Contrariwise, I see San Francisco as a city that is struggling with some of the worst demographic issues in the nation, mostly stemming from having an absolutely absurd amount of wealth inequality for various structural and temporal reasons, and doing an admirable job of it. The "homegrown tech industry" was intentionally fostered in response to the valley turning the city into its bedroom community, so the idea that the city is somehow corrupting your vision of what SF could be is disingenuous. I suspect the SF in your recollection is the SF you yourself had a hand in changing into what it is today.

30 year San Francisco resident. The issues San Francisco faces today are not from wealth inequality. That’s horse shit. It is in fact dysfunctional government. Also, you are mistaken about the genesis of San Francisco based tech versus the Valley. And you are wrong about the history of workers living in San Francisco and commuting to the Valley.

Actually, everyone is to blame- San Jose Mercury News: "Who caused the Bay Area’s housing shortage?"

http://archive.is/UAGhq

original HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16799107

In many cases the homeless have a better net impact on the world than tech people.

Consider carbon footprint, accelerating “progress” toward ecological collapse, building tech used by authoritarian governments, etc.

People of all classes come to SF for similar reasons, the resources.

Instead of being afraid of solving the homeless problem for fear of attracting more homeless, SF Ought to focus its creativity on solving the problem in a way that works for everyone.

The best solution is, give the homeless free housing.

Since SF industry is extracting / creating wealth (depending on your political slant) from all over the world, then it should be ok with people from all over the world coming in to have basic needs met.

Create shipping container / tiny home villages; provide robotic grown organic foods; deploy scalable mental health and community building tech; etc.

Deploy that tech to other surrounding cities which would alleviate some of the pressure for folks to move to SF if they are homeless.

Repeat the process across the USA.

Repeat the process around the world and alleviate the resource gradient.

You want to take a dent out of the universe? Solve homelessness and resource scarcity.

I agree with the reply above mine by Captainredbeard, that bringing back the CCC would help to stymie the crumbling of a large portion of America's failing infrastructure.

Or, bring back the Civilian Conservation Corps and exchange labor for government income / support. It will provide meaningful work and structure for the lost and is productive to boot. There are many great works from the 1930s (dams, etc.) which still provide immense value to recreational users and farmers today.

Most of the homeless aren't inbound. They're being priced out of the market that they've lived in their whole life. You're just illustrating the lack of awareness tech people have in the city.

Would be interested in hearing more about your take on this. What have you seen play out over the years?

How has such a shitty local government not gotten voted out? I understand the NIMBYism driving it and perverse incentives for housing owners but the approval rate has to be crazy low

A "shitty local government" that delivers the biggest economic miracle in the world while at the same time advancing progressive values. Surely we must vote it out.

SF’s success is in spite of the government, not because of it.

This is such an important distinction to be able to make in life!

Often highest leverage in our own lives and in reflecting on our own successes.

People aren't downvoting you because they hate homeless people. They're downvoting because the city already devotes a ton of money to homelessness, and has proven itself extraordinarily inept or corrupt at solving that problem.

There are many possible solutions to what is a horrible and obvious problem. Throwing billions more down the SF government money maw is not one of them.

Much of SF's homeless population is not local to SF. Part of the problem with spending money on the homeless is that it draws more homeless seeking those services. And in many cases, other states and cities have "solved" their homeless problem by shipping their homeless to CA. (Texas, especially, is notorious for this.)

Not saying that SF is well-run or not, merely that the homeless problem isn't simply due to the city's response.

This is simply not true, and is a huge misconception about homelessness in SF.

69% of people had housing in San Francisco before they became homeless and 72% of those people have been in San Francisco for at least five years.

https://atthecrossroads.org/news/myths-facts-about-homelessn...

The city uses an expanded definition of homelessness that includes people who are "doubled-up" in the homes of family or friends [1]. The survey referenced in the source you've linked counts people dealing with LGBTQ-related issues that, while terrible, aren't what most people think of when they picture homelessness in SF.

The "man shooting heroin on the street" sorts of homeless folks are, in my limited experience volunteering, generally not from SF but some other part of CA.

[1]: http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2017-SF-Poin...

that's less than half: 0.69 * 0.72 = 0.4968

There really are cities that pay for bus tickets to ship homeless out, generally under the banner of a name like "homeward bound." The reality, though, is that SF is a net exporter under those programs: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/...

I mean... that's how the cookie crumbles unfortunately. California is the most survivable climate for the homeless and for some reason people applaud local governments busing the homeless to California - as long as those two factors remain in place it's up to California to fix it.

With that understanding there should be more national funding going toward the homeless issue - and if there's one local economy that could actually afford to fix the problem it's SF.

Land is pretty cheap in Texas. It’s often unrestricted. SF could buy up a ton of land and start building an eco village with tiny homes; robotic organic food production; etc. and start providing services to the Texas homeless population as way to stop them from coming to SF.

This would probably be much cheaper.

SF spends $400 million a year on what it terms behavioral health (encompassing both mental healthcare and drug abuse treatment). How much more do you think ought to be spent?

San Francisco’s budget is the same as Chicago’s, despite Chicago having three times the population and twice as large of an economy.

The top-line figure of the SF budget is misleading because it includes the SFO airport. This arrangement is unusual in the United States. Chicago operates ORD and MDW out of a separate budget, like most US cities do [1].

Notice the large difference in the size of Chicago's enterprise budget [2] and San Francisco's enterprise budget [3]. SFO is considered part of the enterprise budget of the City and County of San Francisco, but it's a separate fund entirely for Chicago.

(As an aside, this setup means that the mayor of San Francisco doubles as the CEO of the SFO airport, which is also unusual.)

[1]: https://www.flychicago.com/business/CDA/factsfigures/Pages/f...

[2]: https://budgetblog.ctbaonline.org/chicagos-city-budget-101-5...

[3]: https://datasf.org/blog/unpacking-a-10-billion-budget/

It also includes operation of the water district which other cities split out.

SF's budget is actually much larger than Chicago's budget in 2019, $11B vs $8.9B.

However, Chicago has significantly more debt, and is on the verge of bankruptcy. SF is not.

To add to this, I'm assuming "twice as large of an economy" must be hyperbole because I'm not finding any data that comes even close to that. Chicago's GDP, for example, is only ~1.3x bigger in total. In terms of GDP per capita SF is actually ~1.5x bigger (for metro areas, because that's the data I could find).

Definitely not arguing that SF doesn't have its share of management problems, but this feels like a pretty poor example.

I’m looking at just the city proper. 1.5x the GDP per capita, with 1/3 the population = half the GDP.

Then you're not looking at the city proper and we're mixing measures here. The 1.5x I mentioned is at the metro level, while your 1/3 population is city proper. That said, I'm struggling to find any kind of useful data broken down at the city level in terms of economic output, so I certainly wouldn't die on this hill.

Right, I’m assuming the relative ratio is the same for the cities as for the metro areas. Both cities have a lot of their jobs and major companies in the suburbs, so that’s probably not an unreasonable assumption.

Chicago’s problem is that it’s in a state that until quite recently taxed like a red state (3% flat income tax!). But that’s on the revenue side—it has nothing to do with how much money is reasonable to spend on city services.

If taxes are the issue, nothing is stopping the one party that rules Chicago from implementing their own progressive income tax.

San Francisco is a county, so it includes county budgets like prisons. It is not an apples to apples comparison

I’m not downvoting you but I’m skeptical that the problems with homelessness can be fixed by putting more money toward mental health care. Are there a lot of skilled mental health practitioners who aren’t working due to a lack of demand?

Mental healthcare is absolutely a salve for a lot of homeless folks. We used to have sanitariums and institutes - some of those were terribly abusive (seriously, they were horrific in some cases). Instead of fixing the abuse issues people found it easier to solve the problem by shutting down the evil institutions... then everyone who had been receiving treatment was forced onto the street and expected to take care of themselves.

Anecdotally, my wife (at the time a developmental psychologist) was commuting to SF from central valley every day because her pay wasn't enough to pay both rent and student loans.

In the end she left psych and went into tech. Problem solved!

Too bad most of the world doesn't realize you can't solve national problems at a local level

There you go again, it’s someone else’s problem right ?

For example, what if some of the money used by Google et al, went to lobbying the government to change its stance on healthcare ?

Probably the same reason Volkswagen doesn't spend its billions lobbying the German government to change its stance on refugees?

VW does a huge amount of lobbying:

https://lobbyfacts.eu/articles/29-10-2015/volkswagen-top-10-...

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-influence/2019...

I'm going to guess they lobby for their benefit, not to solve social ills.

It's not just SF. The whole state of CA is woefully mismanaged. They just have enough money to smooth over much of the stupid stuff. When the money runs out (next recession?) they are gonna get hit really really hard (and they deserve it, stupid should hurt).

It is hilarious people think "money will run out" and CA is mismanaged. CA has a $30bn rainy day fund. It is incredibly managed. We have protected our shorelines, our mountains, our nature while other states have sold them off to the highest bidder. Our legislators pioneered equal rights and made LGBT mainstream in American politics. We pioneered action against climate change and kick started incentives towards alternative fuel, solar, and wind energy. We have the most generous healthcare coverage in America. We have the most generous welfare in America. We have invested billions in public transportation. We have the most upwardly mobile population. We pioneered recreational marijuana, and decriminalizing drugs. We are leading the revolution against mass incarceration. We have some of the most generous policies that are pro-women, starting from abortion to parental leaves. And we have the #1 economy in the world. That's quite mismanagement.

So much hyperbole in this comment…

Yes, CA is one of the better states in the United States, but it is by no means half of the things you say.

No, it is not the #1 economy in the world (hello, the rest of the US exists, as does China and Japan and Germany)[1].

Neither was CA the first to pioneer recreational marijuana or decriminalize drugs. Other states like WA and CO did it first, not to mention other countries like the Netherlands or Portugal.

Nor was CA the shining beacon of LGTB rights. Do you not remember Prop 8?

Nor did we do a bang-up job of protecting our environment, or do you not remember the drought and wildfires of recent years, exacerbated by our unchecked agriculture which is pumping our aquifers dry for some of the most water-hungry crops (like almonds).

I'll stop here because I have to board a flight and you get the point. Surely you know half the things you said aren't true.

[1]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/05/05/ca...

Unless the LA Times is wrong, the rainy day fund is ~$8 billion.

https://www.latimes.com/politics/essential/la-pol-ca-essenti...

To put that into perspective, California's annual budget is over $200 billion, so you can run the state for about two weeks on that.

While I agree with you that stupid should hurt, I think one of the reasons the situation is so bad is that a lot of the stupid decisions haven't been hurting the people who make the make them and the people who cause them to be made. This isn't just a problem in CA, just look at the Boeing debacle. Tons of bad decisions, the people who made the decisions made 10s - 100s millions of dollars and laughing all the way to the bank. Same think with California's politicians and elite class ... public workers, on the hand, are probably screwed ...

People have been saying that about California for more than 150 years (when the gold runs out, SF will turn into a ghost town, you’ll see!).

CA is actually quite well-managed. One of the reasons we pay so much in taxes is precisely because CA legislators have a better grasp of financial realities than their counterparts in red states: if you want to spend more, you need to collect more money to pay for it.

And CA voters like to pay for things. Red-state voters do not; they like to pretend that people will do things for free (i.e., teachers) until things break and they accept the reality that nice things cost money.

How are you quantifying (qualifying?) "well-managed". If the metric we care about is along the lines of cost of living, then it's arguably the worst in the county. I could afford to buy a house in pretty much any Red State. What's that a function of? People not wanting to live there? I doubt it. I sincerely doubt it, because every time this topic comes up here on HN we hear stories about people leaving SF/SV for Austin or the South East - and there's plenty of data showing an exodus out of the West Cost corridor. Will housing costs go up in those areas? Maybe - but if/when there's a reshuffling I have a lot more faith in city leaders in those other parts of the country not to use the San Francisco checklist for "how to turn your city upside down".

>And CA voters like to pay for things. Red-state voters do not; they like to pretend that people will do things for free (i.e., teachers) until things break and they accept the reality that nice things cost money.

I think this point is also way off the mark. I should not have to shell out thousands a year for pre-school if I want my kids to be competitive. This is the reality for friends I have in SF. Not so for friends in Houston or Austin.

I don't live in SF, but I turned down a job there entirely because of the cost of living and that, at least from where I'm standing, the city is run by idiots that are completely disconnected from reality. You might think I'm conflating state and city government, and to an extent you're right, I am. But as city leadership is so often a launch pad for state (and then national) government I'm not particularly bullish on California's future.

Cost of living is high is because people want to live here. CA population is actually going up.

Their horribly underfunded pensions disagree with you.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/California-s-public...

Sadly, pain and suffering does not fix stupid.

Indeed, it usually makes it worse.

Having moved from San Francisco to Champaign, IL myself. There’s something to be said for a 5 min commute, lower taxes, a yard. There’s still a fairly large tech community here. Wolfram has its headquarters here, and there’s tons of tech companies, albeit mostly remote offices.

Honestly, I’d have trouble moving back to a large city. It doesn’t have much more to offer, and what I’d have to give up is significant.

I did and am continuing to do the same thing. I ran a company in downtown SF. Employed about 25 people when I was there.

They pulled eminent domain no us to put up the new transbay terminal and infrastructure down town.

We tried to find a decent replacement but couldn't. Eventually we gave up working and converted the entire company to remote work.

Everyone preferred working from home. Some even bailed (like myself) and left SF. Some even went to Europe.

SF is dead.. it's bittersweet like you said of course... but it's died and has been reborn many times.

At least I don't have to smell shit and piss on the walk to work every day.

With the University of Waterloo and Conestoga College, Kitchener-Waterloo is a hot bed of engineering and CS talent. And the whole area is quite underpaid and pretty affordable despite a massive shoot up in housing prices.

I think my point, other than boosting my hometown, is that there's a lot of really affordable talent out there if startups and VCs would just dare to look elsewhere a little harder.

LOL at this hilarious post. SF is in a negative trajectory ? SF has absolutely destroyed every city in the last decade when it comes to job creation, economic engine, value creation, startup creation etc. SF is in such a positive trajectory that has very few historical precedence.

That almost no one can afford to live there is surely the best of evidence that San Francisco has "crushed it".

It is like that adage "Nobody goes there anymore. It is so crowded"

I guess I should've added the /s on that.

It's kind of insane to me that we all think that because it's super expensive to live in SF that that's some sort of measure of success.

yes, it actually is

Sadly we have several cities chomping at the bit to BECOME the next Silicon Valley. There's little regard to exactly what that means.

Usually doesn't mean anything more than self-promotion, which ironically mostly seems to be used to not become a better place to actually move to.

I think "nice weather" figures in there somewhere.

The fun part of the "I'm mad at those wealthy people over there" movement is that the industry the disdain is directed at is hotswappable.

I travel a lot. Pointing at "tech" is a red herring that ensures the most vulnerable people won't figure it out. I would say "tech" is the most inclusive of all the wealthy gentrifiers.

There is no specific university you have to go to, there is no specific fraternity you need to be part of, there is no degree you actually need, very different than high finance or upper class Chinese estate planners.

Austin. And it’s already having tons of growing pains.

Bye!