San Francisco city planners made an idiotic decision about 50 years ago to push housing out of downtown, replace it with office buildings, and build gigantic freeways to bring people in from their new suburban homes. Now the chickens are coming home to roost. Many, many people fought hard against this stupid decision at the time, and city planners should have listened. Hopefully, somebody learns a lesson here, and we don’t have to repeat this same cycle another 50 years from now.
Downtown S.F. on the brink: It’s worse than it looks
181–190 of 272 posts
Re: Downtown S.F. on the brink: It’s worse than it looks
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
Prop 13 ensures that once you’ve bought in you feel no more pain from the housing crisis, and thus most Californian voters would have to vote against their own individual self-interest to do anything positive on housing, which just won’t happen. By contrast, in Texas there is no income tax but high property tax, and as prices have shot up recently most homeowners have reason to be worried about it and to vote to take…
I stand to benefit from Prop 13; yet I would vote against Prop 13 without a second thought. It is causing enormous and unjust human suffering. People vote against their self interest all the time, if you convince them that it is for the greater good.
Would voting against Prop 13 result in you having to sell your home/condo? I've wondered this myself and if I'm perfectly honest... I'm not so sure.
Voting against my self interest when all it does is affect my bank balance? No problem. But if it forces my kid to change neighborhoods (and therefore schools) while giving up a home I plan to retire in... that's harder.
Re: Downtown S.F. on the brink: It’s worse than it looks
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
CBS News. San Francisco Luxury Condo Overlooks City's Worst Squalor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GbcWOGyuq0 CBS News. KPIX Special Report: San Francisco's Tenderloin – A State of Emergency https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuWeMl2lCMM ABC News. Here's why one of San Francisco's top officers says crime is here to stay https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4112HGOCTQ KRON 4. 70% of San Francisco residents say quality of…
If the poll routinely says 40% will leave and only 6.7% do when a pandemic makes the benefits of being here moot for 2 years, you should throw the poll out the window. What's more, labor force data shows most of those have returned. What is your agenda? Why do you people care so much? I'm well aware of the city's problems but there's no nuance in these discussions and it's tiring. I'm happy we'll have a new DA and ho…
There's no _actual_ mental health help in this system. We just have prisons and quasi-prisons that drug their inmates and bill their insurance. Short of that, the healthiest thing we can do for people is to connect them with support, only move them from situations they want to be removed from, and otherwise let them continue to live their current lives.
Re: Downtown S.F. on the brink: It’s worse than it looks
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Keith Rabois and David Sacks and all of the other billionaire VCs who love to whine and complain about SF on twitter are nowhere near the crime (which is totally blown out of proportion). These guys own $20-30MM homes in Pacific Heights which is one of the poshest neighborhoods in the world. They're complaining because they're used to being able to pay for perfection - perfect dinners, perfect vacations, assistants a…
Chesa Boudin lost his recall election unopposed. That's pretty damning evidence crime is bad and the people are right to dismiss strawman arguments as deranged nonsense.
> unopposed
Do you know what “recall” means
Re: Downtown S.F. on the brink: It’s worse than it looks
#185I live in SF & read these articles, which all have a tone of “What is to be done?” They seem reluctant to draw unpopular conclusions, even if those conclusions are inevitable. So here, I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. Downtown as a healthy fully occupied business district is dead. Cause of death: remote work. You can wait 50 years if you want and see if it comes back, but it never will; there’s no going back. Yo…
> Cause of death: https://twitter.com/bettersoma
Why would any business set up shop in these conditions. Remote or not, plenty of safer & cleaner spots in America to do business.
Re: Downtown S.F. on the brink: It’s worse than it looks
#186I live in SF & read these articles, which all have a tone of “What is to be done?” They seem reluctant to draw unpopular conclusions, even if those conclusions are inevitable. So here, I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. Downtown as a healthy fully occupied business district is dead. Cause of death: remote work. You can wait 50 years if you want and see if it comes back, but it never will; there’s no going back. Yo…
Forget retrofitting. Go SCO. Single Cubicle Occupancy.
That’d make a good backdrop for a comedy / startup story or unlikely friends sitcom. Queue a bunch of young nerds living in an SCO trying to make it big. A couple cubicles over would be the crazy non-techy for comedic relief, etc. ;)
Re: Downtown S.F. on the brink: It’s worse than it looks
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's absolutely insane that the government has any say in what a building gets used for. I can see some arguments why the government has a say in constructing a building in the first place, but controlling what it's used for is just planned economy, communist hubris!
You should talk to people in Houston. It effectively has no zoning which means you get oil processing plants built next door to elementary schools. The Austrian Economists will jump in here and say that's why certain private property developments buy the equivalent of "sky rights" (or "land rights" I guess) with adjoining properties to effectively create their own zoning.
>you get oil processing plants built next door to elementary schools
Do you have any examples? This doesn't seem likely to me.
Re: Downtown S.F. on the brink: It’s worse than it looks
#188The real solution to take the edge of these sort of impacts is some kind of regional 'Bay Area' or 'NorCal' planning and funding, somewhere between the state and the cities. America is a little unique in the developed world for lacking decision bodies at this level as well as having very local ('city' based) taxation decisions [n.b. I generally think this is good].
Depends on where you are in the country. Some states, particularly ones with executive-style county governments, have started making these stronger forms of government, and in others the spread of the transit network is functionally tying municipalities together more strongly in a similar way.
Re: Downtown S.F. on the brink: It’s worse than it looks
#189The issue with everybody saying "just add housing" is that SF is becoming unappealing as a place to live for other reasons too. Rampant crime and homeless are big issues. Nobody wants to move to a city with the level of crime that SF now has, when that city is also seriously talking about defunding the police.
Re: Downtown S.F. on the brink: It’s worse than it looks
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a bad situation if you want long-term neighborhood and cultural cohesion, though, because it encourages turnover (particularly among less affluent groups).
I mean if people can defer taxes until they die you’re not increasing turnover at all.
There's value to generational continuity, though--again, particularly for marginalized communities. One of the ways gentrification makes its way in is during these kinds of estate liquidations. I think it's reasonable to assert that there's value in not fracturing those communities any more than is necessary.