Live data from Hacker News

San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

sfchronicle.com

801–810 of 832 posts

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

#801
post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Safer for who? I’m sure enough of the disproportionate minority men in prison and jail or who get harassed by police would disagree with safer. Same with transgender people or people not fitting into traditional social norms.

Safer for people who prefer less violent crime and criminal mischief.

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

#802
post #396

Any actual SF residents in this thread? I’m seeing a lot of very authoritative posts coming from places of ignorance. One person even called it a “right wing dystopia”. Here’s the bottom line. The problems we are trying to solve in SF are hard . This place is fully developed. No way around that. Is SF perfect? No, not at all. But damn if this city doesn’t try its hardest, moreso than almost any other city I know of.…

The breakdown for the $1.7M toilet was published: $300K for the architect, $125K for construction management, $175K for the City project manager, etc. All this for one toilet in this cute town square. This has nothing to do with humanity, fascism, or the city being full. It's simply gross public $ mismanagement. SF should use this $ for something more useful, like better schools.

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

#803
post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As it’s their prerogative to see us as “the pots(?)”.

Do you disagree that stratifying people socio economically so that you minimize your interactions with people who are worse off than you sets up a socio economic caste system? Or do you think a caste system isn’t problematic for a society?

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

#804

“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.…

Can you crap in it? Does it get crap on you? Anything that meets the description will do (doo) .

> Can you crap in it? Does it get crap on you? Anything that meets the description will do (doo) .

Not quite. You can spread portable toilets for pennies, or even a shipping container with toilets, but that will make any city look terrible.

If you care about making things nice then it becomes necessary to invest resources making things nice which you would otherwise not have to spend if you just drop a portable toilet off the back of a pickup truck.

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

#805
post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As it’s their prerogative to see us as “the pots(?)”.

Do you disagree that stratifying people socio economically so that you minimize your interactions with people who are worse off than you sets up a socio economic caste system? Or do you think a caste system isn’t problematic for a society?

The latter; I think it’s folly to deny that social, political, economical, intellectual “caste” systems or hierarchies form naturally on their own, and that they can somehow be abolished through government policy. The beauty of America is that we can break through these barriers if we are truly exceptional and deserve it. And yes, if you are intelligent enough to leverage nepotism, you deserve it. I expect that we will fundamentally disagree on this, as is our right to as free thinking individuals.

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

#806

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just spent a few days in Birmingham, Alabama. The downtown streets were so clean you could eat off of them. It is really hard to come back to Seattle and see all of the trash everywhere. In the Seattle airport one of the bathroom stalls looked like someone had used the floor as a trash can. There were orange peels, discarded shoes, and various other trash sitting on the floor next to the toilet. Social problems exi…

Birmingham has all of its black people locked up with some of the highest incarceration rates in America. They'd just arrest your ass and throw the book at you if you camped in the streets. This is your alternative.

No post body was provided.

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

#807
post #801

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safer for who? I’m sure enough of the disproportionate minority men in prison and jail or who get harassed by police would disagree with safer. Same with transgender people or people not fitting into traditional social norms.

Safer for people who prefer less violent crime and criminal mischief.

No post body was provided.

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

#808
post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gi…

Not necessarily on the economy, but here's one that goes over crime, which one could argue is linked with the economy. https://economics.nd.edu/assets/153486/carr_jillian_jmp.pdf.

Results indicate that voucher receipt causes a large increase in violent crime arrests for male recipients. They do not, however, indicate that vouchers have an effect on women or on other types of crime. Specifically, we find a statistically significant increase in violent crime arrests for the overall population and male recipients alone. There are no statistically significant effects for female recipients alone. This dichotomy in the effects for male and female housing voucher recipients is consistent with previous research on the effect of the MTO experiment on juvenile criminal outcomes (Kling et al., 2005, Sciandra et al., 2013, Zuberi, 2012, and Clampet-Lundquist et al., 2011).

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

#809
post #396

Any actual SF residents in this thread? I’m seeing a lot of very authoritative posts coming from places of ignorance. One person even called it a “right wing dystopia”. Here’s the bottom line. The problems we are trying to solve in SF are hard . This place is fully developed. No way around that. Is SF perfect? No, not at all. But damn if this city doesn’t try its hardest, moreso than almost any other city I know of.…

The breakdown for the $1.7M toilet was published: $300K for the architect, $125K for construction management, $175K for the City project manager, etc. All this for one toilet in this cute town square. This has nothing to do with humanity, fascism, or the city being full. It's simply gross public $ mismanagement. SF should use this $ for something more useful, like better schools.

No, if you read the article, that is the breakdown for the average fully developed public restroom in SF. $1.7m is not the cost for a single commode.

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

#810

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saying that it sounds like they are suffering equally in both environments, so living in a place where it is hidden is a net benefit for everyone.

How is it benefiting the people suffering?

Because they don't have to suffer in public and deal with the shame.
Post reply on HN