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Comment by cheekibreeki2 | Hacker News Reader

It's never been like this. Are you afraid of cities? Sf used to be a nice place to visit.

I lived in San Francisco for the summer of '92. I couldn't get friends/family to visit from Modesto; everyone said basically the same thing as today: too expensive (even to visit), too much crime, too many "crazy people" (90s for "homeless"), and so on.

I honestly don't think San Francisco is any worse than it was 30 years ago; I just think perceptions and narratives have changed.

Unsheltered homeless count is up 65% since 2005 [1], and property crime has doubled since 2009 [2].

So there's a reason people think SF is going downhill.

A 1991 paper [3] estimates homelessness at 535.1/100,000, about half the current rate [4].

[1] https://sfgov.org/scorecards/safety-net/homeless-population

[2] https://sfgov.org/scorecards/public-safety/violent-crime-rat...

[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1749371/

[4] https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2022/fixing-san-francis...

  So there's a reason people think SF is going downhill.

Something to do with using scarce housing stock for short-term rentals instead of housing residents I assume.

Humans are great at short term trends and terrible at long term numbers I guess.

Edit; three months ago the weather was so much cooler, at this rate it will be 150F on Xmas!

You obviously haven’t been recently. Go check it out. I’ll accept your apology when you return.

But that doesn’t make it “good.”

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