I loathe San Francisco it's a gross city especially Market St. and many of its surrounding areas. There's no other city in the US where Ive witnessed so many people on the streets; very sad and everywhere you go the sights & smells hits you. Makes you appreciate what you have, yet sad such a place exists (what can you do to help all these people) and I've lived in Philly, NYC, Baltimore and Nashville.

This is a product of SF being extremely welcoming and supportive of the homeless and the poor.

It's interesting to me how so many people confuse the absence of poverty/crime/homelessness with a system that has solved it. NYC has less of these things because it has undergone extreme gentrification and has politics and police which treat the homeless much worse. This is the opposite of what most people consider to be a real solution, yet NYC is praised for it. It is praised for the ends, not the means.

SF actually employs more of the policies people claim that they want to see, and as a result, it welcomes more homeless, and as a result, has more homeless, and as a result, it is demonized.

It's so backwards.

New York State law also mandates that cities must provide shelter beds for their homeless population, so there is enough shelter space for their homeless population, there is no such law in SF/CA.

A significant proportion of the rough sleeper population are not easily housed. They may have significant mental health issues that do not warrant involuntary hospitalisation, but cause them to be extremely disruptive or unwilling to be housed. They may have unmanaged substance abuse problems, particularly alcohol dependency. Trauma and PTSD often play a significant role. Sometimes, they're just antisocial assholes. Most of these people can eventually be housed, but it often takes years of intensive support and dozens of false starts.

Homelessness exists in a complex relationship with many other personal and social problems. The provision of shelters is only one element of the solution. If you aim for a complete and rapid elimination of visible rough sleeping, you'll inevitably end up persecuting rough sleepers or bussing them off to somewhere else. There is a great deal that can be done to reduce rough sleeping and much of it isn't being done, but there's no magic wand.

> They may have significant mental health issues that do not warrant involuntary hospitalisation, but cause them to be extremely disruptive or unwilling to be housed. They may have unmanaged substance abuse problems, particularly alcohol dependency.

When you make housing for the homeless dependent on being sober and clean, just what, exactly, do you expect as an outcome if not that?

THIS moralizing "Oh, but you've got to DESERVE the help!" is partly why homelessness (and poverty) are still major problems in the US.

(Oh, and the truly pathetic NIMBYism in San Fran doesn't help anything... It makes solving the housing problem in general intractible. Seriously, shut up about the "character of the city" when you're really just using that as an excuse to increase your home value and when that "character" leads to a whole bunch of homelessness and rent that is impossible for people seeking jobs to afford.)

>When you make housing for the homeless dependent on being sober and clean, just what, exactly, do you expect as an outcome if not that?

Note my use of the word "unmanaged". It's possible to house people with active substance abuse problems, but it's considerably more challenging, particularly heavy drinkers and crack users. There is a significant impact in terms of care because you're dealing with people who have a limited capacity to look after themselves, but the primary impediment is aggression and violence. It only takes one difficult resident to turn the whole facility into bedlam, at which point you're faced with few options other than evicting them for the sake of the other residents.

Wet houses do exist, but they're a lot more expensive to run and they face far more local opposition. They're a fundamentally good idea, but housing alcoholics and other difficult-to-house groups is a lot more complex than just "open more shelters". You need a highly skilled multidisciplinary team to make it work, and you're still going to have some amount of unavoidable rough sleeping.

If you still don't see where I'm coming from, imagine a crack addict with diagnosed antisocial personality disorder. Imagine someone who has been arrested multiple times for assaulting medical staff and police officers. Imagine someone whose life revolves around multi-day crack binges, which usually end in an episode of drug-induced psychosis and either an ER visit or an arrest. These people are not exceptional in the population of chronic rough sleepers, but they're exceptionally difficult to house.

Sounds like they're exceptionally difficult when you don't house them as they end up in contact with police or medical staff.

Sometimes the best answer is to just give them their own space instead of a shared facility.

I've had plenty of contact with the homeless, have housed them in my own home for a night or three. They all have at least some kind of substance abuse problem (every one smoked, for instance). But if you push them out on the street, they'll end up eventually in the ER or in contact with police. This is way more expensive.

Highly dysfunctional people generally become less dysfunctional when they're housed, but they also become your problem. In an ideal world society would see the benefits, but in the real world, you're going to have to deal with an onslaught of problems. The neighbours are going to kick up an enormous fuss if the guy down the hall is stumbling around drunk at all hours of the day and night. The police are going to be all over you if your property turns into a crack den. You've got liability issues if one of your residents burns the place down.

Housing is a crucial part of the response to homelessness, but it's only a part. Some people can walk straight into a home and get back on their feet, but some people will need intensive support and others just aren't ready to be housed.

Do you have any advice on how I could find someone who knows how to assemble a team like the one you described, for managing wet house?

I'd start with local agencies that provide support for people experiencing homelessness and addiction. I'd also look to work with anyone who might be seen as a "community leader". If you're looking to open a wet house then you'll need great staff, but you'll also need good working relationships with other agencies. If you can't get the local government on your side, then you're doomed from the outset. You need people who are connected and know how to work the system.

Good luck.

>How do you know?

I've worked in housing advice and have been personally involved in rehousing homeless people. A member of my immediate family is a director of a housing association and has run several supported housing facilities.

It'd be fantastic if homelessness was as simple as "give people homes", but it isn't. Housing is part of the problem - a very large part in some areas - but chronic rough sleepers have very complex needs.

If you don't believe me, go out and talk to some rough sleepers. Ask them about their life stories. Ask them about the people they've met on the streets. You'll find some people who have had a bad run of luck and just need somewhere to stay, but you'll also find people who are highly dysfunctional and need intensive support to rebuild their lives.

I read that Finland managed to "solve" homelessness,by unconditionally giving to every homeless a place to live and more support, if needed.

Is it true? And if so, why isn't this model being copied, at all?

Finland have substantially reduced homelessness, but they're some way from eliminating it. The most effective element of their programme appears to be homelessness prevention, through early intervention for families and individuals at risk of homelessness.

The obvious difference is simply money. Finland spends 50% more on welfare than the US as a proportion of GDP. They have publicly-funded healthcare of exceptionally high quality, extensive social support and a comprehensive public housing programme.

This all connects together. Fewer people fall into homelessness as a result of poverty, because they have a comprehensive welfare state. Fewer people become homeless because of mental illness or drug addiction, because there's comprehensive healthcare coverage and easy access to rehab. Fewer people become homeless when leaving prison, because ex-offenders are referred directly to social workers who can provide personal support, drug treatment and housing. The housing-first model is one element of a holistic strategy to reduce poverty and destitution.

The US could achieve something similar, but it'd cost somewhere in the region of $500bn a year, even accounting for efficiency savings. It also takes a long time. Finland's homelessness initiative more than halved homelessness, but it took the best part of 20 years to achieve. Sadly, I'm not sure that America has the political will to spend a lot of money over a long period of time.

https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/153258/YMra...

I've yet to meet a person in SF who wants these policies towards the homeless.

Compassion is reducing the friction to life, somehow creating $500/month apartments with no credit checks and month to month.

Compassion isn't letting the homeless do anything, camp and violate other's rights, disrupt and distress the working lower to middle class, and reducing the penalties for petty crime while increasing the fines for minor infractions by taxpayers.

New York City has homeless shelter capacity for 60,000 or more people every night. It puts San Francisco to shame in that regard. The reason tens of thousands of homeless people aren't all in the street, is because they have such vast shelter capacity.

San Francisco can't manage to handle 3,000 to 4,000 people without permanent shelter (~6,600 total homeless), despite its immense affluence as a city. It's a failure of priorities.

I think you need to account for the fact that SF has a population of ~860,000 where as NY has a population of ~8,500,000. You also have to account for the weather in SF vs NY. Not defending either city just trying to put the numbers in to perspective

I was accounting for that. NYC manages to provide shelter space for 10x the number of homeless persons as there are total in SF, while having 10x the population of SF.

I'd argue that it's easier for a smaller affluent city of 860k to solve a problem of roughly 3,000 +/- homeless people (their problem isn't the 6k overall figure, it's a smaller subset of that), than it is to deal with 10x that homeless figure at 10x the city size. Human problems like that get more difficult with scale rather than easier.

I'm not sure how SF weather plays in to providing shelter space for the homeless as a problem. It should be easier and cheaper for SF to do it, as SF requires both less air conditioning in the warm months and less heating in the cold months. Of course, this is also where SF's terrible zoning laws show up as usual.

The weather effect isn't about the cost of the shelter space. There is less incentive to put up with shelter rules (or risks, as the case may be) when the homeless can sleep outdoors somewhat comfortably year-round.

Anecdotally I can tell you shelters begin to fill up when it snows or gets extremely cold. This weekend NYC is looking at lows in the teens. SF, lows in the mid 40s.

Having lots of homeless people on the streets is the opposite of solving the homeless problem. SF should be demonized.

What beaner is saying is: If City A orders cops to hassle rough sleepers and panhandlers, closes homeless shelters and offers the homeless bus tickets to other cities; while City B doesn't do those things; then City B will have more homeless people on the streets despite the fact their policies are kinder, more charitable and more humane towards the homeless.

Are there statistics on Homeless -> Employed figures?

Only if you frame the problem as "I see homeless people".

And your framing is "homelessness isn't a problem" I assume then? Because that's San Francisco's policy.

I live in NYC, and we're currently in the middle of a two-week-long span of high winds and average temperatures of -9°C, with lows of -15°C (before you add in wind chill).

If you don't have good shelter for these conditions death is pretty much a guarantee. I sure as hell would never want to be homeless in NYC during a winter like this one. You cannot discount the effect of weather on homeless populations, and even the homeless can typically scrounge together enough money for a one-way bus ticket to somewhere warmer, once.

Basically. I think weather is likely main reason places like SF, LA, and San Diego have huge homeless populations.

That in combination with unaffordable housing. There are plenty of homeless people in these places who aren't mentally ill and do in fact still have full-time jobs; they just literally can't afford a place to live and end up living in their car in a parking lot somewhere. If everything else about their situation remained the same, except rent prices were cheaper, they wouldn't be homeless.

I agree, weather plays a huge role. To praise NYC for lack of homelessness when very few homeless could live there as a result of that factor, doesn't make much sense.

>This is a product of SF being extremely welcoming and supportive of the homeless and the poor.

>NYC has less of these things because it has undergone extreme gentrification and has politics and police which treat the homeless much worse.

This is part of the puzzle. However, I think there are other contributing factors too, like the weather. If I was homeless I sure wouldn't want to be in NY in winter.

Also NYC does have an enormous homelessness problem. It's just that it also has a culture of police action driving homeless people out of upscale areas so that the well off don't have to be distressed by noticing it.

San Francisco is a perfect illustration of a liberal ethos : "Let me step over a homeless person on my way to a party where I can pontificate with my compassionate friends about the homelessness over a glass of Aubert"

Most bigger US cities look and feel like Disneyworld compared to Berlin (including SF). Yet, you are much safer there. Dirt is not the problem.

Seconded. On my visits to Berlin, my travel companions were often absolutely terrified because of the huge amounts of graffiti, the gutter punks at train stations and the open prostitution around Oranienburger Straße. They thought that they had arrived in some sort of dystopian nightmare. After a few days, they realised that Berlin is incredibly safe and welcoming, it just doesn't have any pretensions. Berlin has the same social problems as any other big city, but they're managed in open view rather than swept under the carpet.

Have you considered how the weather condition differs in the cities you mentioned?

NYC aggressively arrests anyone breaking the rules so homeless don't stay there.

Now I'm in a city with a lot of visible homeless and the government tolerating it is the real problem. They allow homeless to build massive camps filled with drugs, garbage, and human waste.

And they don't hang out in these gross camps for company. It's mostly for easy access to drugs. The city should tear these camps down the day they form.

Homeless population is one of the toughest issues a city can have. Homeless people aren't stupid, and the more welcoming you make your city the more homeless you will end up with. Considering the size of the US, there's a practically unlimited number of homeless that can come to your city if it's welcoming enough, and that's exactly what has happened to SF. There's plenty of other places with decent weather, but the homeless problem in CA is mostly a product of the politics there.

We pour endless billions toward 'solving' homelessness when it's been a problem since ancient times. Some people are just too crazy or addicted to live a normal life. The answer is to bring back asylums to hold these people against their will, but that's too politically radioactive to do.

I have a family member of the crazy variety and I would love if they were in an asylum. I wouldn't have to worry about them dying on the streets. This family member is so crazy that if you gave them a house they would likely burn it down or otherwise ruin it anyways. Far too crazy to live with the family, basically a danger to themselves and society. I would guess the majority of homeless are the same.

All these initiatives to provide housing and training are misguided, a normal person will rarely be homeless for more than a few months. The majority of the homeless population is chronic, and these people would already have shelter if they were sane or sober enough to maintain one.

All this talk about personal safety... there were so many homeless people in SF that clearly had an untreated psychiatric condition. How safe do you think it is for them? Everyone goes on about shit on the streets like it's a normal 'poor person' thing to do. It isn't.

What are we supposed to do? People seem to be against institutionalization because it denies them their freedom and they refuse to use the many public and private homeless assistance programs available to them.

It's not like this is a unique local issue, but SF seems to handle it worse than almost any other city in the developed world. All you need is the political will and to copy how other places do it.

The high cost of housing no doubt plays a large role in the Bay Area's homelessness situation.

That in turn has a demand side cause -- the continued influx of highly paid tech workers -- and a supply side cause -- the economically illiterate politics which paints housing development as some sort of handout to developers. The supply side of this problem could be fixed through political means, at no real cost to anyone. New York has 6x the population density of San Francisco yet lower housing prices, because it has the capacity to meet the demand.

Do they refuse, or are the facilities full or inadequate? What about the process by which people get into this state in the first place?

Nobody can afford to be a criminal in Manhattan. Poor people did what middle class people did 40 years ago — moved to Long Island.

Isn't wall Street in Manhattan?

It is, but I understand that not very many people live on Wall Street.

(Yes, recently the population of Manhattan has gone up, although it hasn't fully recovered from the downs of 1980's and is still much lower than 100 years ago).

OP was making a joke that Wall Street bankers are criminals :-)

I just moved to NY from SF earlier this year, and I agree, it feels so much safer.

"Manhattan is so gentrified that there are few pockets of poorer communities where gang-related activity can thrive"

This is basically slowly happening in SF as well. As much as SF-natives didn't want the "Manhattanization" of SF, it is happening just with a lot fewer people able to afford it.

That's because SF is unarguably a complete shithole (like literally, as in there is human feces on every street). There is a reason I refuse unequivocally to ever take a job that requires me to live in the Bay Area. Remote work isn't just good for your startup's office rent, it's good for worker health, diversity of experience and regional cultures, and helps your workers live in places that don't suck. Bringing everyone to SF is unnecessarily expensive and that city is awful.

If you are poor and you can't afford housing NYC has some brutal weather. With the increasing prices its hard to get housing there. I don't really know how you can survive on the streets there. At least SF has more temperate climate.

All* the violent crime in New York City (especially gang related) happens in the NYCHA ghettos, it has been this way for a long time and even that is lower now.

Dnainfo had a map of nyc gangs and it was funny because they all looked like xbox live usernames, and then the awkward reality set in that the gangs are all 14* year olds

*hyperbole

Despite the downvoting because the user is being a little snarky, his point about violent crime focused in NYCHA ghettos is essentially correct: https://spotcrime.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/newyorkcity.jp...

Consensus driven websites reflect world view more than accuracy, but primarily because people dont use upvotes/downvotes for the same reasons

Sites that pride themselves on accurate information should consider a different model

They probably are 14-16.

Where in SF did you feel unsafe?

I walk around all parts of the city considered “dangerous” (Bayview, Mission, Ocean View/Ingleside) and nothing has happened to me. Really the only “bad” area SF has is the Tenderloin and it’s common sense not to be out there wandering around even during the day.

SF has the highest per-capita property crime rate in the country among top 50 cities: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/25/us/san-francisco-torn-as-...

You can't use a personal anecdote to suggest SF is at least as safe as NYC or other major urban centers. "Anecdotally" I saw way more broken glass on sidewalks from car break-ins, saw several phone jackings in broad daylight, and, at the same day, remember wondering to myself on many days why I hadn't seen a single police officer/car on my regular commute...

I'm frankly surprised the situation in SF has not garnered more attention. At Ed Lee's funeral, it was endless adulation. You wouldn't know what the city had become. We've gone well beyond trash-chic...SF has become downright dangerous and teetering on something far worse.

I don't go to SF unless I have to now. I have no idea why rich people are still flocking to SF. It is only a matter of time before the homeless set up at Broadway and Broderick.

Last time I was there I saw a nice woman driving in a top-line Range Rover with her cute blonde kids in the back. They stopped at an intersection near the Bay Bridge. The underpass was jammed with tents and all manner of desperate people. Some young guy from the camp made eye contact with them and stared them down from a distance...they were oblivious. These people think the invisible wall will hold. I don't want to be in SF the day it breaks down, and I am convinced it will.

The city government isn't liberal enough to raise a local tax to build a solution, but also not conservative enough to take a hard line. They're just letting it fester and it will become worse and worse until someone decides to break through the invisible line separating the tent cities from the Pac Heights mansions.

Sorry, how do you know the woman was nice? And what do the kids being blonde have to do with the situation you witnessed?

I see what you're fishing for. Look, if you want to accuse someone of racism, just come right out and say it.

I'm not looking to accuse anyone of racism here. It just felt as though there were some underlying values being expressed in the comment that were not being stated explicitly.

I find it extremely difficult to have meaningful conversations when we obscure our values and are not transparent about our ethical reasoning. The commenter said the driver was nice but clearly didn't interact with her. "Nice" is a signifier of value and I was hoping to tease out a conversation about that.

It dog whistles the hair color of the evil person staring at their car.

San Francisco is far from Detroit or East St. Louis or even other places in California.

Though I may have a different perspective on “crime” since I’m not as easily scared and use my senses to keep me out of trouble. It’s a city, shit happens just make sure it doesn’t happen to you.

Yeah... no. Not all cities are equal - as the crime stats you just ignored show.

I just moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn - it's not the same as Manhattan, but I still feel safer in Brooklyn than in SF.

And you say "avoiding the tenderloin even during the day is common sense" - it's not the Bronx, it's in the middle of town. Make a left from a $400/night hotel room and you're standing next to human feces and needles.

That would be like if I told NYC visitors to "avoid midtown west in Manhattan, it's just common sense."

But you know what is interesting - you would've gotten that advice in NYC in 1985. Times Square wasn't safe. Now it's a shithole of a different variety - but a safe one.

SF doesn't need to be the way it is.

> Make a left from a $400/night hotel room and you're standing next to human feces and needles.

To be fair, there are human feces all over downtown.

Personally, I think pooping is a human right. Cities which don’t provide public toilets are de facto sanctifying defacating on the sidewalk.

What are broke people supposed to do, hold it until they get a job?

I think there’s a transgressive element to pooping on the sidewalk specifically, as opposed to areas that are still accessible but not directly in people’s walking paths.

That said, I certainly don’t blame them for being transgressive.

We had friends recently stay at the Hilton near "Union Square". It didn't describe that it was basically in Tenderloin and the area was pretty shitty, and even worse at night. Had we known we would have warned them, because it's very deceiving.

Pretty much all hotels in the city are around the Tenderloin. You can't really avoid it, it's in the heart of the city.

The Hilton is legitimately in the Union Square area. The problem is that if you take the most obvious route to Market St. and the Moscone, that takes you right through the Tenderloin if you don't know to avoid it. (That said, I try to avoid the Hilton on O'Farrell if I can.)

You see what you want to see. If you think it’s such a crime ridden place horrible, when really every place in the first world deals with the same issues, then fine. I choose to see it for what it is, it’s not anarchy here, things are just fine

> it’s common sense not to be out there wandering around even during the day

It seems pretty bad that a major western city has a completely no-go area right in the middle. Dismissing it as not a problem because it’s common sense to avoid a large area of the centre of the city doesn’t help the argument!

Ellis & Taylor: https://youtu.be/RNXNrPwyJuk

The Tenderloin is a shithole. Don't go there. And don't park your car on the street down there unless you like replacing window glass. Loads of shady looking people standing around, selling and buying crack, screaming at the top of their lungs at ghosts as they zigzag down the street dodging cars, and homeless people shitting and pissing on the sidewalks. Also lots of petty theft and assault, and the SFPD doesn't do much about it.

It's not at all a no-go area. The Tenderloin is one of the most expensive and desirable neighborhoods in SF. It's no worse than the Mission or 6th and Market. It's definitely the best place I lived in all of SF, including the Mission, SOMA, and the Sunset. No wonder people are paying $3-4k a month for studios there. Yes, there are drug spots and such but it's definitely not a place to fear or avoid. That's nonsense.

This is the first time I've heard about The Tenderloin being a desirable neighborhood. Are you sure you were actually living in the Tenderloin and not one of its adjacent neighborhoods?

Yes. I'm also sure of my rent going up $600 in one year and not being able to afford to live there anymore.

I've never felt unsafe walking around in the Tenderloin, e.g. carrying an infant. The main 'problem' people have is that there are poor people living there in SROs, and a good number of homeless people loitering all the time. But they mostly keep to themselves. Some folks certainly have substance abuse or mental health problems and will be talking to themselves, and if you walk through you might get shouted at, and sometimes there is a shouting match out in public, and statistically there is some amount of crime between residents, but it's generally not a physical threat to people walking through. It is by no means a 'no-go area'.

> I've never felt unsafe walking around in the Tenderloin, e.g. carrying an infant.

Are you joking? Or just insane?

I'm a 160 lbs male and would not walk through the tenderloin at night. It's really fucking scary. Almost everyone there is homeless and on drugs. The bad kind of drugs.

I would go so far as to say that someone carrying an infant through that area might be endangering the child.

Kid or no kid, the Tenderloin is fine as long as you "fit in"... but if it looks like you can be scared out of some cash, you will get the predatory stare.

My wife got attacked in San Francisco in Tenderloin around 11am, a few blocks away from Clift Hotel on the second day of the trip. I guess her carrying a Starbucks cup made her a target.

The fact that SF tolerates shit like this under the banner of "acceptance", "it is mental health" or whatever the hell it may be is mind blowing.

CCW would help, though that’s not available in CA.

Between hot coffee into his face and her doing a little bit of a small joint manipulation, she was fine. Just shocked.

People living in a snooty wealthy bubble get 'really fucking scared' pretty easily. It's not like drug addicts sitting on the sidewalk go out of their way to attack strangers walking by in the middle of a busy public street. I'm not recommending you find a big angry looking person and insult his mother.

There are lots of people with kids who live in the Tenderloin and presumably pass through their own neighborhood at all hours.

Walking around near poor homeless people now counts as 'child endangerment' I guess...

Not to be mean but 160 lbs isn't heavy at all. If you're pushing 200 lbs and go to the gym regularly you'll have a lot less people bothering you on the street. I still wouldn't recommend walking through the Tenderloin alone though.

> I would go so far as to say that someone carrying an infant through that area might be endangering the child.

This is nonsense. You must be extremely easily scared. For normal people, it's perfectly fine.

Looks like a proper shithole: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zzhVQRO9jY

I mean I've lived in Bolivia and never seen _anything_ as bad as this at it's worst, in Bolivia's worst areas.

Do people in Bolivia shit on the side of the street or in other public areas? Because that's what they do in SF. So many homeless people shit on the BART escalator that it once took a station's escalations out of service.

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Human-waste-shuts-down...

Shitting onto the escalator? How exactly? Is it moving during the process?

Yes, off hours it's one of the few places people can defecate in almost private (thanks to its side walls).

Privacy isn't necessary. Homeless people shit right on Market street in broad daylight.

Last time I spent a week in SF for WWDC, I saw one car breakin (near Height-Ashbury) and one woman get her phone snatched and shoved to the ground so violently she hit her head on the pavement and started bleeding (Market street).

I've never witnessed a single act of crime like that in any other city I've been to on earth (I lived in Europe, now in Asia), so it was quite shocking.

Thanks for your anecdote. I have had friends beaten up and robbed in the Mission. I have a friend who lives in Bayview who had his windows shot out. My friend's friend was mugged in Glen Park BART station, she was punched in the face and the mugger grabbed her bag, no one did anything. My wife's friends had their phones stolen off their table at a Starbucks in Noe.

Sure, and the same anecdotes hold in Manhattan. I've had friends robbed at knifepoint in the Upper West Side, I've seen phone jackings at 1pm in front of Gristedes in the Upper East Side. Hell, my brother's roommate in Harlem was clocked with a baseball bat in the head while leaving his apartment and subsequently robbed blind.

By and large NYC and San Francisco are both very safe cites in the grand scheme of things. (Unless you are a car window in San Francisco. Then you are screwed).

Look at the crime stats: http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/nycdata/public_safety/crime-selec...

In 2014 (NYC has only gotten better), SF is substantially worse by virtually every measure - some metrics over 3x worse per capita.

Trying to equate them - or even consider them similar - is generally dishonest.

or if you are on BART are terrorized by a gang of teens

https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/11/25/group-of-teens-strik...

Sure, and groups of teens in NYC have been sucker punching random people on the streets for a few years now. [1]

[1] http://www.newsweek.com/new-yorkers-are-getting-sucker-punch...

Sure - NYC isn't crime free. But you're ignoring the actual data that shows the prevalence per capita to be substantially lower than SF.

I never said San Francisco was safer than NYC, but even looking at those statistics they are mostly comparable in terms of violent crimes (notice that I did say your car is much more likely to get burgled in San Francisco), and the rate of aggravated assault is higher in that study in NYC. My point is that that both San Francisco and NYC are by and large safe cities by American city standards.

Need CCW.

I once had dinner at Montesacro Pinseria at night and parked a couple of blocks away....the walk to the alley where the restaurant is was interesting. I didn't feel unsafe simply because so many people were outside and there was lots of traffic but I still was pretty surprised that SF had areas like that. I joked with my wife , who was terrified, that it reminded me of CJs first neighborhood in GTAV.

> poorer communities where gang-related activity can thrive

I know the parent comment only said this in passing, but let's be careful about assuming poor communities are gang-infested or dangerous. AFAIK, gangs are not a problem in most American cities.

Not trying to overgeneralize but there’s definitely a correlation between poverty and gang activity. I’m also not necessarily suggesting gentrification is a net positive, just a big factor in declining crime rates in NYC.

In Manhattan, I think the last pockets of seediness were in Alphabet City but that has quickly gentrified as well. As far as I know gang-related activity near NYC is now concentrated in parts of Brooklyn and Long Island (I.e MS-13)

There was a major gang bust at the houses on Amsterdam Ave in Harlem a couple years ago. Plenty of bad shit still happens uptown. But it definitely is concentrated in pockets now, and it's definitely less bad than it was even a few years ago.

MS-13 is around in some isolated pockets on Long Island. About 1100 identified members total in Nassau and Suffolk, though not all are active. Generally stick to El Salvadoran neighborhoods in certain large-ish communities.

https://projects.newsday.com/long-island/ms-13-long-island-k...

> there’s definitely a correlation between poverty and gang activity

Broadly, I agree. To refine my point: Most street gangs are in poor areas but most poor areas don't have street gangs.

> gang-related activity near NYC is now concentrated in parts of Brooklyn and Long Island (I.e MS-13)

Does anyone know any hard data on MS-13 activity? Government has made it a talking point recently but I haven't seen data on how common it really is.

> I’m also not necessarily suggesting gentrification is a net positive, just a big factor in declining crime rates in NYC.

That seems true to me and I didn't mean to suggest otherwise.

I guess my general point, which was not a criticism of yours (yours just made me think about it), was: Let's be careful about broad stereotypes which can and do result in criminalizing poor people. I will add an observation by the esteemed Woodrow Wilson Guthrie: "Some will rob you with a six-gun, / And some with a fountain pen." I would guess that the latter cause far more harm each year than the former, and in NYC especially.

Per the FBI there are 10,000 MS-13 members out of an estimated 1.4 million US gang members total. MS-13 is in every major city in the US, the scale obviously varies. They get so much attention due to the extreme violence they tend to utilize, rather than the sheer number of members.

Great to have some data; thanks.

> MS-13 is in every major city in the US, the scale obviously varies.

Is that also from the data?

> They get so much attention due to the extreme violence they tend to utilize, rather than the sheer number of members.

This is the kind of thing I try to avoid: Do we know that the violence is more extreme than other gangs? And I suspect they get attention because it fits the White House's / GOP's immigration narrative. But who can say why something gets attention?

Manhattan does not stop at the Central Park. Neither does it stop in Harlem or Upper Manhattan. It goes to Washington Heights and Inwood.

The assumption is more that gang activity doesn’t thrive in wealthy neighborhoods. This is very much a case where one bad apple spoils the bunch.

gangs in wealthy areas are called politicians

I'm from Iowa. Pretty much every city with at least 50k people has gang activity. There are parts of Podunk, Iowa that you simply do not drive through, unless you're buying crack.