81–90 of 201 posts
Now, if only 10 or 20 million more people would get out of California, then maybe the population would be back to a reasonable level...
Everyone who can't tell the difference between CA and TX should really just move to TX...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Spot on. In most previous decades, the city government (no matter the party) would have been able to take whatever action (probably more $$ for police and more enforcement) seemed appropriate to the problem, and that would be a non-partisan issue. Now even admitting that there is an actual issue seems to be a partisan stance.
On a non federal level, imprisoning people and hence goading them elsewhere is the only solution. No city/county/state has the resources to be able to offer healthcare or housing. Freedom of movement across the country means net benefit recipients would move in, and net payers into the system would move out.
Of course, if one is the retributive sort, nothing grinds one’s spleen more than someone worse off getting something “they don’t deserve”.
I personally don’t understand why the some exceptionally wealthy billionaire in California doesn’t solve the homelessness problem themselves, expending some mere fraction of their net worth (i.e., the value of a couple bucks to the rest of us).
Downtown SF (and especially OP's neighborhood of 7th/8th Mission Street) is not the place to be. It's a bit like complaining about LA and living right near downtown. Upper Market, North Beach, Hayes Valley, Valencia St, Mission Dolores, Polk Street, Upper Nob Hill, Haight Ashbury -- all fun locations. I've lived near Dolores Park for the past 15 months now and have had a great experience. I've found community, made n…
Now, if only 10 or 20 million more people would get out of California, then maybe the population would be back to a reasonable level...
Everyone who can't tell the difference between CA and TX should really just move to TX...
Unbelievable how embedded this meme is in our community. The article has to call it out explicitly right at the top, admit it's a fallacy, and then just... plows ahead anyway: > My biggest problem with SF was simply not feeling physically safe [...] SF has a pretty low violent crime rate [...] Instead, the problem was that SF [has] thousands of people wandering around who are suffering from untreated substance abuse…
People should consider moving to a different neighborhood first, pretty much none of these problems apply to me where I am in lower haight SF also has way fewer drug murders than cities I have lived in on the east coast
People should have a right to feel safe and secure in their home and possessions and not have to move because the state refuses to fulfill it's function.
The local crime statistics are saying that San Francisco is a safe city with crime trending downwards.
The statistics are the result of the DAs refusing to prosecute crime. At the beginning of the BLM era everyone said that what is going to happen is police officers are no longer going to do arrests because they fear becoming the next major incident, at the same time the DAs started refusing to prosecute people, so they'd end up back on the street. The result was no one was investigating or prosecuting crimes anymore.…
Drugs and Homelessness are political problems now. It's been a while since they are treated as health issues, that's why nobody can do anything, it's because like anything in politics it has become a pissing contest between people that are far too removed from the actual problem.
Spot on. In most previous decades, the city government (no matter the party) would have been able to take whatever action (probably more $$ for police and more enforcement) seemed appropriate to the problem, and that would be a non-partisan issue. Now even admitting that there is an actual issue seems to be a partisan stance.
The real crux of the issue is that the major west coast cities are being tasked with dealing with a nationwide drug and mental health crisis and there just isn't the money to humanely handle the problem. So you end up with people who correctly say that locking people up in prisons for personal drug use is inhumane and doesn't address their problem, while at the same time other folks correctly point out that people should have access to a clean and safe city and not need to watch for needles and human shit.
The federal government needs to provide funding for the west coast states to build more drug treatment centers, funding to train treatment providers, and more funding for mental health services. There are anti-social people who don't belong in jail but can't be on the street, right now there is nowhere for them to go.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is addressed at the end of the article. > Why didn’t you just move to a different part of SF? > I wanted to live in a dense, central area and not in a single family house that’s 4 miles from downtown. Also, my neighborhood was perfectly nice when I moved in, and then got bad. What’s to prevent that from happening to other places in the city as well?
Lower haight is dense and fewer than 2 miles from downtown. I dont perceive the area OP is describing as one I would expect to be free from drug crime even four years ago, whereas I do have that expectation for this region of SF.
The history of Detroit suggests that that can change very quickly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Muni is effectively a donation based system and can take you much further and faster if you live in the right neighborhoods.
Super agree that living within a 5 minute walk of 9th and market, Civic Center, Powell, Montgomery, or embarcadero stations is peak public transit experience from a distance perspective. I loved being able to get on the train at SFO and then hop off essentially at my home. But of course those spots also mean avoiding poops, drug deals, a homeless person in the 1% group that assaults people, and other general shadines…