Gavin Newsom draws line on SF street behavior: City now ‘too permissive’

[Moonbeam]

Actually one of the reasons for California’s affordability problem is that it’s not dense at all. The more housing you build the cheaper it gets.

This does raise another good point though, that we should abolish zoning that mandates parking. It’s a huge waste of valuable land.

Not really. The more densely you build where people want to live, and the less costly it is to build the more profit you can make with each sale. Demand isn't reduced by density, it is multiplied.

And the solution I offered mitigates against buying cars and having parking as an issue. If you eliminate parking without high speed transit, you increase the nightmare of commute times and the fuel costs that go with them. Also, in California housing density which means high rise might be a solution good only to the next Richter 9.

 

[FIVR]

I love the homeless. They are a necessary and quite pleasant backdrop to living in the second gilded age. How am I to appreciate my own wealth without seeing somebody utterly destitute and miserable every few hours?

You can't truly appreciate being rich without plenty of homeless people around. I would say it's probably one of the top 20 reasons I live in the homeless-infested liberal paradise of California. Living in California without homeless people would be like living in London without chimney sweeps and state orphanages.

 

[Viper1j]

I love the homeless. They are a necessary and quite pleasant backdrop to living in the second gilded age. How am I to appreciate my own wealth without seeing somebody utterly destitute and miserable every few hours?

You can't truly appreciate being rich without plenty of homeless people around. I would say it's probably one of the top 20 reasons I live in the homeless-infested liberal paradise of California. Living in California without homeless people would be like living in London without chimney sweeps and state orphanages.

Breaking news! Donald Trump takes a cue from Hollywood!

The First Purge will begin on January 1, 2019.

Satan bless America and the new founding father.

 

[Moonbeam]

The ideal solution I would think, are genetically engineered trees that grow full of rooms and slides and lifts and provide food and water and soapy chemical baths to poop or to wash in, organic homes with AI.

 

[Viper1j]

Yeah, and if you believe all the bullshit that we were fed on those Saturday morning shorts before the cartoon started, that was all supposed to happen in the year 2000.

 

[fskimospy]

Not really. The more densely you build where people want to live, and the less costly it is to build the more profit you can make with each sale. Demand isn't reduced by density, it is multiplied.

So your argument is if we took an apartment building that housed 500 people, demolished it and replaced it with a parking lot housing costs would go down?

Does that seem rational to you?

And the solution I offered mitigates against buying cars and having parking as an issue. If you eliminate parking without high speed transit, you increase the nightmare of commute times and the fuel costs that go with them.

Or you know, you can just have buses and make commutes better along with fuel usage.

Also, in California housing density which means high rise might be a solution good only to the next Richter 9.

Japan does just fine.

 

[WelshBloke]

Read and figure it out for yourself.

It would be interesting if you explained your thinking here.

Im guessing that you are looking at the cities being more liberal and then... This is where I cant work out where you are going.

Are you saying liberal cities are too soft on the homeless and thats why they are there? Like they would vanish if life was harder for them?
Or that liberal cities are soft therefore the homeless move there?

If honestly curious about your thinking on this.

Personally I think its a complex problem. Theres a lot of people who are on the streets because they are in need of medical care, the level of mentally ill people that are destitute is crazy (pun intended). Plus if you end up with a drug problem in the US its hard to get out of it, its hard to get a decent job if youve got a record as a drug offender.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Anyone else honestly surprised that the number of homeless in the infographic is "only" ~500k? Out of a population of 400M.

It's the kind of problem that sounds like it could be drastically reduced to eliminated in 5 years with even a modcum of effort.

 

[1sikbITCH]

We need a solution that pleases both sides. Most of these folks are diagnosed with mental illnesses but if you are not a danger to yourself or others they just put you back on the street. This is because most supposedly God fearing conservatives see the disabled and homeless as lazy criminals scheming to take their money rather than human beings that deserve our help.There is no money for these people.

On the other hand many liberals would roll out the red carpet for them. Look what happened to that tv announcer guy they found begging for money. Got jobs and millions and was homeless again in about 30 minutes. That's not right either.

I think most folks would agree we need institutions to house the homeless. The difference is whether they should be prisons or schools/hospitals and that I guess depends on whether you value life and liberty or god and guns.

 

[Moonbeam]

We need a solution that pleases both sides. Most of these folks are diagnosed with mental illnesses but if you are not a danger to yourself or others they just put you back on the street. This is because most supposedly God fearing conservatives see the disabled and homeless as lazy criminals scheming to take their money rather than human beings that deserve our help.There is no money for these people.

On the other hand many liberals would roll out the red carpet for them. Look what happened to that tv announcer guy they found begging for money. Got jobs and millions and was homeless again in about 30 minutes. That's not right either.

I think most folks would agree we need institutions to house the homeless. The difference is whether they should be prisons or schools/hospitals and that I guess depends on whether you value life and liberty or god and guns.

Another humane person looking for answer.

I believe the illness these people suffer from is hopelessness based on the feeling they deserve to be where they are. There will be no cure for this that does not include something that addresses that root problem. Unfortunately, the use of drugs to escape pain can also lead to body and brain damage that isn't always repairable and that is the fate we as a society offer in our struggle not to face our own pain.

 

[Lanyap]

I don't know about the other areas, but the SF/San Jose numbers are almost solely due to lack of affordable housing. I live in Palo Alto and you can see people living in cars/RVs on a daily basis. They all generally keep to themselves and are clean to avoid trouble. I don't blame them, rent here is stupid, a 1bdr for $2k-$3k, come on. And they just keep building office space for some reason. Seems like it is a 2:1 ratio of office:residential in my area. Obviously the developers would rather keep the rents high to make more $$.

If I'm not mistaken the people you are referring to have nice jobs at 100k+ but, like you said, can't afford housing.

 

[Lanyap]

I’m not aware of data that shows per capita drug use is higher in these cities then elsewhere?

Sorry, I was not referring to per capita drug use for the cities listed. I was referring to the area in SF referred to in the articles that has gotten out of hand with drug use.

 

[senseamp]

For all the San Fecesco jokes, if you go to your average right wing shithole town, it ain't any better, just no one cares. Maybe the junkies can afford rent and aren't on the streets, but that's about it.

 

[Lanyap]

Anyone else honestly surprised that the number of homeless in the infographic is "only" ~500k? Out of a population of 400M.

The overall percentage is small but the homeless tend to cluster in the core of the cities which magnifies the problem.

It's the kind of problem that sounds like it could be drastically reduced to eliminated in 5 years with even a modcum of effort.

It could but it cost money which means taxing people and / or businesses. The taxes and cost of living are already high in these cities and residents don't want to raise them to house and care for the homeless. Cities have recently tried to tax the high tech companies but they have pushed back and squashed the efforts. Maybe if the cities convinced these big high tech companies that make billions of dollars monthly in profits to sponsor the homeless in their cities by building facilities for them.

 

[Atreus21]

Read and figure it out for yourself.

Please don't do that. For crying out loud that's annoying.

"I think X."

"Why?

"Figure it out yourself."

 

[Moonbeam]

Please don't do that. For crying out loud that's annoying.

"I think X."

"Why?

"Figure it out yourself."

Cities are exhausting for bigots. In cities people are in constant contact with each other who are unimaginably varied and different. The other is everywhere. It takes no time at all for a bigot who is vocal to get his head caved in. pc knows better than to say what's on his mind in a forum full of punch prone liberals. The same thing that makes cities magnets for creating a liberal and tolerant population will be the very places where social problems caused by wealth inequity and political injustice will multiply like rats. Bigotry is a rural affair that requires physical isolation to fester. It's like an ingrown toenail. Liberals develop a sophisticated pallet while conservative grow up on bacon grease. In isolation we learn a lesson a day if we are lucky but you learn thousands a day in the city. But even there walking thought feces may be a bridge too far.

 

[Moonbeam]

fskimospy: So your argument is if we took an apartment building that housed 500 people, demolished it and replaced it with a parking lot housing costs would go down?

Does that seem rational to you?

M: It does not. It also does not sound anything like what I said or nor the kind of argument I would expect you to make. It doesn't sound rational.

f: Or you know, you can just have buses and make commutes better along with fuel usage.

M: No you cannot. The greater the density the fuller the buses, the more routes required and the more frequent the bus needs to arrive at all times of day. A world class bus system requires a world class city design and those grow like viruses haphazard and unplanned. You are trying to fix pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that requires fundamental transformation. Everything will continue to happen on the basis of crisis management like forcing old people to move by making them pay taxes they can afford just because they happen purely by chance to have achieved location location location.

f: Japan does just fine. Right, Fukushima proved that. What a disaster that was. I had to nix the best Japanese unagi from my menu because of radiation warnings. What a life. Rich up to my gulls and I can't even eat the fish I like.

 

[zerocool84]

The SF Bay Area has tons of land available, tons of it, but zoning, stupid laws, keep them from being able to build housing on all that open land so it can only be build in certain areas which keeps it expensive.

 

[Greenman]

The more housing you build the cheaper it gets.

I just want to address this one point as it's incorrect. There is an economy of scale to building tract homes, but the lower limit of cost is hit very quickly. Labor and material cost x amount, and it's a really big x. This is also earthquake country, and all the things we do to help a home survive a quake cost a lot of money as well. There is also infrastructure that gets added to the bill, streets and sewers don't get put in for free. Most city's have a school fee that has to be paid as well as a host of other fees. The other major factor is land cost. You can't put a $100k home on a $200k lot, it won't sell for what it cost to build. The rule of thumb is your improved lot should be about 30% of the selling price of the home.
High density construction has it's own set of problems. We do get to stuff more people into less space, but as you build higher there are different codes to be met, fire sprinklers, fire escapes, and firewalls are just a few. All of those things cost plenty, and if it's state run, it will be double what the private sector will pay for it.
All of this is to say that there is a bottom at which you can't afford to build anymore, and that point is always moving up.

 

[fskimospy]

I just want to address this one point as it's incorrect. There is an economy of scale to building tract homes, but the lower limit of cost is hit very quickly. Labor and material cost x amount, and it's a really big x. This is also earthquake country, and all the things we do to help a home survive a quake cost a lot of money as well. There is also infrastructure that gets added to the bill, streets and sewers don't get put in for free. Most city's have a school fee that has to be paid as well as a host of other fees. The other major factor is land cost. You can't put a $100k home on a $200k lot, it won't sell for what it cost to build. The rule of thumb is your improved lot should be about 30% of the selling price of the home.
High density construction has it's own set of problems. We do get to stuff more people into less space, but as you build higher there are different codes to be met, fire sprinklers, fire escapes, and firewalls are just a few. All of those things cost plenty, and if it's state run, it will be double what the private sector will pay for it.
All of this is to say that there is a bottom at which you can't afford to build anymore, and that point is always moving up.

I think you didn’t understand the point as my point is definitely correct. You’re referring to the fact that in some cases it might not be cost efficient for developers to build but that’s entirely different than my point of the simple fact that increasing the quantity of housing in an area makes housing cheaper for people to purchase. More houses = lower rents = fewer homeless.

More importantly, in all of the areas being discussed in this thread the objections you bring up are nowhere close to being the case. Developers would LOVE to build all over San Francisco, New York, etc, but NIMBYism, affordable housing mandates, historical district nonsense, zoning, etc, are what prevent projects from being started.

 

[Starbuck1975]

I think you didn’t understand the point as my point is definitely correct. You’re referring to the fact that in some cases it might not be cost efficient for developers to build but that’s entirely different than my point of the simple fact that increasing the quantity of housing in an area makes housing cheaper for people to purchase. More houses = lower rents = fewer homeless.

More importantly, in all of the areas being discussed in this thread the objections you bring up are nowhere close to being the case. Developers would LOVE to build all over San Francisco, New York, etc, but NIMBYism, affordable housing mandates, historical district nonsense, zoning, etc, are what prevent projects from being started.

Also liability. A good portion of the San Francisco and Oakland water front is one big superfund site due to the Navy shipyards that used to sit there...heavy metals, radiation from atomic testing and toxic cleaning agents being the most prevelant.

You also see this in Silicon Valley at some of the former semiconductor and chip manufacturing/research areas.

 

[zinfamous]

Read and figure it out for yourself.

Big cities with the most opportunity, have a lot of people, and also higher chance for homelessness.

I am so smart!

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Big cities with the most opportunity, have a lot of people, and also higher chance for homelessness.

I am so smart!

It's also the place that attracts the homeless because let's face it, it's easier to find food and some shelter in a city than sitting on the Great Plains or heading for the hills.

 

[Juiblex]

Most of those locations are in Democrat areas. Im Going to assume that's what pcgeek was going to mention. Not that it matters. I know the homeless flick to areas where the weather is more consistent. Minnesota being very cold in the winter is less appealing than Seattle or San Diego. That's why coastal cities are more popular for the homeless. It's just a coincidence that they are also blue areas.

 

[K1052]

SF has two main problems:

1) A substantial portion of the chronically homeless have some degree of mental health issues that run the gamut. Some of it really severe. These people probably can't be housed without supervision that should range all the way up to institutionalization.

2) Overly restrictive zoning and an approvals process basically designed to fail has caused housing to be under built for decades resulting in the current crisis which also feeds homelessness.

Fortunately the state is starting to step in on at least the 2d part largely propelled by a former SF city super who is now in the legislature. They've been passing housing bills that aim to knock down many local restrictions on density and the ability of locals to gum up approvals.