> Any actual SF residents in this thread?
Hello! :)
I grew up here, and live here now. I'm left-leaning by USA standards.
> One person even called it a “right wing dystopia”.
As an aside, I think they meant something like "what a right-winger would call a dystopia", not that it was the result of right-wing policies (which makes no sense.)
> The problems we are trying to solve in SF are hard.
Not this one. Pooping and peeing in cities has been a solved problem since Roman times.
A toilet could be a simple as a hole over the sewer: squat and go. That would be better than the current status quo and cost approximately nothing. But we're trying to act like a grown up not-insane town these days due to the influx of techies since the Dot Com Boom.
> This place is fully developed.
What do you mean?
> But damn if this city doesn’t try its hardest, moreso than almost any other city I know of.
I can't agree. We make loud noises, sure, but when it comes to actually getting things done downtown it's just like any other city. I mean, check out the career of Willie Brown, eh?
It's an open secret (if you've lived here long enough) that city hall has a lot of "soft" corruption. Some of it even makes the papers, e.g. Nuru et. al.
> we keep looking the problem in the eye and trying to solve it at a systemic level
Superficially maybe.
In reality we sweep homeless camps and keep or discard people's stuff. I've heard we recently started requiring homeless to carry special ID cards to access city services. "Papers please?" We have special police on the buses to check people's fares. That is a new thing here. I remember when we didn't waste taxpayer money on fascist policies like uniformed police sweeping public transport checking papers and ticketing or arresting people who didn't pay their fare.
I've heard that now-Governor Newsom wrote a book about his experiences as Mayor here. In it he relates that he found out that the fares we collect on our public transportation system only cover the cost of collecting the fares themselves. It's a break-even process: the fares pay for collecting the fares, everything else in the Muni system is paid for by taxes.
So he asked, why not make Muni free?
The answer, he wrote, is that it's believed that all the homeless people would ride it, and trash it. They buses would become "rolling dumpsters" was the quote, IIRC.
Look that in the eye, eh?
If I seem somewhat aggressive I apologize. I don't mean to pick on you.
> I would love to hear actual solutions from people who say they could do it better
Okay, I was homeless for about 4.5 years, and spent a little bit of that time here in SF.
Here's how you solve it.
First, everyone eats.
Say it with me, shout it loud as you can: EVERYONE EATS!
There are thousands of commercial kitchens in the city. This state produces more food each year than most nations.
"Even God hesitates to offer anything but bread to the starving man."
Step one: Everyone eats.
Step two: Build houses and give them to people. This city is empty. More than half of it is one story tall. We could easily house a million more people here without sacrificing QoL or open space.
Step three: human recycling center, that's a crass way to put it but whatever. Heal people. Love each other, etc.
That's really step zero: get out of the way of love. All these problems are easy to solve if we just loved each other better, eh?
Peace man, :)