Sounds like London, UK where I currently reside with three children...

Expensive: check. Bad schools: check. Disfunctional government: check. Drugs on streets: check. Lots of crazies: check.

The thing I hate is that people wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire.

Going to move out to the countryside I think...

As for the nutter on BART, I got urinated on whilst on the tube in London .... twice. And no I was not on fire :)

In regards to the "crazies" aspect: I've spent a few months in SF (near Haight St), and 5 years in London.

The thing that shocked me most about SF was the shear number of mentally ill homeless people on the street. London has homeless people, but they're generally coherent enough to carry on a conversation. In SF it seemed that almost 100% of the homeless were "bat shit crazy" - I pondered at the time if the NHS's mental health care was the difference, and thanked good fortune to have lived my life within countries with social care.

An old guy collapsed on the street in front of me in London. I thought he was a drunk tramp, but my sister (who lives there) immediately stopped to check on him as did several other passers by. Turned out he was having a heart attack. Someone with medical training came forward and pumped his chest cavity or whatever they do while we ordered and flagged down the ambulance.

Guy was conscious but confused when the medics arrived.

Nobody urinated on him or stole his wallet. Anecdotal evidence that suggests were you really on fire people would do more than get out the marshmallows.

And conversely I saw someone get stabbed in the stomach at Waterloo. I was the only person out of at least 200 witnesses who did a thing and to be honest I have no idea what to do so could only apply pressure and call paramedics.

Same with an old woman I saw faceplant on the pavement. I was on a bus that was moving. People just stepped over her.

The worst thing: a guy got pushed in front of a friend's tube train (he was a tube driver). Immediately after he got out of the cab, some platform peon started shouting at him saying "how fucking long is this going to take?". The guy was pretty much screaming his head off on the track under the train dying painfully and slowly.

Good for that heart attack guy, but he must have been lucky. It isn't the norm - and the police I've spoken to over the years confirmed it.

SF is way worse (I used to live in Finsbury Park, now live in the Mission).

Yeah, I'd agree with that. I've lived in both. This is not to say that parts of London aren't dodgy, but SF is I think both subjectively and quantifiably worse.

For example, London has around 500 people sleeping rough each night. San Francisco has almost ten times as many, between 3-5,000 (mainly because a winter's night in SF is rather more survivable than a London one).

More subjectively, I think public transport in London far surpasses SF, both in terms of safety and quality (...Friday nights excepted, but I think that's par the course of any large city).

[1]: London figures from here (http://www.thamesreach.org.uk/news-and-views/homelessness-fa...), SF figures from here (http://www.sfgate.com/homeless/)

Seriously? I lived in a crap hotel in Finsbury Park for a few weeks and it was a dive.

I was down nearer the Highbury end of things, but in terms of drugs/violence/random menacing on the streets SF is way sketchier.

The census citation is pretty incredible indeed... About schools, that's something you could never tell just looking at the city that seems very civilized, and this usually correlates with quality of schools. I hope there will be efforts to fix that in the future.

I hope they fix the school situation, but its unlikely. There's a reason why SF is listed as one of the least well run cities in the world.

I'm very late to this discussion, but SFUSD schools really aren't terrible, they're just very uneven. SF has an unusually high number of extremely highly rated schools, a large number of middling ones, and a notable number of failing schools.

To see more about this, there's a site called greatschools.net. You can list the schools by API score (adjusted by expectations based on demographics as well). What you'll see is that SF has an unusual number of schools scoring 8, 9, and 10 out of 10. Below that, there are plenty of decent performing schools. And then, there are some 1's and 2's. Pretty grim.

If you list schools in the suburbs, you'll find a similar situation. The big difference is that in the suburbs, you can convert a very high mortgage payment or rent into priority access for a top school. If you can't afford that, you're stuck in middling or poor schools.

SF uses a lottery, where parents list their choices and then get an assignment. If you only list highly in demand schools, you do risk getting a default assignment to a very low performing school across town (you can still get on wait lists). These people often do leave.

Prop H would have recommended giving priority access to district residents. It failed by a whisker. Probably the most interesting thing it revealed is that voters in good school districts favor priority access for district residents, whereas residents in poor school districts don't. Yeah, huge surprise there.

I feel some ambivalence about this, because I do see advantages to neighborhood schools. However, there was an article in reason magazine making a very surprising libertarian case for SF's school lottery...

http://reason.com/archives/2006/04/01/the-agony-of-american-...

Article is a little old, but I'd say schools have improved since it was written.

I think Rent Control tends to hold people hostage from having new families (as turnover in larger houses is much smaller as a result, and there's no real benefit to waiting to have a family), and that's a part of it. While I'll agree that most families don't need a huge house to live, you at least need a 2 or 3BR house (especially as the become teenagers) to raise 2 children. At current market rates, you'd need $3k at least (in a decent cheaper neighborhood like the Sunset, Richmond districts) in order to raise kids right now. I don't think that's feasible with less than 140k gross family income.

Rent control is the ONLY reason we were able to stay in the city and have a child recently. It gives renters the housing security they need to put roots down and start families.

While you have personally are benefitted from SF's rent control laws be aware it has had many perverse effects:

- Higher rents for everyone else, less affordability overall

- Reduced new constructions (even higher rents, fewer working class jobs)

- Increased vacancy (9.7% vacant [1])

- Reduced maintenance

- Lock-in (you move you lose)

- Endless litigation and political disputes

- Side effects (condos, TICs, Ellis Act, affordable housing)

[1] http://factfinder2.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/ACS/11_5YR/D...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_control_in_the_United_Sta...

[3] http://www.sfweekly.com/2000-08-09/news/the-case-for-ending-...

[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/17/us/san-francisco-rent-cont...

Your citations don't actually establish your claims. In fact, the wikipedia article outlines many arguments in favor.

I believe that too, but I meant that also in terms that rent control punishes you for deferring decisions on moving. I have a very large 1BR apartment that can be 2BR if needed. I'm very reluctant to leave. If I had 2 children, it would be too small. A move up to an extra bedroom in my neighborhood would easily be $2k more for an extra room. 3 years ago it might have been a different story. If I was in a studio now, I'm not sure I could afford a move to a place like mine seeing how most studios are more expensive than my place now.

We have exactly the same kind of apartment. I'm not sure if eliminating rent control would make things more affordable. I am pretty sure that we would have constant insecurity every year, wondering if our rent is going to jump and we're going to have to move. The buffer from short term market fluctuations is a big factor is helping us stay and build a life in our neighborhood.

But yeah, if we have a second kid it's gonna be tight. THAT IS WHY IM ON HACKER NEWZ 2 MAKE MILLION$$$.

That's comparing it to the US average. To compare it to other cities, Manhattan is 17.1% and that's considered a "baby boom" (source: NYT article from a few years ago).

Anecdotally I see a lot more young families popping up in my neighborhood (Nopa / lower haight) over the past few years. Though i'm not sure if everyone can stay if the market stays this way when they need more space.

Regarding [1], I'd be more worried that there's only one guy helping out.

I agree, SF is a fun place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

I also don't like how some San Franciscans like to put down other areas. You can have pride in your city without insulting other people and places. As someone who grew up in a poorer area, it left a very bad taste in my mouth. Most SF people are nice, but it's those other few people who ruin it for me.

Often the people putting down other areas aren't actually from San Francisco. There's a huge mentality in the coastal "progressive" communities that derides other ways of life, and its mostly fostered by non-natives.

It is indeed sad and shallow.