451–460 of 465 posts
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What do you want? Pictures? This is commonly known to be an issue there. If I was there right now, I'd say give me 5 minutes and I'll post a picture. Was in SF last week. If you do a lot of walking there, you WILL see not only a shit, but someone actively shitting. Edit: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=b6fab72091...
I'm genuinely curious, where do you live and do you 'do a lot of walking' there too?
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On the 400 block of Arlington street, there are several large Victorian homes that have been empty for several years. There needs to be a tax on empty homes and a tax on people owning second homes that are empty.
Property tax?
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There is no lack of evidence. There are thousands of video records taken in San Fran 25-30 years ago. You won't see a city filled with vagrants and human feces. You won't see trash filled-streets or sidewalks lined with makeshift shelters. It certainly wasn't perfect (no city is) but it wasn't the open sewer it is today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0t9ogfCI3E
This video only shows me what it looked like at a point in time years ago. It's not a comparison to the current situation. Crime is at historic lows for both property and assault in 2020. I know it went in 2021 but not enough to make the data show San Francisco is worse now than in the 80s, 70s , or 60s. https://www.ppic.org/publication/crime-trends-in-california/
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You do know that if you don't fill out the census form they come knocking on your door, and if you refuse to respond they ask your neighbors and go based on that.
In Canada, it's also technically illegal to not fill out the census.
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With around 6,300 people per km2, "it is similar in terms of population density to San Francisco. In Tokyo’s 23 wards, however, the density is 15,381 people per km2, making it 50% higher than New York City as a whole." https://japanpropertycentral.com/2021/12/housing-in-tokyo-is... The 23 wards of Tokyo are 5 times the land area of SF city proper.
Let’s get in the full context: >Nakano ward’s density of 21,956/km2, does rank a little closer to Manhattan (around 28,000/km2). NYC is quite large. Huge areas of the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island have low-risers or single family homes. Which if course brings the average down.
I agree that the link's comparison of Tokyo 23 Wards with all of NYC is not an appropriate comparison. But not necessarily because of single-family housing as you describe. Even for Nakano Ward (with population density nearing Manhattan's), 20.8% of residential buildings are detatched single-family homes and 48.9% of residential buildings are less than 3 stories tall [0], surely a higher proportion than several NYC boroughs. Its high density is more due to having fewer areas with offices, narrower streets (compared to NYC), and barely any green space.
[0] https://www.city.tokyo-nakano.lg.jp/dept/505700/d026142_d/fi...
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Where have you been seeing the rent drop in SF? I'm in the south bay and have been interested in moving to SF now that I'm going remote, since I want a bit more active nightlife. Now that I'm remote, I don't have to stay in south bay.
Rents are definitely down - or at least they were 1.5 years ago when I last moved. Before the pandemic, 1 bedrooms were usually at least $3500 and often $4000+. When I looked last January, there were decent places between $2500 and $3000. I emailed some landlords saying "is there any chance you could go lower" and they offered me free rent for 1-3 months. I ended up with a pretty good deal on a large one bedroom in t…
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> Homeowners are a reliable political cohort, they tend to organize quickly as soon as any issues are on the agenda that might affect the value of their land and they will reliably push for whatever increases land values. I feel like this is a myth, do you have research to back this? As a 20+ year home owner, I've never been asked to support anything to increase land/housing value (not that I'd want to, since that me…
Have you been asked to vote for/against zoning changes, or for special approvals for variances for developments? Because I got those all the time. If I didn't show up (which I often did, as a homeowner in the area just to see what they were proposing), all the old folks in the area (90% who owned) definitely did to shoot it down or ask for crazy demands that jack up the price. Sometimes they just filibuster in the ve…
No, never. That's not the granularity of questions that bubble up to the ballot. Those planning and permit commissions do whatever they do mostly behind closed doors, they certainly never ask the electorate.
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> Homeowners are a reliable political cohort, they tend to organize quickly as soon as any issues are on the agenda that might affect the value of their land and they will reliably push for whatever increases land values. I feel like this is a myth, do you have research to back this? As a 20+ year home owner, I've never been asked to support anything to increase land/housing value (not that I'd want to, since that me…
But in the spirit of the question and for curiosity’s sake, if you were faced with a decision that’s beneficial to renters but decreases your property value, which way do you go?
Details of the proposal matter of course, but in general I'd rather not support home values going up because that just means higher taxes for me in exchange of nothing since I continue to live in the same house which is unchanged.
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> Homeowners are a reliable political cohort, they tend to organize quickly as soon as any issues are on the agenda that might affect the value of their land and they will reliably push for whatever increases land values. I feel like this is a myth, do you have research to back this? As a 20+ year home owner, I've never been asked to support anything to increase land/housing value (not that I'd want to, since that me…
Have you been asked to vote for/against zoning changes, or for special approvals for variances for developments? Because I got those all the time. If I didn't show up (which I often did, as a homeowner in the area just to see what they were proposing), all the old folks in the area (90% who owned) definitely did to shoot it down or ask for crazy demands that jack up the price. Sometimes they just filibuster in the ve…
Also, if there are cities where this level of question does go on the ballot, it's the same ballot for everyone. So both homeowners and renters in that city get to vote on that, so it's not like there is any special influence power in being in one group or the other.
First summer I rented in the area (around that time), I had to use AirBnB to find something halfway affordable, and I was basically using it more as a trust broker.
The unit I paid 1500 a month for, literally a bedroom in a dog dander riddled home with a tiny shared kitchen.
I looked, and within 3 years the same place would have been more like 4500/month.
(This was walkable to Castro street, but so is a lot in that weather.)
Meanwhile, I heard all these tech bros WHINING, literally WHINING. Oh, San Francisco is so cold in temperature, and all this other BULLSHIT.
I had grown up somewhere if you wore a rainbow shirt someone would have killed you, full stop.
We didn't have beer gardens like tied house. You couldn't even walk anywhere, there were no sidewalks, and the township police would have rolled up on you if you tried. (Meanwhile, one of the richest townships in the country to this day has no bus system as a leftover anarchornism from the era of bussing during MLK's time.)
But people talked like El Camino Real and similar stretches of road out in urban Appalachia were interchangable.
The last summer I was out there, Elliot Rodger went on a rampage after the university counseling center sent me off to Mozilla with two refills on a bottle of aloprazolam and zero leads on therapy for the summer.
(You had to go through the counseling center for it to be covered by the student health plan, and if you met someone who seemed to actually be skilled or empathetic, they'd break it to you they can't "poach clients" even if you wanted to do otherwise, or had misunderstood your benefits, or any other edge case)
I ended going back to my college town and venting to my therapist something to the effect that if folks continue down this path of making the world a giant Ikea without the social programs, folks may perceive it's an easier path to a 1BR and a Playstation if they murder an island of children than if they learn to code or whatever.
And then I went down to the gun range, and rented a glock 40 and about fifty rounds.
(The guy who came with me got a bolt action 223 and quietly sent all his downrange about 200 hundred yards)
(Less kick than a 1911, but still a hell of a recoil. You gotta be within about ten feet if you want to actually make use of one without practice)
I hope folks understand how utterly degrading it is to have it rammed down your throat since childhood to "respect women", then have a string of them who have more assets that your entire family make a show of letting you buy them lunch off OkCupid when the only reason you signed up is because you felt so strongly that folks should focus on work at work, having known what it's like to abandon an entire field of study because someone got too handsy. (It's not "nice", you South Park loving sociopoaths)
Anyways, the time the summer of snowden rolled around, I was DONE WITH IT.
I went back to flyover country and told my therapist that I'd read Elliot Rodgers manifesto, and I thought he was a whiny little freak. I told her that despite that I was sincerely worried that folks might melt down like he did, decide to not JUST commit suicide. I tried to show her an essay I got anonymously published about my special education experiences -- she refused to even read it. They had this weird kind of "If you don't like grad school, you can drop out and work at Subway" mentality.
(I wrote this a while back, but left the tab open because I got distracted -- Happy Memorial Day weekend, peace out girl scouts.)