What caused the decay of San Francisco?

[EastCoastBtm]

These threads constantly attacking cities and their problems are ridiculous in their premise.  The real question, which is too political and really can't be debated - Why is America in decline?  

Unemployed, unhoused, many drug addicts, and people with a whole host of problems gravitate towards cities because cities are the only locations with a high level of concentrated services that support their needs - government support, addiction treatment, healthcare, shelters, food banks, numerous churches.   I wonder why these people aren't moving to small towns and the suburbs en masse?  Because there is little to no help for them there. 

My mother lives in Brunswick County, NC - a largely rural county in southern NC with large snowbird and vacation home population and one of the lower poverty rates in the state.  Low and behold poor people with problems still exist even there and shocker, Republicans run a large portion of county government.  Most 'services' are provided through churches.  Trust me.  If small towns offered everything a big city does in the way of support services, they too would have similar problems and be overwhelmed.  

So can we please stop with the veiled political discussions about the 'Decline of [[fill in the blank Democrat run city]]' masked as some genuine intellectual discussion about the decline of cities?  Its pathetic and this website has been so much better off with the removal of political trolling by a few people desperate to sound relevant.

[nate_sf]

54 minutes ago, EastCoastBtm said:

@nate_sf and @mike carey - This thread has turned political.  Please lock it down.

I've been monitoring this thread, as I expect has @mike carey. It's definitely veering towards politics, and has been on a number of occasions. I'm OK with leaving it up as it has not become explicitly political, though I'll admit I'm tired of hearing the same old tropes over and over again. I'd be more inclined to lock it up just because everyone has already said their piece, and I'm not sure what more is to be said. That is the reason I've stopped engaging in this thread myself. 

[+ Vegas_Millennial]

2 hours ago, EastCoastBtm said:

Most 'services' are provided through churches.  Trust me. 

You bring up a good point.  Maybe the increase in social ills across cities and suburbs is due, in part, to decline in church attendance.  It might be that church used to provide inspiration and hope that people needed and no longer get, and then end up suffering to addiction to soothe their feelings of despair.  Or it might be that churches have fewer resources to provide help to the needy because their membership has shrunk.  Either way, it is an astute observation that we oughtn't rely solely on taxes and laws to address the ills of society.

Edited December 15, 2023 by Vegas_Millennial
Grammar. I ought not had posted without first proof reading.

[Lookin]

On 12/15/2023 at 9:58 AM, EastCoastBtm said:

Most 'services' are provided through churches.  Trust me.  If small towns offered everything a big city does in the way of support services, they too would have similar problems and be overwhelmed.

 

On 12/15/2023 at 11:36 AM, Vegas_Millennial said:

. . . it is an astute observation that we oughtn't rely solely on taxes and laws to address the ills of society.

I no longer live in the City but still watch the San Francisco evening news and I think we get a different mix of stories than the networks broadcast to the rest of the country.  We do see the homeless problems well documented, but we also see the tremendous range and number of groups and individuals using their time and talents to help the unhoused.

The City itself has lots of programs, but no one believes they could or should do everything.  They tried setting up a drug use/education/treatment center but backed off because of liability issues.  They're trying to get a private organization to take on the challenge.

There's a major church in the Tenderloin that provides a wide range of services starting with food.  There are dozens of food banks.  There are organizations providing clothing, health/dental/vision services, hygiene support, family counseling, financial and employment support and, if I recall, there was a veterinarian going around checking on pets.  There are also individuals going out on the streets to contact homeless folks with offers of help.  One guy built a portable charging device and goes through the homeless areas offering phone charges.

No doubt homelessness is a big story but, in my opinion, the bigger story is the number of folks reaching out to help.  It brings a ray of hope, rather than a cloud of despair.

I guess it's possible that some folks don't want to hear what's right with San Francisco and prefer to hear about decay instead of renewal.  I'm sorry their heads are filled with sad stories and I hope they will one day notice the good things that are happening.  There's a lot to see.

 

[SouthOfTheBorder]

the press reports the problems in the big cities because they know people will watch/read/click.  NYC, LA, Chicago & SF are the favorite targets.  Yet, none of these cities are in Top US cities for violent or property crime on a per capita basis.  In fact, NYC is among Top 5 safest cities.  Of course - that doesn't fit the preferred narrative of many who are rooting for the big cities to fail

Interesting that those with the strongest opinions don't live in any of the big cities & their opinions are from what they read/see on Facebook or similar- which makes money by providing information that you already agree with so they can keep you engaged longer.

I have family members that routinely assail me with stories about NYC crime & they've visited exactly one time years ago, while I live there.  These folks live in an alternate reality and are so certain of their beliefs without any actual experience.  Not sure the exact appropriate word - feels like ignorant would do with absolutely no critical thinking skills to separate fact & fiction.  Meanwhile, they live in suburban area with much higher violent & property crime.

As people select their own facts these day's & subsequent reality, belittle education & deny science - it's no wonder the US is in decline. Countries do not prosper while celebrating ignorance & stupidity. 

FYI - many of the most dangerous places in the US aren't in cities at all, but rather rural counties.  You'll never see reporting on this because nobody will pay attention.  
Violent & property crime on a per capita basis have very little to do with population in the geographic area & even less to do with which political party is running the area .  As usual, cherry-picking data to broadcast a narrative that will capture attention is the game - and for now that means giving the folks who want the big cities to fail all the stories & data that confirms their existing beliefs.  Welcome to the echo chamber 

Edited December 17, 2023 by SouthOfTheBorder

[SouthOfTheBorder]

notice any pattern here ???

[marylander1940]

On 12/15/2023 at 12:58 PM, EastCoastBtm said:

These threads constantly attacking cities and their problems are ridiculous in their premise.  The real question, which is too political and really can't be debated - Why is America in decline?  

Unemployed, unhoused, many drug addicts, and people with a whole host of problems gravitate towards cities because cities are the only locations with a high level of concentrated services that support their needs - government support, addiction treatment, healthcare, shelters, food banks, numerous churches.   I wonder why these people aren't moving to small towns and the suburbs en masse?  Because there is little to no help for them there. 

My mother lives in Brunswick County, NC - a largely rural county in southern NC with large snowbird and vacation home population and one of the lower poverty rates in the state.  Low and behold poor people with problems still exist even there and shocker, Republicans run a large portion of county government.  Most 'services' are provided through churches.  Trust me.  If small towns offered everything a big city does in the way of support services, they too would have similar problems and be overwhelmed.  

So can we please stop with the veiled political discussions about the 'Decline of [[fill in the blank Democrat run city]]' masked as some genuine intellectual discussion about the decline of cities?  Its pathetic and this website has been so much better off with the removal of political trolling by a few people desperate to sound relevant.

 

you forgot to mention obesity as one of the reasons of America's decline, how it's clearly linked to poverty, and also, the fact that many regions of the country look like 3rd world countries. 

Edited December 17, 2023 by marylander1940

[+ augustus]

SF will only regenerate when law and order are reestablished.  Bring up all the stats you want about who has greater or lower crime rates than SF.  It is perception, not just reality.  Some areas of SF have become appalling!  People do not want to see or be around that.  This isn't rocket science.  People said Detroit, Newark, St Louis, etc were great cities and look what happened.  

[+ augustus]

On 6/3/2023 at 10:32 PM, Vegas_Millennial said:

The 9th Circuit ruled in 2018 that cities cannot ban camping in public spaces.

https://www.nlc.org/article/2018/09/19/what-the-ninth-circuits-camping-ruling-means-for-housing-first-strategies-in-cities/

This 2018 ruling applies to cities in the following states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.

You may have noticed a large uptick in urban camping that started year that has yet to subside.  I noticed it in Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas almost overnight as transient homeless set up camp on sidewalks that year.   For my masters thesis in 2019, I interviewed homeless people in tent camps in Las Vegas.  A majority of whom I talked to said they previously used about half of their disability checks for affordable weekly rentals.  But now that the police can't arrest them for camping on the streets, they would rather sleep outdoors and save their disability checks for more beer and cigarettes.

While my masters thesis was not on San Francisco, I suspect many urban campers there have no desire to move indoors for a nominal cost.

Amusingly, one of the homeless men I interviewed in Las Vegas said he rotated to California every few years because California would give him bonus payments as a newly homeless person in that state, and then move back to Nevada when he no longer qualified for the California bonus.

The Martin v Boise case.  I've heard about it.  The California State Association of Counties and League of California Cities have filed a legal brief with the US Supreme Court a couple of months ago to overturn this decision.   But you can't just make laws against camping. You can't just run them off. That just makes it someone else's problem.

[SouthOfTheBorder]

4 hours ago, augustus said:

Bring up all the stats you want about who has greater or lower crime rates than SF.  It is perception, not just reality.  Some areas of SF have become appalling!

San Francisco is a unique situation & nowhere else in the US comes close to the myriad of problems that have all come together there at one time.  I happen to agree with you that many areas are appalling & I would not want to live there now.

It really depends on how you’re quantifying the various problems in SF.  The homeless crisis is the worst in the nation - mainly because SF itself is a very small city both in terms of population & geographic area.  The city population is about 800,000 vs NYC at 8.5million (these are the city populations, not broader metro populations).  So with thousands of homeless there it has an outsize impact.  

SF is still safe in terms of violent crime.  Property crime is another matter altogether. And then there’s the unquantifiable damage the homeless crisis is doing to the quality of life and desirability of the city. 

Nonetheless - the devil is in the details and the big cities that some with an agenda like to talk about as crime-ridden aren’t crime-ridden at all compared to other less obvious cities.  But, that doesn’t fit the narrative.  There is perception and then there is the truth.  
Statistically speaking you’re far more likely to be crime victim in Cleveland, Memphis or Baton Rouge than SF. And you’re safer in NYC than almost anywhere else in the US. 

[NipLuvr212]

8 hours ago, augustus said:

Bring up all the stats you want about who has greater or lower crime rates than SF.  It is perception, not just reality.   

Wait.... so are you saying that facts don't matter - it's only people's perceptions that do?

Clarify, please.

[+ augustus]

2 minutes ago, NipLuvr212 said:

Wait.... so are you saying that facts don't matter - it's only people's perceptions that do?

Clarify, please.

It's already clarified......

 

"Bring up all the stats you want about who has greater or lower crime rates than SF.  It is perception, NOT JUST REALITY"......

Emphasis added this time. 

[BSR]

48 minutes ago, NipLuvr212 said:

Wait.... so are you saying that facts don't matter - it's only people's perceptions that do?

Clarify, please.

Of course stats matter, but so do perceptions.  Shoplifting is so bad in San Francisco that drug stores have resorted to putting frozen food under lock & key.  Such a measure doesn't mean that I am much more likely to get murdered or mugged in the city, but who wants to live in a place where toothpaste & Hot Pockets have to be bolted down?

Please note that the property crime statistics in San Francisco fail to tell the real story because stores don't even bother to report thefts less than $950.

[+ WilliamM]

10 hours ago, marylander1940 said:

 

you forgot to mention obesity as one of the reasons of America's decline, how it's clearly linked to poverty, and also, the fact that many regions of the country look like 3rd world countries. 

I  do not agree that many regions of the the country look like third world countries or that obesity is a major problem.

 

Edited December 18, 2023 by WilliamM

[SouthOfTheBorder]

And just when you thought homelessness and all of the attendant problems were only issues in the big cities - get ready, because it’s going nationwide 

from todays Wall Street Journal 

Midsize Cities Struggle With Snowballing Homelessness
Grand Rapids, Mich., enacted ordinances and pumped money into housing and resources as numbers keep rising nationwide

Read in The Wall Street Journal: https://apple.news/ALOX56Kz2Sua2B7i2iCT6SQ

Shared from Apple News

Edited January 2 by SouthOfTheBorder

[BSR]

On 12/17/2023 at 12:49 AM, SouthOfTheBorder said:

notice any pattern here ???

In your post right before this one, you criticize cherrypicking data, but then you point out that Arkansas has the highest violent crime rate.  Hmm, since that just didn't sound right, I did a bit of digging.  As it turns out, the methods of collecting  crime statistics vary widely, which means the accuracy or at least the comprehensiveness of crime statistics varies widely from state to state.  It sounds like Arkansas tops the list not because it's a crime-ridden hellhole, but because its crime data collection is simply more accurate.

Of the 5 states with the lowest crime rates, the first thing that jumps out is that the first 4 states lack a major urban center, magnets for narcotrafficking.  New York is obviously a big exception, but NYC also has an exemplary police department.  When crime dropped precipitously in the 1990s and stayed low in the aughts, NYC real estate values (and therefore NYC property taxes, which make up ~60% of the city's revenue) skyrocketed because the world's ultrarich felt safe enough to buy.  Excellent policing costs, yet NYC leaders are happy to pay the price because they know the city's financial survival depends on it.  In other words, NYC is more the exception, not the rule, for big cities.  Just look at nearby Philly's violent crime stats -- eek!

In contrast, Tennessee has Memphis and all its problems, Louisiana has New Orleans.  I'll skip Alabama because to be honest, I didn't feel like researching it.  Anchorage is a relatively small city, but it has a big percentage of the state's population and also has a very serious drug trafficking problem.

In conclusion, you criticize cherrypicked data and narratives, and then you present 2 lists of cherrypicked data and narratives.

[BSR]

Now if I could bring this all back to San Francisco (finally!) ... since I last visited this thread, I saw a very interesting interview:  an old-school, traditional Catholic who was arguably San Francisco’s number 1 fan.  Who'da thunk it? 

In late 60s when he got married and 70s when he was raising his 6 children, he saw San Francisco as a place where nobody cared if you were black or white, straight or gay, PhD or high school dropout; all people cared about was whether or not you were a good person.  As a devout Catholic, he wanted to teach his 6 kids that one value above all else, and he saw San Francisco as the best place in the world to do it.

SF's number one fan has since left the city, as have his 6 kids.  He's sick over what San Francisco has become:  the out-of-control crime (forget statistics because thefts less than $950 don't count), the homelessness, the needles & feces in the streets.

I loved San Francisco too, although I've only spent a total of 2 weeks there, the last visit a while back.  But it was a different city then.  Contrary to what @SouthOfTheBorder argues, I'm rooting for San Francisco.  I want San Francisco to return to what it was:  a beautiful place that stood as a shining example of the best that cities have to offer.

Nothing against rural Mississippi, but as a gay man, I know it's not the place for me.  I would love to live in the San Francisco of 1985 or 2010, but in its current state, I would no sooner move to San Francisco than I would to rural Mississippi.

Edited January 31 by BSR
Clarity

[marylander1940]

10 hours ago, BSR said:

Now if I could bring this all back to San Francisco (finally!) ... since I last visited this thread, I saw a very interesting interview:  an old-school, traditional Catholic who was arguably San Francisco’s number 1 fan.  Who'da thunk it? 

In late 60s when he got married and 70s when he was raising his 6 children, he saw San Francisco as a place where nobody cared if you were black or white, straight or gay, PhD or high school dropout; all people cared about was whether or not you were a good person.  As a devout Catholic, he wanted to teach his 6 kids that one value above all else, and he saw San Francisco as the best place in the world to do it.

SF's number one fan has since left the city, as have his 6 kids.  He's sick over what San Francisco has become:  the out-of-control crime (forget statistics because thefts less than $950 don't count), the homelessness, the needles & feces in the streets.

I loved San Francisco too, although I've only spent a total of 2 weeks there, the last visit a while back.  But it was a different city then.  Contrary to what @SouthOfTheBorder argues, I'm rooting for San Francisco.  I want San Francisco to return to what it was:  a beautiful place that stood as a shining example of the best that cities have to offer.

Nothing against rural Mississippi, but as a gay man, I know it's not the place for me.  I would love to live in the San Francisco of 1985 or 2010, but in its current state, I would no sooner move to San Francisco than I would to rural Mississippi.

Rural Mississippi? 

Get ready to be asked for papers unless you can pass as local must be cheap for sure and fried food is addictive, that I can tell you. 

Well, at least FEMA works well just like the programs paid by the entire nation. 

[+ augustus]

On 1/31/2024 at 5:52 PM, marylander1940 said:

Rural Mississippi?

Oh yeah.  The good ole boys are hot.

[marylander1940]

11 minutes ago, augustus said:

Oh yeah.  The good ole boys are hot.

Some are, unfortunately they can't stop eating fast food and frying everything! You're what you eat!