441–450 of 465 posts
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What does being "woke" have to do with this situation?
I think you replied to the wrong person because neither I nor the parent said anything about "woke."
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I've been here almost half a century now. The city has turned to shit. Prop 13 is part of the problem, but there are lots of confounding factors. FWIW, the lack of housing is largely artificial: there are lots of empty units, they are just priced out of reach of the folks who really need them. I live in Park Merced, on my block there are at least a dozen empty homes, yet a few blocks away there are families living in…
I've been to SF proper only twice (but many times to San Jose). In my opinion, the only things going for it are the weather, coastal locality, sycamores, and interesting terrain. Otherwise it just felt really trashy to me. I wouldn't move there even if I was offered an extra $100k/yr.
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I think you replied to the wrong person because neither I nor the parent said anything about "woke."
You said "Work politicians and..." I thought you meant woke because otherwise the sentence doesn't make sense
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I'm really curious where you live in Glen Park for this to happen. I've never seen crime there. There's no needles anywhere, and kids everywhere.
Near Arlington and Richland. There's a walking trail there along Arlington that attracts a bunch of druggies and creeps. The Richland overpass also has homeless camps near it year round. I think if you live further up the hill, there are fewer issues, but I was close enough to Bernal Heights, the J, 38, and BART, and the community garden--which all brought more riff-raff nearby.
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As usual, the “speculators” and “out of towners” and others are convenient scapegoats, lest we have to face the underlying supply and demand and barriers to development. You want to have a monopoly on housing in a major city? I’d be hard pressed to point out an industry where that would be harder . You have literally millions of competitors.
San Francisco is already the second most densely populated city in the USA (the first being NYC). SF is actually already slightly more densely populated than Tokyo, which many like to tout as a mecha for de-regulated zoning.
This isn't true, even if you limit it to cities with population over 100k. New York City, Jersey City, and Paterson, NJ are all more dense than SF.[0] San Francisco is effectively tied with notoriously anti-development Cambridge, MA. Quite a few smaller cities around the country are more dense as well.[1]
The housing situation in San Francisco is nothing to be proud of, unless you think that having the highest median home prices or median rents is a laudable achievement.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
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Yes climate change. It's going to be bad. Please don't move to Florida
You joke, and I'm sure for some people (who don't really plan to stay anywhere for very long, especially if single & childless) it doesn't matter. But I'm 39 and have little kids. I'd like to stay where I settled for the rest of my life at this point (which may still be another 50+ years). Would you bet on climate change not making Miami a lot less ideal place to live in by the time you're old?
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> Homeowners are a reliable political cohort, they tend to organize quickly as soon as any issues are on the agenda that might affect the value of their land and they will reliably push for whatever increases land values. I feel like this is a myth, do you have research to back this? As a 20+ year home owner, I've never been asked to support anything to increase land/housing value (not that I'd want to, since that me…
Have you been asked to vote for/against zoning changes, or for special approvals for variances for developments? Because I got those all the time. If I didn't show up (which I often did, as a homeowner in the area just to see what they were proposing), all the old folks in the area (90% who owned) definitely did to shoot it down or ask for crazy demands that jack up the price. Sometimes they just filibuster in the ve…
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Here's another more bleak option. Just like in 2008 when corporations bought up huge swaths of the housing market for cash while no one could get a loan. (which is part of the current issue with not enough homes to buy) They aren't betting the market will come roaring back, they are betting that they can corner the market and housing will be a subscription just like everything else they sell. Rent seekers aren't goin…
That assumes they'll get takers on the areas though. With remote work becoming more of the norm, what if the labor market doesn't move back? They'll have a monopoly that few ever pay rent on, and they'll go broke (while the houses rot).
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> like most major cities I have lived in or visited Boston, Chicago, North Carolina's RTP, and the Bay. Only in SF are there homeless camps with blatant drug abuse and public defecation being tolerated by authorities. Only in SF can you run into, with 100% probability, a mentally deranged person on your daily commute. When "specific streets" cover half the city (Financial district, Tenderloin, SoMA, Mission...) they…
Why is this so prevalent in wealthy U.S. cities but so much less in cities like Paris and London. These are more expensive (relative to income), dense cities with housing shortages and smaller GDP's. Maybe there's something to be said for management of tax revenue and prioritization. Also petty theft is prosecuted in these cities.
A person with this kind of mentality who sees homelessness and drug addiction on the street is unlikely to be sympathetic about what brought someone to that state of affairs, or take action to help fix the issue.
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> SF is nowhere near as bad as some of the roughest parts of the Bay. Not by a longshot. You’re absolutely right, but compared to other global cities SF often looks comically bad, and certainly has the appearance of decline. No fundamental reason it can’t rise again though.
And especially given its income and tax levels... there's no excuse for SF to be so chaotic and disheveled. It's like having the income and taxes of Switzerland but living conditions of a third world country.
2: SF has a lower sales tax rate than surrounding counties.
3: Crime data shows SF is no more chaotic than its much larger and more populated neighbor across the bay (Alameda County)