[umeshunni]

More broadly, the San Francisco livability crisis is out of control. Poop is only a visible and easily disagreeable symptom of the broader problem.

The local government can patch symptoms of the problem but some of them (housing, mental health, opioid epidemic) are state-level or national problems that the local government have very little power or ability to solve. Some of the law and order issues are issues the local govt can solve, but there isn't an incentive to solve them.

[BurningFrog]

These arguments remind me of The Onion's classic "‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens".

Which is to say SF's problems are definitely a result of SF policies! For housing specifically, only SF is responsible for making construction in SF near impossible.

The problems of the nation and state are of course also present there, but that doesn't change that SF is unique.

[dagav]

That Onion headline rubs me the wrong way... Just because a problem is unique to a country doesn't make that problem easily preventable.

[altShiftDev]

Yes, actually it does. You simply have to act like other countries in which it isn't a problem.

[paulryanrogers]

Could it be some countries have unique demographics, climate, or cultural factors not found elsewhere?

I'm not saying SF is blameless, but what works in Japan or Norway isn't guaranteed to work in SF.

[asdff]

It could be, but the broader frustration is that these factors you cite aren't even researched on a local level.

You say the trains run on time in Japan, and people don't respond by researching transit infrastructure in Japan to figure out why that is. They respond by throwing their hands in the air and staying it's impossible, unfundable, politically untenable, whatever fluff reason that's indicative of an unwillingness to think analytically about the problem.

The underlying cause is that there is no thought or scholarship in local government, just electoral risk assessment.

[paulddraper]

> state-level or national problems

Sincere question: Why does San Francisco seem to be the only one with those news stories (not NYC, LA, Chicago, Miami, etc.)?

[umeshunni]

While the problems are more global in nature, they have affected San Francisco disproportionately worse than other cities.

Some cities have been better at patching these issues than San Francisco has - e.g Austin, TX is forcibly removing homeless encampments from their streets. Seattle have revised zoning and is building new housing to offset housing shortages even though the local NIMBYs oppose muh gentrification.

San Francisco has the right combination of growth, politics and local sentiment that prevents these problems from being solved.

[Keverw]

Yeah I seen that the governor was going after the mayor about Austin. Wonder what the solution is though? Actually try to help homeless or just tell them to move elsewhere? I know Key West, FL and Nashville, TN has a busing program to send homeless people to Colorado.

I know even here there's a huge heroin problem. Seen recently that the county sheriff and city police joined together kicking out a bunch of homeless in the woods, and then everytime you go to the supermarket people with signs. Sad, but I know there's been cases of people faking homeless to panhandle so don't know who's real or not. It seems like we have so many resources, and one of the richest nations yet we still have homelessness.

I know in some cities it's illegal to even sit on the sidewalk, what if someone is older or disabled needing to take a break and no benches to sit? Then some cities it's illegal to sleep in your car even if legally parked, but I know there's been challences over that. Some area even put spikes to prevent people from sitting down too. Just seems like instead of dealing with it, they rather want them to move along.

[hippich]

Significant correction about Austin, TX - it is not city removing them, it is Abbot (state's governor) disliked his home city attracting too many homeless people, and decided to override policies Austin's residents voted for. I don't think it is a good solution to base off.

[standardUser]

There's plenty of attention on the same topic in LA, Seattle, Portland etc. Basically anywhere the climate (political and weather) is favorable for living in a tent on the sidewalk year round.

[vsef]

LA and San Diego have both had ongoing major news stories involving hepatitis outbreaks due to unsanitary homeless conditions, I think you are just noticing SF stories.

[paulddraper]

I don't think the problem is on my end.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=poop+streets&ia=news

[weberc2]

Genuine (outsider) question: how is housing not a uniquely-SF problem? The rest of the country and even other parts of California seem to have affordable housing, at least relatively speaking.

EDIT: RE downvotes, shame on me for not being familiar with SF politics, I guess. It is, after all, the center of the universe. (◔_◔)

[ng12]

It's not at all a SF problem, it's a metropolitan city problem. NYC, Boston, Denver, Austin, Boise, both Portlands, etc all have the same housing crisis.

The truth is well-paying (i.e. middle class) jobs are coalescing in a small number of cities which have failed to adapt to the growth. As a software engineer this means I can either make great money in one of the aforementioned cities or a fraction of it in an "off-brand" city. Lucky for me I can afford to pay out the nose for my apartment but this causes incredible pressure on the housing supply, especially for those less well-off.

[jupp0r]

There are some cities that seem to have better salary/cost of living ratios. I'm thinking of places like Boulder, CO or Provo, UT.

[dllthomas]

Even assuming your spending exactly tracts cost of living, ratio is only what's relevant if you're going to keep that same cost of living indefinitely. Often what matters more is the net.

[ethanbond]

One might ask why increasing productivity in a region leads to higher cost of living (rent).

Well, that one is pretty obvious. Landlords will charge the highest prices they can get away with.

The more interesting question is why landlords are supposedly entitled to all of the new wealth. After all they had no role in creating any of it.

[lotsofpulp]

Unless we remove the concept of land ownership, there aren’t many viable alternatives that don’t also have unwanted consequences.

At the root of the problem in your question is how does society determine who has a right to live where. Obviously, given the opportunity, most of the world would want to live with on the California coast or similar places.

Obviously, the most basic answer to the question I posed above is “might makes right”. But we have moved past a situation where fight someone to take their land, and instead have to buy it.

Yes, the current system is unfair for most people. Most people will never get a chance to live where they want, and most people are born without the chance in the first place. So why should society let those born to wealthy moms get the spoils?

There isn’t a good answer, other than a better alternative hasn’t been invented yet. But at least in the current scenario, a small percentage of people can move into the places they want, giving enough hope that people aren’t resorting to war. Or they are unable to.

[zozbot234]

> Unless we remove the concept of land ownership, there aren’t many viable alternatives that don’t also have unwanted consequences.

You can assess land rent (there are methods to do this that are quite reliable) and tax away, say, 80% of it, thus leaving in place enough of a market in land that its ordinary function in facilitating exchanges is not impaired. It's quite easy in fact, the main problem is really getting there from here.

[ng12]

Well, this is what free market capitalism is for. If it weren't for the loads of regulation whole neighborhoods in SF would have been replaced with high-density housing a decade ago.

However, California has decided that "housing as investment" supersedes all else. It's not that there's no viable alternatives: this is by design.

[hippich]

Because of risk. For each landlord "entitled to all of the new wealth" in a few successful cities, there are bunch of these less lucky.

[ng12]

https://news.kgnu.org/2018/08/the-affordable-housing-crisis-...

I believe that certain cities have better ratios but I'm also inclined to think those places are just slightly earlier in the cycle.

[blackguardx]

Denver is generally cheaper than Boulder.

[paggle]

Those are rapidly getting discovered and neutralized.

[weberc2]

> It's not at all a SF problem, it's a metropolitan city problem. NYC, Boston, Denver, Austin, Boise, both Portlands, etc all have the same housing crisis.

I was responding to the claim that it's a state- or national-level problem. Perhaps you would argue that this meets some criteria for being a 'national-level' problem, but it's not obvious to me.

[ng12]

Oh -- do you mean to ask how state/national politics play into San Francisco's housing crisis?

California state law is a big part of the problem: it gives individual cities way too much power to decide what gets built and what doesn't, severely restricting supply. For example, neighborhood associations can filibuster new development into nothingness, even for contradictory reasons like not having enough parking but also not being public-transport friendly enough. Additionally, California has wildly skewed tax law that disincentivizes people from moving or downsizing (look up Prop 13). Add in a lack of public transportation, zoning restrictions, and massive corporate subsidies and you've got a housing crisis brewing.

[btilly]

More than that, Prop 13 incentivizes cities to have commercial real estate instead of residential. Thereby forcing housing to be ever farther from workplaces.

[mikevp]

But before Prop 13, people on fixed incomes were getting taxed out of their paid-off homes they'd lived in for decades.

[chipotle_coyote]

It isn't necessarily obvious, but in some ways that's because the San Francisco Bay area is such an outlier that it's easy to miss how fast housing costs in metro areas around the country have been rising relative to salaries. The median home value in Sacramento, for instance, is $330K, compared to San Francisco's staggering $1.3M -- but the home price in San Francisco in November 2011 was $633K, whereas in Sacramento it was $183K. (This is according to Zillow, and I picked those points because they're about the lowest points in the last eight years, just before the CA housing market had started to recover.) Housing prices in Sacramento have been going up slightly faster than they have in San Francisco -- and they're not flooded with techies making $200K+ annual salaries. (Granted, there are some techies from here who are probably willing to commute from there at this point.)

And this isn't just a California thing.

"Home prices are rising at twice the wage of growth." https://www.curbed.com/2019/5/15/18617763/affordable-housing...

"Low-cost housing is disappearing from the market." https://www.huffpost.com/entry/housing-crisis-inequality-har...

You can find a lot of these articles around without much effort.

[unethical_ban]

They're pointing out that in their opinion, the premise you're questioning is invalid, and if you wish to find the answer, look to a new premise.

[MisterOctober]

What's the other Portland, is it Portland, Maine? Sincere question

[ng12]

Yes, it's not as bad as OR but it's on it's way up -- especially for a small city in an underpopulated state.

[kec]

The parts of California which don’t have a housing problem are, broadly speaking, the parts of California which aren’t attractive to a ton of people as places to live.

The root cause is prop 13 disincentivizes moving around keeping the supply illiquid, and encourages ninbyism preventing new construction, as you’re basically locked in whenever you currently live.

[jackfoxy]

Not just prop 13, but the capital gains part of the tax code.

Used to be you could sell your house for more than you paid and have 2 years to roll it into buying a new house for the same or more money. Now the difference is taxable capital gains regardless of what your new living situation becomes.

IIRC this changed about 20 years ago.

[riversflow]

Wouldn’t people be even more NIMBY if they thought it was going increase their tax rate?