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Why San Francisco’s city government is so dysfunctional

economist.com

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Re: Why San Francisco’s city government is so dysfunctional

#241

Post by proc0 »

bsder wrote: post #228
proc0 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I haven't heard of that, but it seems like this kind of corruption is the most possible explanation.

Possibly, but I don't think its required. The Irvine Company is very similar in Southern California. It seems like they own everything when you want office real estate. So, it's corruption, right? Well, except that if you talk to any contractors (like your internet provider installer) you find that they love The Irvine Company because there is someone who has a little bit of competence for them to talk to when they n…

Well, the corruption comes in when they start influencing politics, and also when they use their monopoly in shady ways to evict people and such. I agree it's problem regardless of corruption.

Re: Why San Francisco’s city government is so dysfunctional

#242

Post by annexrichmond »

lhorie wrote: post #148
bastard_op wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure I would ever call San Francisco "beautiful" - it was a dirty, beat-down city when I lived there in 1999/2000. Unless you can afford a view to just stare over the actual city to the waterfronts, pretending a bum isn't taking a shit on your doorstep right now and leaving their heroine needle for you to clean up. Working in Manhattan many years later, I expected much the same arriving for the first time, but su…

San Francisco's geography is extremely heterogeneous (especially considering the size of the city). All of these are simultaneously true: - yes, there's human feces and needles and tent cities in the Tenderloin/SOMA area - Painted Ladies is an old-ass building, as is much of the residential sprawl around it - Fishermans Wharf is a textbook tourist trap - there's a ton of nice forest-y areas (Presidio, Glen Canyon, St…

Far more than just SOMA/Tenderloin is problematic. Mission, Hunters Point are just as bad. And more suburban areas like Fillmore, Western Addition Inner Richmond are still subject to rampant petty crime. I’ve lived in a few of these areas and I am well aware.

Didn’t a family just get held up at gunpoint while washing their car near Bernal Heights?

Not cherry picking.

Re: Why San Francisco’s city government is so dysfunctional

#243

Post by smolder »

poorjohnmacafee wrote: post #224
Hermitian909 wrote: post #207

As someone who's family has been in the bay area for over a century I was disappointed the article didn't mention any of the old money families who've controlled SF politics for decades. This article[0] mentions some, though not all of the families (The Aliotos aren't mentioned here for example). While I haven't fully kept up, I know in the 90s at least a quarter of the financial district was held by two families. Th…

I think a story about an ultra wealthy ruling class that stands behind the public political class is not going to get published in mainstream outlets. I mean it will if it's about Russia or China or historical periods like "the Gilded Age", but I guess you don't see it talked about for modern day West.

Upsetting super wealthy people too much will get you the gawker treatment, or something similarly debilitating.

Re: Why San Francisco’s city government is so dysfunctional

#244

Post by Hermitian909 »

nradov wrote: post #232
Hermitian909 wrote: post #207

As someone who's family has been in the bay area for over a century I was disappointed the article didn't mention any of the old money families who've controlled SF politics for decades. This article[0] mentions some, though not all of the families (The Aliotos aren't mentioned here for example). While I haven't fully kept up, I know in the 90s at least a quarter of the financial district was held by two families. Th…

If SF politics is really controlled by a wealthy cabal then why have they allowed the situation to deteriorate so much? What possible benefit could they derive from homelessness, dirty streets, rampant property crime, and a dysfunctional government? The wealthy people who control NYC politics seem less tolerant of such issues.

I think your imagery paints an image of a much more organized group than exists.

There are probably at least two dozen families, each of which has a few powerful members. Getting them all to agree on anything besides their own self-interest of maintaining their own wealth and power is quite hard.

But the city government has delivered very well on that one shared interest of theirs. They own a lot of property and property values are way up over the past few decades.

Re: Why San Francisco’s city government is so dysfunctional

#245

Post by spfzero »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #137

I sat and chatted to a homeless fella hanging out at Fisherman’s Wharf in SF for a while. He wasn’t from CA, from Missouri IIRC. He was gay, his family disowned him, he got into drugs. He got bitter, did some nasty stuff to people he hated, did some other misguided things and basically had hit rock bottom. I asked him what he thought would be needed to bring him out of homelessness and keep him inside society. He sai…

Maybe the problem is the urge to “help”? As you say, if they don’t want it, is it really help? We have a bias to thinking that if we wouldn’t be happy in that situation, then they must also be unhappy. Not necessarily.

Re: Why San Francisco’s city government is so dysfunctional

#246

Post by lhorie »

annexrichmond wrote: post #242
lhorie wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

San Francisco's geography is extremely heterogeneous (especially considering the size of the city). All of these are simultaneously true: - yes, there's human feces and needles and tent cities in the Tenderloin/SOMA area - Painted Ladies is an old-ass building, as is much of the residential sprawl around it - Fishermans Wharf is a textbook tourist trap - there's a ton of nice forest-y areas (Presidio, Glen Canyon, St…

Far more than just SOMA/Tenderloin is problematic. Mission, Hunters Point are just as bad. And more suburban areas like Fillmore, Western Addition Inner Richmond are still subject to rampant petty crime. I’ve lived in a few of these areas and I am well aware. Didn’t a family just get held up at gunpoint while washing their car near Bernal Heights? Not cherry picking.

This specific thread was merely talking about the look and feel of the city. If you look at some of my other comments regarding crime, you'll see I very much agree with you.

Re: Why San Francisco’s city government is so dysfunctional

#247

Post by bodyfour »

mc32 wrote: post #177
Manuel_D wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

San Francisco had a declining population from 1960 until 1990: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_San_Francisco So according to people voting with their feet: no, San Francisco was not a brilliant place before tech. Or at least it wasn't brilliant enough to attract a net increase in population.

Believe it or not, I met a RE agent who told me back in the early 90s RE agents were leaving SF because business was so bad. It's hard to imagine, but at least an anecdote. But so was San Jose. Apparently the "downtown" was boarded up in many places till the late 90s when it began emerging from a mini-Detroit like state. MacEnary was feverishly trying to resuscitate it, I don't think it was his effort so much as it w…

That is completely true, but it's by no means confined to SF.

In SF in the 1980s, SOMA was one of the cheapest places even in a cheap city like SF... lost of broke creative types living in old warehouse/industrial space that would otherwise be going derelict.

In lower Manhattan whole neighborhoods were in a similar state -- bohemian artists occupying loads of space that nobody else would touch.

And in London plenty of neighborhoods were full of squats. Housing stock had become so worthless that it wasn't even worth the effort to prevent people living there for free.

Now those same neighborhoods are among the most expensive urban areas in the English-speaking world. People are literally spending millions of dollars to live at those exact same street addresses... in some cases even living in the same structures, just instead of a half-derelict warehouse it'll now be all marble countertops and the like.

All of these places have their own stories and unique factors, but it's also very remarkable how similar the trajectories and how extreme the swing has been.

Re: Why San Francisco’s city government is so dysfunctional

#248

Post by MarkSweep »

bsder wrote: post #228
proc0 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I haven't heard of that, but it seems like this kind of corruption is the most possible explanation.

Possibly, but I don't think its required. The Irvine Company is very similar in Southern California. It seems like they own everything when you want office real estate. So, it's corruption, right? Well, except that if you talk to any contractors (like your internet provider installer) you find that they love The Irvine Company because there is someone who has a little bit of competence for them to talk to when they n…

To add further color to this, the Irvine Company benefits enormously from Prop 13. This law guarantees that once you hold property for long enough, your tax burden will be so much lower than everyone else you have a cost advantage that newcomers will not be able to match. So the current state law favors older companies over new ones.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13

Re: Why San Francisco’s city government is so dysfunctional

#249

Post by spoonjim »

Talanes wrote: post #235
lubujackson wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low because they don't arrest anyone. But that isn't on the police - they don't arrest anyone because the DA doesn't prosecute anyone. Property crime is sky high... if you happen to get caught breaking into a car the penalty is a warning. That is the policy. You have to break into many cars and be caught (which is hard to do) many times for any action. Boudin has indefensibly ignored violent criminals, too. Like a wo…

>But that isn't on the police - they don't arrest anyone because the DA doesn't prosecute anyone. This always struck me as a BS excuse, because if you're trying to demonstrate that the DA is the problem, wouldn't you want to be making arrests and creating a paper trail to prove your point? Apathy by the police just makes them look bad to anyone who's on the receiving end of it. And getting arrested is still a deterre…

Making an arrest is not risk free for a cop, the career lowlifes who have been arrested dozens of times aren’t afraid of anything (including incarceration), and burnout affects even tech workers, of course it affects cops who want to make arrests to get people in jail, and can’t find the motivation when it’s to “create a paper trail.”

Re: Why San Francisco’s city government is so dysfunctional

#250

Post by joophro »

Reading the weak and pathetic responses in this thread shows exactly why the problem is so bad.

>just give the junkies free housing! >just expand mental health clinics! >just…like…talk to them…and stuff. Sing kumbaya and send them to coding boot camp so they can get a job at Facebook!

You people are delusional. This problem is NOT complex.

>arrest/expel all public squatters

>use corporal punishment for those on which you cannot levy fines (like Singapore)

>wall the city and don’t let any of the expelled back in

Really not hard. Just takes an ounce of testosterone which none of you geeks have. Having tolerance for people defecating in public and smashing every other car window doesn’t make you caring or virtuous. It makes you an idiot. And a dangerous idiot if you vote. San Francisco is the most disgusting shithole I’ve ever seen. It will stay that way if this thread is any indication of its base moving forward. You lot are a bunch of feminine, ineffective, do-nothings.

All you need to clean up the city is 50-100 cops with billy clubs and permission to use them. Being a bum should be made so intolerable that the bums leave for Portland on their own accord. And the ones that still refuse should be jailed. Simple.

Enjoy your literal shit filled city.

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