exit, and I still can't really afford to own a home. I could cash a down payment check, but it'd wipe out most of my savings and the home would be some ancient decrepit thing needing an 8th of its values in repairs. As such, I'm at a disadvantage in exercising political power. I'm constantly forced to move around, limiting the time I have to short stints in any given community.

Most of us actually exert very little influence in local politics, precisely because we're here for the work. I'm in a tiny minority that's decided to "settle down" and not retreat "back home" once I've got a quarter million in investments and another 100k in cash.

And in fact, I think very few of my peers are super into local politics. Even I'm guilty of being somewhat disengaged until recently, and I'm trying to make up for that now in Daly City.

The property owners moving in sync are what dominate a lot of features in this town, and very few "hackers from this site" are actually in that club. Even the rare post-exit folks like me. The truth is that they have a lot more to gain by keeping the status quo than itinerant tech workers have to lose by just leaving rather than dealing with the difficult problem of entrenched NIMBYism.

I'm dealing with that now in my area and it is AGONIZING to sit there listening to some old man or woman go on about how Asians and Brazilians ruining the community and stealing their parking when they're the ones renting out 3 homes in the first place.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#146

Post by Funes- »

idlewords wrote: post #137
atom-morgan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it that so much aggressive political rhetoric related to race and the tech industry is coming from this area if there are very few African Americans there in the first place? I live in Atlanta where the minority population is much higher all around and I don't get the sense at all that there's rampant racism or discrimination. Is this problem unique to the Bay Area or is this largely white guilt?

Leaving aside the weird premise of your comment, you're confusing the Bay Area with San Francisco, which are different things. Black communities in the Bay Area are where they are in part because of a very long history of institutional discrimination. Richmond may be the most glaring example—you have a very rich marina district on one side of a freeway, and a very poor one on the other.

>Black communities in the Bay Area are where they are in part because of a very long history of institutional discrimination.

I am really interested in this. Could you provide some links, please?

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#147

Post by kerkeslager »

terandle wrote: post #91
kerkeslager wrote: post #67

The elites of SF and many people on HN are caught in this loop: 1. Companies don't take personal responsibility when they do antisocial things, claiming they can't be blamed, since they are just following incentives in order to compete. 2. Companies follow incentives, and lobby government to incentivize the behaviors that make them the most money (even if those behaviors are antisocial). 3. Government, influenced by…

What sort of regulations are you looking for? I’m just not sure how regulating a company will end homelessness. Seems like the government should be using taxes to do that.

Well, to start, you have to close loopholes which allow corporations to dodge taxes to even be able to collect taxes to begin with. I'm not sure where you're drawing the line between regulation and taxation; they go hand-in-hand.

I don't have enough context to say what's the best regulation to end homelessness in SF, as I have lived more in NYC area and am more familiar with NYC-specific problems than SF, but some ideas:

1. Require builders to build a certain percentage of low-income housing for every unit of high-income housing they build.

2. Require property owners to fill properties in a certain timeframe, rather than leaving properties empty waiting for a high-paying tenant, or simply keeping them as an investment.

3. Higher minimum wage so people at the bottom can afford housing.

4. Require a smaller pay gap between highest-paid and lowest-paid employees of a company (this addresses the corporate threat that if they are forced to pay higher minimum wages, they'll just raise their prices--the money for minimum salaries comes out of CEO's salaries instead of inflation).

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#148

Post by rayiner »

save_ferris wrote: post #140
rayiner wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies are not the problem, San Franciscans are the problem. By all accounts, Texas regulates companies less than California. But Texas is at the national average in cost-of-living adjusted poverty rate, despite being a majority-minority state, while California tops the charts in poverty: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevor... . As compared to California, Texas also has much higher rates o…

Where in Texas were you? I live in Austin, which is rapidly becoming a landing spot for Californians looking to get away, and my experience in Texas has been quite different than yours. Segregation was physically built into the planning of the city of Austin[0], and it's pretty apparent if you spend a significant amount of time here. Not only that, but rising cost of living in Austin keeps pushing minority communitie…

Few hours east of Dallas. No tech out there, but lots of good oil & gas/manufacturing industry jobs.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#149

Post by talmand »

muzani wrote: post #89
Communitivity wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could so see a planet-bound version of the movie Elysium. The elite top 5% live in walled off fortresses, a la Aeon Flux's city, and have everything - while the rest live outside in a daily fight to live against a dystopian environment financially and economically. I don't think it's inevitable though, so the question is - how do we stop it? We have some of the brighter minds in tech on this forum, what are your th…

This isn't so far fetched. Much of the world lives in overpopulated dystopian slums. Kuala Lumpur is covered in walls, spikes and barbed wire. Rio de Janeiro walls off their favelas: https://assets.rbl.ms/14235733/980x.jpg The question with many cities is the same - is it worth saving? A lot of any city's downfall is often the fault of its older residents. Why do the poor stay? Why do the rich not focus on changing i…

>> The obvious answer seems to be moving to somewhere nearby that's cheaper and roomier. But people seem very resistant to this for some reason.

Because that requires money.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#150

Post by the_watcher »

jlewis_st wrote: post #31

The article omits SB 50 [1], the effort by Scott Wiener (state senator from SF) to increase housing density and remove regulatory hurdles for housing development near transit. From what I’ve seen it’s the most promising method to increase housing supply CA-wide given that many municipalities resist development. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/25/opinion/california-home-p...

And nearly unanimously opposed by the SF Board of Supervisors, which is typical of anything that would improve the housing situation here.
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