San Francisco Is Suffering From The Excesses Of Its Own Liberalism

[Jonesy55]

If you have a $200k salary in SF by the way how much does that work out as net after Federal income tax, state income tax and FICA? Or are there too many other variables to be able to say accurately?

[Sun Belt]

The homeless situation has gotten really bad and it is spreading to areas that never used to have homeless in high numbers.

It should not be tolerated for them to establish semi-permanent camps--especially in public parks. All structures with tarps and boxes should be removed by the city.

You can be homeless, just don't establish a home on public property.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Jonesy55

The article does go on to say though that this is because San Francisco has a lot of high income renters compared with other places in the US (because they can't afford to buy despite high income, they would be homeowners in other cities), and also because a lot of the lower income renters have been pushed out into Oakland and other parts of the urban area where the figures for rent burden are higher than in SF itself.

Yes, SF has far more high income renters than in other cities, but I'm not sure why this matters. Rent burden is lower.

Also not sure why you think this means "they can't afford to buy despite high income". Maybe it's that they choose not to buy. Why would they be unable to buy?

Places like SF probably have lots of high income renters because they have a highly compensated, young, transient class, where it would be silly in most cases to buy. Also there's a huge amount of rent-stabilized housing, where, again, buying makes no sense. Finally, if SF is like NYC, there's no social stigma to renting, as in most of the U.S.

[Jonesy55]

Well, it's often the case that somebody could afford to pay $4,000/month in rent but wouldn't necessarily be able to get a mortgage easily for the $1m it would take to buy that same place. Not the case in every circumstance of course but I would think there at least some renters in high cost markets who would buy if they could but they can't so they rent.

[k1052]

SF's housing crisis is largely a result of decades long chronic under-building especially as employment in SF and the peninsula exploded. Even now they're still at a fraction of pipeline that would start to address this problem.

Liberalism isn't the problem here, NIMBYism is and that knows no boundary of political ideology. That a few locals can throw wrenches into even modest up zoning and approvals delaying projects for years if not outright killing them is outrageous. LA/SD have the same problem if to a lesser severity.

[McBane]

This is devolving into the same topic that's regularly discussed here: SF's astronomical cost of living and chronic housing shortages. What I haven't read thus far is how exactly SF's liberalism is the root cause of this. I have a few thoughts:

1) SF is a liberal city, but is its entrenched political establishment really a bunch of far left wing extremists? Or are they more like your run of the mill Clinton Wall-Street type Democrats? I actually don't know.

2) If SF's liberal policies get the blame for all these problems, does the same line of liberal thinking get credit for all the good things SF has going for it, e.g., a booming economy and surging economic/population growth?

[cannedairspray]

Originally Posted by McBane

This is devolving into the same topic that's regularly discussed here: SF's astronomical cost of living and chronic housing shortages. What I haven't read thus far is how exactly SF's liberalism is the root cause of this.

I doubt it's a coincidence, what with the car window imagery, but the article itself seems to be insinuating that SF's generally left of center ideology has resulted in a strong aversion to "broken windows" style of law enforcement. It doesn't come out and cite that theory/strategy at all, but the general thrust is along those lines. And that that aversion has led to people shitting on the streets and whatnot.

Whether or not that's true, it seems as if that's what the article wants the reader to believe. The conversation that's focused more on cost of living is happening in this thread, not really the article The word rent only comes up once in the article, for example.

[The North One]

I don't think SF is suffering because of liberalism at all, the problem is there's a lot of faux liberalism in SF. Preventing housing in your neighborhood just because you want your property to have an inflated value isn't liberal or progressive or socially democratic in any sense.

[Zapatan]

I currently live in San Francisco and it's all true. Way too much of this city is filthy and full of crazy homeless people. Poverty, theft and violent crime (particularly in East Bay) are just through the roof.

Liberalism prides itself on being tolerant of others, and while to a certain extent that's good, we must remember that certain things should not be tolerated. SF is the most crime tolerant city I've ever been to. It seems as if the police don't even care about the state of the city. There are people living in tents sh*tting on the streets within blocks of some of the most expensive real estate in the world. It's absolutely insane.

Word on the street is that the Bay Area has slowly started to lose people, which makes total sense. Who in their right ming wants to spend 4000 dollars a month for a shoebox when there are smelly homeless heroin addicts living in a tent outside their door?

A lot of cities have problems, and there are many wonderful things about SF too ( I don't mean to trash it too much ), but it seems the disparity is only getting worse.

[sopas ej]

Originally Posted by spyguy

I didn't realize The Federalist would have a problem with liberalism

Seriously. When I saw the source of the article, I immediately stopped reading. It might as well be Breitbart, or The National Review, IMO.

[DCReid]

Originally Posted by Zapatan

I currently live in San Francisco and it's all true. Way too much of this city is filthy and full of crazy homeless people. Poverty, theft and violent crime (particularly in East Bay) are just through the roof.

Liberalism prides itself on being tolerant of others, and while to a certain extent that's good, we must remember that certain things should not be tolerated. SF is the most crime tolerant city I've ever been to. It seems as if the police don't even care about the state of the city. There are people living in tents sh*tting on the streets within blocks of some of the most expensive real estate in the world. It's absolutely insane.

Word on the street is that the Bay Area has slowly started to lose people, which makes total sense. Who in their right ming wants to spend 4000 dollars a month for a shoebox when there are smelly homeless heroin addicts living in a tent outside their door?

A lot of cities have problems, and there are many wonderful things about SF too ( I don't mean to trash it too much ), but it seems the disparity is only getting worse.

As I can recall, SF seems to always have had rough edges. But, maybe SF does need real competition in government to elect leaders to try different approaches. NYC certainly did that, electing Republicans and Independents despite being a fairly liberal city overall (Yes, I know NYC has pockets of conservatives too). Also being homeless is not always just because of inability afford rent, unfortunately there is a mental illness element to a portion of the homeless.

[mhays]

Originally Posted by Crawford

OK? What does that have to do with anything?

SF has relatively low rent burden. Whether rents are $1 or $1 billion has nothing to do with anything.

Roughly half of U.S. renters are "rent burdened" per the Census; i.e. they pay more than 30% of income to rent. In SF, the share is much lower than the national average.

https://sf.curbed.com/2017/11/13/166...nt-burden-2017

What this means, in plain English, is that the average SF renter is paying a significantly lower share of income to housing costs than an average renter in the U.S.

This counts the massive percentage that are under rent control. Among those not subsidized, a great many keep things affordable due to roommates. It completely jibes with rents being hugely problematic.

[destroycreate]

I've said it before in another thread: You couldn't pay to move back there, for all of the reasons cited in this article. I most recently lived at 9th and Market, and being in the heart of the Civic Center area was miserable. It frequently felt unsafe, filthy, and ill-maintained. You pay Manhattan prices without the Manhattan quality of life, and I just mean in the sense of how well NYC is maintained/policed in comparison. You really can't roam the streets of SF at 3am, it's unsafe. In Manhattan, people do it all the time...I've never felt unsafe there. With the amount of money SF generates in tax revenue, the streets could be paid in gold.

These are issues I find all throughout the Bay Area though. I find so much of it to be sketchy and crime ridden, liberal to a fault. l

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by mhays

This counts the massive percentage that are under rent control.

But why wouldn't we count rent controlled units? What is the point of talking about relative rent burden if you wish to arbitrarily exclude a huge cohort of renters?

[Jonesy55]

Originally Posted by DCReid

Also being homeless is not always just because of inability afford rent, unfortunately there is a mental illness element to a portion of the homeless.

I would say probably mental illness / addiction issues are probably a much bigger factor than simply high rental prices.

If you are in a good place mentally then if rent is too high you will probably just move somewhere cheaper, but if you know you won't find your drugs easily in some cheap suburban town and you are not making great rational decisions because of your mental health and don't want to move away from the networks you rely on to keep yourself going with your current lifestyle then you are more likely to end up on the street I would think.

Plus the mild climate in SF might also attract people who don't want to sleep outside in freezing winters.

[yankeesfan1000]

Are any of the Mayoral candidates talking about dealing with the homelessness issues? Or is it just more of the same?

[mhays]

Originally Posted by Crawford

But why wouldn't we count rent controlled units? What is the point of talking about relative rent burden if you wish to arbitrarily exclude a huge cohort of renters?

It's a city of two extremes, and you simply average them. The honest point is that SF is extremely expensive for anyone not in a protected group.

[Jonesy55]

Originally Posted by Crawford

But why wouldn't we count rent controlled units? What is the point of talking about relative rent burden if you wish to arbitrarily exclude a huge cohort of renters?

It depends what you are wanting to look at, what the situation is for people who are long term residents of the city or what the situation will be for people looking to move to the city. For the first then including rent - controlled housing is a big factor, for the second then I guess it's not really relevant to them.

[austlar1]

In decades past (many decades by now, since the late 1960s really), a high percentage of those currently making up the homeless population of the Bay Area would have been housed in state mental hospitals. Effective medications and community mental health programs were supposed to provide an alternative solution, but this was never efffectively implemented. Now you have thousands of self medicating (with alcohol and illegal street drugs) homeless mentally ill who could not last a week in an "affordable" housing situation without causing havoc. This is a nationwide problem, but places like San Francisco with a fairly mild climate and other amenities for the homeless population attract huge numbers of these poor souls. I hate to say it, but the solution is to reintroduce involuntary institutionalization for the most intractable element within this population.

[austlar1]

There is also a criminal subset of determined homeless who tend to be young, physically fit, and mentally competent (albeit with substance abuse issues) who can be found camping in parks and streets of magnet cities like SF, Portland, Austin, New Orleans, etc. Strict enforcement of vagrancy laws would go a long way towards discouraging this crowd from setting up shop. By the way, I consider myself to be left of center politically, but I always felt like a real reactionary when I lived in SF many years ago.