https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26040812

Liberal policies such as this does not solve the actual problem. Instead of providing food and shelter to the poor, perhaps starting an infrastructure program to employ these people and fix the damn roads, they empower the poor to go rampage stores to survive.

Edit: I might be wrong. I think I am misreading this, it seems to be not just SF city per se, but the entire state of California. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47

See sacramento article: https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2019/09/25/grab-and-dash-the...

That’s just not true at all, come on, you’re intentionally spreading misinformation.

It raised the limit to $950 for the felony threshold for simple theft. Robbery is still a felony.

“Prop 47 doesn’t cover robberies, theft by the use of force or fear. It doesn’t cover burglaries,” Gascón said. “If you break into a structure with the intent to commit theft or another felony, that continues to be a felony. If someone breaks into your car to steal even a pack of cigarettes, that’s still a felony.” https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/san-francisco-shoplifting-...

Boudin was proud of this heritage and campaigned as having impeccable socialist credentials as the adopted son of Ayers. He went on the record announcing how devastating it was to have parents in jail and vowed to reduce prosecutions. He announced a policy of not prosecuting for property crimes especially if the offenders belong to certain victimhood groups, he fired a number of prosecutors who were responsibile for prosecuting gang crime (https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/01/10/new-san-francis...), and he instituted a policy of pressuring victims of violent crime to not press charges and accept "restorative justice" programs, especially if the offenders were members of victim classes - even for murder. Victims of violent crime report substantial pressure from Boudin's office repeatedly calling and demanding they agree to diversionary programs while victims of property crime are often ignored entirely and police discourage the filing of reports. Despite this, the city now leads the nation in property crime.

Citing quotes by Gascon for a State proposition is not a sufficient characterization for the special brand of lawlessness we have here in San Francisco.

"San Francisco has by far the highest property crime rate in California, with more than twice the number of reported thefts per capita than Los Angeles or Santa Clara counties, according to a new report by the Public Policy Institute of California.

And when it comes to arrests, San Francisco is 50th out of the state’s 58 counties."

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/philmatier/article/SF-ra...

Put it this way LA county is 4000 square miles, Santa Clara is 1300. San Francisco is 47. I bet if you target the most urban areas of those counties the numbers get a lot closer.

    This. I moved outside of Portland a few months ago
    after three serious incidents on my property involving
    violent vagrants. In all three cases the police took
    over an hour to show up and did absolutely nothing.

    I had a man trying to break in to my backdoor. When
    I confronted him and demanded that he leave, he began
    swinging punches and pulled out a knife. I managed to
    restrain him and the 13 year old girl next door called
    911 (in hysterics). After keeping this guy pinned
    for 30 mins while waiting for the cops, I gave up and
    released him. He then attempted to assault me again. So
    I pinned him for another 15 mins, the neighbors called
    911 again. Still no cops. So I let him go and kept
    kicking the guy in the ass (literally) until he left
    my property.

    The cops show up about 75 minutes after the first
    call and said "Our hands are tied. We can't do
    anything." They didn't even bother to look for the
    guy. They just wanted to leave.

    I've seen this happen first hand in developing
    countries. You know what happens when law enforcement
    doesn't do its job? Violence escalates due to rise of
    vigilantism - as communities are left with no choice
    other than to employ street justice.

    After three incidents (none as bad as the first) I found
    myself concluding "The next time one of these guys tries
    to break into my property or threaten my family I am
    simply going to kick the shit out of them... There is
    no point calling the police."

    I am a peaceful person that has never even been
    in a fight. That's when I knew it was time to leave
    Portland. Who wants to live like this? I don't want to
    assault anyone, but I also want to live in peace and
    feel assured my family is safe.

Otherwise, it’s the old “can’t do anything until you’ve been assaulted” routine, and hours of waiting.

But mention you heard gunshots and the Armed Offender Squad boys roll around in no time.

The fact that cops aren’t responding to cases of violence has nothing to do with the shoplifting laws passed in SF, and frankly, that law should explicitly open up more resources for cops to be able to investigate such violent behavior.

What exactly in Portland prevents them from acting on violent vagrants. Depending on the timeline, this likely has more to do with the fact that police unions across the country deployed a deliberate don’t do police work policy because people decided to protest against the minority of police that were killing in percent civilians merely because of their skin color of the zip code they were arrested in.

EDIT: "chewing gun" to "chewing gum". Guns are usually not chewy for certain.

That seems improbable. Why would anyone be charged with felony murder if they killed someone? It seems like a contradiction in terms.

Edit: to be clear, it's easy to look up that yes, his parents were convicted of felony murder, and no, they didn't kill the police officers. That's how felony murder works, so I wonder if the comment above is preaching to people who think "felony" is an intensifier for "murder" or whether it's an honest mistake.

Watch some recent episodes of Soft White Underbelly with homeless people in SF. It will really open your eyes to how much the problem is the cities disinterest in doing anything at all to fix things. All of their 'fixes' are really just enablement.

Making crime easier to commit doesn't reduce crime.

You are looking at this backwards. It's all directly because of policy changes, because that's what changed the judicial behavior, which affected upstream police behavior, which affected upstream public's behavior.

Well, since I've known people who worked as loss prevention managers and who did it, and since the news article on the issue posted elsewhere in the thread specifically identified that retailers have changed policies in ways which reduce that, yes, I am reasonably think that they were doing so before and are doing so less now.

> And if crime isn't being prosecuted

To the extent that is a problem in some places (which no source I've seen indicates it is generally, though I've seen some indicating it may be in San Francisco specifically), then that too is not a requirement of the law (misdemeanors are not nonprosecutable) and the same criticism shifts within law enforcement to DAs, it's still not the law’s fault.

Why are you placing blame at everything downstream instead of what actually triggered the changes?

The vast majority of nonviolent crimes here now have no police involvement whatsoever. They just have you file an online report for you to forward to your insurance (if any). This includes catalytic converter thefts that can cost over $2000 alone to resolve, let alone other property loss plus vehicle damage.

Police do choose whether and what resources to devote to investigation after a report. If they never identify an offender because they don't do anything with what they are given by retailers, there are no charges to drop.

> The vast majority of nonviolent crimes here now have no police involvement whatsoever.

Which is a choice by the police.

  Police do choose whether and what resources to devote to investigation

Under the current "zero bail" guidelines, even felony suspects can be put back on the street the same day. Look up Idris Muhammad, who set three fires while already on probation, was quickly released, then set more fires and busted shop windows.

Texas Penal Code § 31.03

(3) a Class A misdemeanor if the value of the property stolen is $750 or more but less than $2,500;

(4) a state jail felony if:

(A) the value of the property stolen is $2,500 or more but less than $30,000, or the property is less than 10 head of sheep, swine, or goats or any part thereof under the value of $30,000;

"There's a good chance you get shot to death" is probably a better deterrent than even a felony, though it's a little morally concerning.

As a semi-random example, $500 property crime was the threshold for justifiable homicide in Nevada (appears to be $1200 now + a $0 threshold for some classes of property). Criminals knew this and often carefully limited their activity to avoid this threshold, with odd property selection effects.

I guess it speaks to the success of right wing media in our society that well educated and well informed people get so badly taken in by them.

> ...unquestionably accept such a wild claim

For people who don't read or, apparently, Google for five seconds, verisimilitude and truth are the same thing. To be fair, that's true of everyone who doesn't read, not just libertarians.

By comparison, the same dividing line in the state of Texas is set at $1500.

What’s interesting is why SF appears to be the most affected county. It might be because it continues to elect soft-on-crime City Attorneys or that it fails to investigate organized crime rings that then operate with impunity. My favorite example of this is Fremont PD doing SFPD’s job and busting an international auto theft ring mostly operating in SF[1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47...

[1] https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/01/31/thousands-of-stolen-l...

You can't simply compare European to American incarceration statistics without taking into account that the US is an extremely criminal country for the developed world. And no, this doesn't have to do with universal healthcare or any other hobby horse. America had much higher homicide rates going back to the 18th century, well before modern European welfare states. (Not just the US, the Western Hemisphere in general has always had much higher rates of violent crime.)

The fact of the matter is that we're a violent society. Absent total abolition of prison, we're always gong to have much higher incarceration rates than Europe.

Also, we have had Obamacare for a decade. We have a less complete social safety net than European countries, but people act like it doesn’t exist.

If it's possible for a mass murdering nation to become more peaceful than the US then that implies that the US completely failed at dealing with violence. Since you are starting off from a much lower base it should be much easier for your country to take care of the problem.

Edit: As other countries pointed out the US did commit war crimes as well.

And would you really want to? The US is far from innocent with its use of nuclear weapons, fire-bombing Japan (Truman: "there were more people killed by fire-bombs in Tokyo than dropping the atomic bombs"), Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and so on.

Note that I'm not saying you're wrong about Nazi Germany, just that, the whilst the death tolls may be either swift or cumulative, it remains the case that all countries are guilty on the war front.

So to repeat: the context is criminality not war, where the distinction is the normally accepted delineation of the two.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust

> Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population.

Notice the use of the word "murdered" in the second sentence of the article, as well as throughout the rest.

The context was violence, not criminality. But even if it were criminality, the Holocaust is widely considered a crime against humanity.

Maybe you never intended to, but your comment reads:

> Nazi Germany murdered more people in a single named process

Reference to Nazi Germany does not, as you say, necessarily equate to war. However "a single named process" would to most readers be treated as narrowing it down to "a single named process" - World War Two.

The most obvious simple reading of your comment would give the clear impression you meant the war. If that wasn't the intention, if the named process was the wider genocide, or simply the Third Reich, then fair enough. But I'm sure you can understand any misreading.

Did you forget to count them?

I’m not minimizing the evil of the Nazi murders. Just pointing out the US started out with a fundamental violence problem of incredible scale.

There are cycles of poverty and culture causing this but the government’s actions turn SF into both a honeypot and an accelerant for crime. It does this by turning a blind eye to crime both in talk and action.

Criminals know that SF is a great place to commit crime. This draws them in from all over and they commit more crime.

The DA is selling the narrative of rehabilitation but the criminals are just taking advantage of it to just commit more crime.

Cities cut overall violent crime rates significantly in past decades by applying logic from the broken windows theory[1]. The real reason this works is bc a significant amount of crime is carried out by a very small number of individuals...and enforcing more penalties increases the chances police will scoop up a portion of those individuals. The unfortunate downside of this strategy is that some people (that aren't in that category) face overly harsh consequences in relation to their crime. New versions of this should be tried to try and minimize that from happening.

It should be expected that taking the complete opposite approach would likely lead to much more than a slight increase in petty crimes. Buy hey it sounds good initially and wins votes on the left so why wouldn't they

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory

Addiction is not just an idle habit you kick with some perseverance and self control.

"I tried to help some cancer patients by giving them jobs and the occasional free meal, but a lot of them just ended up dying of cancer anyways."

The day America stops treating addiction as an individual moral failing and starts treating it as a lifelong disease and a collective social failing is the day we finally start to address these issues.

They day we start dealing with it is the day when your kids are addicted. Until then, it’s not our problem.

I’m not sure which drug it’s going to be. Maybe Adderral or Vyvanse being gateway into higher dose amphetamines, or something, but it’s gonna have to be a common drug amongst most of the kids before we take addiction seriously.

I think issues around not taking addiction seriously or not understanding it are facets of us collectively not taking mental health seriously.

We spend over a billion a year on the homeless. It’s an intractable problem, and the weather, social services, and accepting (of panhandling) population drives demand to locate here.

The average SF resident loves having homeless people because of the secondary benefits that homelessness brings.

The impact on the "social bond" of society became suddenly clarified. We live in a lawless society. Those that follow the laws are fools pantomiming a voided social contract in outdated custom.

Why not both?

"In 2013, the Utah Housing and Community Development Division reported that the cost of emergency room treatment and jail time averaged over $16,000 a year per homeless person, while the cost of providing a fully subsidized apartment was only $11,000."[0]

The author quoted above makes an excellent case – multiple times – for reducing cost to society if we'd just spend the money to get people off the street in a chapter titled, Criminalizing Homelessness. Think of the number of hours spent by police responding to calls related to homelessness and what social ills it creates. Consider that there are functional individuals who want to contribute to society, but medical bills or a run of bad luck has created circumstances under which this is impossible. Getting those people back into the economy could be useful.

I'm not saying this addresses other issues, such as mental illness. There's quite a lot of services that would be needed there, as well. Also, job training, etc. Another chapter, We Called for Help, and They Killed My Son, deals with the first part.

There's also the problem of addiction among the unhoused. There's a chapter on that as well. I've spot-checked info in the book a number of times and found the information to be well researched. According to the chapter, The War on Drugs, what we've been doing to combat drug use is an even more colossal failure and cash sink than probably most of us realize (assuming that you already think it's a failure).

The book has me convinced that it's cheaper for society, overall, to just pay to help people rather than funding the punitive system that's currently in place.

[0] The End of Policing, by Alex S. Vitale pg 97 ^^ This book is excellent. I've already bought copies for three people who are close to me who I think will be open to its message.

  the cost of providing a fully subsidized apartment was only $11,000.

It also doesn't count the other costs of providing that housing in the first place. The current debate in Mountain View of turning over one hotel to unhoused people includes spending $70,000 per room just in construction/conversion costs for a nice hotel that's barely 30 years old.

This HR guy said "Is that really diversity though?"

I guess he was looking for a more symbolic or virtue signaling example and with another minority group other than Indians. Something like "I was the first person at my company to put a BLM sticker on my cube."

Sarcasm is on a roll this evening.

By your very own words: ""diverse" is just an HR term of art that means "black, Hispanic, or female"", i.e. a completely subjective, odd, and contextual local moralism.

The problem is that these folks believe that any 'questioning' of their methods or approach are in fact 'questioning' of the underlying positive impetus of their motivation (i.e. we all agree 'not being racist' is good, but that doesn't mean we have to buy into any specific moralisms about diversity).

But anyone who asks that kind of question in an interview is either a clown or a pill-swallowing victim, and it's definitely a massive 'Red Flag' in that you're entering into a dystopian social nightmare where you'll need special help 'interpreting' thew Newspeak.

People from outside the West are already having enough trouble keeping up with the basic PC stuff, this is getting ridiculous.

It's a sign of social decay, and that SF has 'peaked' in terms of it's relative importance. Thanks to COVID, the rise of China, Trumpian foreign policy which has engendered a lot of mistrust, the 'decentralization' has begun in earnest.

I work with developers in E. Europe and 20 years ago they would have jumped at the chance to move to the US, now they have a strong preference for staying home - the only motivation is money, but since there's massive Purchase Power differential, even their low salaries offer them fairly high standard of living - and their economies are growing consistently 4-7%/year.

The story really is not about 'people leaving SF' - it's about 'The End of Short-lived SF Mecca'.

Note that SF proper was not a 'centre' of anything really until about 2010: Google, FB etc. are all 'Valley'companies, not until the rise of Twitter, Salesforce, Stripe did we see 'SF Values' come to start to infiltrate the definition of 'Silicon Valley'. The Bay will remain important, possibly even the 'most' important, but much like broad relative US decline (i.e. 40% of global GDP in 1960, 25% today), the relative influence will wane. The 2010's were 'peak SF'.

Edit: I should add - a regular from outside the Angloshpere upon hearing the question 'what have you done to support diversity' would basically be baffled and probably have no real idea what the interviewer was asking. I don't think many Americans in these situations realize how hyper-American (at very least Anglo/American or Western) these kinds of things are. Imagine asking that question of someone from Hong Kong, Delhi, or god forbid the true capital of 'complicated diversity', Lebanon.

Stuff like:

– Non-ironically comparing Trump to Hitler. "At least Hitler listened to his generals!" Umm what? Seriously? And it's not even true: Hitler rarely did. Just... I can't even.

– We can't use the words "blacklist" and "whitelist" now even though they have nothing to do with race. I kid you not, I even heard people talking about "black hole" being "problematic". How patronizing can you be to black people, to think they give a shit? To think this shit is actually helping?

– Non-ironically talking about abolishing the police. If you disagree, you're white privileged and subconsciously racist. No? I just want some statistics first. Evidence it might be a good idea? Pros and cons of the police first? Just not viral videos and emotions?

– Non-ironically talking about socialism, white patriarchy this, equal outcomes that. Partitioning based on race.

– Can't mention Joe Rogan without someone wanting to deplatform, talking about how harmful it is to trans people to even mention the name.

You know what sucks the most? I rarely feel able even to discuss these topics in a calm, sensible way with people. Definitely never at work. Many people are just too emotional here. The culture sucks. So I just keep silent most of the time. You have to figure out if it's safe to say moderate things to someone, like you're in the French resistance or something. And I have relatively liberal views on most topics! I'm hardly an unreasonable right wing gun loving Christian, or whatever caricature of "the other" is in their heads. Yet I don't feel welcome here.

Yeah, go ahead and downvote because I have different politics to you, even though I was just answering the question (at least I interpreted it as a question asking me to elaborate).

What it actually did is raise the line between misdemeanor and felony theft from $450 to $950.

And non-quip: the police haven’t given up in Texas.

There is no law which allows robberies.

I haven't seen any conclusive evidence that shows Prop 47 has led to higher crime rates. In fact there are many studies which show there isn't any, while at the same time the state is saving tons of money not incarcerating non-violent offenders.

I haven't seen any conclusive evidence that Chesa Boudin has led to higher crime rates, though I'm not sure how controlled the comparison is of pandemic-city levels vs normal crime levels.

Crime happened before prop 47, crime happened after prop 47. Crime happened before Chesa was elected DA, crime happened after he was elected DA.

I wish there were no crime, but to point out an example of one crime being committed and then jumping to broad conclusions, while also misrepresenting the supposed rationale for the increase in crime, it's a bit of a red flag for me.

There is a point at which you have to realize/admit that your ideological narrative, and the public sector interests who popularize it, are wrong. The left coast cities, from San Fran to Vancouver, have prioritized decriminalization of drugs, social services, and hands off policing for 'minor' crimes like theft, and have been overtaken by deliquency and squalor as a result.

I don't know why anyone would assume that homeless people are starving in Texas. What do you think all the shelters and kitchens are for?

[0] https://www.waco-texas.com/housing-homelessness.asp#gsc.tab=... [1] https://www.churchunderthebridge.org/ [2] https://www.kwtx.com/content/news/Waco-Church-Under-the-Brid...

Should NYC provide me housing if I start living in a tent on Madison Ave?

https://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/todays-read-behind-n...

San Francisco is also 3x less dense than Paris (Paris, France).

SF could add homes for 1.5 million people and still be as livable as Paris, if it wanted to.

For example, Tokyo and Seattle. San Francisco even has the advantage of being merely fault adjacent. In cases like Seattle, a major thrust fault runs through the city. It doesn't prevent dense construction.

This is hyperbole and dramatically wrong. It's one of those statistics that's repeated in Bay Area circles but has no bearing on reality.

Houston metro is almost the same size as the entire 9-county Bay Area metro: 7M population, 10K sq mi.

Bay Area 9 county: 7.4M population, 7K sq mi.

Houston metro pop density = 0.7K people / sq mi. Bay Area 9 county = 1.05K people / sq mi.

So, the Bay Area 9 county is only 1.5 times as dense as Houston, largely because Houston allows many more high rises.

Applying statistics from SF, which is effectively the "downtown" of the Bay Area is not a valid comparison. The population density of San Francisco is not impressive, period. Downtown Houston is much more developed than San Francisco, and that would be a more valid comparison for density.

But this also doesn't get to the main point which was cost and housing density. Cost per sq/ft in Houston (excluding the lots, which are enormous compared to the Bay Area) is $107. Median house price in downtown Houston is $310K.

Costs per sq/ft in the Bay Area are anywhere between $280 and $800. It's not a close comparison in price at all, despite being a comparable density.

It is ridiculous to compare downtown Houston, which is surrounded on all sides by a zillion square miles of suburbs (under city control!), to SF, which is surrounded by a limited number of more expensive and more restrictive enclaves that SF has no power over, and most of those places are a bridge or tunnel away. Obviously there is going to be less demand, and less premium for land if there are 10,000 other plots within 30 minutes. That just isn't the case in SF.

If the bay area as a whole had better housing policy than it would help SF a lot. But they don't, so it makes it worse for SF. And SF has no control over the housing laws passed in other counties. SF is of course partially at fault, as they should have better housing policy themselves, but they are not entirely responsible for the problem.

You don't have the same choices in and around SF, therefore there is a lot of demand on much smaller amounts of land, therefore it's a lot more expensive!

It's the same reason rent is really expensive in NYC, even though they are way more dense than SF. Lots of demand, not many alternatives.

Right. I left CA to Vegas and it’s like every second car on a stoplight has CA license plates. Houses in decent areas are overbidding. What Covid didn’t do - liberal policies finished. SF flooding with feces, rising crime, exorbitant taxes and lockdown nonsense.

We had enough. Voting with my feet

It used to be that SFR was all small funds or investors. These investors hold fixed 30 year notes and don’t have to be aggressive with rent increases. A turn is more of a concern than a rent increase.

Dodd- Frank had nothing to do with that. The fix is to require these institutional funds to liquidate to owner-occupants after a decade. Let them cash out the appreciation and wind up the fund.

I'd say that benefits large investors.

I worked on a public project. The funds were misappropriated in my opinion. Your tax dollars are wasted like in every other state. Therefore: lower taxes.

Everyone's comments makes sense to me if you swap SOMA in for tenderloin

Intelligence is having knowledge (think book knowledge )

Bright is like sharp. (think street smart or think things through that are complexed)

I have friends that I consider very intelligent that are not bright. One makes $200k as an actuary but can't figure out how to talk to his kids in a way that sounds human/normal.

Intelligence is usually defined in terms of adaptability, ability to learn, solve problems, etc.

For comparison, the cost to incarcerate someone in California is around $7k/mo and what that money is spent on is broken down at https://lao.ca.gov/PolicyAreas/CJ/6_cj_inmatecost

California should investigate contracting the prison service to Oklahoma: Oklahoma spends per prisoner something like a quarter of California spends, so California could save lots of money this way, and Oklahoma would make a lot of money, a great example of positive sum trade.

Of course, that’s not going to happen, because California rulers don’t want to incarcerate all these people, and from this perspective, high cost is a feature, not a bug: it helps in arguing against incarceration.

https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2019/feb/5/oklahoma-num...

But that plot of land its pitched on might be worth $200 per month (using FiDi pre-pandemic parking rates).

>"Most who left San Francisco stayed in the Bay Area economic region, according to the study, and some 80% remained in the stateMost who left San Francisco stayed in the Bay Area economic region, according to the study, and some 80% remained in the state"

I'm curious where you fall on the exodus spectrum? Are you leaving California or just SF? Where did you decide to relocate to?

I came around to this some time ago and I'm always curious if it makes sense to others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left%E2%80%93right_political_s...

To a “progressive”, “liberal” is a pejorative. To a “liberal”, “leftists” are the enemy. To “the right”, all 4 words mean the same thing and are interchangeable in usage.

That's your problem right there, when you write "houses". Cities need apartment buildings, which allow more homes per same area than single family houses.

Up seems to be the obvious answer.

No they don't.

Switzerland is one of the most conservative places on Earth, at least culturally, and they have super strict rules on what you can build.

The issue has little to do with NIMBYISM really. SF is a relatively popular destination, it's going to be really, really hard to keep people on the very bottom end of the scale in housing there.

Vancouver 'built built built' and didn't make a dent in affordability - just the opposite, it's one of the most unnafordable places on earth.

It doesn't matter what gets built, just that it gets built and that everyone gets a place to live in.

>The issue has little to do with NIMBYISM really. SF is a relatively popular destination, it's going to be really, really hard to keep people on the very bottom end of the scale in housing there.

If its a population destination and the rest of the country isn't then why would we tell people that they shouldn't come here? What about all those poor people who wouldn't be poor in SF?

>Vancouver 'built built built' and didn't make a dent in affordability - just the opposite, it's one of the most unnafordable places on earth.

Pretty much everyone I have heard talk about Vancouer is that Vancouver failed to build enough housing.

This makes no sense.

? People who live in SF (or any community) are already housed in SF. 'Everyone' already has a place to live.

Unless by 'everyone' you mean 'everyone who wants to live there', which is absurd, because if cost were not part of the equation probably 50x the number of people in SF would not mind being there.

That's why we have suppl and demand.

"why would we tell people that they shouldn't come here? "

This is really baffling. You do realize that if SF when from 600K people to 5M people (vertical, like HK or Vancouver) that it would be a completely different kind of city, and wouldn't resemble the current SF in any way?

Nobody has a right to live anywhere.

Every community has a right to influence the future of their own community.

If SF residents want to 'go vertical' that's fine, if they don't that's fine as well.

"Pretty much everyone I have heard talk about Vancouer is that Vancouver failed to build enough housing."

'Hearsay' (i.e. some random people said some stuff about an issue) does not help your argument.

The facts are 1) Vancouver built out massively. You can see the city skyline has been totally transformed and 2) it's still completely unnafordable.

Why is it unnafordable? Because of demand from foreign places and ultra low interest rates. Local salaries are not enough to supply that kind of demand. A lot of people moving in from foreign places (or just buying). For a variety of reasons.

As a 'global safe zone' the demand is massive, far more so than the locals can endure.

In this specific case, the problem is not 'build more' - the problem is 'don't allow foreign ownership', 'get interest rates under control' and 'reduce migration to normal levels' (Canada always has higher than normal migration, that's fine, but the amounts set lately are massive and most migrants prefer cities, putting additional pressures).

First - there is no such thing as 'under built'.

A community can house as many people as it houses - and that's that.

There can be an 'amount of new development relative to other places' - but not without a massive dose of 'housing ideology' can you say how much is over or under.

Second, the notion that 'there was less building for decades and then a lot of building, but not enough to catch up' doesn't really make sense, because even with an ideological view of 'how much is correct' there can be no such thing as 'pent up unfulfilled demand from previous building'. There are not a bunch of people living in Calgary or Seattle 'waiting' for the opportunity if only affordability was there.

Plenty of places in the world are 'more expensive' than neighbouring regions and yet don't 'build out quickly'.

Lastly, and most importantly, Vancouver has built up quite dramatically over the last two decades, and even as it has done this, affordability has plummeted.

The problem with 'NIMBYism and Housing' is the degree to which that position is ideological and that people don't recognize it as such.

There is no such thing as 'over/under' building for any specific community, there is only such a thing relative to net demand in nation for example that is either growing or shrinking for natural reasons or migration.

Yes, there is. In a regime of rapidly increasing life expectancy, there is a demographic certainty of future housing needs.

Nobody has been able to put forth a single reasonable argument for why SF must tear down their homes and put up apartment buildings other that 'because it should'.

And FYI there is no housing shortage in the US overall, there never has been, housing has expanded commensurate with population.

Not only that - housing is relatively cheap in the US.

Of course there is a lot of demand to live in SF vis-a-vis Sacramento, there always will be, but otherwise, there isn't any reason to build a single home unless the residents want that.

If you mean to say 'people have a moral right to live in the city they were born in' - fair enough - but this notion falls apart instantly unless you want to somehow give 'born and raised SF' kids some kind of literal non-market advantage.

If you live in an 'expensive place' then your kids can live there, as long as they are wealthy enough, that's the cost of living in a wealthy place and there's no way around it.

By 'building more to facilitate affordability' - well that certainly would enable more people to live there, but the demand will come from all over not just 'the kids of'.

SF is a small city and it's expensive, if parents want their kids to live there they can literally give them their homes. Otherwise, their kids can get good jobs or live in Santa Rosa.

There is plenty of space in North Cal.

Finally, SF residents can make up their own minds about how they want to do it. More building, less building, it's entirely up to them and nobody else's business.

Because building houses generally does nothing for prices. Zoning for managed apartments is the best way to increase the housing supply.

It "solves" the problem in that the homeless are no longer visible. Whether that is a "solution" is up to the individual to decide.

Winter also self-limits the homeless in many liberal and conservative states.

The end result is that the homeless either end up leaving, or moving their camp to somewhere out of the way like the woods. If you're an eye sore, people will call 911 on you 15 times a day.

I'm not advocating for it, but "let's make the homeless in our city so miserable they don't want to be seen" seems to be effective in reducing the eye sore.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemcneal/bag-of-...

Important distinction. Take note.

1) Public urination / defecation: There is a need for more public bathrooms. That's cheaper than spending millions of dollars cleaning poop and urine from the streets.

2) Public intoxication and substance abuse: Decriminalizing drugs and letting people get as intoxicated as they want is not a responsible approach. The responsible approach would be to treat drug addiction as a health problem. That means, prescribing medications to help the addicts manage the reasons behind their addiction (anxiety, depression, PTSD and other conditions), their addiction, and making sure they do not overdose.

3) Littering: sentence people to do community service cleaning the litter.

4) Homelessness: Many homeless people do not want to comply with shelter rules, so they live in the streets. The shelters won't allow intoxication, drugs, etc.

You won't stop me or anyone else with your nanny-state laws. It's easy to get bricks in Cali, good luck!

What is the irony?

So it seems the correlation between population size and 'rich people literally stepping over needled addicts' is not that strong.

People will stereotype Texans as rugged individualists ready to shoot you for stealing from a fruit stand, or Chinese as some heartless mass that will run you over and go about their day. But I don't see any cities in those places with such visible social problems.

Those drinking the SF Kool-Aid will tell you it's because of the weather being a magnet for homeless people, or some other such nonsense. As if nowhere else in the world keeps temps above freezing year round.

Why's that ironic? Isn't that exactly liberalism? Accepting and tolerating different people behaving in different ways and not forcing them to change? Individual rights and responsibilities, limited government intervention, freedom of way of living, rejecting authoritarianism and the nanny state?

I feel like tons of people don't know what the word 'liberalism' means.

Y’all want to disrupt something? Extreme ownership models really seem like the last social structure to disrupt.

What’s needed are better run cities.

I’ll just note that there are a lot of different points on the spectrum between country side and concrete/glass metropolis. Many of these points are great places I would still count as cities, and they still allow for gardens. I am NOT arguing for us all to live in high rises in midtown Manhattan. I do think that we should build nice, dense areas that still have green space, while allowing humans to live close together to gain the increasing returns that make society great. Hopefully we cut down on cars and get the fresh air as well.

My thinking is there is more space for nature if people are a bit concentrated in one area. Hong Kong is an extreme example, over two thirds of the land is nature [0], the rest seems to be mostly high-rise skyscrapers! I think they did a good job with the small space they had to work within.

I was hoping that you weren't thinking like a giant suburb or exurb where we are in cars all the time? That can be such a drag.

[0] https://www.pland.gov.hk/pland_en/info_serv/statistic/landu....

If this were the natural state of large cities, it wouldn't require government regulation (better run cities) to accomplish.

After the city of Detroit had lost most of its population, there was a real problem with the cost of providing infrastructure and services to a single home in each multi-block area. There were proposals to concentrate those things into multiple "villages" with the space in between (other than roads) reverting to nature. Unfortunately they never got to try it because too many of those isolated-home owners refused to move. I'm not saying who was right or wrong, but it prevented the experiment from happening and I think we might all regret that some day.

My opinion has only been made stronger since having been to San Francisco.

Have you ever stopped to seriously consider if this is the realistic end result of liberalism? This is a very common trend for major cities that have been under liberal control for decades (Philly, Baltimore, Chicago, etc). And yet somehow the politicians convince the population that this time around will be different.

I guess that's why it's so powerful that the left currently owns the mass media...they stir up that visceral hatred to the point where people forget about reality.

And why would a Republican do better is a question I’d ask? Their track record across the vast swaths of America they control are full of drug addicts, high rates of welfare, and crumbling towns. It really is the white ghetto. Outside the affluent suburbs the country is more or less not doing any better than the major cities.

Regardless, the Republican argument would need to change to “effective government” from their typical “no government” stance. People do want self sufficiency and they do want to be treated as individuals and not reduced to group identity. But there are certain things republicans would have to change to break through.

ERCOT is a bit different in that it doesn’t use what’s called a forward capacity auction. All RTOs in the country have markets where users pay generators for instantaneous electrical production. RTOs other than ERCOT, however, also have what’s called a forward capacity market. The RTO projects how much peak power will be required three years from now, and conducts auctions to provide the required capacity at the lowest price. Then there are various mechanisms attached to that which ensure that a generator that commits to providing a certain amount of capacity actually does so when the RTO calls it in. ERCOT instead maintains a fixed reserve margin—it tries to ensure that capacity is about 13.5% higher than peak projected demand. That’s different, but it’s still not a free-for-all.

Amusingly, many people called the lack of a capacity market a positive thing. In practice it tends to prop up coal plants, because those can reliably commit to providing a particular generation capacity years in advance, unlike renewables: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/flexibility-wit....

Texas was not the only area that had problems. Louisiana is regulated and had outages, people with no potable water, etc [0] Nearby states did not have available power to send via the interconnects. It was really cold for a really long time. Everyone talks about how it snowed ten years ago in Austin. I know, I was there. But do they also mention that this cold spell was the worst cold spell in 100 years?

There are many bad things that can happen in this world, we can't afford to prevent all of them. As a society we do not have unlimited money to spend, decisions need to be made, sometimes we have to muddle through. Societies have to prioritize where to spend their limited resources.

I get the feeling that there's a lot of partisan politics involved in the dialogue around things like this, always in hindsight! I don't understand the urge people have to knock down others who are doing something different. Not everyone thinks the way you or I do. The Texas power system has its pros and cons. They've been enjoying cheap power for a long time. They, along with others, struggled during this record cold. I don't understand why this needs to be a partisan issue, or what business it is of anybody outside of Texas. I'm sure they'll make adjustments and improvements to their system. They get to decide, it's their system, right?

I wouldn't say that regulation is a failed model because the power went out in Louisiana. I also don't agree that markets are to blame for a 100-year cold snap in Texas. Disasters happen.

(Note that I don't necessarily agree with the parent you were replying to. I grew up in a city like the ones mentioned, and the problems were more due to corruption, I believe. Politicians are not our friends, none of them.)

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2021/02/17/te...

Entergy turned over its grid control to MISO, as well as built a (huge waste of a) gas peaker plant that I will concede was used in this situation but probably wasn't needed given our connection with other states. Louisiana may be an economic colony of Texas, but please don't drag us into apologia for the national media or Texas' poor decisions.

In Louisiana 2 million people lost power (42% of the state population), 800k had to boil water (17%), and 5 people died (1 of every 940k).

In Texas 4.5 million people lost power (17% of the state population), 12 million had water problems (43%), and 40 deaths as of a few days ago (1 of every 685k).

I don't think my comparing the two states to prove a point was out of bounds. The numbers show significant impact in both of them. I know Oklahama got it pretty bad, and Mexico was impacted. Cold weather kills. Water pipes were going to freeze regardless of electricity. People don't go to shelters when they should. I know the numbers are not the complete picture, but back to the original point: This was a 100 year cold spell, not a free market failure.

I'm not sure of your angle, I might be misunderstanding your comment. I didn't mean to trash Louisiana. It's understandable that this record cold would cause problems. I don't think it's fair to single Texas out, and the numbers above support that.

[0] https://www.texasmonthly.com/news/blackout-crisis-texans-ele... [1] https://www.ft.com/content/12640ebb-5c20-4d00-aec0-9c8810541...

I'm just finished reading about the people in Texas who got $10k bills. I'm wondering if these people, residential customers, knew the rate limits were increased for those 32 hours? It's not fair if they don't have a mechanism to monitor or limit the rate they're willing to pay. I wouldn't call that a complete failure of their system, but it needs to be made right. A 10k surprise bill sucks. They pushed the risk to these people, and the regulators there knew it. I don't know where the money is going. I'd try to negotiate it down. I also think it should be easier to declare bankruptcy. People are more important than companies. I'm hoping they get bailed out at some point, they are as deserving as anyone else. I'd be outraged if people don't get the tools to monitor and limit their usage rates.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/A-t...

I still wouldn't characterize this as a "free market failure", implying there is no room for competition, or everything needs to be the same as the rest of the country.

I paid a lot of attention to the following from the grandparent's linked texasmonthly.com article: "You essentially pay up front for peace of mind. But because neither regulators nor state lawmakers ordered anybody to pay, nothing was done." (regarding winterizing, costs to keep the grid robust, etc)

I assume that the regulators and the politicians weren't smart enough to do their part. Free markets can be great, can be better than too much regulation, but need to be tempered by the people's interests. The politicians involved failed big time. Didn't they think past their next reelection? Hopefully they make adjustments, both in their current regulations, and in the processes around reviewing and maintaining those regulations. I'm disgusted at the oversights that led to this. They had regulators who were responsible for this stuff! I'm curious how this will play out.

On a related note, it's not a free market if the customers don't know when the price increases a hundred fold or more.

I’m saying it attracts people who need something. You stop services to people maintaining the status of quo and invest in rehabilitating and upon failure, removing people.

The problem is (idk how many homeless you’ve spoken with in SF). Most chose to be there, you have to make it somewhere they can’t live like that.

This is a failure of policy. Other cities have solved this, SF can too.

(2) Regularly push them out of where they are staying with officers. If necessary, use hoses or w.e.

People will either leave because they can't stay there or they attempt to rehabilitate. This is what they do most places outside of California.

This method often leads to rehabilitation, because they don't really have a choice. Those who don't want to be rehabilitate leave and start a life the next town over, live in the woods, what have you.

It's better for everyone in a society to hold each other accountable -- be apart of the society or leave. Many homeless are drug addicts and / or mentally ill, they need help, but you can't help them (unless they want to). By holding everyone accountable, everyone will be better off.

West coast lawlessness demands federal funding. Tent city occupants are for all intents and purposes refugees, and we basically need a UN-style refugee camp for them to live in.

Also, this is definitely not a federal problem. At most it’s a Cali problem. This is how the US works, local jurisdictions deal with the local problem.

What OP meant was that it will take a federal initiative, meaning something that will cover every state and local jurisdiction. If they're forced out of one locality, what's to stop the next one from moving them out of there and so on?

> I genuinely have no clue where the high taxes go.

> tech bros step over needles and homeless people on their way to make their 200k a year.

> Why didn't they build more houses here?

I don't think you've learned about Prop 13 yet. Ignorance is bliss here. Yes there are answers to your questions, but California is more enjoyable when you're just confused about these things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_13

Basically, home value for property taxes gets assessed once, when you buy the property, and it can only go up by inflation after that.

As long as property values are going up across the state, as a whole (of which SF is only a part of), voters tend to have a disincentive to do so.