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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

#681

Post by dang »

puffoflogic wrote: post #607
erulabs wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascism is the idea that the nation (and the race) of a people is more important than any individual member of the people. A fascist would say bureaucracy only implies a lack of power. Private property is the opposite of the textbook definition of fascism - private ownership is literally the idea that EVERY SINGLE individual is more important than the nation. The fascist answer is to consolidate more power in a singl…

[flagged]

Would you please stop posting ideological flamewar and other unsubstantive comments to HN? You've been doing it repeatedly, unfortunately, and it's not what this site is for. We've already had to ask you this once. We eventually have to ban accounts that won't stop, so please stop.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#682

Post by readthenotes1 »

abigail95 wrote: post #670
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…

Did the multi year timeline not raise your eyebrows either?

It reflects San Francisco values

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

#683

Post by readthenotes1 »

dralley wrote: post #635
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…

>When I read cases like these, I feel like maybe the Republicans _are_ on to something: the government has become too big. States like Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Kentucky etc. are absolutely not immune to corruption, I assure you. Small-government Republicanism hasn't truly existed in decades. However, that's not to diminish blame from cities like NY, Chicago, LA, SF. They need to get their flipping act together.

At anyone in Texas and they will tell you that the government in Austin is too powerful and too corrupt...

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

#684

Post by HWR_14 »

It's a maximum amount allocated, and takes into account the possible costs of needing to start over because of building code changes and slowdowns due to power issues. As well as the cost for all the administration to decide on what kind of bathroom to build, a custom design, etc. It sounds high, but not insanely so.

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

#685

Post by dgellow »

baby wrote: post #665
someuser4234 wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is German or French more common? I knew someone in S.F. who married a woman from Switzerland roughly 5 years ago and moved out there...did you work at a software consulting company in S.F.?

Depends where you go in Switzerland, my understanding is that the country is sort of divided into two parts depending on language. Same as in Belgium.

3 parts: German-speaking, French-speaking, Italian-speaking

The ~west speaks French (we call the region Romandie), south-east speaks Italian (canton of Ticino), the rest speaks (Swiss-)German.

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

#686

Post by HWR_14 »

tomcam wrote: post #31

Why didn’t they open up the bids? My firm would’ve been willing to do that toilet for only $1.45 million and get it done within 18 months. Because we are go-getters /s

They are opening up the bids soon. Feel free to bid 1.45 MM, but that will probably be too high as the 1.7MM cost includes the architect, running the bid process, etc.

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

#687

Post by vlovich123 »

asow92 wrote: post #561
juve1996 wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to be a strong statement to make - how do you know they don't contribute? Already by paying some form of rent, is that not contribution?

If they're rent is subsidized by the state and they do not work is their contribution a net positive? Many of these people that I've met don't want a W2 or 1099 in fear of loosing their entitlements. The only folks who win there in the long run are landlords (rich getting richer). Sure some do contribute in a qualitative way to culture and social functions, but not as much economically. Yes, I'm often accused of bein…

Do you have any studies you can point me to that shows that Section 8 housing is a net drag on the economy? I haven’t come across such but admittedly I don’t go looking for it either so I’m curious to better understand the themes of what makes it an unsuccessful program and ways to mitigate it. As far as I know, at least based on personal experience, poor people don’t stop being poor people if you take aid away vs give them opportunities to try to better themselves (or at least their child’s lives). And if you think Section 8 housing isn’t rough, all that I’ve seen is not in a state that I’d want to find myself in and I suspect that’s how people there feel too (based on stories I’ve heard told by people from that background).

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

#688

Post by vlovich123 »

asow92 wrote: post #472
whimsicalism wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can guarantee you it would not be immaterial to you if the state was shipping people there without housing already lined up. It is the state's prerogative to distribute this as it seems fit.

As it is our prerogative to protest it either way.

Yeah. God forbid poorer live next to me. You know who else has that mentality? People who are much better off than you and view you as the pots.

You know what’s demonstrably shown to improve moral and connectedness of a society? Being forced to live next to people who are worse off than you so that your self-interest is to vote and advocate on their behalf so that you’re not living in a shithole.

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

#689

Post by ALittleLight »

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…

You know people are actually Republicans, right? You think what they want is for big companies to loot the government? That sounds like you view Republicans as the villains on Captain Planet.

The Republican position is probably more like "With less regulation more companies could flourish and compete in the same space and then market forces would drive costs down" and less about wanting to steal from people.

It's crazy to think ~half the country just wants to empower big business to rob them. Not least because big business tends to support Democrats.

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

#690

Post by staticautomatic »

uoaei wrote: post #661
dahdum wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’d be injecting hard drugs, especially fentanyl, constantly in this toilet, so signs and disclosures won’t mean much. SF is a rather “special” place, you can’t easily compare to other international cities.

Spoken like someone who has not spent more than a week in SF, probably entirely in hotels or restaurants.

I’ve lived in SF for more than a decade and if I opened the door to a public toilet I’d be surprised if someone wasn’t shooting up inside.
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