And honestly, looking at how Rincon Hill and Mission Bay both privatized their operations and keep the neighborhoods extremely clean and safe, I am starting to feel privatization is the only short term solution that might help, no matter how unsavory it is.
I live there and AFAIK I don’t pay anything extra for living in that neighborhood. Is it baked into my (high) rent and apartments pay out?
> Is it baked into my (high) rent and apartments pay out?
Yep! The parks, the library, the sprout social, and all the public areas are a mixed ownership between the City, the landlords (UDR, Avalon, etc), UCSF, the State of California, and Union Pacific. Also, because a decent portion of Mission Bay is owned by UCSF and Union Pacific, CHP and DoT can technically lay state and federal charges overriding local government - which is why the very few homeless you see in Mission Bay squat around the library and the community center (it's definitively City of SF land).
I know some people hate on it for being quiet, but it's only like 10-15 minutes away from other bustling parts of town like North Beach, Chinatown, Mission, etc via public transit or Uber - so honestly idk why people hate on it. I guess it's those 90s rage against the machine types.
Sounds like a perverse incentive to me
There's a very real issue of understaffing and underfunding which leads to the issues that exist with SFPD today. The exact same neglect and funding crisis is impacting SFUSD, SFMTA, and other public institutions in the city.
Normally, I'm not a fan of privatization, but Rincon Hill and Mission Bay have both proven that public services are better provided by the private management those neighborhoods have.
On the side of the alley within the USBID the streets would be cleaned of litter, poop would be washed, and private security (off duty SFPD hired by the USBID) would monitor the neighborhood.
On the side of the alley that wasn't within the USBID, trash would be dropped, you would see open PCP and Meth use, and poop on the street, and cops wouldn't respond unless a weapon was drawn.
The distance between the two was 5-7 feet. The area within the USBID didn't change drastically compared to pre-pandemic, but the area outside the USBID basically collapsed.
There are a lot of these invisible borders across San Francisco which townies and unhoused people can recognize.