Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

sfchronicle.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

731–740 of 832 posts

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

#731

Post by kelseyfrog »

Pigalowda wrote: post #718
joshspankit wrote: post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Y’all are funny in there (US). Every time someone argues that “democratic politicians this” or “republican politicians that” the rest of the world looks at each other like “do they think that they actually have two different parties?” Even based on public policy (and ignoring how their private actions), US democrats are closer to “global centre” but still in many cases to the right of centre.

You don’t speak for the rest of the world. And no, democrats are not to the right of center.

Where do you suppose center is?

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

#732

Post by [deleted] »

perfectstorm wrote: post #323
mattnewton wrote: post #206

One of the reasons this toilet is so expensive no doubt, is that the new SF public toilets are self cleaning and will have attendants on duty to try to prevent this. The one on golden gate park and Haight closes after each visitor to spray the inside down like a dishwasher, and has an attendant on duty to make sure no one is inside while it does that (and to generally discourage people from shady stuff). It's not per…

why not have a full time janitor who cleans after each visit? much cheaper than a self cleaning toilet. even if you pay $100k to the janitor in annual salary, it will take 10+yrs to reach 1.7M and who knows what kind of issues these self cleaning toilets will have in that 10yrs.

[deleted]

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

#733

Post by [deleted] »

1024core wrote: post #436
mattnewton wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because a human who can afford to live in San Francisco almost certainly costs more than this machine over 10 years (the 1.7 million is for the whole project, not just the self cleaning portion), and drugged out crazies can make a mess that would be a very hard and unpleasant job to give a human.

A large number of City employees live outside the City. According to this article, only 40% of the City employees live in SF. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/remote-work-17510522.... So why is residence a requirement for the janitor??

[deleted]

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

#734

Post by programmer_dude »

david_allison wrote: post #729
programmer_dude wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

M is not ambiguous at all it stands for mega which is 1e6 (which happens to be a million). Meters is lowercase m. And nobody uses Roman numerals as a suffix. MM is just unnecessary.

> An expense of $60,000 could be written as $60M. Internet advertisers are familiar with CPM which is the cost per thousand impressions. > The letter k is also used represent one thousand. For example, an annual salary of $60,000 might appear as $60k instead of $60M. [0] k and MM are unambiguous. You don't want to stop & think, and you definitely don't want to be off by a factor of 1000. So it makes sense to avoid ty…

> An expense of $60,000 could be written as $60M

This is unfortunate. $60,000 is $60K (capital K not k) using SI suffixes. Please reject M=1000 today.

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

#735

Post by dijonman2 »

nemo44x wrote: post #107

“the committee evaluates each project’s design, scale and massing for accessibility, safety and aesthetic merit.” The review process “ensures that each project’s design is appropriate to its context in the urban environment, and that structures of the highest design quality reflect their civic stature.” This is a perfect example of why you codify requirements and any review for permitting is as objective as possible.…

I worked on a public project in the South Bay and the corruption runs deep.

Spend 15k on Airbnb in a week for one person? Expense approved.

Seems everyone took a cut somehow.

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

#737

Post by freemrkt8 »

nemo44x wrote: post #107

“the committee evaluates each project’s design, scale and massing for accessibility, safety and aesthetic merit.” The review process “ensures that each project’s design is appropriate to its context in the urban environment, and that structures of the highest design quality reflect their civic stature.” This is a perfect example of why you codify requirements and any review for permitting is as objective as possible.…

[flagged]

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

#738

Post by didibus »

cloverich wrote: post #460
didibus wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we need to also keep things into perspective, there are an estimated 8k homeless in San Francisco, about 1% of its population. It seems most of those are caused by just poverty, not able to afford living expenses pushed people to the streets. Some amount of them are coming from other cities who get rid of their homeless by sending them to cities like San Francisco, but Sam Francisco also sometimes send homele…

Most homeless conversations center around those with drug addiction and mental health issues. Poverty as such is not the primary ingredient.

Some of the data seem to possibly indicate that poverty could in fact be the primary ingredient though. Also, rich families with kids that have mental issues or drug addictions are much less likely to end up in the streets, so it's definitely part of the formula.

> Homelessness Rises Faster Where Rent Exceeds a Third of Income

-- https://www.zillow.com/research/homelessness-rent-affordabil...

> According to responses from a 2019 survey of homeless people identified through the PIT count, a quarter said losing a job was the primary reason they became homeless

-- https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2022/fixing-san-francis...

> When unhoused adults 61 and older were surveyed during the 2019 PIT count and asked why they had become homeless, 22 percent said it resulted from a job loss and 20 percent cited an eviction.

“The fastest-growing segment (of the homeless) is 51 and older who are homeless for the first time,”

-- https://sfseniorbeat.com/2021/06/22/people-over-age-51-remai...

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

#739

Post by therealjumbo »

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…

Democrats have a super majority in SF, have a majority in the CA state government, and PG&E is essentially a state (as in CA) controlled corporation. The democrats have had majorities at both the municipal level and the state level for a long time.

PG&E is not the reason for this particular high cost, but if it was it would be the D's fault. And it's squarely a local level problem. And yet you manage to somehow blame republicans at a federal level...

Why don't you demand some responsibility from your local politicians instead of blaming a caricature of the other party? If PG&E was at fault here, D's are literally doing what you're mad at the Rs for supposedly doing... Incredible.

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

#740

Post by indymike »

stvswn wrote: post #519
indymike wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In government, the continuum is not a line, it is a circle. If you go far enough left, or far enough right, you end up at the exact same place.

I don't think there are many ways in which SF is similar to a "very right wing" city. First of all, "right wing" politicians do not control any city governments in any real way, but if you were to compare SF with say, Houston -- which has radically different policies along these lines -- you wouldn't find that the results are the same. In the American context, an extreme right-wing city government would theoretically…

> In the American context, an extreme right-wing city government

My businesses is in Carmel, Indiana. It is the definition of far right wing republican. There are often races where the only candidates are Libertarian or Republican. Here’s what it looks like:

* Constant growth driven by tax incentives.

* More roundabouts per capita and a corresponding low injury accident rate

* Fantastic public parks and commons (that drive up real estate values)

* best or near best public school system

* consistently in the top 10 places to live in the US

It’s been this way for 20 years. The city is expensive to live in and safe, and public transportation is minimal.

Post reply on HN