Born and raised in SF. NIMBYism is indeed a huge problem. It’s the hidden underbelly of a city with otherwise modern and diverse thinking.
I’ve since moved to Seattle and it’s crazy to see shit can actually get done here.
I’ve since moved to Seattle and it’s crazy to see shit can actually get done here.
This gives everything I've been told or heard about SFO somewhat of a 'superficial' veneer (forgive me for lack of better words, I do not mean offense) based on the assumption that a city governed by its constituents ought to resemble them, but I'm seeing stuff like this where the words and intentions are right, but the actions and results are incongruent. Is this a mismatch between the politicians and residents or is this a "yes, but do it over there" thing?
p.s. congrats on the move! in your opinion, what makes Seattle different? I've been there before, it was a beautiful and welcoming experience. People are friendly like here in the sticks, but there's just a lot more folks.
The core of the problem is that SF has spent decades investing in giving every person, block, and neighborhood ways to participate in planning and changes. Generally this means giving out some kind of veto. So when the time comes to do something "Yes, but do it somewhere else" is the predominant response.
To put it another way - everybody wants more shelters for the indigent, nobody wants one near where they live. The planning system is structured around enabling this.
What are the resources (aside from this restroom) afforded to those without, near SFO? I'm tempted to think about this time when a local made a habit of feeding the deer, eventually they went from not being seen to no longer fearing people and would walk right up to the porch expecting sandwiches and RC Cola. Is it possible the abundance of resources exacerbates the situation where those seeking them arrive?
As to that question... it's a difficult one to answer. My understanding is that it's both difficult to study and politically sensitive.
Unfortunately I think you're right. A lot of delicate conversations fall into this category, and not just in SFO. As time passes my perspective shifts and I begin to realize our actions being at odds with our beliefs is not an ideologically linked trait, it is an innate quality of humanity.
It is as if having the correct belief-system is sufficient and on par with actually living those values- the emotional reward is the same.
It seems most of those are caused by just poverty, not able to afford living expenses pushed people to the streets.
Some amount of them are coming from other cities who get rid of their homeless by sending them to cities like San Francisco, but Sam Francisco also sometimes send homeless away similarly, this happens all over the US, as a kind of way to spread it out more evenly so it's not as visible in any given place.
The fundamental issues of poverty are hard to solve, obviously, every country, city, nation, has always struggled with this. It's also a little more complicated due to some of the homeless also suffering from mental illness or drug addiction, that doesn't always make them qualified to even work, so it's like poverty mixed with what to do with the people that can't contribute to the work force as effectively.
There's also the case of temperate climate, that's pretty attractive to people who live in the streets, but it's also convenient for a city, if homeless are dying of frost bites or heat, you might feel more compelled to give them shelter, but when outdoor tents suffice you might instead choose to shelter them outside like that and just keep moving them around so they don't stay to the same place too long for the neighbors to complain.
I've heard San Francisco has a policy that when they give shelter, it has to be a full apartment with social service support, whereas New York and other cities go for more warehouse shelters, beds in a big room. The former is nicer to people that get to have access to them, but it hasn't scaled, whereas as the latter isn't as nice but has had more success actually sheltering them and hiding them from view I guess.
> Homelessness Rises Faster Where Rent Exceeds a Third of Income
-- https://www.zillow.com/research/homelessness-rent-affordabil...
> According to responses from a 2019 survey of homeless people identified through the PIT count, a quarter said losing a job was the primary reason they became homeless
-- https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2022/fixing-san-francis...
> When unhoused adults 61 and older were surveyed during the 2019 PIT count and asked why they had become homeless, 22 percent said it resulted from a job loss and 20 percent cited an eviction.
“The fastest-growing segment (of the homeless) is 51 and older who are homeless for the first time,”
-- https://sfseniorbeat.com/2021/06/22/people-over-age-51-remai...
It's only 46 square mile and has over 800k inhabitants. It's the second densest city after New York.
The surrounding Bay area adds 6.7 million more people, a large amount of who regularly go into the city for entertainment or work. I think it's an estimated 160k additional people that come in to the city per day from the outer areas. And there is an average of 131k tourist in the city each day as well.
So you have almost 1.1 million people in a 46 square mile area.
The city is fully built as well, there's no lots left, everything has a building on it with no room to grow, nowhere to expand out.
You could only expand up, but that would require destroying and rebuilding. The landscape is also all hills and valleys, huge slopes, it's not the easiest to work around.
The mayor is born and raised and still lives in San Francisco.
All in all, I just think running a city like that, of that size and yet so populous, that also has so much wealth at the top, a relatively strong middle, but also large lows, it's got a lot of all classes of things, it's just a harder problem because of the sheer scale and density of it all.
Seattle is twice the size at 84 square mile, and has a smaller population at 740k. The city has developed more recently as well, and a lot of the newer development are big tall skyscraper, there's still a little bit of building too small in some places, but it still hasn't reached anywhere the sheer density of San Francisco.
The other problem facing cities such as San Francisco is that despite its density it does a piss poor job at public transit and is still focused on car-first infrastructure. To your point, the surrounding area is ~7 million. It’s physically impossible for all of them or even most of them to drive everywhere without gigantic infrastructure problems. It will simply not work. Ever. It is physically impossible.
As in exaggerating it's livable land size? Or the other way around?
This occurs because the city occupies ~225 square miles [1] and so when you look at density it turns out Columbus isn't much of a big city at all.
If you look at this link from Wikipedia, Columbus is even larger than San Francisco or Boston! Wow so big. But the relevant metric is density, not square milage.
I could have been more clear here but I just wanted other readers to note that you can't just look at square milage or even population, you have to look at those together to get density to help derive insight.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
While that may be true, a huge fraction of the city is single family homes. Increasing housing capacity would be trivial were the political will to exist.
You'd have to re-appropriate people's family homes, or buy it from them. You have to destroy, possibly decontaminate, and then rebuild, there's the neighborhood to think about as well, with neighbors having to deal with the construction and the newly obstructed view, etc. Does the infrastructure support feeding water, gaz, electricity, internet as needed for a large apartment complex, and so on.
It is feasible, but can you think of a more complicated situation then this one? As it comes to cities and paths to increase housing, San Francisco seems to be one of the hardest one to accomplish.
I've never heard Seattle described as a place where "shit can actually get done," but I suppose its not quite as bad as SF at this point.
[eta: I'm not making an opinion about what is good/bad/should be done. Just expressing what I understand is happening.]