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San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

sfchronicle.com

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Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#671

Post by asow92 »

kelnos wrote: post #655
asow92 wrote: post #160

Why is it that the deepest blue areas of the country have some of the most abject inequity and poverty? It seems that there's a fine line between compassion and enablement when it comes to the deep blue municipalities of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, etc. Sure the rustbelt, deep south, and Appalachia are areas with similar problems and mixed politics, but they also somehow feel different.

> Why is it that the deepest blue areas of the country have some of the most abject inequity and poverty? Because urban areas tend to be blue, and urban areas attract more poverty (costs are higher, easier to get into poverty; but also there are plenty of public services around that make it "easier" to be poor). Poverty is also just much more visible in areas with denser populations. I assure you that there's plenty…

And I assure you there's in fact more poverty in right-leaning areas. Yet they are cleaner, safer, and overall more beautiful places to live.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#672

Post by 1024core »

feoren wrote: post #636
1024core wrote: post #425

It's simple. It's not their money. When you ask any SF Department to give you a budget for something, they will just hallucinate a number and pull it out of their ass. Matt Haney (the State Senator) asked the Parks & Rec Department for an estimate of what would it cost to build the toilet (given that the hookups are already in place). They shrugged and pulled a figure of $1.7M out of their ass. And he just accepted t…

> maybe the Republicans _are_ on to something: the government has become too big. Except this is SF, not the Federal Government, and part of the reason the costs are so high is because PG&E is holding the city hostage. Republicans want giant corporations like PG&E to have more power to hold the government hostage and loot it. Why do you pay attention to what they say, rather than what they do? They never actually shr…

> and part of the reason the costs are so high is because PG&E is holding the city hostage.

One thing you'll see when you live in SF long enough (20+ years here) is that they'll come up with all sorts of crazy excuses to justify bad behavior. Blaming PG&E for the $1.7M cost is bullshit.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#673

Post by AdamJacobMuller »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #669
colpabar wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is a forum for tech bros who are generally well paid but responding to a story about a million dollar public toilet with "that's no big deal, I'm currently spending six figures on minor kitchen renovations" seems pretty out of touch to me. That is a ton of money to so many people.

Thank you. I laughed out loud when I read this part: > In many parts of the United States, you can buy a whole house for $300k.

In many parts of the United States, you can buy a whole house for $100k.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#674

Post by neweroldguy »

colpabar wrote: post #630
antiterra wrote: post #384

Price doesn’t seem that outrageous to me. Public bathrooms in cities get destroyed and are very difficult to maintain; a lot of cities give up on free restrooms entirely. One of the biggest perks of working downtown in a moderately sized or larger city is being able to go to the bathroom there outside of work hours. I priced out some relatively minor kitchen/bathroom renovation work in 2018 at around $100k. Put it of…

I know this is a forum for tech bros who are generally well paid but responding to a story about a million dollar public toilet with "that's no big deal, I'm currently spending six figures on minor kitchen renovations" seems pretty out of touch to me. That is a ton of money to so many people.

They clearly were emphasizing how expensive things are; they didn’t make a value judgement as to why. “Minor” conveyed that the work to be done is small.

This is a shit take, there’s no evidence for this person being out of touch with respect to anything

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#675

Post by Kalium »

hcurtiss wrote: post #653
Kalium wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only works if the people in need of assistance don't respond to the on-site security by moving out of the encampment. You wind up having to establish a sizable security-protected area around the blessed encampment, otherwise you wind up with a series of unsanctioned and unsecured encampments anchored by the serviced one. Neighbors tend to object to that kind of thing. What SF actually needs to do is house people…

Is housing really an option? I mean that seriously. I suppose we could build "projects," like in Baltimore, but I definitely wouldn't call those a success. Right now, most of the Section 8 projects are skimming the better candidates off the top. The hard cases, the truly drug addicted and mentally disturbed (and there are a whole lot of them), will take whatever housing you give them and either ruin it, or move back…

Honestly, all SF has to do is stop obstructing projects that are a mere 20% subsidized units. It's become common political practice to pretend that a parking lot housing zero people is preferable to a lot housing a bunch of people, of which up to 20% are impoverished and formerly unsheltered vulnerable community members. Couple it with a fantasy that 100% subsidized is within reach in all cases and you have a recipe for a parking lot staying that way forever and the unsheltered staying that way too.

Getting people in housing is often the first step to being able to help them with everything else making their lives difficult. It's remarkably hard to deliver psychiatric care to people who cannot be reliably contacted.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#676

Post by Kalium »

agumonkey wrote: post #647
Kalium wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I lived in Oakland, my apartment building had several close calls with wildfires caused by poorly contained campfires in a nearby encampment of vulnerable community members housed in tents to keep the wind off as they slept. Given that lockable wooden sheds / "tiny homes" can and do catch fire from things like poorly managed propane stoves in particle board construction, perhaps a better solution is in order. As…

btw if the problem is heating, how crazy would it be to provide them with .. warming ?

If that was the problem, I think it would have been solved long ago without as many fires as we see today. Warmth is available in a variety of ways, including and not limited to warming centers and chemical warmers. Propane stoves are a poor way to warm people.

To be honest, I'm being very generous when I ascribe those wildfires to a need for warmth and poor fire management. None of them happened in particularly cold weather.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#677

Post by rapsin4 »

colpabar wrote: post #630
antiterra wrote: post #384

Price doesn’t seem that outrageous to me. Public bathrooms in cities get destroyed and are very difficult to maintain; a lot of cities give up on free restrooms entirely. One of the biggest perks of working downtown in a moderately sized or larger city is being able to go to the bathroom there outside of work hours. I priced out some relatively minor kitchen/bathroom renovation work in 2018 at around $100k. Put it of…

I know this is a forum for tech bros who are generally well paid but responding to a story about a million dollar public toilet with "that's no big deal, I'm currently spending six figures on minor kitchen renovations" seems pretty out of touch to me. That is a ton of money to so many people.

But this is the SF Bay, things are actually outrageously expensive here.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#678

Post by dehrmann »

batman-farts wrote: post #508
dehrmann wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is in fact the breeding ground of a lot of major national politicians from that party. Really? If Newsom runs for president, despite being somewhat moderate, he's going to have problems because Republican attack ads will frame him as the former mayor of the most liberal city in the country while showing pics of the TL in the background.

He’s obviously angling for a national platform, picking silly sound-bite fights with people like DeSantis. My guess is that he runs for president, fails somewhat spectacularly due to just this issue, and then steps back into the position of senator for as long as he likes. Quite possibly for life, just like Boxer and Feinstein. It’s what I would do in his shoes. It would also give him the platform to launch another p…

> senator

Feinstein is 89, so...

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#679

Post by MisterSandman »

antiterra wrote: post #384

Price doesn’t seem that outrageous to me. Public bathrooms in cities get destroyed and are very difficult to maintain; a lot of cities give up on free restrooms entirely. One of the biggest perks of working downtown in a moderately sized or larger city is being able to go to the bathroom there outside of work hours. I priced out some relatively minor kitchen/bathroom renovation work in 2018 at around $100k. Put it of…

Please don't pretend that spending 100k on "minor kitchen work" is normal.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#680

Post by drewrv »

asow92 wrote: post #666
drewrv wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a political system disadvantages a group of people then their needs will always take less precedence. “Why doesn’t the urban coalition simply win rural votes?” is a silly question. They would win rural votes by prioritizing different issues and then the issues important to urban citizens would be less likely to get addressed.

It's not a silly question. If they can't win on their merits then they deserve to loose. That's what democracy is. Also, notice how I said political parties and not an urban coalition: these are not the same, and their needs are different. There are rural democratic voices, and they do engage in these issues, but the wider party does not seem as interested in this. And that's why they will continue to loose rural vot…

I agree that Democrats should focus on rural areas more. You have to win by the rules not complain about the game.

But you’re missing my point by ignoring coalitions to focus on parties.

Imagine a religion that is a mix of democrats and republicans. Imagine Saturday is a holy day for them where they try not to engage with the modern world as much.

If elections were only held on Saturday this would hurt their community.

This is why farm subsidies are plentiful for example, neither party wants to claw those back and face the consequences.

It’s also why social security is “the third rail of American politics”. Republican or democrat, no senior wants their checks messed with. And having elections on a Tuesday in November is a fine time for seniors and retirees to vote even if it sucks for other people.

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