Both sides? I know what one side is, this being the normalisation of homelessness and criminal behaviour in the name of some silly "progressive" ideology. What is the other side of the topic?

Just the normal bullshit you get with any political argument (cherry-picking, dishonesty, etc), but particularly exaggerated. The subset of people I'm referring to are not interested in fixing the problem - only in using it as evidence of how justified their hatred for their political enemies is. This is obvious - I'm not referring to something subtle or defending the SF government.

That's nothing more than hiding your head in the sand though, isn't it? When the wry fruits of those policies are so clear to see it is no more than logical that opponents of those policies - who have been clamouring about just those things for years - point out what happened yet another time. This is not cherry-picking at all as there are no cherries to be picked in this garden, only rotten fruits. There is no exaggeration either since there is no need for such - and isn't it a sad thing all in itself?

As to "fixing the problem" I'd say that when your house is on fire you first take to the firehose before you chastise your children for playing with matches.

The other side is not wanting to clean human shit from the steps to my door every week. Hardly an ideology.

A Hacker-libertarian anti-freedom ideology where drug abuse and homelessness are re-criminalized and mass institutionalization of others against their will.

bruh that is not the other side, the other side is not giving drug addicts, resources to do more drugs

I'd also ask what is the other side of this. What are the largest conservative cities in the US around 800k scale? It seems like the largest cities in big conservative states, such as TX (Houston, San Antonio, Dallas) or FL (Jacksonville, Miami), are at most as conservative as "purple" or liberal leaning.

SF is also quite close to the national homicide average while being denser than most cities.

Largest is probably Oklahoma City. They average around 70 murders annually for a population of just under 700K, or around 35th in the nation for major cities. It has twice the rate of murder as SF according to that Wiki list posted above.

Only vaguely related to your comment, but comparing cities can give unreliable data.

City boundaries within a metropolitan area are often quite arbitrary. A murder can happen on one block and be in the city and two blocks over and outside the city.

A good example is Detroit. Greater metro Detroit has 4.3M people, but the city of Detroit has 632,000.

And the city of Detroit is where most of the poverty is and most murders happen, within the larger metro area, so you end up with super high murder rates for Detroit and super low murder rates for the surrounding area.

But in the grand scheme of things it’s just one big metro area.

SF is far richer than the median city. This is a bad comparison. SF should be compared against NYC, San Jose and Singapore not St Louis annd Baltimore.

I really like Singapore, but it’s almost a single party police state. It’s somewhat unique in a couple of respects. Mostly that it does actually provide the safety and stability that you are theoretically promised as a trade of for the compromised civil liberties, and that the government is kinda, mostly benevolent… But I don’t think it’s directly comparable to a country that embraces civil liberties. It’s probably pretty safe to walk around Pyongyang too.

Economically speaking they also embrace a basically libertarian style of free market capitalism (in respect to everything except land use), which is another reason they’re not a great comparison.

> I really like Singapore, but it’s almost a single party police state.

SF is a single party city defunding the police. While they parallel Singapore in the single party system they are close to the opposite in nearly all other aspects and it shows. Both places are awash in money but one of them only seems to get worse the more money pours in. If I had to choose between the political system of San Francisco and that of Singapore I would choose the latter.

It is a good thing I do not have to choose though since I don't like either of those systems, it is just that watching the slow-motion train wreck of San Francisco (among others) being run into the ground by self-proclaimed saviours of humanity is so disheartening, especially seen in the light of the claims made by those who push these policies. They must know that they are destroying the place, they can not be so blindsided by ideology. This only leaves the possibility that they are so hell-bent on staying in power that they will do anything it takes, no matter the consequences. How they can rhyme this with their self-proclaimed virtuous goals is beyond me.

> the largest cities in big conservative states

The largest cities in big conservative states are where all the Democrats in those states live. And the rural areas in all the big liberal states are where all the Republicans in those states live. Democrats by and large run the cities.

neither "side" wants to address anything even remotely close to the root causes of it, so the options are very limited. The right, at least, favours a solution that is congruent to its reactionary values, in a way it is a more internally consistent ideology than social progressive liberalism. The latter has to content with the unavoidable internal inconsistencies it creates.

In other words, liberals have the uncomfortable task of ruling the richest cities with the largest wealth and income inequality, in such a way that is both progressive and economically liberal. So you end up not regulating the real-estate industry or providing livable wages, but you are also not bulldozing the tent cities or investing in larger prisons to more effectively mass-incarcerate poor people crimes.

> not regulating the real-estate industry

Are we talking about the same city? SF real estate is super regulated, it’s my go to example of real estate regulations taken to an insane level. This is the city where any citizen can appeal any project for just a few hundred dollars, and basically every medium-large project is a negotiation with the SF board of supervisors (and often random non profits too, just look at what happened to 469 Stevenson St).

I was more so referring to public housing projects, rent control, banning institutional investment firms and more. I'm sure they have much regulation in place, doesn't mean it meaningfully addresses the housing cost crisis in any capacity.

What's the other side, but portrayed as a straw-man?

Chasing the poor out of the city by sending armed thugs after them, redistributing wealth from poor to rich by ratcheting up rents, keeping rich to poor wealth redistribution to a minimum, and importing more yuppies until gentrification is completed. At some point the poor will be displaced thus reducing wealth inequality in the city thus reducing crime.

In well-run cities, that stay on top of public safety and hygiene, extreme measures never become necessary.

In well run cities and countries this doesn't happen in the first place.

Stop criminalizing poverty and try actually solving the problem.

how many more years are cities like SF gonna keep trying to solve problems by rewarding people for causing them?

They're not doing that. No city is doing that. Your way of thinking leads to punishing people for being poor.

I understand that social climbing requires participation in this lying game. Maybe your HN account is tied to your irl identity, so I understand if you can't speak honestly here.

Rational individuals apparently.

SF in a lot of ways is a microcosm of the US and the broader world which is currently suffering what can only be described as emergent behavior in social networking. Like unintended gradient descent to get everybody maximally polarized by learning what most upsets them and feeding them more of that.

If you don't like addressing the reality the above poster stated, then sure.