Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

The entire country has awful city planning, SF just happens to be a highly visible example with some unique problems.

Conservatives have plenty of issues as well - look at Kansas or Alabama. Don't see those being discussed at a national level, though the politics that drove them into the ground as now steering the federal government.

> SF just happens to be a highly visible example with some unique problems

Coming in from New York, San Francisco’s lack of attention to its homeless population is self inflicted. It’s also a problem that nobody in the city seems very much to care about.

> It’s also a problem that nobody in the city seems very much to care about

Because all the rich people living in the North West part of the city are completely insulated from it.

I haven't been to San Francisco in 10ish years or NYC in 5 so I can't compare directly, but Austin, Dallas, San Antonio and Houston all have tons of homeless people as well and they seem to get very little attention.

That can't quite be true, given how central the Tenderloin is within NW SF.

Which reminds me of an interesting experience I had. I was living in NY, and took a trip that had me spend about 8 days each in SF and Cuba. It took me a couple days to put a name on a feeling I was experiencing in Havana. I realized that it was the dissonance of the staggering inequality plainly in the Union Square area of SF I was staying and the relative flat deprivation of Havana. The latter lacked the overtly utter destitution of the Tenderloin.

I didn't have any profound takeaways other than that it seemed like there should be some way of getting the benefits of American society, with the baseline of Cuban society, given how much more we have in resources.

The point is that supposedly San Francisco's ideology would be extremely favorable to taking superior care of the homeless vs more conservative cities. The actual results, are that SF does an extraordinarily mediocre job at it.

SF is an affluent city, with a homeless problem consisting of 5,000 people, and they're unwilling to fix it financially. They can afford to, and they refuse to. It's disgusting.

> Austin, Dallas, San Antonio and Houston all have tons of homeless people as well

I'm sure, but the situation in California is objectively worse. 34 in 10,000 Californias are homeless, compared to 8 in 10,000 Texans. The California homeless population increased by 13.7% last year alone (+16,136 people), compared to a 1.8% increase in Texas (+426 people).

San Francisco does a particularly bad job at sheltering its homeless population though. Maybe its mild climate allows this, compared to cities like NYC or Boston or DC with harsher winters.

https://www.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/2017-AHAR-P...

Really, in Cuba, like in old USSR and other communist countries, you just don't see the inequality, which is far greater than anything that ever existed in the US. It just goes off a lower baseline.

> Because all the rich people living in the North West part of the city are completely insulated from it

I was recently invited to an afternoon of board games at the residence of a wealth San Franciscan. I was invited to step over a homeless man at the entrance. I refused. My behaviour was surprising/comical to my host. This isn’t a problem of geographic isolation. Empathetic circles have contracted, and that is bad.

Homelessness isn't just a city-wide problem, but a national one. National policies regarding drugs, housing, economics, play a huge role in how homelessness in a city turns out. There are also homeless populations that move around to different cities. A city can do a lot to change their own situation, but it feels like there's only so much that can be done on a local level when there are huge higher-level pressures.

Cities in Kansas and Alabama may be struggling, but San Francisco has a strong local economy due to the tech industry and it spends a lot more money than most cities. Here's San Francisco's budget expenditures per resident, as compared to other cities:

  SF:      $11,600
  DC:      $11,000
  NYC:      $9,800
  Seattle:  $7,950
  Portland: $7,454
  Austin:   $4,114
  Chicago:  $3,626
  Philly:   $2,810
  Dallas:   $2,367
  LA:       $2,313
  Columbus: $1,035

Lots of money spent and very little to show for it.

Years ago, I had a class on Homelessness and Public Policy through SFSU. At the time, SF had about as many homeless as NY in a city with about one tenth the population, IIRC.

I spent 6 years on the street. I blog about homelessness and have done at least a little paid writing on the subject. My blog and other online activities keep me in touch with homeless people. I have also been interviewed by reporters because of my homeless blog.

I firmly believe that climate is a major factor in the high levels of homelessness in SF. This plus insane housing prices become a recipe for intractable homelessness.

Some homeless travel to places like SF in part for the good weather, in part because big cities have more services for the homeless. Then once they are there, they can't afford to get into housing and leaving to go someplace cheaper is both expensive and time consuming.

I suspect SF just feels overwhelmed by events. The only real solution here would be to get housing prices under control. People don't know how on earth to solve that issue for more middle class individuals in SF. The idea of solving it for the seriously poor is just too much to even contemplate.

I am not excusing it. I appreciate you refusing to step over a homeless individual. But one of the problems is that most people talking about this issue talk about The Homeless as if this is primarily a people problem and not a housing issue. It becomes a psychological barrier to the ability to imagine making real progress. So, like the relatives of addicts get inured to it and quit trying, I think SF is getting numbed to the problem because it seems simply unsolvable.

Obviously there's the political inner circle, who operate with privileges the regular people don't have access to, but I'm really talking about the experience in the places ordinary people tread.

And I also do realize that one is simply not allowed to be openly destitute in a place like Havana, as it would discredit The System. By the same token, I think we kind of discredit our own.

That's what gets me. In SF you have a huge liberal majority and is a wealthy city. This is in a state with a liberal majority.

Yet the social problems in SF are probably some of the worst in the US.

It's pretty shocking.

Your observation is consistent with the belief that progressive policies are not the answer.

I'm not as familiar with Havana, but sure, in Moscow in "good" old times it was illegal to be a bum, or unemployed.

Come to think of it, it would be just as illegal to openly compare the living standard of even a third-rate party apparatchick vs. that of a factory worker, for whom the system ostensibly worked.

I am not sure if hiding the rather natural that people end up differently (even though in places like Cuba or USSR where you end up depends far less on your abilities than in the US) is in any way better than having the differences in the open.

It’s very easy to contemplate how to solve this problem: make it easy to build extremely dense housing in SF. The problem is that the powers that be don’t want to make it easier, and they all have ultimately self serving excuses as to why.

Every time a politician tells me more housing won’t make it cheaper, I posit the hypothetical “what if we built 100,000 more units? No? How about 1 million more? 5 million more?”

The answer I get is the same: “well, we don’t want to change the character of the city. Do we really want to be like New York?”

Press the question enough and the subject will eventually confess.

Unfortunately, it isn't actually that simple.

Since WW2, the vast majority of our financing mechanisms and housing policy has been aimed at creating family housing because that was what the parents of the Baby Boomers wanted and needed. Meanwhile, our population has diversified away from that. Plus there are myriad zoning policies, tax policies etc at all levels of government that are pieces of the puzzle for how SF has ended up this way.

There isn't anyone on the planet who actually knows exactly what needs to be dismantled to untangle this mess and trying to do so comes at high risk. It isn't at all unusual for the baby to be thrown out with the bath water when dealing with things as complicated as city planning.

I wanted to be an urban planner before life got in the way. It is why I took a class on homelessness and public policy. I have a good grasp of what is generally wrong. I can't give you a point by pint list if instructions on how to fix it for SF.

San Francisco proper is physically much smaller than New York City, 231 sq. miles vs 468. Part of it is built on infill, reclaiming land from the waters around it. Such infill has serious structural limitations. You can't build on it like it is solid ground. San Francisco also needs to be built to withstand serious earthquakes. All of these geographic factors further constrain what you can realistically build there.

I generally agree that simply building more housing would help. But when I lived in Fairfield years ago, SROs in San Francisco were $1000/mo. San Francisco is one if the few US cities that still has more than a few SROs and it still is not cheap enough. I am not convinced the problem is as easy to solve as you suggest.

Easy fixes very often come at a hidden cost. That cost can be quite high, catastrophically so.

If politicians only pay lip service to the ideology when their major supporters are NIMBY property owners, is it really an application of progressive policies?

To say that matters are complex is not really helpful, though. We must demand our representatives break down these barriers and eliminate complexity.

The infill argument is totally bogus. The majority of the Financial District, which is where the majority of high rises are today, is on the very same infill you claim cannot support high rise structures. Singapore is largely infill and is mostly high rises. Tokyo is very dense and is in an earthquake prone area.

The absolute area argument is similarly specious. That argument would be valid only if, per unit area, we were already building at a density similar to New York. Moreover, it’s irrelevant how large the city is within its political boundaries if you consider this to be a regional problem, which it is.

So I’m not really sure whose side you’re on in this matter since you muddied the waters instead of clarifying them.

The problem is entirely political. You can either help or make excuses.

No, I stated clearly that I generally agree that building more housing would help. I don't agree that the problem is entirely political.

Characterizing my comment as merely making excuses and being part of the problem is not good faith engagement. I am bowing out now.

  San Francisco proper is physically much smaller than New York City, 231 sq. miles vs 468. 

In fact, San Francisco measures only 47 square miles. And that's if you round upward.

Thanks. I did a quick Google and was surprised at the figure. Yours makes much more sense.

From Wikipedia:

City and county 231.89 sq mi (600.59 km2)

• Land 46.89 sq mi (121.46 km2)

• Water 185.00 sq mi (479.14 km2)

So both figures are correct from some perspective, but yours is the more relevant for purposes of talking about building stuff.

SF is already notoriously family unfriendly. The side effects you're describing sound like they'd impact suburban areas more so than the city.

SF needs an overhauled planning process and possibly a way to fast track review of housing in already over priced areas that can contribute to a reduction in median rent.

Edit: what is also clear is that the longer we delay these changes the more A) folks will get displaced that wouldn't have otherwise and B) the greater backlog of housing will need to be built to make up for past deficit and correspondingly the greater magnitude of change to the city in a shorter time (which I agree with you should be minimized to a reasonable extent)

I have actually studied some stuff relevant to this problem space. I am trying to figure out how to put useful info together and I am getting involved locally where I live, which is outside California.

I don't know if that I am doing will go anywhere and I don't currently have firm suggestions for SF. But it is quite hard to find genuinely viable solutions that don't have seriously undesirable side effects.

I think discussing it on HN can have a constructive purpose, but it isn't guaranteed to have one. I wish I knew how to more seriously engage people trying to come up with real solutions.

My mother always said it is easy to criticize, it is hard to create. If you have any thoughts on how I can more effectively connect, I would love to hear them. You could also try connecting with me on Reddit where I created a space called Housing Works.

> I can't give you a point by pint list if instructions on how to fix it for SF.

I'm sure that was a typo, but a "point by pint" list (or discussion, either one) sounds pretty fun...

What are the "undesirable side effects" to which you refer?

Folks are getting involved in the community planning meetings, which are a major way here for potential developments to get more visibility.

In SF this week there's a case of a man who owns a laundromat, and would like to turn it into a 75 unit apartment building. It sounds like he met all the objective criteria and is getting stonewalled by NIMBY's due to the usual excuses: "neighborhood character" and historical value of the building. The building is a laundromat, and by all appearances fairly mundane and not at all historical. I can think of no obvious opposition a reasonable urban planner would have to this development. Yet it's being stonewalled. What undesirable side effects would it have? I grew up in New York City, which is also dense. People love living there. What's wrong with SF moving in that direction if it means accommodating all the new residents AND providing reasonably priced housing to all the current ones. Pardon the rant, this issue hits close to home for me.

Edit: Re your earlier point on SF geography, earthquake proofing is a well developed tech. It will add some cost to development, but that doesn't make it infeasible. I live in a part of the city where they had to drill many many feet down to bedrock. It can be done.

I am not familiar with the specific case you are talking about. But one of the reasons we have this mess is due to historical efforts to improve things that resulted in the elimination of a lot of affordable housing. I have seen lots of examples of zoning gone wrong and stated goals being achieved, but with unexpected costs.

I don't remember it as clearly as I once did, but the Aswan Dam met all its stated goals of providing electricity and controlling flooding. But it cost vastly more to build than expected, silt build up was much faster than expected, leading to a shorter lifespan than expected, it caused a terrible schistosomiasis epidemic and farmers had to spend huge quantities on fertilizer. They overlooked the fact that the icky flooding provided free fertilizer in the form of rich silt. They overlooked the fact that the icky flooding is why Egypt was The Jewel of the Nile for thousands of years. They didn't recognize that the icky flooding also kept the snail population under control. The snails are the vector for schistosomiasis, a horrifying parasitic infection.

Lots of efforts to fix things go sideways. It happens all the time.