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San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide
271–280 of 312 posts
Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
Companies are not the problem, San Franciscans are the problem. By all accounts, Texas regulates companies less than California. But Texas is at the national average in cost-of-living adjusted poverty rate, despite being a majority-minority state, while California tops the charts in poverty: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevor... . As compared to California, Texas also has much higher rates o…
Where in Texas were you? I live in Austin, which is rapidly becoming a landing spot for Californians looking to get away, and my experience in Texas has been quite different than yours. Segregation was physically built into the planning of the city of Austin[0], and it's pretty apparent if you spend a significant amount of time here. Not only that, but rising cost of living in Austin keeps pushing minority communitie…
Having grown up near-ish Austin and now living in SF, I agree that SF is just ahead of the curve. There's nothing special about Texas that makes it immune to de facto segregation caused by history and NIMBYism. In fact, Texas government is significantly more dysfunctional than that of California. If Houston (or Chicago for that matter) had followed the same economic path as SF, it would have ended up with the same problems. The idea that rich people in Texas are somehow more virtuous is laughable; talk to people from Plano sometime.
Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
yeah, not sure what happened with that link on their site. SF Gov seems to have moved the report. Here's a breakdown by St. Anthony's: https://www.stanthonysf.org/san-franciscos-2015-homeless-cou... (to be clear this is from 2015, so nearing 4 years out of date)
Thank you for posting the actual link - that is helpful. From that link: "Survey results show that 71% of respondents were living in San Francisco when they became homeless, and of those, 49% had been living in San Francisco for 10 years or more." This sheds very little additional information. This statistic is often presented as if 71% of the homeless had their own apartment before they became homeless, but for all…
Seriously, get off the internet and go volunteer at St Anthony's for an hour. You'll get to meet some representative sample of the homeless in San Francisco and gain a much more high resolution picture on what all the various causes of homelessness are. The picture is complicated but it's not at all what you're positing.
I guarantee if you spend a week working with the homeless in San Francisco, you'll meet at least some people more intelligent than you, people who at one point earned more money than you, people who are more mentally composed and happy than you. You won't meet all of them in the same person but you'll meet at least one example of someone who can disprove every single simplistic pet theory about homelessness ever proposed.
Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is it that so much aggressive political rhetoric related to race and the tech industry is coming from this area if there are very few African Americans there in the first place? I live in Atlanta where the minority population is much higher all around and I don't get the sense at all that there's rampant racism or discrimination. Is this problem unique to the Bay Area or is this largely white guilt?
I'd attribute it to two or three key factors: 1. Large Asian population. The SF companies I've worked at often had 30-45% Asian workforce. In theory this should be a good thing as far as diversity goes (and I have had the privilege of learning from and getting to know people coming from very different societies on a personal level, most of them Asian). But for a variety of reasons I'm not going to dig into, Asians do…
> Perhaps as a result of #2, many in the SF Bay area aren't exploring non-discriminatory explanations as to why there are few African Americans in Bay area tech companies. First off, the Black population is not very big in the Bay area. Less than 2% of mountain view's population is black. Overall the Bay area is 6.7% black, about half that of the country as a whole.
What percent of SF Bay area tech workers grew up in the Bay area? If it is not high, it is not clear that the Bay area's general population racial demographics are relevant.
Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide
#275I've lived in New York City for about 25 years in three different boroughs, and as as a member of the "arty bohemian gentrifier" class I was in transitional low-income areas and things like occasional street crime, gunshots and stuff like that were not unusual. But only once did I actually see two street people start a knife fight on a subway train and it was during one of my probably less than five short visits to S…
Manhattan in the late 80s was probably a little more comparable to that
What changed?
Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
I could so see a planet-bound version of the movie Elysium. The elite top 5% live in walled off fortresses, a la Aeon Flux's city, and have everything - while the rest live outside in a daily fight to live against a dystopian environment financially and economically. I don't think it's inevitable though, so the question is - how do we stop it? We have some of the brighter minds in tech on this forum, what are your th…
Walking around Pacific Heights gives me that feeling… How to stop it and create a city where anyone can live: - build world class public transit - double the number of houses but decommodify the housing market as much as possible with lots of social housing and controlled rent increases
It's actually funny you said that. After I wrote my earlier comment I was thinking of Frank Loyd Wright's version of the perfect city, Broadacre City. It looks like it might go a ways toward solving some of the modern city problems, if it was viable: https://franklloydwright.org/revisiting-frank-lloyd-wrights-...
Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide
#277I've lived in New York City for about 25 years in three different boroughs, and as as a member of the "arty bohemian gentrifier" class I was in transitional low-income areas and things like occasional street crime, gunshots and stuff like that were not unusual. But only once did I actually see two street people start a knife fight on a subway train and it was during one of my probably less than five short visits to S…
Manhattan in the late 80s was probably a little more comparable to that What changed?
Giuliani
Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
Homelessness and mental health issues leading to homelessness aren't really an issue the police can address alone. Housing is indeed a big part of the problem; other cities (New Orleans for example) have had excellent results relocating formerly homeless people into inexpensive apartments.
Maybe you haven't been harassed or panhandled while walking in SOMA and had the police just watch and ignore, but that is an issue the police can help with. I've also seen the police help, but it's few and far between because there are so few police on the streets in SOMA. It's not that the police are bad, that they are the cause, or they are the only solution. I think the police are probably underfunded, understaffe…
That's fair. I haven't.
Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have to wonder... Do all the southern racists hide it less... Or are there so many blatant racists that the coy ones are a lot harder to detect? I'm sure there are plenty of racists everywhere, but I do find it hard to believe that there aren't more percentage-wise in the south.
> I'm sure there are plenty of racists everywhere, but I do find it hard to believe that there aren't more percentage-wise in the south. Isn't that statement prejudiced and discriminatory toward people living in the South? You're doing exactly what it is you're accusing and entire geographic region of doing. Why do you think there are more racists in the South? Why do racists believe what they do? I suspect the answe…
It is prejudiced against the South. That's the last acceptable prejudice amongst the "woke," and I say this as a red state SJW. Lots of blue state liberals have no idea that the Southern diaspora code switches with them, often avoids having to talk about where they're from lest it be held against them, that making comments about "escaping the south" isn't cute or funny at all, it's insulting, hurtful, and a microaggression if there ever was one. You can't get ahead if people decide your funny way of talking means you're inherently backwards, ignorant, stupid, and uneducated. For all the crowing and screaming about diversity, where the hell are Appalachian voices in mainstream American discourse? Where are the voices from the rural Mississippi Delta? Places whose culture is unique from the rest of the country but incredibly rich and beautiful and full? Is it because if these places were humanized, maybe the "get what we vote for" narrative used to justify our disenfranchisement and maintain the exploitative power structures that be down here would fall apart?
Mississippi is 40% African American. Of course there are racists down there as there are any where else, but you have any idea how hard it would be to function in Mississippi with that demographic make up if people were half as racist as the South is alleged to be? You'd think they'd be uncovering clandestine mass graves of black people every other week or worse down here s2g. I cannot and will not get over the blackest part of America being labeled "Trump Country" and used as the scapegoat for all of the nation's bigotry. It's fucking lazy victim-blaming. We are the poorest, least educated, and most vulnerable part of the country. Shitty rich people with shitty agendas own our governments, as they have for decades and decades, and the rest of the country sure does get off on telling us our hardships are our own fault.
Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you for posting the actual link - that is helpful. From that link: "Survey results show that 71% of respondents were living in San Francisco when they became homeless, and of those, 49% had been living in San Francisco for 10 years or more." This sheds very little additional information. This statistic is often presented as if 71% of the homeless had their own apartment before they became homeless, but for all…
Seriously, get off the internet and go volunteer at St Anthony's for an hour. You'll get to meet some representative sample of the homeless in San Francisco and gain a much more high resolution picture on what all the various causes of homelessness are. The picture is complicated but it's not at all what you're positing. I guarantee if you spend a week working with the homeless in San Francisco, you'll meet at least…
You're talking past me to a prototypical "person who (you) disagree with". To wit:
- I made no comments about homeless people being uninteresting or unintelligent or how much money they do, or did earn, etc.
- I have presented no pet theories about the causes of homelessness or the demerits of the homeless.
I have simply pointed out that a very, very commonly published and cited statistic is, in my opinion, very ill defined and probably misused. I also suggested a possible alternative narrative that I suspect is more correct.
Please don't put all of the things you hate into a box and then shove me in there with it.
"Seriously, get off the internet and go volunteer at St Anthony's for an hour."
I have done that all over the world.
Cheers!