They seemed puzzled, as if I came from a small town and wasn't used to life in a big city. I've moved to SF from NYC. Several times I would get a variation of "isn't it the same in New York?" from them. It's not, it doesn't even get close to SF. Mid-pandemic NYC at 2am felt safer than pre-pandemic SF on a Monday morning.
For example, I was living downtown during Sandy and my area lost power for 4 days. The police were there to deter looting and property crime. Every hour or so, a police cruiser drive down my street with lights on but no siren checking for crime.
I'd walk home at 3-4am and feel completely safe. This was in Manhattan and I realize the outer boroughs are, at least in part, a different story.
I once had a car alarm go off outside my window at 2:30am early Sunday. While deciding what to do I called 311 after about 10 minutes. While talking to them a police car rolled up and officers broke into the car and disabled the alarm. I went out and talked to them and said they'd respond to any unattended car alarm, which was defined as an alarm that had been going off for more than 10 minutes.
And here's a big one: lower income people are infinitely better off in NYC than SF IMO. While Subway coverage isn't complete in the outer boroughs, lower income people aren't typically burdened by the costs of car ownership and having to drive 4+ hours a day to get to and from work (unlike, say, the people who drive the tech giant buses [1]).
It confused me why so many self-described liberals didn't see or didn't want to see the misery in their own city, caused by policies they supported to turned a blind eye to.
[1]: https://abcnews.go.com/US/bus-drivers-working-alongside-sili...
Don't forget SF's omnipresent smell of urine!
(My theory is that the lack of rain in California (not because of drought, but in general) is part of what makes the situation worse than in NYC.)
They’re there because of drug and mental health issues.
In Europe, they’re not tolerant of drug use on the streets. Even in cities where it’s decriminalized.
On the flip side, in countries with mass poverty issues and mass homelessness - the slums aren’t necessarily a place of rampant and constant drug usage. (You still see grinding poverty and families on the street, but it’s different)
But - at the risk of sounding callous - why would someone down and out on the streets of the Tenderloin think, even if they completely sober up and clean themselves up, that it’s a long-term sustainable option to live in one of the highest cost of living cities in the world.
Ehm Berlin and Frankfurt are pretty much Europe and there's open drug use and selling on "sanctuary districts", same as San Francisco. On Frankfurt it's more blatant because it's right by the train station, but a little bit more nuanced than in SF because they have "safe drug use houses" so people don't do it in the sidewalk.
Europe understands that people are entitled to and deserve a basic standard of living. It largely explains why the EU has expanded eastwards into former Soviet bloc countries where people are much poorer. The EU as a whole takes an economic hit for that but it's an undeniable good for those poorer members.
Whereas in the US, people seem to be stuck in a 19th century "every man for himself" frontier cosplay.
That didn’t solve the problem in the least. It certainly reduces harm, but not drug use.
What would the mechanism be of Europe’s disintegration if the US pulled out of the EU today?
The Tenderloin was like that in the 1990s. Same with SOMA, the Lower Haight, 6th and Market, and other parts of the city as well but those were places I frequented often enough to have seen it myself.
Things changed after the first DotCom boom and the advent of Pac Bell Park.
This is already illegal in California - banned as of 2018 under the California Fair Chance Act. Through companies can still conduct background checks after extending offers.
https://www.zumper.com/blog/affordable-san-francisco-neighbo...
> You didn't walk into Golden Gate Park after dark, because it just wasn't safe.
This is laughably inaccurate. There are plenty of runners and recreational cyclists at night in that part of Golden Gate Park. Even more so now that they re-opened Great Highway to cars on weekdays. And if you think the 7/11 next to the Indian pizza place is shady - wow. You'll see far more shady stuff, in broad daylight, inside the Target at 4th and Mission on any afternoon. Which is why they cut hours down and only open at 9am and close by 6pm for their SF locations.
Perhaps you left San Francisco a long time ago. Today the Outer Sunset has a median home price around $1.8M, and is the safest neighborhood in the city that isn't at the top of a hill.
I will point out that "isn't at the top of a hill" is not actually much of a distinction when you're talking about San Francisco. If there's one thing the city isn't short on, it's hills.
NIMBY is correct. The neighborhoods are highly resistant to new construction.
> I will point out that "isn't at the top of a hill" is not actually much of a distinction when you're talking about San Francisco.
What?
How does Haight-Ashbury compare to Ashbury Heights, Corona Heights, or Cole Valley? How does the Mission compare to Bernal Heights or Noe Valley, or even Potrero Hill? How does the Fillmore compare to Pac Heights? How does the Bayview compare to Portola, even?
Again, take a look at the crime data. There are some exceptions in the stats (eg. Twin Peaks - but largely because of tourists getting their car broken into at the viewpoint) but by and large, top of a hill = less crime.
My overall point here is that the Outer Sunset isn’t a super exclusionary neighborhood. You get that kind of rhetoric up here in Seattle, too: people like to imply that anyone with a progressive approach to crime must not live someplace that’s affected by crime. It’s usually untrue.
One of these is not like the others.
I live in the Dogpatch and it is amazing here, ditto for most of Potrero Hill. I do occasionally see a small number of homeless people about, but nothing particularly threatening, and I don't see trash and needles and whatnot everywhere. I go out nearly daily. I stay closer to home these days, since there's plenty to do in my neighborhood, and I feel like I've gotten a bit more insular since the pandemic began.
And yeah, when I do venture out farther for dinners & drinks, well... it depends. Parts of the Mission have gotten really bad (they've been bad for many years, but have been getting worse). Parts of North Beach aren't great. Ten years ago I would cut through the Tenderloin on foot when walking places, but I would definitely not do that today, especially after dark. I used to live in Soma, and it got pretty bad there too. I felt unsafe at times, and that's part of why I moved. (And I didn't even live in the worst areas around mid-Market.)
But consider places like the (inner) Sunset, Richmond, Lower Pac Heights, Bernal, Glen Park, Balboa Park, most of Japantown. They're... fine? A lot of these neighborhoods have reputations for being sleepy, but if you're content to make a night just at one restaurant followed by one bar, you can have a great time. If you want to do a bar crawl or see some serious nightlife, sure, you're going to have to go to the Mission, Nob Hill, Haight, Lower Haight, North Beach, Marina, the south-of-Geary Divis corridor, etc., and yeah, some of those places can feel varying degrees of unsafe at times, depending on where you are. That's definitely a problem that needs to be addressed.
But this narrative that SF is just chock full of homeless people shooting up, with spent needles, trash, and human shit on the streets and sidewalks everywhere... no, that's just not my experience over the 11+ years I've lived here. No neighborhood is perfect, but these particular problems are nowhere near as widespread as some people make it sound.
> I'm against the culture of mass incarceration but not prosecuting thefts below $950 isn't the answer. [...] There's no simple answer here. There are lots of contributing factors. But pretty high on that list is income inequality and housing unaffordability.
I'm in full agreement with you here. I think some of the crime is driven by opportunism (if the cops won't even investigate, there's low risk), but a lot is driven by desperation and feelings of powerlessness. We need to get everyone in secure housing, get people with mental health and/or addiction issues the help they need, and somehow let people feel financially secure enough without having to work 3 jobs and 100 hours a week.
https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/11/04/san-francisco-m...
This put the new well to-do Twitter techies in constant daily contact with the original "residents" who were/are down and out on their luck where as before the original "residents" had that end of Market to themselves. The Twitter techies were then very likely to make a big deal about it on social media.
It also probably tore down a significant number of SRO units.
By "ignorance" I mean I know a lot of people who work in tech (as I do), many of whom live in SF. I'm actually shocked at how often they'll tell me how amazing SF is. Like where do they live? Do they go out? I really don't get it.
I'm against the culture of mass incarceration but not prosecuting thefts below $950 [1] isn't the answer.
There's no simple answer here. There are lots of contributing factors. But pretty high on that list is income inequality and housing unaffordability.
If it were up to me, I'd also get rid of the "are you a felon?" question that permanently excludes you from many jobs, renting somewhere to live and generally from many aspects of society, forever, with no recourse. If you do your time then your record should be expunged (except for sentencing for future convictions). Some crimes may exclude you from certain jobs (eg sexual or violent crimes and working with children). But it should be pretty limited.
Felons should certainly not be stripped of the ability to vote. That should be illegal.
If you exclude felons from society, what do you expect these people to do when crime is the only way they can support themselves?
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/21/us/san-francisco-shoplift...