San Francisco Faces 'Doom Loop' from Office Workers Staying Home, Gutting Tax Base (sfchronicle.com) 218
Today a warning was published from the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle. "Experts say post-pandemic woes stemming from office workers staying home instead of commuting into the city could send San Francisco into a 'doom loop' that would gut its tax base, decimate fare-reliant regional transit systems like BART and trap it in an economic death spiral...."
Despite our housing crisis, it was years into the COVID pandemic before our leaders meaningfully questioned the logic of reserving some of the most prized real estate on Earth for fickle suburbanites and their cars. Downtown, after all, was San Francisco's golden goose. Companies in downtown offices accounted for 70% of San Francisco's pre-pandemic jobs and generated nearly 80% of its economic output, according to city economist Ted Egan. And so we wasted generous federal COVID emergency funds trying to bludgeon, cajole and pray for office workers to return downtown instead of planning for change. We're now staring down the consequences for that lack of vision.
The San Francisco metropolitan area's economic recovery from the pandemic ranked 24th out of the 25 largest regions in the U.S., besting only Baltimore, according to a report from the Bay Area Council Economic Institute. In the first quarter of 2023, San Francisco's office vacancy rate shot up to a record-high 29.4% — the biggest three-year increase of any U.S. city. The trend isn't likely to end anytime soon: In January, nearly 30% of San Francisco job openings were for hybrid or fully remote work, the highest share of the nation's 50 largest cities. Amid lower property, business and real estate transfer taxes, the city is projecting a $728 million deficit over the next two fiscal years. Transit ridership remains far below pre-pandemic levels. In January, downtown San Francisco BART stations had just 30% of the rider exits they did in 2019, according to a report from Egan's office. Many Bay Area transit agencies, including Muni, are rapidly approaching a fiscal cliff.
San Francisco isn't dead; as of March, it was home to an estimated 173 of the country's 655 companies valued at more than $1 billion. Tourism is beginning to rebound. And new census data shows that San Francisco's population loss is slowing, a sign its pandemic exodus may be coming to an end. But the city can't afford to wait idly for things to reach equilibrium again. It needs to evolve — quickly. Especially downtown. That means rebuilding the neighborhood's fabric, which won't be cheap or easy. Office-to-housing conversions are notoriously tricky and expensive. Demolishing non-historic commercial buildings that no longer serve a purpose in the post-pandemic world is all but banned. And, unlike New York after 9/11, San Francisco is a city that can't seem to stop getting in its own way.
So what's the solution? The CEO of the Bay Area Council suggests public-private partnerships that "could help shift downtown San Francisco's focus from tech — with employees now accustomed to working from home — to research and development, biotech, medical research and manufacturing, which all require in-person workers."
And last week San Francisco's mayor proposed more than 100 changes to streamline the permitting process for small businesses, and on Monday helped introduce legislation making it easier to convert office buildings to housing, expand pop-up business opportunities, and fill some empty storefronts. This follows a February executive order to speed housing construction. The editorial points out that "About 40% of office buildings in downtown San Francisco evaluated in a study would be good candidates for housing due to their physical characteristics and location and could be converted into approximately 11,200 units, according to research from SPUR and the Urban Land Institute San Francisco."
But without some action, the editorial's headline argues that "Downtown San Francisco is at risk of collapsing — and taking much of the Bay Area with it."
The San Francisco metropolitan area's economic recovery from the pandemic ranked 24th out of the 25 largest regions in the U.S., besting only Baltimore, according to a report from the Bay Area Council Economic Institute. In the first quarter of 2023, San Francisco's office vacancy rate shot up to a record-high 29.4% — the biggest three-year increase of any U.S. city. The trend isn't likely to end anytime soon: In January, nearly 30% of San Francisco job openings were for hybrid or fully remote work, the highest share of the nation's 50 largest cities. Amid lower property, business and real estate transfer taxes, the city is projecting a $728 million deficit over the next two fiscal years. Transit ridership remains far below pre-pandemic levels. In January, downtown San Francisco BART stations had just 30% of the rider exits they did in 2019, according to a report from Egan's office. Many Bay Area transit agencies, including Muni, are rapidly approaching a fiscal cliff.
San Francisco isn't dead; as of March, it was home to an estimated 173 of the country's 655 companies valued at more than $1 billion. Tourism is beginning to rebound. And new census data shows that San Francisco's population loss is slowing, a sign its pandemic exodus may be coming to an end. But the city can't afford to wait idly for things to reach equilibrium again. It needs to evolve — quickly. Especially downtown. That means rebuilding the neighborhood's fabric, which won't be cheap or easy. Office-to-housing conversions are notoriously tricky and expensive. Demolishing non-historic commercial buildings that no longer serve a purpose in the post-pandemic world is all but banned. And, unlike New York after 9/11, San Francisco is a city that can't seem to stop getting in its own way.
So what's the solution? The CEO of the Bay Area Council suggests public-private partnerships that "could help shift downtown San Francisco's focus from tech — with employees now accustomed to working from home — to research and development, biotech, medical research and manufacturing, which all require in-person workers."
And last week San Francisco's mayor proposed more than 100 changes to streamline the permitting process for small businesses, and on Monday helped introduce legislation making it easier to convert office buildings to housing, expand pop-up business opportunities, and fill some empty storefronts. This follows a February executive order to speed housing construction. The editorial points out that "About 40% of office buildings in downtown San Francisco evaluated in a study would be good candidates for housing due to their physical characteristics and location and could be converted into approximately 11,200 units, according to research from SPUR and the Urban Land Institute San Francisco."
But without some action, the editorial's headline argues that "Downtown San Francisco is at risk of collapsing — and taking much of the Bay Area with it."
Solution: Build housing in SF (Score:5, Interesting)
The solution is to build housing in SF so workers don't need to "commute into the city." They can live in the city and pay taxes in the city whether they work from home or not.
Chance of this solution being implemented: 0%.
SF's revenue problem is caused by SF's mismanagement. They intentionally destroyed their own tax base.
Re:Solution: Build housing in SF (Score:5, Insightful)
After seeing telecommuting pushed for so long as a solution to all sorts of modern life's issues, it is interesting to watch the rejection of it when we got a couple of years to try it out and decided we like it.
All sorts of entrenched interests with money want us to keep getting in cars and driving from suburbs to city cores every day, even though it's worse for humans who lose hours of their lives, harder on infrastructure, and burns more hydrocarbons.
We could be working on decentralizing - slowly disassembling our big cities and building more small cities / large towns. Big downtown business districts are about as necessary today as the old stock exchange trading floors.
Wasn't it long ago people were protesting... (Score:3, Funny)
...about workers being bussed in? Well guess what motherfuckers, you got what you wanted. Enjoy your dilapidated downtowns.
Re: Wasn't it long ago people were protesting... (Score:3)
Wears your mask?
I always where a mask. No matter ware I'm going.
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I think one major issue is just how sudden this change was. Everyone thought this would happen eventually, but over many years if not decades.Then slowly the rate of office construction would slow as demand cools, some would be converted into housing, etc.
Instead it was basically overnight everyone who could, stayed home, and never came back. The forced "return to office" measures are stupid, but also, pretty understandable. You don't want cities to run out of money and then end up bulldozing everything dow
Re:Solution: Build housing in SF (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't want cities to run out of money and then end up bulldozing everything downtown
Places like SF are so far away from that ever being a thing it's not worth worrying about. The issue isn't that people don't want to live in SF, it's that people don't want to live there at current prices.
There is a rather simple solution to that problem - drop the price. It's funny how that is apparently never an option when it comes to real estate.
If my skills become outdated, then I have to reprice myself at the new market rate. Nobody is going to care that I can't get the income I once could. The problem with real estate is that it is is part of a massive leveraged financial ponzi scheme. If the institutions that own these properties have to reprice them downwards, it is likely many of them will become insolvent, and we would have another GFC situation. You can already see this starting to happen with the SVB failure.
The irony of our neo-liberal financial system is that it has loaded everything up with so much multi-generational debt that our economy can't easily adapt to changes anymore. I mean, the whole creative-destruction thing is really the big benefit of capitalism. But instead we've created a finkncialised model that is always threatening to collapse anytime something changes.
Just look at how AI is terrifying everyone, when we should be celebrating entering an era where we are likely to see a huge increase in productivity - i.e. more stuff for less working hours.
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Places like SF are so far away from that ever being a thing it's not worth worrying about. The issue isn't that people don't want to live in SF, it's that people don't want to live there at current prices.
The large property owners don't want to lower prices because they can claim the high valuation on their assets to get more financing . Your average homeowners will fight tooth and nail to avoid their McMansion depreciating.
So this will keep going until everything collapses and turned into parking lots or gets bailed out.
But yeah overall agreed completely.
Re: Solution: Build housing in SF (Score:5, Interesting)
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Let them. That's what bankruptcy is for.
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That's kid of exactly what the OP wasn't talking about.
He was talking about mixed use city centres where people live and work nearby, not live miles out and then all commute in by car. That's not a terrible idea. Many people don't want to live in the arse end of nowhere, and never interact with anyone physically day to day.
You could never tempt me to the American 'burbs with or without a commute.
Re: Solution: Build housing in SF (Score:3, Insightful)
I said this for 25 years and then crime and politics sent me packing.
10 years in the burbs, I would never ever move back into a big city.
And it has nothing to do with me being old. Even young adults out here are cooler and more refined and less chaotic.
You can keep your urban planned ghettos.
Re: Solution: Build housing in SF (Score:5, Insightful)
There is politics in the burbs, you just don't see it. Financially they are unsustainable in their own and the city you so despise is actually subsidising your lifestyle. Either way, you are now fully dependent on a car to do anything. You can keep that personal hell.
Re: Solution: Build housing in SF (Score:4, Insightful)
It's true that big city has been supporting the burbs... because the city is where the jobs have been and the burbs are where those people have gone to sleep at night.
We don't need that to remain true any longer. There's still a need for hubs, but not at the current scale. Plenty of jobs can be done remotely now, and refusing to do so just to prop up the old paradigm is myopic in the extreme.
Your home can also have your office cubicle in it, and you'll probably have a nicer cubicle than you would 'downtown'. You'll certainly have a nicer commute. I work in tech support and have multiple clients whose main office is now a PO box, with hundred of employees all working remotely.
Re: Solution: Build housing in SF (Score:3)
Many people don't want to live in the arse end of nowhere
It's not the arse end of nowhere. It's a community of like-minded people. Where the political autocrats have not yet been able to get their nose under our tent and start telling us how to live our lives.
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Many people don't want to live in the arse end of nowhere
It's not the arse end of nowhere. It's a community of like-minded people. Where the political autocrats have not yet been able to get their nose under our tent and start telling us how to live our lives.
Well, no autocrats unless one moves into a HOA. Then the HOA can tell one what one can and cannot do with one's own property. ;)
Not in CA myself, but we moved out to "the sticks" and have a local store about 5.5 miles away, also in "the sticks", that is basically built around the old community General Store idea. We can get groceries, prescriptions filled, and "dry goods" there. What they don't have we can order online and have shipped. I WFH for my tech job, and have to show up for in-person meetings abo
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"After seeing telecommuting pushed for so long as a solution to all sorts of modern life's issues, it is interesting to watch the rejection of it when we got a couple of years to try it out and decided we like it"
There's also the issue of the failures of global supply chains which were long touted as everything for everyone anytime, anywhere on demand and one pandemic & one sideways tanker showed just how fragile & inefficient the global village can be
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The solution is to build housing in SF so workers don't need to "commute into the city."
That sounds like a neat idea, but, if we consider tax receipts are the goal, that the wrong direction.
Let's say a worker in the city occupies "X" amount of space, a residential unit for the same worker would *easily* be 10x larger.
By working in the city at a desk/office, the city collects a certain amount of wage taxes, call it "W", and you can fit a number of workers defined as Available Space divided by X, giving you the number of workers the city can accommodate.
If the worker lives in the city, they now
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Not only that, but the revenue generated by someone living in an area is not the same as from someone working in an area. When I live there, my chance of going out to eat is far lower than when I work there, simply because at home, I have the facilities to cook my meals, something few people have at work, so their only option is actually go to out to lunch somewhere.
Eating out for lunch? (Score:3)
I've a friend who has been instructed by his local council employer to go into work 2 days a week to support the local economy round the office. He brings in sandwiches. Apart from car polluting the air his presence makes no difference to the town.
OK - that's obviously an extreme case. There are shops that are dependent on rich commuters spending money because their office is there. The pandemic has turbo charged the move to working from home that was already happening a little. Trying to protect the econom
Re:Eating out for lunch? (Score:5, Interesting)
You can rest assured that if I get forced into an office, I will make certain not not have a positive impact on the economy around the office, if only out of spite. And I'm for sure not the only one.
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First of all I don't think the goal is just tax receipts, but also supporting an actual local economy. Even if you do cram 10 cubicles in the space of one apartment, do they really contribute more tax and economic activities than a family living there? An office worker, from what I've seen, will just drive to the office, sit there for 8 hours, maybe spend $15 on lunch and drive home. The other 16 hours everything is empty. Which isn't how a resident spend their time in the city.
The whole thing also apparent
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How about asking a more fundamental question, why are there taxes there in the first place, can a city exist, function completely without government that is funded by taxes? It can, though it is still too early for this to happen there because there is a government that will fight tooth and nail against the reality setting in. A city based on complete private ownership and operation would be making only market driven (profit driven) decisions, that would be rational and would solve the question of what is
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> can a city exist, function completely without government that is funded by taxes? It can,
Welcome to slab city... enjoy your stab life style: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Not totally (Score:2)
If I remember correctly, a documentary on Slab City revealed that there are groups of viglantes who enforce certain rules whilst county authorities also do intervene occasionally, particularly in child protection cases.
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Feel free to move into Elon's company town.
Re:Solution: Build housing in SF (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Solution: Build housing in SF (Score:2)
Re: Solution: Build housing in SF (Score:2)
This, but: convert empty office space into affordable housing.
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This, but: convert empty office space into affordable housing.
Nice idea, but the renovation and permitting costs are generally as much as building a new building on the same site.
And with SanFran politics being what they are...dream on.
And with California politics being what they are...good luck finding a developer that wants to make that effort.
And with employment rates being as tight as they are for the skilled trades required in the construction industry...they might stick to "slap 'em up" wood-frame and "stand 'em up" pre-form construction stuff.
FYI - There are no
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No way the powerful lobby representing the greedy bay-area landlords is going to allow more housing to be built in the area (which would put downward pressure on rents and prices and loose them money)
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Exactly this... Just because someone's job prevents them working remotely, doesn't mean they're going to want to waste a huge proportion of their lives commuting. If they can live and work within a short distance that's better for everyone.
Re: Solution: Build housing in SF (Score:2, Informative)
I am pretty sure they already have a solution under consideration.
They want to pay black people $5 million each.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/n... [nbcnews.com]
If nobody leaves. This will cost $600,000 per person.
That should solve the housing problem
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The council area is too small, it prevents diversity and significantly hampers the potential solution to problems.
The entire greater bay area should be one very significant council. That would lead to holistic solutions around where people live, work and play. You could get coherent planning decisions for things like housing encompassing the whole area, SF, Daly City and all.
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I have never understood this penchant for having workplaces many kilometres (or miles if you must) away from where people live. I can understand not wanting to live near polluting industry but a tech office, or financial office, and such, shouldn't be polluting except perhaps with the noise generated by the presence of people and supporting commercial operations such as cafes and so forth.
I think it's more a question of density. Office workers typically just need an office (or cubicle) in terms of personalized work space. And it makes sense for all the offices to cram together in a single downtown because potential employees will have chosen their living arrangements so they could commute to downtown.
On the other hand, people want more space to live in. If you're willing to stay in a small apartment you can live downtown close to where you work. But if you want a house with a yard... well th
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I have never understood this penchant for having workplaces many kilometres (or miles if you must) away from where people live.
I think it's more a question of density. Office workers typically just need an office (or cubicle) in terms of personalized work space. And it makes sense for all the offices to cram together in a single downtown because potential employees will have chosen their living arrangements so they could commute to downtown.
No one wants a long commute. However, lots of people crave density. It's not so much the density per se, but density supports a vibrant economy, pulling in a diversity of restaurants, stores, arts, parks, museums, etc., which in turn pulls in young people, artists, immigrants, etc. There's a reason that Manhattan attracts so many people.
Affordable housing is an issue, but it's not the primary issue. The problem is people wanting to be in the city, whether to work, live, or visit. That's the difference
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But then the rent on the tiny downtown apartment ballooned so much that it's become unaffordable. So it's now house and a yard or do you want to pay even more to live in a broom closet with a sink.
Re:Solution: Build housing in SF (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you misunderstand the problem.
Many many companies would leap at the chance to build housing in SF.
The problem is that the government refuses to grant them permits to build ... because that is what voters want. Voters want their property values to continue to appreciate, and the best way to achieve that is to constrict the housing supply.
The same NIMBYism affects most other coastal cities.
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Weird, we don't seem to have that problem over here in Europe. I guess "socialist" governments don't give a fuck about your property value and instead concentrate on getting people into affordable apartments.
look at a subway map of SF (Score:2, Informative)
Re:look at a subway map of SF (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, contribute to society... there's worse things. Like, say, a mob of bums roaming the town because they literally got NOTHING to lose anymore. There's a reason we have social peace over here: We basically pay off our bums to stay out of our hair.
Still, a billion is an insane amount of money for a city of less than a million. You might want to check whether that money doesn't find pockets that have little to do with bribing bums to stay calm.
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Really, where? I'd like to go to there. Housing prices are through the fucking roof almost everywhere that isn't a dirt-poor half-empty village in the middle of nowhere in Croatia or Sicily or something like that.
Re: Solution: Build housing in SF (Score:3)
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Outta where? I've been over here for a very long time now, I wouldn't want to hang dead over a picket fence in the US anymore.
Re: Solution: Build housing in SF (Score:4, Insightful)
Many many companies would leap at the chance to build housing in SF.
The problem is that the government refuses to grant them permits to build
IIRC Google tried to do exactly that -- build employee housing on property they already owned, and the city refused to allow it. And this was after they were already protesting Google busing its own workers in.
They got exactly what they were asking for all along, and now they're crying a river because their wish came true.
Re: Solution: Build housing in SF (Score:3)
Re:Solution: Build housing in SF (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you misunderstand the problem.
Many many companies would leap at the chance to build housing in SF.
The problem is that the government refuses to grant them permits to build ... because that is what voters want. Voters want their property values to continue to appreciate, and the best way to achieve that is to constrict the housing supply.
The same NIMBYism affects most other coastal cities.
The focus on NIMBY misses the key problem, that housing is a market and is in many ways a zero-sum game. Affordable housing means buyers paying less and seller receiving less. That's great for the buyers and bad for the sellers. It's easy to pile on faceless rich people, but a lot of these people are families and seniors who have much of their life savings locked up in their homes. This also isn't just a generation battle of boomers versus young people because many young homeowners would also be crushed with a housing price drop.
The problem is having to pick winners and losers, and the only way to solve the problem is by breaking the zero-sum nature of the market.
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You've just agreed with me and the grand-parent post: People want to profit from owning a house. If retirees want to move, they can move to a suburb where the value of housing is the same as their own street: Government shouldn't be manipulating house prices to benefit a minority. As retirees, they've probably spent several years in the house and even a depressed market will price the house as more valuable than the purchase price they paid: This is everyone demanding the double-digit inflation continu
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Affordable housing means buyers paying less and seller receiving less.
Wrong. The entire point of the thread is building NEW housing and for that it’s profit margins and quantity sold which is more money for more homes, the cost each has much less to do with it. Further, sellers profit off of the margins as well, in my city the LOWEST price houses went up 400% and the top 10% most expensive houses about 20% during the same timeframe and that’s not unusual - it’s far more profitable to purchase the cheap homes and hold those.
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Those families and seniors with much of their value in a single home are not rich people, and they are also not the ones responsible for skyrocketing housing prices, so it's unclear why you chose to bring them into this.
They absolutely benefit from it and will fight tooth and nail to keep property prices going up. Everyone who's bought into real estate and views it as an investment will, it's just not compatible with affordable housing.
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They absolutely benefit from it and will fight tooth and nail to keep property prices going up.
Their efforts are irrelevant compared to the corporate investors, which spend vast amounts of money to change public opinion, and to lobby.
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Not much room to build housing in San Francisco. Have to build up, and that means tearing down existing housing.
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They build the jobs where people are, then the people move. Downtowns are the way they are because more people used to live downtown. When people migrated to suburbs, then lots of newer companies also formed nearer to the suburbs. But it's not like this is all Legos and you can just redesign it all over night, it takes many decades usually for these changes.
Also note, many many people live in San Francisco. Just not many of them in the high economic industries, like finance or content creation (I hate to
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why SF Is Nearly The Most Crime-Ridden City (Score:2, Interesting)
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I have seen it once or twice. Since the comment is modded to +5, I REALLY wonder what kind of shenanigans are being played. What did the comment say? Is there a cache of it anywhere? I am not finding it.
What could have been said that was important to get rid of? Nuclear launch codes?
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by treating drug addiction and mental illness as medical conditions
How would that look like? Fentanyl + meth addiction treatment has 80-90% failure rate (not success, _failure_ rate). It's even worse than heroin. So realistically, there's simply no way to make addicts become clean.
Prescription heroin might work, Canada is trying that in Vancouver. But so far the results aren't that great.
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Well, you can go with Netherland's model, [beckershos...review.com] which is that if you're a bad enough addict, they just provide you with the Heroin.
That way they're not enriching dealers(who can be violent criminals), drug gangs, and such. Also, by reducing the profit of dealers, it makes being a dealer more difficult, increasing the difficulty in getting the drugs, and thus fewer addicts.
Do you have a citation on Canada's problem? Why would they be different than the Netherlands?
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Do you have a citation on Canada's problem? Why would they be different than the Netherlands?
The OD rate in Vancouver is greater than in nearby Alberta, even though Alberta went with a different model (basically, the usual stuff). We'll see by the next year the results of a more wide rollout.
Why is that different from Netherlands? I'd guess the amount and potency of drugs available, fentanyl is widely available and it's way more addictive and destructive than cocaine. Also, it looks like Netherlands isn't that great of a success story: https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
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San Francisco spends a billion dollars a year on homelessness and new york spends two billion. Given the much smaller size of San Francisco, there is clearly something wrong with current policy.
SF has more temperate climate so there are probably more homeless people there, plus less cheap(er) areas around as it's water or the rest of the Bay Area.
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Of course it's not solving the problem, because that money is probably mostly spent on cops and jails while the solution is giving housing to the homeless [oecdecoscope.blog]. So they are no longer homeless.
Finland's success is not a matter of luck or the outcome of "quick fixes." Rather, it is the result of a sustained, well-resourced national strategy, driven by a "Housing First" approach, which provides people experiencing homelessness with immediate, independent, permanent housing, rather than temporary accommodation (OECD, 2020). A key pillar of this effort has been to combine emergency assistance with the supply of rentals to host previously homeless people, either by converting some existing shelters into residential buildings with independent apartments (Kaakinen, 2019) or by building new flats by a government agency (ARA, 2021). Building flats is key: otherwise, especially if housing supply is particularly rigid, the funding of rentals can risk driving up rents (OECD, 2021a), thus reducing the "bang for the buck" of public spending.
But I think it's easy to see why that's not gonna happen in the US anytime soon.
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I know, right?
Housing affordability is so bad in SF that you have the CEO of Twitter sleeping on the floor of his office!
And he has to do his own plumbing, too. "Let that sink in."
When life gives you lemons... (Score:3)
Seems like the obvious course here is to just turn the entire downtown into a giant open prison where the lawless create order with their own hands (and knives and guns). Mad Max: Embarcadero.
Beats Facebook/Meta at least.
Not the first "de-urbanization" scare. (Score:4, Insightful)
Doing anything in SF is Expensive and Inconvenient (Score:3)
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SF is highly walkable. When things are closer together, you don't *need* a car. Muni, BART, CalTrain, Uber, and Lyft all provide excellent alternatives to driving within the city. In most of the Bay Area, it is much harder to get around if you do not have a car.
As for why people would want to live there, there's lots of entertainment and social events. There are many, outstanding restaurants. There's some of the nicest beaches, parks, and views in the entire country, with many more a short distance awa
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In most cases, trying to do just about anything in San Francisco is very expensive and inconvenient. Tiny narrow streets with almost no parking. What little parking there is usually involves very tricky and frustrating parallel parking (with cars crammed as close together as possible) or parking in very expensive parking garages.
Are you America by any chance? You know the solution to better cities is not necessarily "more cars". In fact that's basically never the solution.
Why would anyone want to pay more t
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How about no cars? People survive just fine in cities without a car.
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You're clearly a little hard of thinking so it's not especially surprising that you find the grammar of the king's English somewhat confusing. In can try to use small words if you prefer, so you have an easier time.
Like I said, more cars is not the solution to living in cities. That's why American cities are so bad for traffic and living because everything worthwhile has been eviscerated to make more room for cars. This isn't hyperbole, it's well documented, and the planning laws strictly enforce it.
I live
Begging (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm not here to prop up your failed business model (Score:3)
Adapt or perish. Either is fine by me.
There is nothing unexpected here... (Score:2)
The SF Bay Area has been gaining jobs, not losing them. https://www.siliconvalley.com/2023/03/14/bay-area-job-gain-tech-covid-layoff-google-facebook-january-economy/ Tech workers have a greater than typical ability to work remotely because of the nature of their work, and they make up a very significant percentage of the Bay Area's employment - much more so than most metropolitan areas. The tech industry is currently in a downturn, primarily caused by a sudden drop in advertising expenditures. DC is als
Biotech requires inhouse? (Score:2)
Yeah, sure, biotech requires you to do stuff with chemicals, bacteria etc. which you don't want to bring home, but nowadays you design the genome on a computer. The process is actually really much like programming, except to "compile" you send order to printing company that makes you the genome, which you then insert to your target cells and then do some experiments, fail and go back to computer trying to figure out why your gene did not activate and how you can fix it or debug it using light emitting genes
Public servants need to change course. (Score:4, Insightful)
Karma's a bitch. (Score:2)
Funny "public-private partnerships" (Score:3)
should build for mixed use walkable neighborhoods (Score:5, Interesting)
I moved to Germany for my PhD and I have noticed that the cities here seem to be doing much better with this. People want to live in the cities because they can walk to restaurants, shops, etc. Most places have a shop on the first floor and apartments above it. Work from home had almost no impact on that. Work from home is also less of an issue because many people can walk to work so the commute is not an issue.
I think that in the USA we have built areas that are pretty hostile towards people and designed to favor cars. As a result things like work from home have been far more damaging.
cease being in expensive, violent cesspit (Score:2)
It used to be a nice city. Things went sharply wrong.
Perpetual growth only benefits the rich (Score:2)
Perpetual growth ruins cities and it not desirable for anyone not a developer. Fuck them.
To commute it so pollute and waste time. It's stupid. Work is painful enough already.
You can't make cities more desirable to live in than suburbs which is why people have been paying to choose their neighbors for centuries. The Frisco people miss was BEFORE high tech devoured it.
The only people who want other people in their office are social defectives. Everyone here has worked for at least one who lives for work to e
That's nice. (Score:2, Interesting)
It's nice to see a coastal intellectual city go through the same crap they put the Rust Belt through 40 years ago. I remember when the greedy assholes said "Manufacturing is so yesterday, computers are the future!" So everyone and his dog got into the computer scene... then they started shipping *those* jobs to India, etc.... meanwhile everyone still needs the basics (and luxuries) of life, which were created by... manufacturing.
Fallacy (Score:5, Insightful)
So, let's see, people are leaving SF because the housing is too expensive.
This reminds me of a Yogi Berra-ism: "That restaurant? Oh, no one goes there any more because it's too crowded."
At some point it will reach equilibrium.
Mixed Use saved Austin (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I imagine it was government requested/mandated silently.
Unlikely. The city has very little leverage over tech companies. Once their people are working from home, the tech companies can pull up sticks and move their headquarters to Tracy or Gilroy.
SF is already hostile to businesses. The more they squeeze, the more will leave.
Re: (Score:2)
" the tech companies can pull up sticks and move their headquarters to Tracy or Gilroy."
Gilroy smells of garlic. So bad sometimes that you can actually taste it when you exhale, too. You can smell it with your windows up and your vents set to recirculate.
It's bad enough to drive through Gilroy... but live there?
Re: (Score:2)
" the tech companies can pull up sticks and move their headquarters to Tracy or Gilroy."
Gilroy smells of garlic. So bad sometimes that you can actually taste it when you exhale, too. You can smell it with your windows up and your vents set to recirculate.
It's bad enough to drive through Gilroy... but live there?
Don't worry, once companies move in the garlic fields will get sold and the only thing reminding you they existed is "The Garlic Capital of the World" on the sign welcoming you to Gilroy.
Re: (Score:3)
Excessive Garlic: Check
Higher than usual annual sunshine: Check
Nearby forests for ample stake construction: Check
Moderately close (Two week journey on horseback) to abandoned silver mine: Check
Yes... This will do nicely.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, yes, but indirectly. There's a lot of companies, especially the larger ones, that invested heavily into the infrastructure around their offices (and of course the offices themselves), renting out that space to restaurants and other services around their offices, partly for additional revenue, partly to make their offices more attractive to qualified personnel. That revenue now plummets because, well, if there's nobody at the office, nobody needs the restaurants around it for lunch.
Re:My honest reaction? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: My honest reaction? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Once you get out of the big cities, California is an amazing place.
No, it sounds like it's full of republicans based on what you said.