Local tech billionares are recently dumping more money into the city politics to shift it ot the right. The CEO of Y combinator, a hugely influential silicon valley incubator is notoriously antagonist and recently drunkenly said the local city council should “die slow.”
Measures supporting low income housing, more ethics laws for city officials, turning office space into residential space, and $6B for mental health care also passed in the election. Those definitely don’t seem like things that the right would support.
Hes right of San Fransisco progressive politics. Basically bog standard tech bro liberals, i.e “Yimby but not actually where I live, also don’t tax me in any real way and where are all my cops at?”
The 7 city council members he told to die were all progressives. He opposes actual progressive reforms, and is willing to spend his billions and his massive influence to fight them.
Yeah he definitely seems like a bit of a loose cannon that only has a platform due to his wealth. Not that it makes it excusable, but he did issue an apology for what thats worth. I definitely don’t think that the majority of voters agree with the remarks he made to the city council members.
However, I do think that due to the prominent quality of life crimes, homelessness and drug use in recent years, a lot of the voters in San Francisco have become disenfranchised with Progressive politics, viewing them as failed experiments.
The rest of the propositions you mentioned were pretty liberal but the office space one was lead by the right. It allowed for fast tracking transforming office space from commercial to residential, which sounds good on paper, until you realize that fast track already existed for affordable housing. All the proposition did was fast track developers plans to turn the space into non-affordable housing, which San Francisco already has plenty of, and removes the incentives to build affordable housing out of that space.
You could argue that reducing the red tape for market rate housing would help increase the supply and therefore reduce the cost for everyone, but that’s a standard right wing pro-developer argument. The left would say that SF has been building tons of market rate housing for years with no decrease in rent and that the only way to make housing affordable is to build affordable housing. You can either build it through state funding and building, like the affordable housing proposition A does, or by incentiving developers to build it, because the base incentive of the market is to build the most expensive housing possible to maximize profits.
The Inclusionary Housing Program requires developers to set aside a percentage of the housing as affordable.
Even if it is not classified as affordable housing, it is still more housing which the city needs regardless.
Also, another measure that passed in the previous vote was for a tax on vacant units it multi-unit buildings. If they don’t at least compete with market rate, they will suffer.
Housing issues in big cities don’t fall squarely into right wing or left wing. For many progressives like me, we’re allied with the housing developers because there is a housing crisis and more housing helps people.
non-affordable housing, which San Francisco already has plenty of,
This is absolutely not true. Not anywhere close. SF is drastically behind on housing at all income levels. By tens if not hundreds of thousands of units.
This is absolutely not true. Not anywhere close. SF is drastically behind on housing at all income levels. By tens if not hundreds of thousands of units.
Could you cite something in this, because for nearly the past decade SF has beat it’s market rate housing goals by over 50% . This seems to be going down recently due to the tech recession and people leaving the city though . Even looking on Zillow there’s a thousand results for apartments under $3,000. If you’re medium to high income, based on AMI, and want to live in this city, you can find a place. If there were truly a housing shortage at all income levels and that’s causing high rents then the shortage would be alleviated and rents would be going down with the slow exodus that’s been happening in the city post pandemic and during the tech layoffs, but they haven’t. That’s a big question I have for the market fundamentalists and developers, how does the population go down, the total supply go up and rents stay the same?
Speaking anecdotally I recently moved from one of the newer high rises in mission bay and I’d guess it was half full. They were either fully vacant or as I discovered with my next door neighbor only occasionally occupied during some weekends. The building management probably knew this as they started to encourage residents to Airbnb as they tried to keep or attract more of these pied e terre types of residents. Some of my friends also live in mission bay a few blocks away and they say there building is mostly empty as well.
Here’s an article on some of the flaws of the yimby movement, I hope it’ll give you a different perspective on how to solve the housing problems facing the city.
I had a very long response typed but I hit the wrong button and it vanished😔
I had sources linked and everything, it’s so demoralizing when that happens
Nothing in your drafts? If you want to give a more condensed version that’s fine too, rarely get to talk about local politics on here with someone who actually lives here, as opposed to the people outside of the bay area who think it’s a hell hole covered in shit.
Awwww I like hacker news why does ycombinator have to be evil
I mean, I agree that the NIMBY bastards on the city council should be kicked out, but not to pave the way for a cop-loving bootlicker.
The SF City Council sucks donkey balls but at least they stand up to copaganda.
This is what happens when less than 25% of the population comes out to vote.
That’s why they pushed these referendums this election cycle, they knew it would be low turnout
That is a pretty sad turnout. The votes reflect the choices of about 92K registered democrats, vs. roughly 13K registered rebublicans though, so it’s not like this is some right wing takeover.
Turnout in the last election in SF was 44.4%. Not fantastic, but much better than the rest of the state.
The NIMBY class will always project its insecurity more greatly than the remainder of the populace.
Policing a certain demographic more always works
Depends on who it’s working for. It works quite well for the people who want to drive up real estate prices.
Just a fun remainder that Kamala made it like this on purpose and no we won’t vote for her either once biden resigns
once biden resigns
Can I borrow your crystal ball? The Powerball is up to $559 million this week.
Lol of all people, you’re pinning this on Kamala Harris? Wasn’t she a prosecutive attorney before she was DA? Wtf did she do that “made it like this”?
You do know what the AG does, yeah?
Yes.
Jesus sed so muh preest says
These Trump areas need to just fall into the ocean. It is sick what they want to do to poor people.
San Francisco, California is now a Trump area? What the fuck are you talking about?
And why does your gibberish have so many upvotes??
Seriously. Who the fuck is up voting this completely detached from reality shit? This is honestly a really bad look for Lemmy. It reminds me of “The_Donald” subreddit from back in the day. Different end of the political spectrum but behaving pretty similar.
Hasn’t the failed war on drugs shown the narrative that drugs cause the homelessness and crime and are not just another symptom of the underlying problems is a lie?
Guess not to the general public.
If the more progressive policies are helping, that impact is getting drowned out by other factors pushing parts of town in the other direction.
As someone who lives in the SF / Oakland area, I can attest to people constantly talking about drugs, crime and homelessness going in the wrong direction. People bring it up without being prompted.
My theory is that more progressive addiction policies work, but that’s just one variable. And there are other things impacting day to day vibe in the city that are overshadowing the stuff that’s working.
When people go to the ballot box, nuance often goes out the door. When things aren’t great, they vote for whatever is different.
Of course they’re going to talk about crime, what else are they going to talk about, the weather that never changes?
In all seriousness though I do think it’s the lack of other issues that’s driving this. Most other issues liberals care about have come to a secure consensus in the city, abortion and LGBT rights are as secure as they can get, marijuana and even mushrooms are basically legal, the last gun store has closed, the city has a good recycling and composting system and a green energy option, the parks and schools get decent funding etc. The only thing left is affordable housing and crime. Since the minutia of housing policy is boring that just leaves crime for the media and people to talk about, so even if crime itself is stable or even declining, people’s awareness of it increases.
You can see this during the pandemic where homelesness and crime were just as bad if not worse, but people were focusing on other things.
The lack of other issues also demobilizes the average liberal voter who already has everything they want and doesn’t see a need to vote, so the election becomes dominated by people who care about that one remaining issue.
If you look at something like car break ins in SF, the data did show that it dropped a ton during the pandemic, then rebounded to the 2019 craziness.
It wasn’t something that was in people’s heads. The SF Chronicle has been pretty good about charting this stuff, and if you search for things like car break in graphs, Google images will get ya past some paywalls.
IMHO, those of us who have been living in the area for decades have some legitimate observations and experiences that are supported by data. I’m not saying the solution has to be super conservative policies. I’m just saying that the problems are real.
Car break ins did go up during/after the pandemic, just as crime went up across the entire country, but that early 20s crime wave seems to be subsiding. This election took place in a context where car break ins are declining and crime in general is decreasing. If these propositions were truly a reaction to real crime then they would have happened in 2022 when crime was peaking and looked like it was going up.
I’m not saying the problem isn’t real, there is crime. But I don’t think the idea it’s getting worse is true. I’ve only been here for 5 years but my understanding is that SF, like most cities, was far worse in the 80s and 90s . Maybe there was some golden era in the 2000s , early 2010s where it was slightly better but just comparing to what I’ve seen since I’ve been here I haven’t noticed any changes that warrant this recent tough in crime bend that local politics is going.
Here is the broader data set going back to 2009. I wish it went back further do capture life before the great recession. Cutting things off at 2018 doesn’t really tell the full story and doesn’t really show you why people who’ve been here for 10, 20, 30+ years are unhappy.
Visualization: https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/sf-car-break-in-data-18639763.php Source: https://datasf.org/opendata/
The concern is the post pandemic uptick it was the overall trend going back a decade. Things have gotten a LOT better over the past 6 months. Whether that’s because of the aggressive 2023 crack down efforts, or because of something else, I don’t know. All I know if that people in the region are not reacting to the past couple years, they’re reacting to the past decade or more.
Whether they are a cause or symptom, people shooting up in the streets and leaving needles everywhere is unacceptable.
So create safe injection sites then.
SF tried. So did Philly. Feds shut em down.
All of history has shown that getting tough by criminalizing drug use doesn’t solve the problem.
If you don’t want people injecting in the streets then kicking drug addicts out of shelters and taking away their rent subsidies seems pretty counterintuitive.
The ordinance specifically does not have a sobriety requirement for continued shelter and assistance. It just requires treatment. Even if you’re still using, you don’t lose assistance. You just also need drug treatment.
I know, but there are going to be some people who refuse treatment and are forced out of there living situations and onto the streets, thus exasperating the problem the guy above mentioned.
I’m just saying If your main concern is seeing people doing drugs on the street your main priority should be giving them somewhere else to do them, either a safe injection site or shelter, and anything getting in the way of that is counterproductive. You can try and get them off drugs but coercing people into treatment like this rarely works.
Where do they end up in that system? Is the idea to just keep them safely on drugs for the rest of their lives since treatment rarely works? Safely locked away in a shelter, dependent on opiates?
Hopefully one day they seek treatment, and any system should make that option as open as possible at any point, because treatment can work if the person is truly committed to it. It almost never works when you coerce someone into it though, especially if whatever’s forcing you into it is as alienated from you as the city government. Maybe if the addict truly loved a person or group of people could an ultimatum like it’s me or the drugs work, and even that fails sometimes. But the city government, a government that you may blame for the shitty circumstances your in, telling you that is more likely to turn someone away in spite then awaken some actual desire in a person to seek sobriety.
So it sounds like that’s a yes then. Keep them on drugs and just hope. Hope that they change, all while their minds and bodies are actively being destroyed and whittled down by the drugs, and the Honduran gangs in SF gain money and power… This just doesn’t seem to be sustainable. There is a seemingly endless supply of people coming here from all over the country who are addicted to this stuff, and it really fees like it’s turning parts of the city into a zombie land. Many people in this city, especially those that live and work in these areas are just fed up. And the votes reflect that.
I agree about safe injection sites, but the feds won’t allow it. SF and Philly both tried but got shut down.
They wouldn’t have to shoot up in the streets if SF still had the safe injection sites up. People who shoot up in the streets do so mostly because they want to get found if they OD.
Making it illegal to be high won’t make addicts want to stop getting high, it will just push them into dark corners where they die when they OD. Imo that’s way more unacceptable.
Not disagreeing, just curious. How can they safely inject the kind of fentanyl that’s out there now? When milligrams can kill you? What if they prefer to smoke it? Do the safe injection sites provide the drugs or do the users just bring their own stuff there and do it under supervision?
First, no they don’t give out free drugs. Even tho having clean drugs would help a lot in reducing the harms of addiction, I don’t know any government that would pass that.
Obviously fentanyl is fucking dangerous and toxic, no matter how you take it. Overdoses at those sites happen. That’s why they are equipped with Narcan, and also have a line to medical services. So users that would OD somewhere in private and not make it to the ER have a chance.
The second important part is all the stuff that goes with taking the drugs themselves. Usually addicts don’t have a ready supply of syringes and other paraphernalia to use their drugs. This leads to them sharing needles, using dirty gear and other behaviors that spread diseases like hepatitis c. By handing out clean needles and other things, a lot of those diseases can be avoided. They also hand out other medical supplies to treat the damage from the drugs and living in the streets.
Finally, they always offer addicts that want to quit support and help them find treatment. This is the most important part. Addicts trust the people at those sites, because they treat them like people, not junkies. So there is a higher chance that they feel safe enough to ask for help when it’s time for them.
I hope that answers some of your questions. If you want to learn more, Channel 5 with Andrew Callahan has a great series on drugs and homelessness on YouTube. There’s one Episode where they go to a safe injection site, but the other episodes in Philadelphia and SF are definitely also worth a watch. You will see some absolutely harrowing and terrible shit tho. If you have the stomach I highly recommend them.
https://youtu.be/Ym7qS27oiHU?si=UpV19WFJL7MU9Zqq
Edit: Reading some of your other questions in this thread I definitely recommend you watch those Andrew Callahan documentaries. They will answer a lot of your questions and hopefully clear up some misconceptions. Start with San Francisco Streets, then watch harm reduction facility and finally Philly streets.
Thank you for actually answering this. This answered a lot of questions for me. I actually work in a nasty part of the SOMA district of SF and have seen stuff there that I will never forget. 3 ODs have happened outside of my work while I was there so far. I’ve opened the door to leave and had somebody unconscious just fall in. A 16 year old girl’s corpse was defiled after she died from an OD down the alley. People screaming covered in feces and peeling off their own skin. Some of my smaller coworkers have been harassed and chased when trying to enter the building. I’ve talked to some of the addicts there of course, and many of them have told me they don’t care if they die. Most of them are not bad people, just mentally ill and disabled. Some of them definitely get the free needles but they all use outside. There is a needle disposal box around the corner and I’ve actually seen people breaking it open to steal the needles multiple times…
It just seems like none of this stuff works and we are all bending over backwards to cater to them, and then they end up dying anyway. Many of them are severely mentally ill or damaged from the drugs and it’s pretty obvious that they are never going to be anything near functional ever again. It’s like letting a 4 year old kid in an adult body addicted to opiates just go out on to the street to fend for themselves. They are not going to make choices that are beneficial to them in the long run, they’ve literally lost that ability.
After years of putting up with this stuff, I think your average person in the city just gets to the point where they’ve had enough, and people end up voting to try something else.
Sounds absolutely horrible, and I definitely understand that residents don’t wanna live or work in these environments.
I don’t think there is an easy fix for this problem tbh. Or at least not on a local level. From what I see SF is doing a lot of social stuff right, or at least better than the rest of the country. On the other hand you have crazy inequality pushing people into desperation and addiction. This somehow needs to be solved, but it might get worse before it gets better. Idk man, it’s tough.Where I think people can make a difference is on a personal level. A little kindness goes a long way, and those people are yearning for empathy. You said they are like 4 year olds, and I think they are probably just as vulnerable. Addicts don’t have the luxury of thinking about consequences, they just survive until the next fix. So the right thing to do is be as kind and understanding as possible, even though they might make it difficult.
If you don’t have it already, might I suggest you get some Narcan for your workplace? Sounds like you could literally save a life with it someday.
You’re right, definitely couldn’t hurt to have some Narcan around. I’ve called 911 when I see people that look like they’re in danger, and the emergency services have come pretty quick each time. Many of them tend to use in tents, or place covers over themselves though. This makes it pretty difficult to tell if they’re ok. Its very common to see people completely passed out but not dead. You can usually tell if they’re actually danger by their skintone. Purple/blueish = bad.
Yeah I wish more cities in this country could devote the same amount of resources that SF devotes to these issues. Many of the addicted people I’ve talked to are actually from out of state, particularly red states. It shouldn’t be up to certain cities to take most of the burden of this national problem, but it seems like that’s what is happening. Income inequality is definitely out of control and I agree it seems to be a huge factor in pushing people into these situationss. Multi billionaires just should not exist when we have shit like this happening to to our people.
Pretty easy to Google that kind of thing since that’s quite a lot of questions and is better answered by an article or website from one of these places that breaks it down
I did Google it and I didn’t find anything specific to Fentanyl, which is what kills in the majority of the ODs in San Francisco. That’s why I wanted to ask here as there are people who seem to have more knowledge on the subject.
The city that walks through literal human shit is finally tired of that.
Finalllllyyy
“tough on crime” is just a euphemism for authoritarian
Oh good, I would hate to see a vulnerable struggling poor person get support that they don’t “deserve” because they didn’t fix their life yet.
Sincerely, 1/3 of this country. :/
Read the article:
Breed’s office has said the measure was intentionally designed to be flexible on the treatment component. Treatment options could range from out-patient services to a prescription for buprenorphine, a medication used to treat addiction. They noted it doesn’t include a requirement for participants to remain sober, recognizing that people often lapse in recovery and shouldn’t be kicked out of the program for a slip-up.
From what I understand, drug screening usually ends up costing more than it saves because, unlike what the propagandists would have you believe, the vast majority of people on welfare aren’t on drugs.
When the city government spends two decades allowing hordes of homeless dope fiends to regularly shit on the streets, chase their fellow citizens down with machetes, and litter every nook and cranny of your town with syringes, the general public typically reacts by gravitating towards civic leaders who speak and act like Dirty Harry
I say this as a propent of repealing all drug laws, and treating addiction like the psychological ailment that it is
Can we start with addiction to Fox News?
FUCKING CHRIST CAN SAN FRAN EVER RECOVER FROM FEINSTEIN
Please stop watching Fox News.
im an anarchist you stupid cunt read a history book
Same difference. Same IQ anyway.
christ are you a pathetic loser. get a life other than posting 24/7 you neolib cunt
I’d just like to point out to everyone watching that I’m not reporting this, because I firmly believe that this moron has the right to call me a pathetic cunt and I’m not so fragile that seeing it gives me a mental disorder.
For those of you who can’t handle being insulted by someone online, don’t participate in online discussions.
For any mods reading this, do better. Insulting someone is not a banworthy offense. Insults are a part of life and some people need to grow a damn spine.
I stand corrected!
So if they test positive for drugs, that means you’ll set them up with support programs, right? Treat the underlying issue, correct? Not just write them off and let the problem grow even more… right???
Breed’s office has said the measure was intentionally designed to be flexible on the treatment component. Treatment options could range from out-patient services to a prescription for buprenorphine, a medication used to treat addiction. They noted it doesn’t include a requirement for participants to remain sober, recognizing that people often lapse in recovery and shouldn’t be kicked out of the program for a slip-up.
Yes?
Holy shit I’m glad to be wrong. Honestly surprised. That’s what I get for not reading the article and just assuming.
Thanks for the correction
San Francisco is fairly groovy about these sort of things. Even when SF goes authoritarian it does so with some compassion. The SF city council has issued declarations of support for Palestine and calling for the end of genocide, and it’s a hotbed of protests against the genocide, and against fascism and religious authoritarianism in general. It was the center of the hippie movement, the gay rights movement, etc etc
Frisco is a good city.
Agreed. It is a revolutionary city. It’s where some of the world’s best free thinkers go to, well, change the world. This is what the natural process of societal evolution looks like at the forefront. Some things stick, some don’t. Compromise and understanding are critical in a functioning democracy, and no one side is going to get everything they want, even here.
