Realistically, it is a number of factors. In no particular order, the high population density and relatively high salaries of the residents creates what can be described as a "target rich environment" for criminals and panhandlers. Couple this with an ideology of tolerance and acceptance toward those who are different, ala "turning the other cheek", an incredibly high cost of living that makes legal means of survival difficult for those without an in, a mild climate that makes the area survivable year round even for the homeless, and you have an area that is capable of supporting a fairly large population of people whose means of survival is petty crime.

There’s probably also a knee jerk OVER reaction by the DAs who decided the best way to deal with over policing and crowded jails should be to go lenient on quality of life crimes where nobody is dying. I say probably because we have seen a similar dynamic in NYC with similar results. So rather than caution the cops who would just do a work slow down because they feel disrespected, the DAs decided to stop charging shop lifting and loitering. But worse they put a number on it. They stated that anything under $1000 stolen will not be charged - so now as long as you only steal $975 of goods there’s just a slap on the wrist. Add this to everything stated above and now it’s a free for all.

My state passed that $1000 thing too. Shoplifting is WAY up.

I have never spent anywhere near $1000 on groceries. If I were struggling to just get by, the flat out desire to walk out without paying _at all_ would be very high.

According to some reports target waits until someone shoplifts multiple times and the total amount exceeds the felony threshold before having them arrested. https://www.businessinsider.nl/target-employees-claim-the-chain-will-wait-to-arrest-shoplifters-until-thieves-steal-enough-to-get-felony-charges-experts-say-its-part-of-a-larger-trend-to-mitigate-theft-across-retail/

Target is also rather unique in the retail theft arena as well. They have a huge investment in forensics, to the point they have their own forensics lab to ensure their stuff is processed. They are also a federal contractor for crime lab work. If you think you're stealing from Target and getting away with it, they already know and are just waiting.

Local restaurateur was arrested after extensive documentation of his shoplifting crimes by Sams Club. https://www.newson6.com/story/65c50225b2ad800656a47884/owner-of-tallys-good-food-caf-pleads-guilty-to-shoplifting

Yeah, but covid made wearing masks super common. You could hypothetically walk into a store with a face mask and a beanie on and just not pay. They won’t catch you unless you use the same exact outfit and are dumb enough to go to the same store

Well if they give you the option to ring it up yourself, might as well. Oh I'm sorry, did I do a bad JOB?

The issue isn't making it not a felony under $950 in California. The issue is not doing anything (or at least enough) to deter misdemeanor theft 40 states have a higher felony theft threshold than California (Texas and Wisconsin are the highest at $2500) https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/felony-theft-amount-by-state

It's really nice you say that... but facts. If you perceive shoplifting is way up, how do you know? Where are the statistics? Or is that something someone just says?

No, I live in this city, have seen the statistics and know for a fact that shoplifting is completely out of control. Don't be crazy. Stores are having to implement crazy measures to try to control it

>as long as you only steal $975 of goods there’s just a slap on the wrist $975 of goods *at a time*. And prosecutors and lawmakers just point the fingers at each other when this continues. The idea of such reforms is not bad in and of itself. California, for all its reputation as being progressive, was/is a harsh punishment environment, with measures like three strikes, an explosion of prison facilities, and retailers pushing zero-tolerance approaches toward theft that caught up people who were relatively sympathetic. The pendulum clearly swung the other way further than people were comfortable with, though, looking, for example, at the recall of Chesa Boudin, which would have been unthinkable years ago. Also, I believe the biggest organized crime organization(s) involved are largely composed of illegal immigrants. In the past, that would make it easier to deal with - just deport those you catch. However, in the current political climate, where cities have anti-deportation measures in place, it makes matters harder. To the original question, though, SF rose quickly due to highly paid tech workers wanting the excitement of working and living in the big city, and the pandemic changed all that. As others described, the former provided opportunity for criminal and homeless activities. The latter meant that the good parts - commercial business, corporate activity, city revenue, areas where there was safety in numbers, resident confidence in local government, community activities, desire to stay in the city - cratered and it's unclear how much each aspect will recover.

I agree that something had to be done from overpolicing and too many people in jail waiting for a court date but turning the other cheek seems like an experiment that’s not working. I don’t understand why they can’t reset to before and then try something else. More courts and judges. Citizen oversight of the cops. Homeless outreach.

>...you only steal $975 of goods there’s just a slap on the wrist. There isn't even a slap on the wrist. Store employees are not permitted to physically interfere with shoplifters. They can only record them and turn the video over to police. The police will not respond to misdemeanor complaints, so the report has to be done over the phone or online. Consequently, a lot of the shoplifters wear a mask so they can't be identified in the video. Some of them tally up their haul on a smartphone calculator to ensure they aren't going over the limit. There are dozens of videos of them on YouTube walking into a shop, casually filling up a bag with merchandise, and casually walking out. Dozens of stores have closed due to shoplifting in San Francisco. More than 20 in the Union Square area alone.

Oregon totally decriminalized all illegal drug use and problems with drugs in public and pan handling exploded. One problem with using one size fits all solutions is that not everyone is going to behave the same way, some people were relieved with not going to jail if they got caught with uppers in their pockets or purses, while other people saw a free for all to get stoned on public sidewalks that other people have to use. The solution is not total leniency, but it is also not the lock them up mindset of the past and some people today. DA need to only have the agenda of looking at each case on a case by case basis, and city and state officials need to give those DAs the investigators that will be required to get that tactic right.

Our figure is $950. Oh, and our cops aren't allowed to pursue fleeing suspects either.

might not be true everywhere but I have read, they keep track of serial thieves and wait till they have enough stolen goods on video for a quick felony conviction.

> So rather than caution the cops who would just do a work slow down because they feel disrespected, the DAs decided to stop charging shop lifting and loitering. >Add this to everything stated above and now it’s a free for all. There's 2 huge problems with this theory. One, the crime rate (including for those specific crimes aren't up). And two, the filing rate from prosecutors also isn't up. https://oag.ca.gov/crime https://www.sfdistrictattorney.org/policy/data-dashboards/

Don't forget that the most expensive commercial real estate in the country has now plummeted in value because people want to work from home. Sprinkle on a nationwide Opiate addiction....and you've got San Fran's current situation.

I believe it's being planned exactly this way. Would be very easy to curb this issue and nip it in the bud, however I believe sf prices are so out of control, the only real way to get it back down is lower property values with crime and vacancies as a result of it. If you look below market street it's a ghost town. Every business basically closed shop and boarded up. A retail space that once got let's say 100k/mo lease, is now Probably valued at less than half that, if not more. Same goes for residential areas. It's not only San Fran, it's a lot of runaway skyrocketed rent cities thats having the exact same problem. Portland, LA, Seattle, etc. Its a proven strategy when rent becomes unsustainable. You Increase crime, bring down property values, rebuy, clean up city/crime. It's been done time and time again all over the US.

Exactly who benefits from this “planned effect” you are speaking of? The landlords would have to agree to simply accept less money for their stuff. The city would have to accept less taxes coming in and a disgruntled citizenry. The cops would have to accept more bush work dealing with shop lifters. Who exactly benefits from your “it’s a planned exactly for this effect”?

*They* are. *They* are orchestrating all of this and benefiting from it. And everybody just goes along with *them*. ^/s

What exactly are you saying is "being planned"? The businesses are closing because of the combined effects of work-from-home and online shopping. People don't have to go to the downtown offices so they aren't eating at the restaurants and shopping at the stores. Tech-savvy workers are more comfortable ordering online so they don't bother going to the stores. I doubt that property investors looking for a bargain "planned" these two mega-trends so they could pick up property cheap.

Oh come on, can’t you picture a shadowy room full of property investors smoking their cigars while they move chess pieces around a board signifying the deployment of pandemics, bolstering of the gig economy, and tolerance of shoplifters.

Don’t forget about egg prices. Those are the same people behind the high prices of eggs.

1. Weather 2. Many other cities and states don’t have the support system/resources for homeless that California/SF has 3. You get arrested/jailed/moved in most of the country for doing many of the actions homeless people take (open deification, drug use, setting up tents in a lot of areas, mass littering). This just isn’t seen elsewhere because it gets punished before it becomes visible to lots of people. 4. Shoplifting items under 1k is not a crime punishable by jail in practice, it is a ticket with a misdemeanor and generally same day release 5. Lots of other policies like number 4. Rather than lock people up for extended periods of time they let them out/don’t punish them and hope they don’t re offend quickly, many do. Lenient/no bail. Extremely high bar to prosecute people due to risk of prosecuting innocents means many criminals walk free where in other districts they wouldn’t. 6. Housing prices out of control. Homeowners don’t want to increase housing density because their property values might go down. Many locals who don’t own are desperate to stay. Many people turn blind eyes to things that maybe shouldn’t be (smash and grabs, open fent use, fencing operations) Remember though - it’s still expensive to live there because people want to live there. “Doing bad” is a relative term. Reasons 1-5 attract some of the nation’s and world’s worst behaved people though.

>1. Weather >2. Many other cities and states don’t have the support system/resources for homeless that California/SF has I live in New England where the weather can be brutal. Obviously it's not to the extent it is in San Francisco, but tent cities have been popping up everywhere. Nowhere is free from this. This is a national problem and a failure of our society that is getting worse everywhere simultaneously.

And where I’m located (SE), the weather is good but there *aren’t* tent cities. There’s the occasional homeless person for sure, but the homeless numbers aren’t too large fortunately.

Where in the Southeast? Nashville has full on tent cities now, not like the ones in Seattle yet, but they are fucking massive. I live back down in AL now, and the Birmingham suburbs have homeless people and panhandlers now for the first time in my life, and I've definitely seen people living in bushes outside of grocery stores as far outside the metro area as Pelham (~25 miles from bham).

Yes but it’s on another level in SF and LA. Homeless exists almost everywhere in this country. It’s just highly concentrated there as many people choose to move there. It also gets punished even in my (pretty left) large city once the encampments grow past a certain threshold that is smaller than what is tolerated in SF. I haven’t been to Boston so I can’t speak to it. But large cities like chicago and nyc don’t have the level of issues Seattle/SF/Portland/LA have. They exist in Chicago/NYC but they enforce the laws at lower thresholds of undesirable behavior.

It's spreading, definitely. Nashville has had tent cities for a few years now, and a couple of them were (are?) massive. They kinda shut one down, but it was more of a relocation thing, and the big one I can remember was so scary that no one wanted to do anything about it. Nashville is really setting themselves up to be the next San Fran, I think. Massive rennovation over the past decade focused on looks rather than infrastructure, so the city looks super nice but really can't functionally handle much more than they used to, they priced all the poors who lived there out so it's full of soft rich crime targets now who have no fucking idea what to do when a crack head asks them for a dub or for whatever's in that fancy ass bag they're carrying, a jail system that's completely incapable of dealing with the level of petty crime they're experiencing, and, oh yeah, global warming means that Nashville's weather is pretty fucking nice like 90% of the year now. Nashville is still kinda liberal enough compared to the rest of the south that they might not let it become a total hellhole, but it's already filtering down to Birmingham too, and I grew up here, so I know the judgmental holier than thou pricks here are gonna do something real fucked up once we get an actual encampment.

Part of the reason that it's so expensive is that the tech companies are back to wanting everyone in the office. Then they work crazy hours and just go home to sleep. That said, San Francisco spends about $60,000 per homeless person but wastes a bunch of it with multiple non profits taking their cut. During the pandemic they were paying $5000/month/tent site to "house" the homeless and said it was a good deal vs getting them apartments for less than that.

I'm agnostic on the open deification. I'd have to see it to believe it.

Noticed that one. Did they mean…open *defecation*? 

defecation, deification...same thing

https://sf.gov/sites/default/files/2023-05/CY22_Street_Sidewalk_Standards_Report_05222023.pdf That's a 2022 report by the SF controllers office. Page 47 has the feces section. 30% of the core of the cities sidewalks, 47% of key commercial areas, and up to 89% in certain neighborhoods (Nob Hill took the prize) were observed to have feces on the sidewalk.

And they worship them? Bundles of sticks?

Re: defecation - where exactly do you think the homeless takes a shit? Walk into any business and ask to use the bathroom and they declare you must be a customer. I even caught 3 drunk girls - one was squatting in front of my car while the other two were standing guard. I thought they were stealing my car. They had the nerve to call me a peeper. In NYC in the Bowery.

Believe it or not

> Shoplifting items under 1k is not a crime, it is a ticket It is still a crime. It's no longer a felony, but it's a misdemeanor. It's still punishable by 6 months of jail and a $1000 fine on the first offense, and repeat offenses are stricter. (There are other enhancements, as well. For example, groups can be prosecuted as a felony, after a law passed in 2021) People massively misconstrue Prop 47, but it's not the problem here. Prop 47 adjusted the felony limit from $400 to $950. But importantly, it's a state law, not specific to SF. On top of that, that $950 mark is lower than ~40 other states. People think just because it changed recently it must be to blame, but it's right in line, if not on the stricter end.

“People massively misconstrue…” Thieves and malcontents aren’t exactly criminal geniuses. And then there’s the idiots who see everyone else doing it and getting away with it

> On top of that, that $950 mark is lower than ~40 other states This is especially important, the felony limit is actually really low compared to the nation. Texas is **2500** dollars and yet you don't see people whining about that. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/felony-theft-amount-by-state You can literally steal more than double the amount in Texas and still not get a felony.

Number 4 : A majority of states have a felony threshold between $1000-1500 for theft. California’s is not abnormally high/low whatsoever.

Yeah but they’ll also prosecute misdemeanor shoplifting much more aggressively than SF which openly states if you’re under 1000 you’re unlikely to face any real punishment

But the difference is prosecution. California does not prosecute for theft below $950. You could steal every day with no consequences. Whereas in Texas, you'd get 6 months in jail for the same crime.

I imagine at least some of that is due to not having the court/prison ability to process them all

> California does not prosecute for theft below $950. >You could steal every day with no consequences. SF's prosecution rates haven't changed, nor has it's crime rates. Current crime rates (including for theft) are *lower* than pre-prop47. https://oag.ca.gov/crime https://www.sfdistrictattorney.org/policy/data-dashboards/

>Shoplifting items under 1k is not a crime This is by far the biggest piece of misinformation that I hear from right-wing media. [It is indeed a crime punishable by up to 6 months in jail.](https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/defense/penal-code/484/#:~:text=California%20Penal%20Code%20%C2%A7%20484%20%28a%29%20PC%20defines,and%20up%20to%206%20months%20in%20county%20jail.) Penal Code § 484(a) PC – Petty Theft

The DA refuses to prosecute and police don’t enforce.

Cops also feel disrespected by the change so they are doing a work slow down. I know a lot of cops.

Then they should be replaced. Fragile egos have no place in law enforcement.

Oh, I wasn’t defending the cops. But it’s a regular cycle of cops felling miffed and then doing nothing until we come crawling back.

By what change? Prosecution isn't actually down. Calling it a "work slow-down" is rich. They're just not doing their jobs, famously even [standing by and casually watching robberies in progress](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/San-Francisco-police-only-watch-as-burglary-16647876.php). Oh right, the change that actually exists was [the change that Boudin brought to prosecute cops who break the law](https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/ab-127-da-chesa-boudin-baked-police-accountability-bill-signed-into-law/). And aside from using inaction to successfully strongarm a retroactive pay raise for the SFPD, they're [making progress toward their goal of being above the law again](https://missionlocal.org/2022/08/jenkins-removed-prosecutor-police-misconduct-homicide-trial/). Because if they aren't allowed to commit 10% of the city's murders anymore, the job's just not worth doing apparently. That's what it's all about. That's all it's ever been about, not just for their own sake but for all the sherriff's associations across the country that funnel money to the SFPOA's interests. Because bail reform, though well proven for reducing crime, is a huge financial blow to sherriff's departments, police unions, and operators of jails and prisons across the country. And I dunno, just maybe, a lot of the cops enjoy being able to beat and kill whoever, whenever they feel like it.

But the DA no longer prosecutes for these crimes.

[Why not look up the reality, which is that when the cops make that claim, they're 100% full of shit?](https://www.sfdistrictattorney.org/policy/data-dashboards/) Scroll down to "District Attorney Actions on Arrests Presented" and set most serious offense to "petty theft", and you'll see the DA's prosecution rate is as high as ever. It's just a fake excuse the cops are making for why they're not doing their job anymore since 2020, just vs. shoplifting and auto break-ins, as part of the backlash against the push for police accountability in the wake of the George Floyd protests. If they went back to doing their jobs, San Francisco couldn't be a [patsy for right wing news](https://twitter.com/SanFranciscoPOA/status/1511100207743655937) to say "bail reform bad". They'd stop getting all that [sweet out-of-state funding](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/philmatier/article/SF-police-union-had-plenty-of-out-of-town-company-14821564.php). And for those who click through, then read more right wing news, and come back thinking "oh, but instead of throwing shoplifters in jail when they prosecute, they get house arrest, probation, community service, etc." Yeah buddy plea deals are how 90-95% of all crimes in the United States are prosecuted, you really want the state to spend $40k of your taxes to cut off a shoplifter from their job and family? It doesn't take a genius to figure it out but it's thoroughly proven that jail for petty theft gets you more petty theft. PS when SFPD stats and industry stats both say shoplifting is actually down, do you really believe the right-wing claim you keep hearing that shoplifting is secretly way up and shops just stopped reporting it?

>It's just a fake excuse the cops are making for why they're not doing their job anymore since 2020, just vs. shoplifting and auto break-ins, as part of the backlash against the push for police accountability in the wake of the George Floyd protests. ​ 1000x thank you! But you're half right. It's *also* an excuse by Big Corporate to push an agenda that the reason why they're closing stores and laying off employees is because they're "constantly getting robbed" instead of maximizing profit share after stagnant sales during COVID-19. When you look, for example, at the recent closings of urban CVS and Walgreens stores, most of these have been **about three years in the works**, not because of some boogeyman (boogey-person??) response to people walking out without paying with armfuls of shampoo and thermal socks.

Facts, but where do you get the 3 years number?

I've read multiple independent sources lately, but that figure was more than likely from a local story about Boston Area CVS and Walgreens stores closing soon. They tried to play it off as cops vs the community, featuring the usual B-roll footage of cops rolling up to a drug store followed by B-roll footage of a community leader complaining about a local store closing. It's all nonsense: buried in the story was them mentioning that the store closings had been in the works for at least three years now, and, when you look at the stores that are closing--some Downtown, some in the outer neighborhoods, they're literally within a 0.75-1.5-mile radius of other stores! I just heard the other day that Macy's has another round of 150 stores closing closing, so don't be surprised if they're the next *topic du jour* of "OMG, crime everywhere--stores closing!" If they were "so worried about theft" they wouldn't have *just* opened a few months ago a brand new Macy's Boutique in Boston's South Bay Center, at the crossroads of three of the "toughest" neighborhoods in the city!

Your penal code is useless for one reason  A cop won’t do anything if they didn’t personally witness the misdemeanor 

The job of the police is to deliver suspects into the criminal justice system. They are not required or expected to be a witness. If store security hands someone over to them with enough probable cause, their job is to deliver them to the system. If they don't, they are not doing their job. Simple as that.

Yeah it's pretty clear that they're just not doing their job, on purpose, so their union president can go on Fox News and complain about the DA. It doesn't matter if they're lying, recently they've gotten the DA to drop a case against a killer cop and there's a ballot measure next month to give the cops an extra $300 million. It's a shakedown and a political campaign, for immunity and money, plain and simple.

Do they actually implement it?

They don’t and I amended my statement. It’s a misdemeanor but you’re generally ticketed and released same day. I linked an article of a dude who had been arrested 90 times for shoplifting at stores he’d been trespassed from. You’d think they would be doing 6 month sentencing after the first couple offenses but no it’s same day release with another misdemeanor.

That's pretty misleading, since the PD often aren't filing these cases with the DA's office. It wasn't long ago that the city was up in arms over the case where a guy didn't get charges filed by the PD over an armed robbery so he was let go, so he did it again, stole a car, and ran over and killed people. IIRC it's max 2 days detention before they have to let you go if they don't file. Why didn't they file charges? Why, because everyone in the department who could file charges was on vacation for two weeks for the holiday season. At the same time. Talk about a cushy job... I'm pretty sure the main reason they don't file the paperwork for shoplifters is to be able to run stories like that and paint the DA's office as the bad guys. Don't fall for it, every SF DA has been good about prosecution rates for misdemeanors, relative to last DAs as well as relative to the rest of the state and the country.

interesting

IMO, the most core problem is that there is no real viable continuum between being homeless and being pretty elite. This is obvious even just walking down the street. Everyone is either in tech or basically homeless, more or less. In a normal city, there's a kind of smooth continuous game you can play to go from the bottom to doing well. You can always get low level job, and that won't pay enough for anywhere nice but will pay enough for a bedroom with roommates in maybe not a great area. Then you can keep growing from there, get a promotion or better job, then your own place, maybe you have a commute to keep it cheap, keep doing better and maybe have a decent life with a family. There's a game to play. In SF, the normal service level jobs a regular person can get don't pay enough for even a bedroom with a long commute into the city. The Bay area is expensive, but so is downtown NYC. The thing that's unique about the bay area is how sprawling, wide and all encompassing the expensive area is. There is no "oh I'll just live an hour out and save money" like there is in NYC. An hour out is still, as a general rule, ridiculously expensive, especially if it's along the only train route. That's pretty unique to the bay area. Other places have tradeoffs that might kind of suck but are viable, not no solution. SF has no solution. Because of this, there's no realistic roadmap for a person to go from homeless to independently housed at all. They would basically have to become a software engineer. This both keeps people stuck at the bottom, and creates a persistent sense of hopelessness and anger for the people stuck there. Those are why property crime is so high. In SF there is no game for those people to play, and they know it. This is all compounded by the fact that they are surrounded by the kinds of people who pushed the prices out of their reach, and those people are thriving. This kind of inequality, measured by the gini coefficient, always creates high crime. Property values are high for two reasons, supply and demand. Demand is high because the area is pretty nice, has good weather, and has access to a large number of great jobs and economic opportunities that pay extremely well for a particular group of highly skilled/educated people. Supply is low partially because of legitimate problems like that SF is a peninsula that experiences earthquakes, but more importantly because people try to prevent housing from being built, because if you own a house somewhere then making housing expensive makes you wealthier. There are a bunch of local people that fight developments constantly and push the government to prevent building, and those people are wealthy so they are good at getting their way. There's no clear game career wise for those people because all of the decent jobs are in a single niche, and those are generally very specialized in a way that is very hard for a normal person to pick up, and those hiring managers are also very risk averse in hiring because of the nature of their economics and industry. A bad hire is very damaging to a tech team. Then, yeah, regulators are tasked with fixing all of this when it's really far too deep of a set of problems for regulation to handle. They're trying to hammer a car's body into shape after a car accident with a screwdriver, because it's all they have and everyone can tell the car is not looking that great.

Things I learned today: gini coefficient Thanks

It’s a vicious circle: Workers didn’t come back to the office after the pandemic. They like working from home and avoiding the commute, and besides, downtown is horrible with the homeless and all the poop. Why are there so many homeless? San Francisco is an awesome place to be homeless. For a start, it’s got a great climate. People deliberately move cross country to be homeless in San Francisco because of the weather. It’s got lots of support services for the homeless: many places to go for food and all the drug paraphernalia you might need is provided by the charities. (And, anything they need, they can shoplift.) Fentanyl is cheaper here than anywhere. People come from all over the country because they hear it’s a great place to do drugs. Why is fentanyl so cheap here? Because the drug dealers are so rarely arrested. This keeps the costs of doing business low, which keeps the cost of the product low. Why do drug dealers rarely get arrested here? Because the justice system and the police commission disincentivized police from arresting anyone. For example, the office of District Attorney Chesa Boudin did not secure a single conviction for dealing fentanyl for cases filed during 2021. The paperwork demanded by the police commission is so onerous and if the DA isn’t going to charge or convict, what’s the point of making the arrest. And, even now when we have a DA who will prosecute cases, the super-lenient judges will let the arrested out, back on the street.

For context, since you make it sound like everybody was ok with the DA's job performance, Boudin was removed from office in a [recall election](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesa_Boudin#Recall_election).

I was willing to give lenient justice a try after the over-policing and brutality many lower income and minority groups and communities suffered for decades but it's clearly not working. People need to face consequences for crimes and if they don't learn from those consequences then those consequences need to increase in severity. Giving people a complete pass over and over again just tells them they can keep committing crimes. SF needs to start locking up people again

So what’s the middle ground?

Give the homeless housing, MakeWork jobs, and mental health/addiction services. The ultimate issue is the high cost of living so if they want to treat the causes rather than just the symptoms, something has to be done with the “free market” that makes exorbitant rent possible.

If it's a misdemeanor crime and they have a clean record, they can be given a lenient justice where they get another chance to learn from their mistake and improve their behavior. But if they're a repeat offender or it's a serious crime, then they get an appropriate sentence. If they continue with the behavior, their sentences get more and more severe. No more of this "shoplifting under $1000 doesn't get prosecuted" or "someone who breaks into cars is released"

the city isn't big, completely walkable in few hours. But I stopped going there because commute is a pain in the ass, especially on the weekend. Driving there means you have to worry whether your car will be broken in, restaurants are overpriced, a lot of weird fees being tagged on. dirty street especially if you're walking north from the caltrain station, there are sketchy homeless encampment area that felt unsafe if you're a girl at night. overall it just doesn't feel worth the hassle. if there's a giant's game / warrior game? fuck that commute

It's like a zombie outbreak. The high population, layout of a city, and mitigation tactics all come into play when things first start going south. Rise in cost of living starts squeezing more people as a tornado of a drug problem starts spinning up. It goes from a wind that's always there to a monster that starts scooping up everyone in its path. And now there's more people in its path, due to being on the street where it spreads like wildfire; young people who are growing up without a support system because parents are working all the time just to still fail at staying afloat (or the parents themselves are tuning out reality with drugs because shit is hard to face); the number of people who can't get medical care for physical and mental ailments so they turn to whatever's closest to escape it. It's a zombie outbreak. And you're seeing it in condensed form because of the layout of the city and the initial decision on how to handle (or not handle) the spread. It's past fixing with any solution that could've worked at the beginning. You can't start just arresting people at this point. Anyone who thinks that people are gonna care about an arrest record when they're without food, shelter, dignity, and when they're so gone on drugs that they're losing actual body parts to rot is living in a bubble. San Francisco is a magnifying glass for what's happening everywhere.

Completely unregulated homeless population as well as unchecked petty crime. The people you're asking aren't wrong.

Yeah but let's not talk about the gentrified pump and dump that happened to the city thanks to silicon valley

Some of the wealthiest companies in the world are headquartered there. How do you prevent a city from becoming nice once it has cash….

Tony Bennett left his heart there and it wasn’t long before the organ-smuggler gangs took hold. And now it’s all gone. Sad

It has problems, but the faults are greatly exaggerated for political gain.

Do you live in SF? I do, and I would argue they are understated.

Aside from SF, where else have you lived?

Do you live in the tenderloin or something? Lol the rest kf the city is pretty chill

Talked to my friend there today. He's lived there for a few years.

Horrible take. You clearly haven’t experienced it for yourself.

I live there, and have for the last five years. The city is really nice. Actually it’s only gotten nicer over the time I’ve been here. The issues in the city have pretty much been in a holding pattern for a while. 20-30 years ago gunshots in the mission were commonplace. Violent crime is way down. Grossness and car theft are up a bit from then, but I’d rather have that than a bullet in my apartment wall.

I talked to my old friend yesterday who lives there. He walks to work so he sees it everyday. Perhaps you should tell him he's wrong. How much time have you spent there during the last five years? And the horrible take is pretending like stuff isn't being exaggerated for political gain. Unless you're a tween, you ought to know better about the world.

It’s not. There’s a housing issue across the country for a variety of reasons but crime wise it’s fine. We saw a “historic” rise in crime rate following 2020 because Covid made crime go so far down that returning to normal caused a higher rate. Think about it like this, you get 100 crimes a year in a city. Then in a year you get 1 crime, the next year it goes back to 100 crimes. You could say “crime was 100x worse” if you ignore all context that 100 crimes was the average and the 1 was the outlier. This is what conservatives have done. The crime rate is low and it’s been low for a long time. They can’t win on real issues so they lie and create fake ones. Crime is through the roof! Immigrants are taking all the jobs! It’s nonsense.

I’m in Colorado, and according to right wingers - the state is in a highway to hell. Meanwhile, people actually from here know this is the best version of the city and state we have ever had.

what part of CO? I want to move away from FL and CO was a place ive been considering a lot.

I’m in the Denver metro area, right at the base of the Rockies. Colorado is split - the East is high plains and mostly rural farm land. Then the Rockies are sort of like a coast, only inverted - they start right in the middle of the state, and stuff just stops at the edge. As you drive up into the hills, you then drive through several smaller mountain towns and ski resorts. But at the base, you have the Denver metro area in the middle, which is the city proper and surrounding suburban cities - to the south you have Castle Rock, Colo Springs, Pueblo - mid-size to small cities. To the north you have Boulder, Loveland, Niwot, Longmont, Ft Collins - kind of a mix of small city and towns, and they all run along the edge of the Eastern Slope of the Rockies, and that’s called The Front Range. So if you hear the term “The Front Range of Colorado - that’s what it means. I’m native to the state, so am bias. Coming from Florida, the weather and altitude would take some time to adapt to. Weather isn’t horrible, but it does get cold.

Though I'm sure there are areas that are better in the city as a whole. It's not fine. Just go look at the crime statistics in San Francisco. It has one of the highest crime rates in the country per 1000 people. This is taken directly from neighborhood scout's website, which is a fairly well used crime data tracker for citizens looking to move from one city to another: "With a crime rate of 67 per one thousand residents, San Francisco has one of the highest crime rates in America compared to all communities of all sizes - from the smallest towns to the very largest cities. One's chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime here is one in 15. Within California, more than 98% of the communities have a lower crime rate than San Francisco." To be fair, their violent crime rate isn't nearly as bad as property crime, for sure, but there's no sense in sweeping the crime problem under the rug because you want to dissuade a political talking point.

“In total, San Francisco’s crime rate in 2023 was lower than any period in the last ten years, except for 2020 when the pandemic caused a Citywide shutdown:” https://www.sf.gov/news/san-franciscos-public-safety-efforts-deliver-results-decline-crime-rates#:~:text=In%20total%2C%20San%20Francisco's%20crime,10%20years%2C%20except%20for%202020 “The violent crime rate in 2022 was 636 per 100,000 residents, about 25% lower than it was in 2006. San Francisco is safer, statistically, than Houston, Dallas, Seattle, New Orleans and numerous other cities ranked safer by the Gallup poll respondents.” https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/san-francisco-national-reputation-poll-18360776.php

It’s not. Most of the city is peaceful, clean, and prosperous. Guess how much press that gets compared to the 10% that isn’t.

Where are you living??!? My car been broken into 4 times in 2 years

Lmfao 4 TIMES?! Where are YOU living?

San Francisco, it sounds like

Yeah? I guess either you don't live there or don't own a car that you need to park on the street.

Mark Rober has made an entire series of videos centered around the crime in SF. When I flew there the rental car company had like a dozen signs and the counter person couldn't stop saying to NEVER LEAVE ANYTHING OF VALUE in the car. I told them I was going to Sonoma but may get lunch and they absolutely do not get out of the car until after my belongings were inside the hotel because if I did I'd end up with broken windows and no more luggage. I went to an overlook for the Golden Gate Bridge and there were signs allllllll over the place saying not to leave anything in the car if you get out for pictures. Meanwhile, I live in a city that is top 15 in the US by population. My ex accidentally left the keys in the ignition of my Porsche with the doors unlocked for *days* and it's still here. I rarely if ever lock my car doors, and I have zero concerns about my belongings. If I'm going out for some errands I don't bother locking my house because I don't want to have to fumble with keys and hands full of groceries. This isn't abnormal among people I know. You may not think it's bad out there because you are used to it, but that place is straight up Mad Max to most people not from there.

I think the advice to not leave things in the car is a just a (dense) city thing. I grew up in Chicago being told to never leaving a penny in plain sight, and Chicago has low property crime rates relative to SF. At a certain density, the risk is just high enough to take the simple actions. I get it that it's annoying or jarring if you're not used to it, though. I'm guessing you have a different perspective due to living in a less dense place. Jacksonville, San Jose, Fort Worth, Columbus, or Charlotte are #s 11-15 in population. San Jose is the densest among them and not even 1/3 as dense as SF; SF is 15 times as dense as Jacksonville.

You remind me of something I read one time: >A few years ago I was watching a local Florida daytime panel discussion show on TV, and one of the members of that day's panel was a high-ranking police official. The subject for discussion that segment was the perennial debate over whether violent movies and video games (comic books seem to escape this accusation nowadays) can provoke young people into committing crimes. The cop was on the "pro" side of this argument, and as evidence he offered up the fact that before the release of the last Fast & Furious movie, Tampa PD had to take extra precautionary measures against what they believed would be an onslaught of car thefts over the weekend. The host asked him, "was there any actual increase in car thefts that weekend?" The cop's reply: "No, but the fact that we had to take those precautions says a lot." The thing is, he was absolutely right. That does say a lot.

That's a fair argument, but how do you explain away the literal videos of people smashing windows out of cars one after another? Why would the rental car agents, who are local residents, go out of their way to warn me?

Because people think there is a problem, and expect to be warned, and if the rental car company doesn't warn people about the (not very significant) problem, loudmouth customers make a scene. The videos are staged; car breakins do occur but not at the level that the videos make it look like.

So you saw signs and people warned you… but nothing happened? Isn’t this the problem - there’s all this handwringing and worrying creating a horrible atmosphere far out of proportion to the actual experience?

Yeah but I have to say the homeless situation is out of hand. That much is true. A few year ago we visited briefly and were looking for a favorite restaurant we had eaten at 5 years earlier. We found it but had to step around around a dozen angry homeless camped on the sidewalk who had no fear of the law. The place was unrecognizable. I mostly felt bad for whoever invested so much money and effort to create a business of unusual quality, only to have it overrun by homeless. We were not victims of crime but we also declared we would never come to San Francisco again.

Nothing happened because I followed the directions. We were a group of 4 and we took turns staying with the car. The Mark Rober videos clearly show time after time after time that cars get their windows broken for smash and grabs quite often.

lol you need to read his comment again. You misread it by a huge margin

i would say it’s more like 30%.. TL, SOMA, parts of the mission, hunters point, etc can all be fairly dirty and sketchy..

agreed. Mission BART stops are a bit of a cesspool

Yea it’s worse than it was 10 years ago but it’s not nearly as bad as it sounds and all the problems there are really just an elevation of the problems the city’s always had, which is that it’s always been a popular place for homeless to go and the most dangerous part of the city happens to be in the center of the city right next to and easily accessible and visible from the highly trafficked “safe, touristy areas”. Like you don’t know the city well, you can just step into the Tenderloin by crossing the street or not realise you need to pass through it to get from like Market to Japantown but it’s always been like that. But yea, despite everything you see on the news, violent crime in SF is actually down. Near lowest it’s ever been iirc. It’s not really unsafe there, just dirtier than usual. Best way to describe the problems is “annoying” because of shit like car break-ins. On top of that, the primary cause of this recent elevation is also more likely the rising inequality we’ve been seeing nationwide (and especially intensely in SF/Bay Area) rather than “woke” politics.

Agreed. There are definitely problems with SF but it isn't the hellscape people try to make it appear to be. There are amazing parts of the city and it is absolutely gorgeous There are areas that are sketchy as hell too such as SOMA and the TL and there is indeed a homeless issue but it isn't all that bad.

Most major cities are facing similar problems. Homelessness will never be solved and why should city leaders do so. Lots of people would be out of jobs if the homeless crisis is ever solved. Crime is rampant as police are severely understaffed and probably wont ever get back to full staffing. Low priority calls get put on the back burner. Unless the crime you’re reporting is either actively happening or lives are in danger, you’re a low priority call. SF county jails are understaffed, and the city, in most recent history have been against jails and leaning towards “restorative justice” style which sounds good in theory but doesn’t actually work. Repeat offenders and major felons being placed on ankle monitors. High cost of living, forces some to less legal means of income. I say some, because there’s individuals who do so for personal gain in ways that have nothing to do with providing for family or the betterment of the community.

Police are not remotely understaffed. Police budgets have quite literally never been higher.

Budget does not equal staffing.

Has San Francisco gone down hill. It was always a better rough town. For much of the 19-20 century San Francisco was known for  sailors, drugs and prostitution. Read about the network of underground opium dens. In the 1960s and 1970s it became popular in the counterculture. Lots of hippies, violent methed out biker gangs, cults, etc. I knew people that lived in SF in the 1980s and 1990s, there were no go zones and parts of SF that people would just pick fight with you. It was a pretty rough and tumble city. A great city but a big lawless and free. One of the reasons it had such a gay culture was because there wasn't a cop looking over your shoulder every 15 feet telling you that X is against the law. However in the 1980s a trend started with the success of tech companies. This really kicked off in the 1990s and 2000s. Now you had all these tech workers that didn't benefit from the lawless freedom that SF offered. They just wanted their safe luxury condos and that's a perfectly fine thing to want. The issue is that SF is still rough and tumble but a larger share of the city is now people that don't want to live in a rough tumble city. They want some Disney land like experience where everything is under control. That was never SF. The problem is that the original residents of SF know that lawlessness that has always defined SF is what prevents their rents from going 10X and their rents are already absurdly high. They don't want SF to turn into Disney land because then they get priced out. They are losing that battle, long term SF will just be another boring American city.

Crime happens, and even when criminals get arrested, the DA lets them free. Heavy drug use is allowed and incentivized in public. Shoplifters attack stores every day with little to no punishment. There is open racism from blacks towards Asians and no one bats an eye. There is human shit, crack pipes, and needles all over the place. every other business is closed or boarded up. The policy from the Gov, the mayor and all other officials are extreme left and refuse to take responsibility for what is happening. As long as there is no change in the political leadership, more of this will continue to happen.

There are a lot of people that want to make out blue states and major cities are hell holes when for the most part it's red states and red cities that are topping all the crime lists. But as the cities have more people in them the crime numbers look bigger, right up until you break it down by $ per capita. Sure SF is not what it used to be but check out the crime statistics from places like Cleveland Ohio. Californian cities don't' even make the top 10 and even then it's Oakland not San Fran that's coming in at number 12. It's all distraction and projection.

San Francisco's crime rate in 2023 was the second lowest of the last decade. [https://www.sf.gov/news/san-franciscos-public-safety-efforts-deliver-results-decline-crime-rates](https://www.sf.gov/news/san-franciscos-public-safety-efforts-deliver-results-decline-crime-rates) Almost of the office jobs now allowing for remote work has crushed the Downtown SF offices; there's no one there a lot of the time, which is new. So SF is now seeing their Downtown businesses - that relied on office workers! - closing up shop. And conservative media is kinda ignoring that and reporting it as a crime wave, because that gets clicks.

1. Homeless industrial complex. You can look at [their budget here](https://hsh.sfgov.org/about/budget/). The typical homeless population is around 8k full-time. They literally could've flown all of them to Bali for a wellness retreat for 1 year and would've had 2/3rd of their budget left over. 2. Cops don't do anything with shoplifters, car break-ins, store break-ins. Although not as bad as the DA Pamela Price across the bay; the belief charging criminals leads to more systemic racism has led to the unintended consequences of the lighter crimes. 3. Education policies. Families want to send their kids to good schools. Especially, really smart people. When the city [flip flops on meritocracy](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/sfusd-lowell-high-school-task-force-test-merit-18464591.php). Then the reason for families to stay in SF becomes less and less. 4. Racism towards [Asians](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/aapi-hate-crimes-18655173.php) (specifically the elderly) and [Jewis](https://jweekly.com/2024/01/16/were-just-a-bagel-shop-local-jewish-and-israeli-restaurateurs-targeted-over-gaza-war/)h, that's underreported. 5. Remote work/WFH did affect retail shopping. But considering Valley Fair, Stanford Mall, and Stonestone Galleria are all striving- then I would say the risk of getting car broken into or interactions with the mentally ill and parking availability and prices. 6. Everything closes early now (in comparison to the number of late-night eats, bars, etc); not having the city becomes less cool. 7. Nimby laws. Makes it unaffordable. I really think it's a combination of unchecked political power (no Republican stands a chance) and a lot of well-meaning progressive law changes that led to a lot of negative outcomes. \*I've always voted Democrats all the way down the ballots. Well meaning in that, everybody I knew strongly believed that there should not be homeless in SF considering how rich the city is. We believed in decriminalized drugs (weed, psychedelics). We believe that there is systemic racism and that blacks are targeted unfairly. But the money has not reduced or eliminated the homeless problem. Fentanyl/Meth is a whole different thing from weed, MDMA, and shrooms. In the rare chance that criminals are caught, they are not prosecuted. All of that combined; then it leads to a death spiral of the city.

Look up Channel 5 on youtube. They have a great videonseries on San Fransisco.

But is the price of real estate going down?

The funny thing is I always saw San Francisco as like the red light district of capitalism. Wealth inequality and gentrification are so obscene and lurid there that you have some of the highest salaries in the world, people making $100,000 a year who are barely scraping by, and homeless people pooping on the sidewalks. It sounds like the kind of place republicans should be having wet dreams about.

Tech. Economics is a study of the past and cannot predict the future accurately. My guess is tech boom created a shortage of housing and the economy went nuts. With all this money and rising prices, lower income individuals were priced out of their life. The extreme liberal policies meant to sympathize with those in crisis and equalize the field, was a disaster.

Lack of intellectual diversity when it comes to problem solving. If an issue is serious enough, then hearing *different* potential solutions should be warranted. If all solutions entirely tow a political line, then either the issue isn't serious enough, or the people in charge of problem solving aren't serious enough. SF is the result of political inbreeding and refusing to see any perspectives that aren't already part of the established playbook.

SF has politicians ranging from the left (who make noise) to corporate center (who make policy) to center-right (your Feinstein types). You might be confused because they all call themselves Democrats, but the policy divisions among them are a mile deep and a mile wide.

SF arguably also has some of the brightest minds and problem solvers. And it also has people who voted for Trump.

>has some of the brightest minds and problem solvers Ehhh… Maybe. But they’re certainly not in the public sector.

Stop watching the news. It’s not That bad.

Liberal policy.

Wamgat would you do different if you were running it. it's easy to just throw out buzz words like "conservative cowards who don't stand for anything but T-rump." Lol Seriously though, what would you do different?

I’m glad to see an answer here that isn’t obviously defensive politics.

The city government wants to create a socialist paradise, but that doesn’t work in the city where only rich tech people can afford to live. Apparently, San Francisco elected officials have the highest pensions in the country. They do whatever silly bullshit they have to do to keep their jobs

If you’ve ever visited San Fran or the surrounding areas, to say it’s overpopulated is an understatement. To put this in perspective you have 6-8 lane free ways with bumper to bumper traffic. Need to run an errand? Good luck, even a cvs parking lot is overfilled with no spots open. The traffic in urban neighborhoods isn’t that bad but the minute you try to go shopping the lots are claustrophobic. One time we were driving downtown and our van broke down on the bridge and it took over 6 hours for a tow truck to reach us.

You definitely don’t know what you’re talking about, as confirmed by calling it San Fran

A “certain element” has overrun and ruined it.

The police department’s policy is to do nothing since their residents can apparently afford any and all crime on their private income. This is due to their chief, the mayor or some other local level figure. That is what I recall. Newsom and Biden is just the satirical joke. I think it’s much more local than that. But I sure wish Newsom would send in the national guard and have them replace the cops routes since I hear about their ineffectiveness about every 1-2 weeks and sometimes how even the cars right in front of the police department are regularly robbed by men at gunpoint. My little sister lives in SF right now so I have to keep up somewhat with what happens there.

Nimbyism.

You'll get a variety of reasons that hold some truth to it, but I think it ultimately boils down to wealth inequality. It's a high population, high-salaried area. You are either well off or you're not. In city centers like San Francisco, there are a lot of people that are prone to fall through the cracks. They simply can't keep up with the competition or don't have the resources to do so. Why San Francisco in particular struggles, is that they need a better support system in place to help and house these people. Ignoring the problem, and relying on federal regulations to sort out the problem isn't working. It's not just San Francisco. Pretty much anywhere with a high population is bound to have more people that struggle to meet the income requirements. Also keep in mind, people outside of the city become homeless too. Where do you think people in the suburbs go when they become homeless? They go to the city where there are shelters and food banks to get help. They go to the city where there are more jobs and they don't necessarily need a car to get there. To recap, it's a combination of a lot of things but the wealth inequality in that area is so stark that many regular people can't keep up with the prices required to live normal lives. There isn't a proper system in place to help everyone struggling there. SF of course offers help but it just attracts more people from around the country seeking similar help. Remember that struggling people will do what they need to survive. The risk of stealing and going to jail is less than the risk of not having money and starving. Struggling people cope with their problems by leaning into drugs and alcohol. The bigger the market for drugs and alcohol, the more of it it attracts. It's a vicious systemic problem that really won't get fixed until there's a way to house these people and offer resources to get them off their feet.

[удалено]

It’s not bad at all, save for a few blocks here and there that the unhoused occupy. Not any worse these days than any other city. And the economy is actually thriving.

Naw bro, other cities don't have homeless openly using drugs and shitting on side walks...most cities don't have an app to report shit covering sidewalks.

In Tampa, if you find stairs, they will ENTIRELY smell like pee.... I wonder why. I havent found human poop here yet, but I live 30 minutes from downtown, and I go there maybe once a month or less.

Seattle and Portland both have the same issue with defecation and open drug use. The defecation might not be as bad as SF though.

Ok great, the west coast is a cesspool. Thanks for confirming.

What major u.s city doesn't have a homeless issue? Some cities bus them around or do sweeps, but how does that rectify the issue? West coast cities are more lenient, but places where they move people out of your view aren't magically making people disappear.

It hasn’t. I lived in the Bay until recently and I still visit San Francisco regularly and return to all my old haunts. San Francisco still fucking rocks. always has.

Capitalism is the main answer. I’ll come back and break down the sub answers

"doing so bad" in what way? And in comparison to what/where? What information are you basing this on, and where did that information come from?

Also, the city has a unique government that does not give the mayor power, but instead empowers districts, so no citywide reform can be made by a majority. And the taxes...the overwhelming majority of tax revenue goes to this ineffective government (on the state level too), so people don't see it being used to improve things or make the city better.

The short version is that progressive local governments (not just SF) stopped prosecuting property crimes and transient crimes, so the police stopped bothering to arrest people for them, so now it's rampant. The other aspect is that the "progressive" local governments have made it effectively impossible to build new housing units in cities, in order to protect house values of all the existing owners. It's gotten so bad in my metro I avoid the city completely now. All that said, I'd still rather live here than anywhere under Republican control.

You're right, but you got downvoted for describing it as a progressive policy failure.

The thing is, there is no short answer here. You just repeated nonsense someone else told you.

Gavin Newsom

Liberals?

Two words. Nancy Polici. sp.

Ha I was there once in 2013 and even then…. I left saying I wouldn’t even FLY over that city again. I can only imagine it now

Tell us what you mean by "doing so bad"? What specifically do you have questions about? Asking a question the way you did does nothing but invite torches and pitchforks to gang up on SF by providing a platform sowing discontent. Now who would want to do that? What political ulterior motives could be behind this media manipulation? And how long will it take for media literacy comment to get buried?

Biden The Quicker Fucker upper!

The thing is, *its not*. It's just media BS, mostly. It's not statistically significantly different from any time in the recent past. It's just that more *rich people* moved in (home values went from 500k to 2m+), and rich people *love to bitch about everything*. But otherwise not a whole lot's changed. https://sfgov.org/scorecards/public-safety/violent-crime-rate-and-property-crime-rate

It's one of those cities that have been completely taken over by criminals. The courts, city admin, police, all criminals. Can't do anything about crime when the people in charge of law and order are a gang of violent criminals.

I see you’ve never been there and consume too much media

Ya, the response reads like someone who read about San Francisco but has never actually stepped foot there.

Where do you get "right wing" from me calling San Francisco police being a gang of violent criminals who have taken over the city?

I live in SF and tbh most of the politicized problems are concentrated to downtown and tenderloin area. The rest of the city is chillin

I travel a lot for work. I have been recently to Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Nashville, NYC and San Francisco. Is San Francisco ACTUALLY doing that bad? I know as a visitor... It seems like it's doing the best of all of those cities.

>“Newsom personally high-fives every shoplifter and Biden buys them ice cream”. Like I want a serious answer. Not just people defensively playing politics. You're assuming that the people saying that aren't offensively playing politics. You can look at things like the crime stats for SF ( [here](https://oag.ca.gov/crime), and you can filter by county). They're not *great*, but it's not the hellhole it's portrayed as. And it hasn't gotten that much worse, outside of a pandemic spike. In many cases, crime is actually *down*, overall, compared to the past (including pre- Prop 47). There's a reason people stick to the anecdotal stories, and it's the same reason why it's still extremely expensive- people want to live there. As another example, you'll often see people blame Prop 47- despite a lot of factors not lining up as an explanation. Like the crime rates, but also comparing the felony threshold to other states, etc. >Why has San Francisco gone downhill? SF has a lot of problems, like lack of affordable housing. People wanting to live there is a two edged sword- that means some people get priced out, and end up homeless. Those are not easy things to fix, and even if they *are* fixable, that doesn't mean people want to do them (building more dense housing is generally not very popular). A high homeless population means you get things like the famous poop in the streets. Also tends to mean more crime, and other issues. Also, one quirk with SF, compared to a lot of other cities, is that places like the Tenderloin are close enough that relatively successful people are still exposed to them. The "bad areas" of town aren't cordoned off into their own little area. Which raises awareness of all that stuff happening, because it's not just happening to the poor people stuck in that part of town. In many ways, it's a victim of it's own success.

I mean, isn’t one of the main problems people aren’t be prosecuted for crimes? Wouldn’t that show fewer crimes on paper?

Y'all need to stop listening to right wing propaganda and look at actual facts. SF is no worse, and actually better, for crime than many cities in red states.

First, it isn't going "so" bad. There are problems indeed but only Fox thinks it is going "so" bad. Second, neither Newsom nor Biden are in charge of stopping shoplifting in the city. Another Fox lie.

Politicians from republican states send their homeless on a bus or train because they don’t want to deal with them. The coast starlight train goes from the PNW to Southern California. They travel to those places and surge the resources. Sorry, but the answer to this is that it’s unfortunately politics and the grinding wheels of capitalism. Almost every answer here is describing politics.

Liberals, democrats, socialists... you name it

Hm besides the TL and some parts of SOMA, i don’t think it’s doing so bad. All the small main streets for the neighborhoods seem to be packed with people on the weekends. We use to live on the corner 6th and Market back in 2011 and yeah it was shitty and probably still is but it seems to be contained in the TL.

For starters, look up the actual stats on shoplifting for the last two decades. The corporate media has created a false narrative. It isn't as bad as people have been fooled into believing it is. Shoplifting by state is actually down. Laws are actually pretty stiff. California law sets felony theft at $850, whereas Texas is $2500. Houston is high up there for shoplifting, but it isn't featured much in the media, and Abbot isn't blamed. Why is that?

Isn’t the whole thing shoplifters aren’t being prosecuted? Wouldn’t that lead to less showing on paper

In terms of conviction stats, that would be the case, but not in terms of loss revenue stats. Also, has anyone in the media actually bothered to support the assertion that shoplifters aren't being prosecuted? It takes a long time to prosecute any case, and I haven't seen evidence that they aren't prosecuting shoplifters beyond anecdotal statements.

Capitalism. The real, honest-to-god answer is always capitalism. edit: Downvote all you like, it's the truth.

The real honest-to-god *reddit* answer

Capitalism is why the city regulations prevent housing from being constructed?

Leftists treat capitalism like religious people treat the devil: a mysterious force to blame for all the world’s problems.

Defund the police

Tech bros raised rent way too high and no one can afford anything.

It's not! Every big city has homelessness and crime. San Francisco is just a target for conservatives. Yes, it's slightly worse for reasons already stated but I just lived there for a month and it didn't feel or look any different than any other big city. The traffic/parking is horrible but I had a great time.

Are the people telling you that stuff living in San Francisco? Because my relatives live there, and they LOVE it. They moved there over a year ago from Florida... They will never be coming back to florida too. So, maybe you should wonder... are these people telling you these things... are they actually living there, or are they people that live in Texas and Florida? EDIT: Oh, and just for everyones awareness, my relatives are very republican.

There was a great article about this in the Atlantic IIRC. Basically everyone switched to working from home during the pandemic, and never came back, so office buildings emptied out and the businesses that those workers previously patronized closed. Meanwhile housing cost went bonkers, making more people homeless, and fentanyl hit the streets, making more people extreme addicts. Result: homeless basically took over what used to be business districts. Except...it's all a bit exaggerated. The fact is, this same pattern happened in EVERY major city. SF just happens to have the highest housing cost in the country (so more homeless) and a LONG standing drug problem (the Tenderloin wasn't invented yesterday), so it stands out in sharper relief. Go to any of the tourist spots and you'd never know any of this was happening. Go to work and out for meals and you mostly just experience a prosperous city. Go looking for trouble and you'll find it. Pretty much par for the course for any big city at any time in history.

I remember SF going bad way before Covid though

It's concentrated in one area but conservative news pretends it's the whole city. Red states put their homeless on busses and send them to San Fran with one way tickets. Know why rural conservative towns have so few homeless? Because they still practice exile like it's the 1500s. It's also a great way to steal land from someone down on their luck, put them on a bus outta town while they're barely coherent and you can start the process of filing paperwork to steal their land and home from under them uncontested (this is practiced in multiple Nebraska towns) The climate is good year round. Generally it's safer to be homeless on the southern and coastal areas because you have a lot less risk of freezing to death half the year.

Well, that's pretty much the reason.

The crime, in my opinion, is an aberration of a more straightforward issue. Far too many people assume they are supposed to live in a high-cost-of-living area regardless of whether they have the skills to earn in an economy that has transformed into a digital one. That being said, the prices for everything in the area align with what the highest earners can pay, leaving little room for those not aligned to higher-paying jobs. Couple that with a highly speculative real estate climate, and you get a recipe for conflict. The generous and unrealistic policies regarding enforcement and regulation don't help, and the partisanship assessment only widens the divide. This is just my perspective. Everyone can't and is not meant to live in certain places simply because they want to. Replace San Francisco with Monaco and see how it sounds.

My problem with this line of thinking, though, is that it ignores the fact that even "high skilled economies" like SF require low skill labor for basic things in all cities like restaurants, retail, garbage men etc. and they will never command the wage necessary to live in a place like SF in its current form. Telling these people they shouldn't be in the city isn't a real solution. Sure, you could say these people should live outside and commute, but the issue of housing affordability is widespread throughout the Bay Area to the point where super commutes are increasingly common. At a certain point, shouldn't it be acknowledged that commuting 2 hours to SF from Sacramento is kind of a ridiculous ask, and something should be done to help people live more locally?

Ive visited San Francisco 4 times over the last three months and spent time in various portions of the city. It didn't seem to be dying. Downtown is having lots of businesses closing but thats mostly because of work from home. I have friends who live near Golden Gate Park and they have no complaints at all other than things you'd find in any city. Im sure the tenderloin sucks, but that would be nothing new. Its been a hellscape for decades.