I feel like this experience is so common it’s almost cliche, but I ended up moving with my family out of the city in mid 2020 mostly due to the major influx of homeless into our neighborhood, which had very little before. I didn’t like my kids facing that every time we walked to the park or the grocery store. There was also a rise in petty crime that made the neighborhood feel a lot less safe.
It’s a tough situation. At the end of the day, mental health shouldn’t fall to any one city to be responsible for, but we have to start somewhere. I hope for the best and that SF can come up with an effective way to help people off the streets.
Petty and non-violent crime is only petty and non-violent because the victims don't fight back.
I don't know what the solution is, but calling these petty/non-violent feels like an unfair take.
A victim is often traumatized about this kind of experiences, but that is never taken into account.
I feel San Francisco is such a screwed up place. But many would disagree with me.
I don't live there anymore, but it seems people there like restorative justice, and outsiders should help cheer for that to see whether it will work. We need this kind of experiments anyway.
Whether it works or not, it will be a great experience to learn for outsiders... So... Go Chesa Boudin! Fighto! We support you 200%!
I personally would be terrified to stop a thief in CA, because I suspect that the way CA laws are written, I would be crucified in court for daring to defend property, and most likely I would end up with an assault conviction or something. I'd be hesitant to take that risk even for my own property.
I wouldn't intervene if my stuff isn't like 1M USD or something.
Spending time going to court justifying whether you use the exact appropriate amount of force to stop the incident (who would have time to think that through??) is just really wasteful and psychologically damaging.
I would be terrified to stop a thief anywhere in the US, because I assume that they have a gun and will just shoot me. I don't own stuff that is worth the risk.
This will be unpopular, but have you ever heard the phrase "an armed society is a polite society"? Just as you're afraid to stop someone committing a crime because they might be armed (wait, I thought there were strict gun control laws, how can they be armed?! You mean criminals don't obey laws?! /s), an attacker will be hesitant to assault you if they think you are armed.
Yeah but different stages require different attitudes.
10y ago, this wasn't an issue, so it was okay.
Now it is an issue.. but we double down on this same approach, which makes it even worse.
Sociological problem like this is tricky to solve. SF residents believe that restorative justice will eventually win in the end, so we should cheer for them to follow through with this experiment.
Whether it will work or not, we will all get to learn. For an outsider, we will get to learn without investing much.
I don't think it will work, but I'm not an expert here, and I would love to know the result of the experiment.
> SF residents believe that restorative justice will eventually win in the end, so we should cheer for them to follow through with this experiment.
Doesn't restorative justice usually involve restoration, though? As in, making victims "whole" by paying them fair compensation for the harm they've incurred? How often does that happen in SF?
You are already seeing the result of this multi-year experiment. At what point does one lift the veil from his/her eyes? Does the entire city need to become a no-go zone?
Sometimes there is no direct victim. Whose the direct victim of public urination or jay walking?
I’m not saying they should be legal it’s just nobody really gets traumatized if someone crosses the street without right of way.
Besides, acts like this normalize moral and ethical rot. Do you want your kids to witness this behavior week in / week out? What do you think this does to their development? I took my family out of that cesspit years ago, when my little girl starting asking uncomfortable questions stemming from witnessing this sort of behavior.
Breaking car window is clearly nonviolent property crime presumed no one gets hurt.
> because nobody confronted the thieves
Not really because of this, but rather because there was no assault to addition to the property crime. Its not absolutely impossible for that robber with bicycle from the Walgreen's video to repent when guard lazily tried to stop him.
>“We believe there was some contribution of dog or human urine on the base of the pole,” PUC spokesman Tyrone Jue said. “It has actually been an issue for us in the past. We encourage people and dogs alike to do their business in other places, like a proper restroom or one of our fire hydrants, which are stronger and made out of cast iron.” Urine accelerates the corrosion of the metal base of street poles, he said.
>The six month monitoring survey is costing Derbyshire County Council £75,000. It was commissioned after a report found that years of exposure to the highly acidic urine from dogs can cause the base of the posts to crumple away.
>It is part of a national campaign after someone died when a light collapsed.
Working from home now, there's nothing I miss less than my twice daily walk through a transit station that absolutely reeks of piss INSIDE from all the homeless folks that spend their time there. I feel sorry for the poor fare collectors that have to spend their days working in that environment.
My logic is 'crossing the road is completely reasonable, doesn't harm anyone, people should be allowed to get to the other side of the road'. That logic doesn't follow to speeding, which is dangerous and selfish.
Do you realise it's not a crime in other countries? It's not in the UK and yet we have a lower road-death rate than the US. What are jaywalking laws for anyway?
The theory is that if people like you are forced to see the homeless you’ll be more willing to fund helping them. Tuck those homeless into shelters and you’ll forget.
The problem is people with options leave. They might be willing to help but not at the cost of their own children.
The thing 2020 taught me is 90% of the population considers me an acceptable sacrifice. I’m going to have to live with that now and act accordingly.
>The theory is that if people like you are forced to see the homeless you’ll be more willing to fund helping them.
Whose theory is this?
Also, why do you think fighting homelessness is just a function of funding? What if activists and the solutions they propose actually exacerbate the problem.
The problem with the theory is that the people who have a choice to avoid it just move out. The wealthy who stay can live behind gates and walls with paid protection. The people who promote these theories live in such a disconnected reality, relearning basic lessons in ways that cost societies as a whole and tragically create even more inequality and inequity than was present when they started. Now you preside over a piss-stained, violent[0] city with an eroding tax base and a widening chasm between the haves and the have-nots. Congrats.
[0] I tend to agree with another poster that the threat of violence is still violent even if the victim acquiesces to avoid violence (by not confronting, fighting back, intervening, either from direct threat of retaliation by criminal or punishment from state/society for daring to be intolerant of antisocial behavior).
This is interesting given the protests. As I understand it, San Francisco is generally considered to be a very liberal and progressive city. The politicians are generally considered to be very liberal and progressive. These are the same groups, however, that want to defund the police. I don’t get it. You can want both police reform, and policing, but without the police there’s not really anyone capable, trained, or just available to confront dangerous criminals and individuals. It’s almost like a very radical group pushed for something and they went way too far, so now the more rational side is like whoa wait a second
The homelessness problem has been growing for the last 15 years (I mean, before that too, but I remember never being shocked in the early 2000s like I always am today), whereas the "Defund" thing is only in the last year.
The homelessness crisis is not caused by a lack of police enforcement.
True, but lack of police enforcement has led to greater numbers of homeless people acting without worry, setting up camps, pooping in the streets, vandalism, assault, robbery, etc. Greater police presence is an excellent deterrent for homeless misbehavior and crime. Otherwise there is no limitation on what those unhoused persons can do, thus exacerbating the problem. It may not have caused it, but the lack of police is certainly not helping it
> but lack of police enforcement has led to greater numbers of homeless people acting without worry, setting up camps, pooping in the streets, vandalism, assault, robbery, etc.
From my experience, homelessness is not affected by police presence/enforcement other than to force them into other areas. An unhoused person has to go somewhere, so using police to approach that simply pushes them in larger numbers into other areas, making it someone else's problem. That seems like a huge waste of resources.
Yes. I don’t think people realize police are expensive. You shouldn’t use them to “solve” problems unless you have no other means available. Police also aren’t terribly interested in the demoralizing work that gets put on their shoulders by a lack of investment in social infrastructure. Nobody becomes a cop to rip down a tent city.
There’s a sick irony that the very same people who are fighting “for” the police against the defund crowd also demand police officers perform tons of unnecessary grueling work the police themselves willingly admit they aren’t trained to handle.
I think for many people “Support the Police” really means only support their budget; not support them as human beings or public servants.
One of the principles of defund is to use more appropriate responders to things like homelessness. Police arresting homeless and moving them somewhere else is pointless. Having social workers who can get them into a shelter and maybe treatment could actually ameliorate the problem.
Whole lotta assumptions here. The biggest one is "Greater police presence is an excellent deterrent for homeless misbehavior and crime."
So much of what you said is, honestly, what a lot of homeless people need to do, just to survive. When you don't have safe, ready access to bathrooms, you go outside. When you don't have a job and can't get money, you steal to eat. When you are subject to this misery for long enough, you stop caring about what polite society cares about.
Police presence sure does deter this behaviour, but only where police are present. It doesn't _stop_ this behaviour, because it can't. Cops can't fix homelessness, they can only move it along somewhere else, turn it into some other neighborhood's problem.
If you really want to fix the problem, look at you and me. We don't crap outside, we don't steal, we're not making neighborhoods scary and dangerous (I assume). And why? Because our basic needs are met. We have food, water, shelter, sanitation, entertainment, employment. If you really want to fix the problem, THAT'S the problem you fix. Sadly, social programs for the homeless ("handouts") aren't nearly so politically popular as spending that money on policing, the legal system, and the prison system, despite being many orders more efficient.
There's lots of programs available in California. If you're not currently drunk or high, you can generally get a bed and food for a day at a shelter in most West Coast metropolitan environments. If you're in these shelters, there's jobs programs that can get you earning a modest paycheck quickly. Unfortunately there's a large and growing segment of unhoused that don't want this, though. They want to be able to drink, or use other drugs. And that makes them ineligble for most of these programs. So they set up camp, continue to decline in mental health due to stress, diet, drug use. And they spiral farther into the drain.
It's these people that need the strong hand of law enforcement to whip them into shape. It's for their own good, honestly, which bothers me as a big proponent of personal liberty and personal responsibility. But their options are either shape up, or slowly decline to a tragic death. A puppy who is not trained not to bite toddlers very well may end up getting euthanized. Sometimes strict enforcement is the morally just choice.
edit: my point is that both are needed. The options for the self motivated, and the guiding hand of arrest for those who cannot save themselves.
>The politicians are generally considered to be very liberal and progressive. These are the same groups, however, that want to defund the police. I don’t get it.
It's the fact that you see an issue like homelessness and think "this is what we pay the police for", that blinds you to the actual grievances of the protestors. Instead of actually addressing issue, most Americans have developed the crutch of just calling the police who have just opted to either move the issue or throw the homeless in jail. It's sort of frustrating that on Hacker News people haven't done anymore than surface level research into the grievances behind "defund the police". A lot of their argument seems to stem to the fact that many problems they face are relegated to police (who have the funding) when things like housing and mental health services should be funded instead.
San Francisco's problem (and, I'd argue the "true" motivation behind the restorative justice) is that the city can no longer afford to in-prison more people for basic offenses. The housing problem has now extended to prisons and I believe COVID exasperated that issue as people wanted to avoid having overcrowded prisons. That plus the massively reduced city traffic has had homeless people claim a lot of open spaces. At this point I don't think funding more police departments would put a dent in the issue.
A lot of so-called “crimes” are societal creations. It’s a crime to steal food: is it a crime to let someone go hungry? Actually if that someone is your child under 18, it is in fact a crime.
There are other crimes that aren’t even considered criminal nor even enforced. For example wage theft. You cannot get your boss arrested for clocking you out before you leave. Yet your boss can have you arrested for taking from the till.
Point is, most crimes are because of society structure. Lying on a sidewalk? Setting up a tent somewhere? Living in a car or rv?
In a better structured society there would be better support than calling the police. That’s the essence of “defund the police”.
For many people with well resourced families, allowing a child or family member to live in the street because they lost their job just wouldn’t happen. Generally most people get support from their families (and friends) in this way. But what about those that don’t have those resources? Well apparently “call the cops on them” is the American solution. Great.
What don’t you get? Policy makers are out over their skis believing in a utopia that runs contrary to human nature and economics. They can’t admit the physics of the problem so just keep insisting they haven’t gone far enough. Graft creeps in as it always does, corrupting the machinery that (even generously) may have originally been born with the best of intentions. Everyone is afraid of being labeled as intolerant or an asshole so nobody has the courage to call out the emperor’s lack of clothes - to say this isn’t working and needs radical correction to enforce some social norms and define acceptable behavior under penalty of imprisonment, labor, or some undesirable consequence for the offender. People are thus held prisoner by the group think and the social glare. It’s only worse now with social media enabling a cancel culture with very real and significant consequences.
> to say this isn’t working and needs radical correction to enforce some social norms and define acceptable behavior under penalty of imprisonment, labor, or some undesirable consequence for the offender
We should really be focusing on the underlying mental health issues rather than resorting to a base desire to crack skulls. One such example is opening up (humane) mental health institutions. For people who are out of their gourd but aren't your typical criminal case, these mental health institutions would exist for these people to go if they consistently prove to be a danger to themselves and/or others.
Who said anything about cracking skulls? Institutionalization is simply a manner of imprisonment, but it is still in that column. State-run institutions were shut down, but interestingly the amount of "institutionalized" people in the population remained much the same, they basically just moved into the prison system, which I think is arguably worse. But yeah, I'm all for addressing mental health and being more "liberal" with institutionalization. It's better than having crazy people cursing at kids on the street, threatening violence and creating public health hazards.
Cracking skulls is actually the more humane solution. If a city makes harsh examples of a few criminals, it dissuades many more potential criminals from ever getting started.
Allowing criminals and homeless to run rampant will lead to the rapid increases in both we have seen in SF. Then there still will be an inevitable backlash, and that will involve the cracking of far more skulls than would have happened by doing it early. If a city never enforces its laws, the criminals will crack far more innocent skulls.
You can't escape the cracking of skulls, you just choose who does the cracking and how many get hurt.
That cartoon unintentionally proves the point of those who oppose Defund: The author either intentionally or accidentally discards the stones marked "Theft", "Gang Violence", and "Domestic Violence." Who should response to a gang shooting, a theft, or someone in the middle of beating up their spouse/partner, if not the police?
I agree that addressing underlying causes would reduce those problems but it would take decades even if we went all in on fixing those things. What exactly do we do about them in the mean time?
These comics (and the ones suggesting "defunding police" will lead to school funding) are essentially a trick because 1. reducing police funding won't lead to money going to those other places 2. half those things are done under the police department 3. the other half are much more expensive than police funding.
Affordable housing is a notable case of the last one, it's very very expensive to build in SF and nobody actually wants it. The reason people dislike "luxury housing" is that it actually exists, so they want "affordable housing" because they know it won't happen. When it actually shows up, they oppose it too.
It does demonstrate that anything presented in cartoon form is probably false, because the people drawing cartoons are not specialists in whatever the topic is. Basically Gell-Mann Amnesia.
> These comics (and the ones suggesting "defunding police" will lead to school funding) are essentially a trick because 1. reducing police funding won't lead to money going to those other places 2. half those things are done under the police department 3. the other half are much more expensive than police funding.
You should look in to the defund proposals, then, because that's what they're typically advocating; moving these responsibilities (and their funding) out of the police department.
> "Defund the police" is a slogan that supports divesting funds from police departments and reallocating them to non-policing forms of public safety and community support, such as social services, youth services, housing, education, healthcare and other community resources.
> Equating police reform with being anti-police plays right into propaganda.
The people who started "defund the police" literally do not want there to be police. Sometimes they want to become the police, except they want to be called community violence activists, or therapists, or something.
That was fine as a fringe position, but then a lot of other people took up the slogan and just declared that no, actually, it means totally different thing X but we're going to keep saying it.
…Anyway, nobody is actually trying to do this, except Republicans in congress when they tried to block state funding in the CARES Act, so it doesn't matter.
"Some activists want both things means they can't be distinct proposals" is like claiming the FSF and libertarians are the same group because there's a lot overlap.
Then they should say "reform the police" not "defund the police". If you "defund the police", they will cease to exist, since nobody will be paying them. It might or might not be what the "defund" people are actually want, but it is what they are saying, so it isn't really a strawman argument.
Personally, I assume people actually mean what they say, so I think it's more likely they just want to be "radical" and haven't thought things through at all (as OP pointed out).
>Then they should say "reform the police" not "defund the police". If you "defund the police", they will cease to exist, since nobody will be paying them.
Great idea, let's call the CEO of a grass roots protest and have their marketing department update the website copy. Do you realize what you are saying?
>Personally, I assume people actually mean what they say, so I think it's more likely they just want to be "radical" and haven't thought things through at all (as OP pointed out).
I think a very useful skill in life is being able to read past slogans and actually understand what people are asking for. Kaepernick was trying to create a message about police reform for 5 years now, and no one cared about that - only the kneeling bit. "Defund the police" is the only message that has stuck. If extremist messaging is what gets people talking about the problem then so be it. There is no CEO of protests that develops a finely tuned marketing message for what is essentially a populist movement.
> I think a very useful skill in life is being able to read past slogans and actually understand what people are asking for
I think a very useful skill in life is accurately communicating what you actually want to say so that the receiver understands your message. The responsibility of communicating is on the protestor--they are the ones trying to change things.
I don't think that the extremist language had anything to do with getting people talking about the problem. George Floyd's death is what got people talking about it. Seems to me the more radical people are advocating "defund the police" as a solution. If they really want police reform, why not just say that? They wouldn't alienate everyone who thinks that is a silly idea. So tactically it is a major blunder because they've needlessly lost support. Why would someone who disagrees with "defund the police" as a solution risk working with them--what if they actually believe what they say?
> If extremist messaging is what gets people talking about the problem then so be it.
This cuts both ways. Can I assume that you're good with the right wingers' extremism, too? And how are you going to keep it from escalating? They still aren't listening, better make the statement louder, maybe in blood this time? Extremism begets extremism.
I am pretty opposed to extremism, and I think a large part of the problem in the US is that the only voices are the extreme ones shouting really loud. A group of friends driven by loud, extreme voices is dysfunctional, and larger groups are no different.
Besides, reacting to a problem with extremes doesn't solve the problem, it only changes what problem you have. Historically it usually changes for the worst.
What you are asking for is for people to protest more nicely and to have a co-ordinated message. Ignoring the impossible ask of trying to get a single message from a decentralized movement, people have been asking for police reform. Black Lives Matter is founded on police reform. The original michael brown events was in 2014. I explicitly brought up Kapernick because he's been asking for reform in 2016! It's not until people starting saying defund did the message change from "well can we just have reform instead"?
Protests have always been extreme and riots has been historically the best vehivle of change for the proletariat. People on the ground are rarely going to be amazing orators in explaining what they need and for a underprivileged group, being reasonable has never worked. You have WSPU escalating to violence for Women's Suffrage in the UK. You have the troubles in Ireland. You have the underbelly of the violent race riots in MLK's marches.
And how do you keep it from escalating? By solving the underlying grievances people have. Most people don't turn to white supremacy through a pure ideological belief that the "white race" is superior. They start with system problems - increasing health costs, increasing housing costs and lack of upwards mobility, and in their search of their solutions they find someone who tells them what they want to hear.
At the end of the day when you have people rioting in the streets the time for "rational" discourse has long passed. The people who are most loudly chanting defund the police have been trying to reform for almost _10 years_.
The more useful skill in life is to take written statements at face value. Otherwise a more valuable life lesson will be learned when you challenge a written contract in court.
Even slogans must be taken at face value, e.g. the Jews in Europe who could have escaped Nazism in the early phase, but waited too long because “they can’t be serious…just read past the slogans, it will all pass.” Godwin’s “law” notwithstanding…just one egregious example among many.
Not suggesting SF is at this stage, but a blasé attitude to what is actually being said in these situations has had severe consequences in the recent past. If you say “defund the police”, you better mean “defund the police” because any mature adult excepting your parents (maybe your grandparents) are going to interpret it as abolishing/crowdsourcing(?) the police. If you don’t mean that, then don’t say that. If it’s just unclear, than stop saying it and say something clearer. It’s the responsible thing to do.
Late in Timothy Leary’s life he was giving his standard spiel and he was surrounded by the usual burnouts and psychedelic enthusiasts who were being unusually silly, naive and annoying. A friend commented to him “Does it ever seem to you that all the neurons you killed off over the years have reincarnated into these people?” You wonder about the homeless being the karmic hair shirt some older SF folks wear to repent for their misspent youth/adulthood or accidentally winning the housing lottery. There but for the grace of tech dollars and Daddy’s money go I.
PS: Doesn’t it seem the cities most bought into these political fads are also those with the most self-indulgent parenting styles? Might be worth a study.
The police can only effectively deal with the homeless the way LA did in Echo Park -- by kicking them out. Then it becomes an issue for somewhere else.
Considered to be progressive by whom? Like most of what passed for “progressive” in California, it’s generally a narrow set of issues to which the label might apply. A lot of SF is now dominated by the tech industry which is almost libertarian in its views, but for a narrow slice of identity politics.
"Defund the police" is mostly a shorthand for "federalize the police". Some people with little political power might interpret it literally, but they're not really calling the shots.
I am currently in Warsaw. I have lived in SF. The quality of life is astoundingly different. There nearly zero visible homelessness people. There are low levels of crime and none visible. There are hardly any murders or gun crime. Not much property crime. There are quite a lot of police, but no brutality that I have heard of. I feel safe walking around at night. People have health care, higher education, and employees have strong legal protections with sane working hours. Taxes are reasonable. There's a good tech job market.
As I was leaving SF, I watched a homeless man with no teeth pick a morsel of food out of the gutter and eat it.
I am not sure if it's a case of boiling the frog, but trust me when I say that SF has an absolutely shameful inability to solve it's problems and that a city that was no more than a crater 70 years ago absolutely shines in comparison. I would not believe it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.
Love Warsaw but suspect your in $1000/mo+ Airbnb, alcohol abuse amongst the homeless in Warsaw is massive, and thus aggressive begging, everything else you say is correct, but your in a 2km bubble and Warsaw is a big city, even a walk to googles free coworking space will be enlightening for you (it will put you marginally outside the comfort zone briefly if you walk the quickest path over the bridge, then loop back in to an arty farty outlet shopping complex zone), even in your comfort zone I've seen some pretty horrific situations with people collapsed outside with head split open (self inflicted alcohol abuse, but I guess less scary than stringes everywhere)
I am a block away from it in Praga. There are a handful of drunks, but I understand this is the worst area of the city, but I was interested in getting to know the other side of the Vistula. I haven't seen any rough sleeping or open air drug use near me. Very little public drinking over here (unlike all the students on the other side of the river). Praga has nothing on the Tenderloin.
Elsewhere in the city, I saw pushy begging exactly once when entering the Old Town. There were about 6 rough sleepers under one of the Vistula bridges with neatly folded sleeping bags and they are being guarded by a police van.
If there's a homeless tent city of heroin addicts around here, do tell.
For the most part the homeless live inside abandoned buildings or under the bridges since the weather in Warsaw is drastically different than in the SF. If you are a drunkard, you are very likely to die in the winter due to exposure.
Fair play, might of changed with covid, the many times I went I always thought they should do more for them, same in Katowice, Lodz, etc.. perhaps care has stepped up a bit, always felt safe but that's probably due to male and size. You couldn't move for pushy beggars in 2019
I really think there must have been a recent push to clean things up then based on what you and some friends here have said. I think the Mayor wants to run for President again and one of the richest persons in Poland is making a huge investment in Port Praski a few blocks from here, so they might want a guaranteed ROI, drunks be damned.
It should be mentioned that Warsaw is not at all representative for the country or even the local region. It's a status which the city had for many decades.
In the same way, it should be mentioned that SF is not at all representative for the country or even the local region. I have never been in another city anywhere that has the problems which people relate about SF.
It's just a symptom of the neo-pseudo-scientific political system. I can find plenty of articles that "fact check" my gut instinct that deporting illegal immigrants who commit violent crime will reduce the violent crime. A cursory googling will remind me that SF's ban on handguns, licensed carry, and other gun restrictions protect me. After all, if I were in danger, the police average under 8 minutes response time on top priority calls. Every time I visit my family there, and remind myself not to pack sandals because of the number needles on the ground, I pull up my bookmarked journals reminding me that we can't be hard on drug use, even in public, because that makes the problem worse.
SF is a fantastic reminder that we cannot trust our gut instinct and logic on how to deal with the problems of society.
I look forward to the peer reviewed article explaining why this is just bias and misconception of the status quo. I used to enjoy my memories of playing ultimate frisbee barefoot in Delores park, as a young teenager, with no concern over safety taking public transit. But I must remember that my memories are subject to fallacies of their own. Likewise, those un-scooped poops I used to see were probably human, like they are now, I just didn't realize it then, because I was so naive.
The neo-liberal politics of finding, or creating the studies that support the policies that "feel good" and not the ones that actually tackle problems are making the problem worse. And like a snowdrift growing on a ledge, it will continue growing, until it collapses into an avalanche. The longer we let it grow, the more casualties we will see when the correction arrives.
I have family that's now leaving the city. Chesa Boudin and his policies was their personal tipping point
"Boudin was born in New York City to Jewish parents. His parents, Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, were Weather Underground members, both convicted of murder."[1]
"The thing I have noticed is when the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. There's something wrong with the way you are measuring it," - Jeff Bezos
Its funny, the comment adjacent to yours is one where Krakow Poland is shown as a paradise compared to SF. So please, go over to that thread and tell them how safer Krakow could be with unlimited guns, a insane war on drugs and the removal of their welfare system.
By today's standards? Yeah, it probably is. I don't even care anymore though. Homogenous societies have fewer problems of inequality, less crime, more social cohesion. We've known this since Aristotle in Greece, since Marcus Aurelias in Rome, and probably with some other writers I can't think of in between then and now.
It's not a statement of any one group being better than another.
It's not a statement that I don't enjoy many aspects of our diverse society.
I don't think there are actually any studies cited for any of those. In fact, it's well known that local gun laws are nearly useless. NYC makes it nearly impossible to buy a gun but they are easily bought in bulk an hour or two drive in any direction.
Immigrant policy is mostly based on humanitarian grounds. But I'd still be surprised if it's actually a major driver of crime. Violent crime in higher nationwide than every developed nation by a huge margin. Our lack of healthcare, for-profit opioid sales and the endless flow of firearms are the things I'd point to.
I don't feel the need to deport illegal immigrants who don't commit violent crime. However SF doesn't allow ICE to arrest/serve warrants, even if the person in question has drug charges, violent crime charges, etc. In a city that clearly has taxpaying residents unhappy with the level of crime, they're throwing away free federal resources to deal with those issues. Even if it's not a driving factor, it's a symptom of a law enforcement philosophy that doesn't inspire confidence.
AFAIK they do allow enforcement of criminal warrants for anything violent. They also don't and can't prevent federal agents from doing anything. They just don't actively cooperate or enforce immigration law with their own police. Also worth noting that they adopted sanctuary status in 1989 which preceded their massive rise in prosperity. It seems unlikely to be a factor in problems of the last 5 years.
The city has a "rapid response" hotline you can call if you see any ICE agents in the city. I'm not sure what their response is. But they definitely don't work with the agency
That headline is exactly what I said. SFPD will not enforce federal warrants for simple immigration violations.
They absolutely will enforce warrants for serious crimes. Nor will they prevent federal agents from operating in the city. The rapid response hotline is a private non-profit and not run by the city.
I suggest not relying on conservative propaganda outlets like Daily Caller for your information.
I'm assuming you know that site was founded by Tucker Carlson? He might have an interest in making "liberal" cities and populations look as bad and scary as possible, even if it means writing outright lies. You should try to find a more reputable source.
I've never seen anyone call Chesa Boudin "neoliberal" before. Actually I haven't even seen anyone call "neoliberal" policies not right-wing enough. Very innovative post.
I'll share my experience as a proud SF resident of 6 years. The quality of life here decreased dramatically through 2020 for obvious reasons. Now, it seems like the city is much more alive. Restaurants, bars, etc are all open, parks are packed. The weather is still great. My coworkers are moving back to the Bay Area now, and we're all very excited to get to hang out again. Overall I'm much happier now than I was 6 months ago.
That being said, the most upsetting thing has been the loss of my friends who have left SF over the last year and a half to move other places. Losing your friends and community is much worse than losing a coffee shop. This is, to me, the biggest downside of SF: it's a temporary stopover for most people, and your roots will always be lain in thin soil.
I find it weird how everyone wants to point their fingers at politicians or the police as if these are the forces that created this mess, as if those groups simply snapped their fingers then the economic conditions that perpetuate homelessness would magically disappear.
Everyone wants someone else to make the problem go away for them, that they shouldn't have to play any part in that because they pay taxes, and all the while they're also lobbying the city to keep housing density low out of some absurd privileged need to preserve a broken status quo of what they think an idyllic neighborhood ought to be.
It's incredibly ironic how in America we've recreated the very thing that Americans were trying to escape from in Europe -a landed aristocracy.
It would be nice if they voted in new people (read: republicans) based on this. I think the city would be improved with some different ideas in government.
The republicans would do what they normally do with homeless, they ship them to a different city. SF should put its homeless on buses to rural Texas, but they'd all just end up being moved to Austin by the local police.
The same as with vancouver, San Francisco and Los Angeles are both some of the rare large cities in the USA where a homeless person can live a fully outdoor lifestyle year-round and not risk freezing to death.
This is often repeated, but the entirety of the US south is warm year-round and the proportion of unhoused homeless is much lower in all those southern cities. Clearly there is something else at play on the west coast that resists housing the homeless.
Turns out the homeless, like many (most?) people, prefer living in desirable places.
When you have no ability/intention to pay rent, the whole cost of living deterrent vanishes.
So it seems rather obvious to me you'd have a higher rate of homelessness in the most desirable (most expensive) cities. Not without interventions creating costs or inconveniences actually relevant to the homeless as a proportional deterrent. I'm not sure if that's even possible without being cruel though.
The problem is that taxes are already fairly high. Throwing more money at the problem is not going to fix these issues. Bad administration is bad administration no matter how much money you burn.
Exactly this. The city's budget was $6.4B in 2010, and $12.6B for 2021-2022, which is down from $13.7B for 2020-2021 (only because of Corona). That's a _doubling_ in a decade, and speaking somewhat subjectively as someone who's been here the entire time, all public services and the state of the streets have continued getting worse. Even if you don't buy that, it's absolutely certain that nothing has gotten better.
It's not clear how SF can escape the situation, but there are a few things that are absolutely certain, and one of them is that more money is not going to fix the problem. We need a different approach.
Except the issue is that there is a tragedy of commons, as SF increases resources for homeless more and more homeless flock to the city thus requiring ever increasing amount of resources. I am honestly not sure what to do other than support more nationwide solutions.
Most places deal with this via border restrictions. One country with better welfare does not allow themselves to be flooded with people from other countries. This problem can not be solved by one city without the ability to restrict movement.
It's going to be interesting to see earnest social welfare advocates and earnest open borders advocates realize that their beliefs are totally incompatible. Of course, right now, most of the politicians successfully selling those policies don't really care about either at a deep level.
People from other countries do not get welfare in the USA. that is a myth. The problem with 'SF' is people flocking from conservative areas in the US that have solved their homeless problem by literally bussing people to SF. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/...
"The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) is an anti-immigration think tank. It favors far lower immigration numbers, and produces analyses to further those views. The CIS was founded by historian Otis L. Graham and eugenicist and white nationalist John Tanton."
My point is that SF can not fix welfare on its own because it doesn't have the power to stop people from other states moving in. It either needs to be a nation wide fix or for the city/state to become its own country.
The “free market” is not a real thing and it never will be - it is a platonic ideal.
Every nation on Earth has border restrictions of some kind. Though recent in human history, such restrictions clearly have utility and value in the modern world.
this also happens in other major cities like NYC, Boston, etc… most of the local homeless are from small cities and towns and go to the city because they hear it’s better… and it is, because many small cities have next to no services for them
if you spread out the homeless proportionately to the population of the country it becomes a much more manageable problem
The small towns literally bus or have the police drop off homeless into big cities so they don't have to pay for it. In Santa Cruz, there are tonnes of homeless. 10 miles away in Scotts Valley there are no visible homeless, that's because Scotts valley PD picks up homeless and drops them off in Santa Cruz.
This is a tech city, start fingerprinting and ID'ing where their real residential address is and send them back after a nice shower and a good hearty meal. If the same people keep coming back, start filing lawsuits against the towns or send them a bill. As soon as this happens the Republican lawmakers will start to pass laws banning this. Assert states right and start pressuring local companies to stop doing business in those states or else face consequences. It would take a leftist with real guts to do stuff like this.
I also wonder if it is legal to put checkpoints in the entrance to states so that if a bus arrives, they need to be subject to inspections. This stuff sounds cruel but the cities are not fighting for their tax paying residents. Its unbelievable how much of a scam this country is in favor of typically rural white people.
1) Red states typically get out more than 1$ of every tax dollar they put back in.
2) Red states get an additional subsidy in the form of sending their homeless to the blue cities. This allows them to reduce their tax burden while increasing the tax burden of an already highly taxed blue electorate. The decreased tax burden directly translates into more renovations to the towns and better quality of life for their citizens(ie more services) while directly reducing the quality of life for the left leaning counties.
3) Red states are overrepresented due to gerrymandering, the electoral college, (and because the Dems never fight), now the supreme court so the mechanisms to change this system are all blocked for the left wing population.
We don't have a Democratic party that fights for us. I'm convinced that they are actually on the same side as the Right but only pretend to actually care about the people in the left states and stop all opposition using cancel culture.
They of course cater to their wealthy constituents but everyone else that makes up the Democratic party: minorities and the poor are in this hellish limbo where they have no real say in governance yet at the same time are paying and suffering the consequences. Its the modern day slavery.
We are starting to see minorities run for congress and challenge the status quo. We also see them get co-opted by the Democratic party and muted or aggressively fought against so that they have to work 10 times as hard to get a chance
(ie. AOC's initial opponent outspent her 10 to 1, endorsed by the entire party, baseless accusations of being associated with less that favorable figures)
(ex2. Ilhan Omar being blasted whenever she opens her mouth).
It sounds like it's going to take a whole generation of effort to finally break this cursed situation that so many people in this country are born into.
Sorry for the rant, its just that as a minority living in a left state, it grinds me endlessly that I am paying for these Red state jerks while my quality of life continues on a downward trajectory and at the same time no one will fight for me. Not AOC, not anyone in the Dems for sure. What is the way out?
Did this happen in Portland? I can’t put my finger on it but I seem to recall something about how Portland’s public assistance largess had become a beacon for people across the country to go to Portland to take it advantage of that. Thus increasing the number of people needing those services, and causing the friction.
There was a discussion today on NPR about Venice Beach and how they're providing housing to those living on/near the pier so people are migrating up from other neighborhoods to take advantage. It's only a couple hundred people total but it's still an interesting experiment.
If you ask people whether or not they some ostensibly good policy should be implemented, the majority will agree. When you ask taxpayers to actually cough up and pay for the services, though, the majority will get extremely upset.
A more interesting survey question would be how much people are prepared to sacrifice to make these problems go away.
> I wonder what percentage of residents support the tax increases necessary to provide such services
It depends on how the question is phrased.
Few people want to pay more taxes.
Most people want a better society, not just for themselves, for everyone, since we are all connected.
The art of good government is asking the question in a way that shines a light to where 51% of people will dare to go, that many of the remainder will tolerat.
SFDC and others could make a big difference by hiring some homeless workers with a dedicated program. Half of the battle is for dignity and a decent resume. There are plenty of people with college degrees on the streets. Simple changes like not requiring a permanent address on job applications and payroll allowing cash cards as a deposit option (many payroll services do support this) are powerful enablers for people who need a hand up.
Chesa Boudin was elected in November 2019 on a progressive platform centered on ending mass incarceration. DA Boudin personally understands the impact of incarceration; both of his parents were incarcerated (for Murder) throughout his childhood and his father is still in prison.
San Francisco residents deserve to reap the fruits of their Prophet.
San Francisco has some of the most expensive real estate in the country. [1] When I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area like two decades back and looked at housing prices there, SROs[2] were like $1000/month or so. That's a single room, not an apartment.
San Francisco has really lovely weather most of the year. It has highly desirable weather if you are homeless: Not much rain and mild temperatures year round.[3]
I think California is currently the dumping ground for a lot of America's homeless. I have heard that homelessness is down in other states and up in California.
I think part of what happens is people go there because the weather is very homeless-friendly and then get stuck in part because housing costs are so high in California. I think California will not really solve its homeless problem until the entire US decides to resolve our lack of affordable housing.[4]
I spent nearly six years homeless, most of it in California. I left the state to get back into housing. I have six years of college and yadda, so what I was able to pull off may not be what most homeless people can do for themselves in the face of a broken system.
(Edit: years before I was ever homeless, I took a college class from SFSU called Homelessness and Public Policy. The above paragraph was intended to suggest I'm somewhat knowledgeable about the topic.)
I am still dirt poor and trying to establish an adequate income while being told it's somehow my fault that my poverty is intractable and no amount of rebutting the myriad explanations for how it is somehow my fault ever seems to really change the situation.
I've been repeating a lot of this for years on HN, seemingly to no avail. I'm frankly amazingly exhausted at this point.
To ignore the relation between homelessness, the high cost of housing, the gentrification as tech people like to live authentic and the absolute lack of building, and to pretend its welfare and the lack of guns is just blindness.
People in SF have to either kick the tech companies out, or allow a massive amount of high density housing in.
Google did try to build housing but Mountain View wouldn’t let them. [1] I also have been to public hearings where Mountain View and Palo Alto council members celebrate their success in blocking public transit in the South Bay (hence Google Buses). If you think this is the tech companies fault then maybe the local governments shouldn’t be blocking them from trying to help.
The same thing has happened in Portland and Seattle, both cities with increasing amounts of property crime, increasing amounts of homeless campers taking up public spaces, increasing amounts of harassment from vagrants, widespread open drug-abuse, increasing amounts of blight as pristine greenbelts are trashed, and a revolving door of criminals who are released into the public without consequence by a permissive city leadership. Calls for "restorative justice" always mean being soft on crime, which removes deterrents for crime, and therefore enable increased crime. It's all so obvious and predictable, but these cities are such extreme political echo chambers that no other perspective is really represented or considered at all.
In Seattle, these policies were spurred on by motivated progressive activists who aggressively shouted down all dissent in protests, council meetings, and in social media. The rush of transplants from outside Washington state changed local politics significantly over the last decade, importing a lot of SF's policies as the voting constituency changed. As a result, Seattle experiences all the same blight SF does, but with a time delay of a few years. There have been a couple great documentaries about the deterioration in Seattle such as "Seattle is Dying" (https://youtu.be/bpAi70WWBlw) and "The Fight for the Soul of Seattle" (https://youtu.be/WijoL3Hy_Bw) that provide a great overview of the issues. The business community also wrote two comprehensive reports about the failure of restorative justice policies as well, called "System Failure" (https://downtownseattle.org/files/advocacy/system-failure-pr...) and "System Failure 2" (https://downtownseattle.org/files/advocacy/System-Failure-Pa...).
The response from city leadership? Gaslighting, denial, and absolute arrogance (https://www.seattle.gov/cityattorney/news/seattle-isnt-dying) as they continue to ignore the needs of tax-paying law-abiding residents in favor of vocal activists and criminals. I don't think long-time residents have any confidence that Seattle will return to the peaceful, beautiful city it once was given how things have changed and how they continue to get worse. It's gotten to the point where even businesses have just given up and don't report crimes (https://mynorthwest.com/1538741/uwajimaya-seattle-prolific-o...), which results in skewed crime figures that don't tell the real story. And just like SF, now businesses have begun closing stores due to unchecked criminality (https://komonews.com/news/local/bartell-drugs-closing-in-dow...).
As someone else said, you get the results you vote for. Change needs to happen from the bottom-up starting with the people who keep voting for these failed policies and the politicians behind them.
I was recently on holiday in Europe. We did a boat tour and there were some Americans on the boat, from LA and New York. At lunch their discussion turned more or less immediately to violent crime, their fear of it and the sudden increase in it. What caught my attention the most though was their explanation: it was, we were told, due to insufficient funding for prisons causing prisoners to be released early.
I was quite surprised by this because of threads I'd seen on HN like this one, and because I'd read about the Portland riots, but didn't say anything. Afterwards I found the articles talking about the recall of the LA DA. No mention of prison funding levels was to be found.
The table didn't talk politics explicitly, but I wonder if those people were sufficiently left wing that they'd voted for these policies and were now trying to explain the results as having different causes.
Well, a quick Google search brings this up from Wikipedia:
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media is a 1988 book by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. It argues that the mass communication media of the U.S. "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion", by means of the propaganda model of communication.
Most surveys are propaganda: a sample size of just a thousand people allows to get any result in any area. I could get 85% respondents to support ktulhu as the official deity by handpicking the right respondents. Even if I really wanted to know how much support ktulhu really has, I'd be very troubled because accountants in Idaho are going to view ktulhu differently than mechanics in Florida. For this reason, when I see "N% support X", I read it as "the media agency wants me to think that X has N% support" and I wonder why. Most of the time the answer isn't terribly complex: it's the party affiliation of the agency.
Assuming it's a properly conducted and accurately reported survey, I would say no, except in the very postmodern sense that everything is "propaganda" of a sort, since what is chosen to report and how to report it is determined by the media, and is at least significantly influenced by those who own and control the media.
There is no rise in crime, but people polled say they believe there is. It's a textbook case of Chomsky's manufactured consent phenomena. It's not a drive-by comment, it's simply concise.
Crime reported to police is fairly constant regardless of crime levels. As crime goes up people just stop reporting minor things that the police now no longer has time to handle, making the number reports not change. This makes the crime maps fairly useless, you'd think that Switzerland and Chicago has similar levels of theft since the amount of crime reports are the same, yet Switzerland is as safe a place can get while Chicago is a notorious crime area.
Therefore hard stats like "homicide rate" or soft stats like "perceived crime" are the only ones that matters.
It’s a tough situation. At the end of the day, mental health shouldn’t fall to any one city to be responsible for, but we have to start somewhere. I hope for the best and that SF can come up with an effective way to help people off the streets.