Sure, but in the article it’s pretty clear it’s not corruption or incompetence so much as the fallout of deliberate policy choices that are causing the citizens of San Francisco to be angry.
I’m taken aback by this tu quoque response. What’s happening in San Francisco may be happening, to various degrees, in other U.S. cities. But it is not acceptable anywhere.
It’s fallacious Chesa Boudin reasoning to suggest that we can’t have basic standards of law and order and racial equality at the same time.
There needs to be criminal-justice reform. Absolutely! But Boudin’s particular approach and policies as SF district attorney failed. Catastrophically. And SF residents deserve accountability, which Boudin tried to shrug off.
Read the article again! Not acceptable. None of it.
(I don’t live in San Francisco anymore, but I too used to work in South of Market.)
This part made me laugh:
Once, when I was walking and a guy tore my jacket off my back and sprinted away with it, I didn’t even shout for help. I was embarrassed—what was I, a tourist ? Living in a failing city does weird things to you. The normal thing to do then was to yell, to try to get help—even, dare I say it, from a police officer—but this felt somehow lame and maybe racist.
When notions that being an easy mark or racist is a worse sin than theft, something’s gone wrong.
I feel an article being given national attention is intended for a national audience and that reporting on a failure of extreme left wing policies in one city is an attempt to discredit all left wing/liberal/Democratic/socialist policies (the terms are interchangeable to most conservatives).
You are talking two different geographies.
The San Francisco Bay Area is 52 percent white, yes, but the “Bay Area” includes nine different counties and dozens of cities. The San Francisco Unified School District, for whose board the gentleman was applying, has a student body that is 14.8% White, 6.3% Black, 37.5% Asian or Asian/Pacific Islander, 28.3% Hispanic/Latino, 0.2% American Indian or Alaska Native, and 0.8% Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander. In addition, 12.2% of students are two or more races.
Thanks for clearing that up!
~Max
I guess since I live in the Bay Area I see this entirely within a local lens.
My philosophy, generally, is to always support the most progressive candidate in all races — except in San Francisco. Because there, I know that even the more moderate candidate would be considered quite left wing in most places.
Oh and by the way, I go to San Francisco very often. For meetings, shows, concerts, etc. I do not find it nearly as bad as some of these articles depict. I don’t consider it a failed city by any means.
Yeah, there are all of these articles that talk about how bad San Francisco is. So show us the numbers. Do the numbers actually show that SF is worse than less-liberal cities? How about quantifying both “liberalness” and “badness”, and seeing if there’s a correlation?
Reminds me of the rhetoric about how Chicago is a war zone unfit for human habitation. I’ve spent a lot of time in Chicago, including doing field service work in some of the so-called “rougher” parts of town and I never saw or felt any of the things folks who never set foot there insisted I would.
I also reject the framing that San Fransisco’s failings are due to being “too leftist.” Last time I checked, policies can (and often do) fail regardless of the political motivations behind them, because they are all being applied to the chaotic system that is human life.
I always try to tell people that it’s more important to hire smart people than people who have the right positions. No matter how wonderful the idea might be, in theory, an idiot is going to implement it wrong and then you’ve just screwed over that idea for the rest of time because everyone’s going to point at that one example when someone proposes actually trying it.
(And you might also want to take notice if there never is anyone smart and competent backing that idea…)
Yes, it sounds that way, if you read one article where someone is trying to make a point (or just draw in readers). The boring truth is as @suranyi , @Chronos and @Mr.E have said immediately above.
It reminds me of the 1989 earthquake. All, and I mean all of the photos on national media showed the relatively few collapsed buildings in the Marina (unstable landfill area), the collapsed freeway in the east bay, and the bay bridge with one section of the upper-level roadway fallen down to the lower level. Except for the transportation inconveniences caused by the last two, the rest of the city was basically normal. You wouldn’t have known it by any of the national news outlets.
San Francisco has lots of problems. Housing costs, lack of land, and an unwillingness to commit to Manhattan-style population density, means existing housing is very expensive, and you can’t just wave a magic wand and have affordable housing. Nimbyism is very strong here, regardless of politics. Also bureaucracy and corruption in the Dept. of Bldg. Inspection adds untold time to any building project. I spent a year on the civil grand jury trying to dig into and understand these kinds of questions, and frankly, I felt more hopeless after that year than before. The problems seem intractable because the myriad interlocking special interests want it that way, for whatever reason.
This attitude becomes destructive when it’s used to wave off all criticism of failure of progressive policies, since the other guys are so bad, we can ignore our dingbats and declining cities. It’s tu quoque on steroids, or maybe fentanyl.
The pendulum swung too far in SF and now there’s a reckoning for the politicians who let it happen.
Though even the cannier ones are reluctant to risk the wrath of key supporters.
That sounds like the people Phil Ochs mocked in “Love Me, I’m A Liberal”.
“We can fix things but ooh, not too fast.”
My takeaway on this as a relatively liberal centrist is that the reason that progressive policies are failing to reduce homelessness is that the primary solution to homelessness is building a lot more housing so that the price of housing comes down, and urban progressives tend to oppose policies that would lead to more building. Cities with substantial Republican populations tend to do better on this because they tend to have less restrictive zoning and more permissive growth and building ideas.
My impression is that this may be slowly changing, and young progressives are embracing YIMBYism, but it’s hard to say if that trend will really continue.
This is almost impossible in any city environment, if you are suggesting the price will go low enough that most homeless will have enough income to be able to afford someplace to live. There is some hope in the communal micro-apartment approach, but there is a lot of Nimby resistance to having such a complex in one’s own area. Increasing population density by a factor of about 3 would solve a lot of problems, but people who live here don’t want to live in that kind of city. I guess they would rather have homeless camps (but not near them).
Not where I live. It is the small property owners who oppose adding population density, because it will make their properties worth relatively less. My area is almost exclusively single family homes (and, incidentally, something of a grocery desert). Try to get a big condo or apartment project built around here, just try it.
I disagree. Tokyo manages it, for one. For much of our history we largely built enough housing for people to live in. One way we did it was by accepting lower standards of housing than we seem to be willing to permit these days, like rooming houses. You can’t legally operate a rooming house in SF any more, but you can pitch a tent in a public park.
Aye, there’s the rub.
Good point, it reminded me of one ad by a California commerce group: (Paraphrasing)
“You know you live in a special place when you know that there is an active fault line… and nobody is leaving.”
That was then back in the 80’s 90’s, and even recently, that remains the case for most Californians.
IMHO the solution is to treat violent criminals (among which I include burglary of a private home and stealing / breaking into cars) more harshly regardless of race, to legalize victimless crimes (drug use and consensual prostitution), and to focus on rehab and improving the economic opportunities rather than jail for nonviolent criminals (for things like shoplifting to feed your family when you can’t afford food). There’s a problem with drug users shooting up in the public restrooms? Then build safe, open spaces specifically designated for the use of now legal drugs. The problem isn’t that the criminal justice system is too harsh on violent Black criminals, it’s that that the system isn’t harsh enough on white and Latino (in places where Latinos aren’t minorities) violent criminals.
And by all means take a magnifying glass to my city. We’re also not doing well, and largely for the same reasons as San Francisco, even though I live in a pinkish red area of Texas. I can link several articles, if you like, to recent murders in the Corpus Christi area, and in every case the criminal has a history of prior violent offenses for which they either weren’t prosecuted or served less than 5 years. Had they been given multi-decade sentences their first go round, all those victims would still be alive. In fact, due to our IMHO too liberal DA, I’m planning on voting Republican for the first time in my life in a general election (don’t worry, it’ll only be on the local DA race, I’m still voting straight D on the rest of the ticket).
I agree. There needs to be a mechanism where the mentally ill who can’t manage on their own but who aren’t violent can be treated safely. I’m in favor of bringing back long term mental health care facilities. We also need a massive increase in affordable housing for the homeless who are homeless due to not being able to afford housing rather than due to mental illness. No, I don’t care if they build that housing in my neighborhood, as long as it comes along with a harsh policy for imprisoning violent criminals.
Two points that I’d suggest considering (not to anyone in particular - just to the people in the thread) if you’re going to discuss homelessness:
- O'Connor v. Donaldson - Wikipedia A Supreme Court ruling against the Constitutionality of holding people in a mental hospital against their will.
- Homelessness and chronic homelessness are VERY different things and it’s very likely that you’re going to address the wrong thing unless you understand that difference, ascertain which a speaker is referring to, make clear which you are referring to, and are checking which of the two is being referenced by any particular data on the subject (usually, it’s going to be both - but with 98% of the numbers coming from the first group).
I agree that zoning in Tokyo makes excellent sense, but good luck getting any US city to follow that model. Our way of doing things is too entrenched.
Neighborhoods in Tokyo tend to be less uniform than here, and there are a lot of mid-size apartment buildings nearly everywhere. You can slot in a building with cheap units, and as long as it is kept up on the outside, and the residents obey the rules about trash and don’t cause disturbances, no-one will care. This applies more for the working poor (of whom there are many) rather than the indigent and down-and-out. (And, incidentally, there are homeless people in Tokyo, they just tend to make themselves inconspicuous).