San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

Having lived in SF for a number of years now, I 100% agree that SF is just dystopian as hell.<p>Trash everywhere downtown, human feces&#x2F;needles&#x2F;smell of urine all over downtown &amp; SOMA, depressing mix of aggressive and zombie-like homeless, very few kids&#x2F;families, very few minorities (especially African-Americans), barely functioning public transportation system, high rents forcing six-figure earners to live with 2 roommates and still pay $2500&#x2F;month, 400 sq ft studios going for $700k, every other non-tech worker is an Uber driver&#x2F;Instacart Shopper&#x2F;DoorDash delivery person

The elites of SF and many people on HN are caught in this loop:<p>1. Companies don&#x27;t take personal responsibility when they do antisocial things, claiming they can&#x27;t be blamed, since they are just following incentives in order to compete.<p>2. Companies follow incentives, and lobby government to incentivize the behaviors that make them the most money (even if those behaviors are antisocial).<p>3. Government, influenced by the belief that the only way to do things is incentives (since regulation risks losing companies to other jurisdictions) gives companies the incentives they ask for (even when those incentives incentivize antisocial behavior).<p>4. GOTO 1.<p>We cannot trust markets to regulate the behaviors of companies. There is little to no benefit to any company, i.e. investing in ending homelessness when they can simply wall off their campus and prevent the homeless from entering. Companies might choose one or two social issues to do good on for marketing purposes, while creating equal or greater harm in other areas. Until SF (and indeed, the rest of the world) becomes more willing to regulate companies, things are only going to continue on their current trajectory.

I&#x27;ve lived in New York City for about 25 years in three different boroughs, and as as a member of the &quot;arty bohemian gentrifier&quot; class I was in transitional low-income areas and things like occasional street crime, gunshots and stuff like that were not unusual.<p>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 SF. It&#x27;s equally rare that I&#x27;d agree with a National Review writer but SF was really ugly and quite unsafe feeling. Manhattan in the late 80s was probably a little more comparable to that. But I can&#x27;t imagine why anyone would want to live in SF nowadays, if you&#x27;re in tech you should aspire to work remotely and live anywhere you want.

It&#x27;s weird that technology oriented people see code&#x2F;IT in terms of infrastructure, but too little from a city as such.<p>I&#x27;m living in Vienna, Austria which is a city consistently rated to be in the top 5 most livable cities by multiple independent evaluations.<p>How did that happen? A strong sense of ownership and infrastructure thinking over a _century_.<p>Just to mention the obvious, property prices do not exist in a vacuum and cities where property prices go through such a steep and continuous rise as in London, Moscow, San Francisco etc. are not a reflection of desirability or market forces but rather the total abdication of planning and responsibility from the local authorities.<p>There are dozens of things local leadership can do to fix infrastructure and living standards issues, never let anyone tell you otherwise.

The article omits SB 50 [1], the effort by Scott Wiener (state senator from SF) to increase housing density and remove regulatory hurdles for housing development near transit.<p>From what I’ve seen it’s the most promising method to increase housing supply CA-wide given that many municipalities resist development.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;03&#x2F;25&#x2F;opinion&#x2F;california-home-prices-climate.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;03&#x2F;25&#x2F;opinion&#x2F;california-home-p...</a>

For those who are wondering, given the publisher, no, the essay is not simply a rant against rent-control:<p>&gt; <i>True revolution would involve curbing the authority of the San Francisco Planning Commission. If Democrats in the city or in Sacramento actually cared about the poor or the environment (density is green), they would enact a land-value tax and establish a redistributive policy to align the interests of the city, current residents, and future citizens. Strong government housing policy could spur growth and redistribute the city’s wealth fairly. But most of all, the freedom to build and experiment is the engine of Silicon Valley dynamism. Allow the experiments of the few to become the prosperity and fulfillment of the many, and the city could thrive once again.</i>

&quot;“Where I grew up, no one would walk past a person collapsed on the side of the street on their way to work and not do something about it. I hope I never get used to the fact that that happens in San Francisco.”&quot;<p>Oh, just stop.<p>I have lived, full-time, in many, many cities in the United States and nobody - not the good Lutherans in Minneapolis nor the heirs-of-cowboys in Denver nor the tanned youth in San Diego nor anyone in NYC or DC - is stopping to attend to a filthy, passed-out drunk slumped over in the middle of a sidewalk.<p>The people (that I live and work with) in San Francisco are a lot of things but they&#x27;re not monsters and I imagine they compare, roughly equivalently, to whatever golden locale Sam Altman grew up in.

Although a bit overdramatic at times, there is so much truth on this article. I wish i could do more than upvote it.<p>“Crowded thoroughfares such as Market Street, even in the light of midday, stage a carnival of indecipherable outbursts and drug-induced thrashings about which the police seem to do nothing.”<p>This really touched me because the police in SF, if you ever see one, look disinterested at best.

I live in Utah but work remote for an SF company. Utah is getting a huge influx of outsiders moving to the state (as are other urban centers like Austin, TX).<p>Sure, SF has better weather than we do. But this year we had 6-7 ft of powder in mountains a 30-45 minute drive away. Homes with 5 bedrooms and a quarter acre are $350k. We have plentiful public parks, tons of museums, and great utility prices. Oh and my SF salary means I can fly&#x2F;live elsewhere for the 2-3 hottest and coldest weeks of the year, whether or not I take that as PTO.<p>This SF company pays me more than local Utah companies would, but probably less than many of their SF-based employees. Win-win all around. They gave me a standing desk, 4k monitor, all the supplies. I get an office with a door and plenty of space for my plants. I don&#x27;t even use headphones - I just have a receiver and some Onkyo speakers.<p>This is my second remote job and everywhere I look more and more companies are moving to a distributed working model. It just so much more financial sense than giving 1&#x2F;3 of your own revenue to landlords, as well as the huge portion of employee salaries that go to landlords as well. Out here in Utah a company&#x27;s budget can go to actually <i>building the product</i>. Pretty soon all the &quot;San Francisco companies&quot; will have to compete with others that can strongly undercut them on price due to not having &quot;San Francisco overhead&quot; but still have amazing talent.<p>My favorite thing about it: heads-down time. Folks interrupt me far less and I just get to hide away in my office and code for hours at a time. The only downside here is that I need to schedule time for explicitly socializing: I have 3 separate &quot;lunch&quot; groups that I attend at least once a week and I fly into SF quarterly and spend that week almost entirely socializing.

People working to fix the problems: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;yimbyaction.org" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;yimbyaction.org</a> - get involved!

The author draws a very unsubtle if not direct line between housing costs and homelessness. Is there any? I was under the impression that most of the homeless are mentally ill and&#x2F;or transplants from other areas. What percent of them just can&#x27;t afford the rent?

I particularly liked the top comment on the article (not mine):<p>&gt; In the early seventies, the sport fishing Mecca of choice turned from the warm southern states where fish grew all year long, to oddly, some of the finger lakes in upstate New York. Record size fish were being taken almost daily. A sportsfisherman’s dream from lakes that unbeknownst to them had died ten yeas earlier from acid rain. With no new fish being born, the bottom of the food chain had already collapsed. With no small fish left for anglers to catch and release, eventually only the largest were left. Within a few years, the collapse was finally evident, and brutal for anyone who invested in a fishing lodge industry in the region.

Here’s what I don’t get. The real struggle seems to always be against local governments and the residents. The residents all know how jacked up it is and have good ideas for fixes, but constantly butt heads against their city.<p>Somehow everybody knows this, but votes in people who <i>increase</i> the power, scope, and responsibility of the local government which works against their interest?

San Francisco is a bonsai kitten. It wants to grow into a major world city like NYC, LA, or Tokyo, but its older residents are steadfastly opposed and want to keep it in a jar so it stays cute. The result is a painful deformed mess.<p>I don&#x27;t really think city planning boards can control how cities grow. A city is a living thing. If it &quot;wants&quot; to grow, let it grow. If it doesn&#x27;t, I don&#x27;t think it can be forced.<p>Detroit learned the opposite lesson and is recovering in part by realizing that the Detroit of today is destined to be a much smaller city population wise than it once was and they are adjusting and &quot;right-sizing&quot; the city accordingly. They are concentrating on the living areas and demolishing and transforming the dead ones into parks, public gardens, urban farming, or natural land. The result will be a smaller city with a ton of really cool history and a cool &quot;post-industrial&quot; vernacular.

The silver lining here is that fewer people will be present when the next big one comes and wipes out the city (predicted to occur in the next 500 years).<p>It makes sense societally to spread out innovation centers in a number of areas to reduce catastrophic risk.

“Up and down the city’s disorienting hills, you notice homeless men and women — junkies, winos, the dispossessed...“<p>Did the author ever actually walk in SF? The homeless mostly stay in the flats, the hills are fine (and higher rent of course).

1) Affordable housing 2) Population density 3) Reasonable work-home distances<p>You get to choose 2 of the 3 constraints. Much of California&#x27;s political situation is about people believing they can buck the constraints and have it all. You cannot, as long as there&#x27;s free movement in this country. People come here for jobs, and the old residents demanding that the constraints all be met is causing things to go down the toilet. And people are getting angry at the failure of government to take a position against fantastical thinking and actually solve the problems.

&#x27;SnapCrap&#x27; app invites San Francisco residents to report poop on city streets<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sfgate.com&#x2F;bayarea&#x2F;article&#x2F;SnapCrap-app-San-Francisco-poop-feces-dirty-street-13281837.php" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sfgate.com&#x2F;bayarea&#x2F;article&#x2F;SnapCrap-app-San-Fran...</a>

I&#x27;m planning to move to SF form Barcelona next year and this kind of article always makes me doubt a lot about my decision. Especially because of the fact that seems like that there&#x27;s nothing less then tech to talk about in SF, and i&#x27;m seriously worried about how this can affect not only my creativity but also my relationship (my girlfriend is not tech). Can you advise me any other place (in the US) to move for a while where i can improve my network, discuss interesting ideas that have a similar wheather condition to Spain??? I&#x27;m starting to consider new options.<p>Thank you!

The author lost me at<p>&gt; Cities are nearly immortal; though they decline, they rarely die.<p>Cities great and small die all the time. Ur died, Babylon died. SF will die. Cities die when their purpose no longer justifies their expense. And the purpose of most cities is concentrating people to facilitate trade. But increasingly there’s nothing to do in SF, especially for the masses. If people don’t figure out something for these people to do, SF will definitely die.

It’s interesting how this guy cherry picks examples. He mentions Sam Altman but declined to mention how Y Combinator is relocating to SF. And there are incubators and small companies etc. not saying there’s no negative trend but this articles comes off as a biased rant vs a more balanced perspective, which given the title i suppose is fair just not compelling.

I&#x27;ve visited San Franscisco a few times. First in the 80s, it was a lot nicer then. Most recently last year, where I found the awful zombie apocalypse around Moscone Center. What a change!<p>I hope SF can find a way to revitalize, sort of like NYC has done. It seemed to go through some dark times in the 70s, but now is much nicer. Wishing the same luck for SF.

A good video on the topic:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;bpAi70WWBlw" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;bpAi70WWBlw</a><p>It’s not a homelessness crisis. Homelessness is a symptom. Our cities are in the grips of a heroin &amp; meth epidemic. Until we acknowledge that, it won’t get better.

Hmm an article on SF from the National Review. I&#x27;ll pass on that one.

&gt; But somewhere in the bureaucratic hierarchy faceless city functionaries administer labyrinthine regulations that benefit the rich over the poor, the old over the young, the here over those to come, the past over the future.<p>One would think that, given this article comes to us from the National Review, this would be presented as a positive.<p>Jokes aside, the city and really the Bay as a whole are unlikely to change much. Prop 13 goes unmentioned in the article, somehow, though it remains a core part of the problem; so does the tendency for tech companies to build their headquarters on the peninsula or the west side of SJ. One would think that with the extraordinary amount of wealth floating around the bay that there would be some effort put into making the place better for everyone, ie. the old &quot;changing the world for the better&quot; idea that presumably drives a lot of startups, but I don&#x27;t see it.<p>The standard for tech seems to be avoiding the hard problems of politics and long-term local issues that require campaigns and consensus rather than code and servers. I remember finding it striking a couple years ago to see that on the list of corporate sponsors for <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.spur.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.spur.org&#x2F;</a>, Microsoft was donating more money than Google. Perhaps there&#x27;s another non-profit dedicated to urban planning in the bay that Google prefers to support, but I haven&#x27;t heard of it. Apple could have considered building their HQ closer to public transport, but last I checked decided to go with tacking on a set of ugly massive parking structures to set the backdrop for their nice shiny new building.<p>I&#x27;m not really sure what should be done. The transient nature of many people that live in SF&#x2F;the bay means they&#x27;re unlikely to have an interest in city&#x2F;area politics, much less take action on it (if they even can - several of my co-workers are on various kinds of visa). I&#x27;d guess that in the coming years tech will wax and wane but never really fade and the wealthy will gradually retreat from the public sphere and areas, surrounded by an ever-increasing array of private software functions that replace public services for those that can pay.

I&#x27;ve seen articles that are less political get reported a lot faster than this.

This is a National Review opinion article offered as a news piece (as they are wont to do). It features a seamless conflation of SF&#x27;s problems with Silicon Valley&#x27;s somewhat corrosive lobbying effects on the urban expansion problems of SF, as if they&#x27;re the same thing.<p>It suggests that San Francisco&#x27;s housing problem is NOT directly at the feet of the folks who own the majority of the property, and instead implicates... uh, let me just check the article again... &quot;Baby Boomer civil servants [acting] as urban taxidermists stuffing and mounting a dead city so it always resembles the past.&quot;<p>The implication of that paragraph is that it&#x27;s democratic &quot;regulation&quot; that is halting SF&#x27;s expansion, but if you live in the city you&#x27;re looking at the recent unsuccessful public&#x2F;private partnership building projects wondering why building codes aren&#x27;t stricter (I&#x27;m looking at you, ridiculous Salesforce(tm) transbay terminal). The implication that it&#x27;s bureaucracy and not a bitter generational argument between young and old residents about &quot;preserving the city&quot; vs. &quot;meeting the housing demand&quot; is likewise absurd; it&#x27;s SF citizens as a whole that are debating how to proceed. A republican governance wouldn&#x27;t be better off here, except it might find more alignment with property owners (who benefit enormously from this state of affairs) instead of less.<p>It suggests that SF doesn&#x27;t have culture, but that&#x27;s wrong. It has tons of culture, but it&#x27;s <i>not accessible to rich white people hoping to stroll through like tourists.</i> You can still access it if you code yourself correctly, but if you roll up with merino wool shoes and $800 vest over a tech t-shirt and iWatch, you&#x27;re not gonna make a lot of progress because people will avoid you.<p>But if you are that person, it&#x27;s not like there aren&#x27;t a dozen hopeful artists lurking around the edges of popular rich mission spots hoping to get your spare $20s. It&#x27;s not like public spaces don&#x27;t exist for you.<p>Most humorously, it features at least one nationally reviled industrialist who has increasingly had a hard time finding anyone willing to work with him anywhere where Software Engineers make good money. Thiel avoids popping up in SF because <i>people don&#x27;t like his politics here and would rather he retreat back to his bubble in orange county</i>. We don&#x27;t, strictly speaking, need his money. We have enough money, we need to build up the will to use it to solve the problems we have more acutely, but that are shared in kind with every city that&#x27;s finding a way to prosper in an era where many other cities are struggling to recover from even more acute decline.<p>This article is everything I&#x27;d expect from a National Review piece about SF. It is confused about the geography, tone deaf to the politics, quick to blame local government for problems brought about by citizens, and steeped in the popular meme that &quot;art is dead because I don&#x27;t see marble busts anymore&quot; memes that sound like they&#x27;re fresh out of a PragerU video.

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