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San Francisco: An Elitist Bubble Ignoring a Crime Epidemic?

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Re: San Francisco: An Elitist Bubble Ignoring a Crime Epidemic?

#131

Post by DoreenMichele »

Aunche wrote: post #127
DoreenMichele wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of city residents need to come to terms with the fact that some of these progressive criminal justice reforms may need to be adjusted a bit, given that we now have years of evidence of their effects. And/or: We need to make affordable housing available, make a car-optional lifestyle more viable, etc. "The beatings shall continue until morale improves" isn't an effective approach to anything, especially since if…

Interesting how you're characterizing enforcement of property crime as "beatings", and not stealing things as "morale".

The OP assumes people are stealing to alleviate financial duress caused by inflation. If that's accurate, then giving people relief in a way that doesn't encourage them to intentionally be failures and doesn't make it someone else's responsibility to pay for their needs is the optimal solution.

Re: San Francisco: An Elitist Bubble Ignoring a Crime Epidemic?

#132

Post by tootie »

moolcool wrote: post #50

Ignoring? I live 6,000km away and I still see people online complaining about the crime in SF all the time.

I have lived in NYC for almost 30 years and I see all sorts of complaints online and in the news, but almost never hear from anyone who actually lives here. Crime was so much worse when I fist moved here and I still mostly ignored it. There's crazy people and homeless and whatever. I let my kids walk around by themselves. I'm far more worried about them getting hit by a car than anything else.

Re: San Francisco: An Elitist Bubble Ignoring a Crime Epidemic?

#133

Post by Dig1t »

alexb_ wrote: post #43
Dig1t wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>support local policies that restrict housing development You are absolutely correct that this is the problem. But the solution is not to disincentivize home ownership with a tax, it is to fix zoning itself. Homeowners will still have an incentive to restrict housing supply even with a tax. However if you restricted the power of local zoning boards to tell people what they are allowed to build on their own land, then…

Asking to change policy without changing the incentives that led to said policy is a fool's errand. You have to change what people are incentivized to do to actually change anything because people respond to incentives, not ideas. The way you fix zoning itself is by incentivizing people do to so. Plus, that's not the only supply problem that comes from Prop 13. People don't want to ever sell their houses because that…

I completely agree with you about incentives.

I'm saying there is already an incentive to build densely, developers already want to do this because they make more money by doing so. They are literally not allowed to build anything other than single family homes though, the local homeowners actually control what is allowed to be built. That is to say: the people who have an incentive to keep housing supply low are the ones deciding what is allowed to be constructed in their town.

If I go buy a piece of land in Cupertino and I want to build an apartment complex, I have to go apply for permits and get approval from the city of Cupertino zoning board. The people on that board are all people who live in Cupertino that own single family homes, they have a strong incentive to deny my application if I am building my apartment complex anywhere near their neighborhood.

Basically every single city in California has zoning laws that prohibit you from building anything other than suburban single family homes in most of the town.

What I'm saying is that you can fix the housing crisis by passing a law that limits the power of the zoning board to deny permits for these types of housing.

Take a look at the Cupertino zoning map: https://map.gridics.com/us/ca/cupertino#11.67/37.3159/-122.0...

if you click layers -> planning -> zoning you can see an overlay of the zoning for the whole city. The light beige color is "single family" zoned, meaning that nobody is allowed to build anything other than low-density homes. Notice how _most_ of the city is designated "single family". This is the cause of the entire problem. Nobody is allowed to build anything more dense than the single family homes that are already there.

Not-so-coincidentally, Cupertino is one of the most expensive places to live in the US.

Look at Houston, TX. They have no zoning laws (it's not perfect they still have deed restrictions which sometimes act similarly to zoning laws), and it is a massive city. The median house price is ~340k, something that most normal people can afford. There is a clear correlation between reduced zoning restrictions and lower housing costs.

Re: San Francisco: An Elitist Bubble Ignoring a Crime Epidemic?

#136

Post by tootie »

wonderwonder wrote: post #114

Unpopular opinion. Prisons Should really have at least twice as many occupants. If people are unable to live in a polite society and follow the rules they should be removed until they are willing to. How many times do we read about someone that killed/ raped/ assaulted someone and it's revealed they have dozens of prior arrests? Putting them back on the street constantly can only lead to their death or crimes against…

"How many times do we read"

It's a known principle that crime reporting has increased far faster than actual crime. And I mean, seriously you look at 2020 and think the major story was the police had bad PR? I'm pretty sure something else pretty big happened that year.

Re: San Francisco: An Elitist Bubble Ignoring a Crime Epidemic?

#137

Post by 2c2c2c »

Domenic_S wrote: post #33
uoaei wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, welcome to the conversation, I can tell this is the first time you've engaged with this topic, so I'd love to introduce you to the economic dynamics at play. When property taxes don't rise, people are disincentivized from selling their home because if they buy a new home they must pay property taxes at the new rate, not the grandfathered one. This creates a bottlenecked supply of housing because no one sells. Gro…

Do you have data to support this claim? It doesn't appear to play out like this in practice. Compare CA vs a state like NJ and home sales seem on par per capita. https://journal.firsttuesday.us/home-sales-volume-and-price-... https://njar-public.stats.10kresearch.com/docs/lmu/x/EntireS...

Would assume this is due to the constant inflow of high income tech workers to california

Re: San Francisco: An Elitist Bubble Ignoring a Crime Epidemic?

#138

Post by kmeisthax »

boredumb wrote: post #16
belfalas wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A great history professor I had at university was very interested in California politics. His take after years of research was that the thing holding California back is Prop 13, which has to do with taxation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13 Dear HNers, please note: I understand Prop 13 is hugely controversial and the "third rail" of California politics. I don't have a dog in this fight, I…

So the thing holding back California is that they don't get enough taxes? There must be something more nuanced i'm missing, but it almost feels like a comedy sketch thinking of a California college professor explaining to people that California not taxing it's citizens enough is the thing holding it back.

Considering that lots of Californians pay practically no property tax... yes! Absolutely tax more!

The current system is extremely conservative. Any time a piece of property changes ownership, it gets hosed by the assessors. If you move to California you will be paying insane sums in property tax while living next to people who are paying almost nothing. This is an effective subsidization of people who hold property for a long time, which creates market distortions.

For example, people normally sell their house and move when they retire, because they don't need as much housing and can save money by downsizing. This means more houses on the market, which pushes down prices and keeps people from living in their cars. But not in California, because a lot of people are getting the best property tax deal available in the country there.

Re: San Francisco: An Elitist Bubble Ignoring a Crime Epidemic?

#139

Post by khuey »

Manuel_D wrote: post #78
Dig1t wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the argument basically just "arg if only we could collect even more taxes we could use the money to fix all our problems"? California already has super high taxes that are skewed towards taxing the rich more. Seems like a joke at this point saying that they need even higher taxes. Also California's system of propositions is one of the closest forms of direct democracy available anywhere, if you like democracy then…

It's not just more taxes. It's that Prop 13 effectively means your taxes go down over time. This encourages people to stay in housing units as long as possible. It also creates a big divide between people who bought early and those actually supporting the government through up-to-date tax rates. Most sickeningly is that privileged tax status can be passed parents and children, effectively creating a separate caste of…

> Most sickeningly is that privileged tax status can be passed parents and children, effectively creating a separate caste of people with lower taxes.

Thankfully this was significantly curtailed by 2020's Proposition 19.

Re: San Francisco: An Elitist Bubble Ignoring a Crime Epidemic?

#140

Post by sylens »

chucksta wrote: post #124
not_the_fda wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Philly is a literally a city of zombies that will stab you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl0fDm7HSQ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi1Kf-1qd6Y

Kensington is hardly an example of the city, it was a mess before the pandemic. Drug epidemic is bad but that's all cherry picked, dude even said it https://youtu.be/nl0fDm7HSQ0?t=169 "one block is clean, the next isn't"

My experience with Philadelphia since the pandemic is that its public transit is now riddled with crime and heroin users, whereas before that was not the case
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