I realize this post is from a long time ago, but it’s worth piggy backing off of some of these points.
I don’t know the percentage, but a significant portion of the homeless individuals in San Francisco grew up in other parts of America and chose to move to SF after becoming/almost becoming homeless. Weather is an obvious reason: no one wants to be homeless where it snows or gets brutally hot during the summer.
Second, San Francisco invests much more money than other cities into programs that assist homeless and low income individuals. They have more shelters and soup kitchens per capita than any other city in California.
The beauty of transforming old dock areas in mission bay and central waterfront is that the area has largely been abandoned. That’s way the aerial photos looks like nothing is there.
The other thing is the area is to the south east of SF peninsula, so any changes there wouldn’t affect SF’s iconic skyline, which can only been seen coming from the North. Plus, the area is so desolate because it sort of is separated from the rest of the city by two mega freeways.
By redeveloping that area, there would be new and fancy high rises for the well off portion of the tech sector, and hopefully get prices in the city down enough so that more SF residents can keep their homes.
It sounds good in theory, but have you any idea how expensive it is to build or remodel in SF? In California?
An example from a remodel of an existing single-family residence in south SF. The home owner is required to submit plans for remodeling work to the city. The owner must submit the plans before work can begin. Last I checked the fee to submit a remodeling plan is US$6,000. That’s after you’ve paid to create the remodel plan, but before it’s been approved by the city, and obviously before work starts. $6k just to hand it in. Not $6, not $60, not $600. $6,000. And that is just the beginning, there are many more fees to pay.
Keep in mind that building a new building is much more expensive.
I suspect this guy has no idea how much it would cost to transform the old dock areas.
It’s not like Taiwan where you can just remodel and hope nobody complains… even in Taiwan you pay 60,000NT just to submit the plans for your remodel. But 9 times out of 10 nobody does that unless it’s something major. I suspect if you so much as put on wallpaper in your home in San Francisco without submitting the 6000 dollar plan you get a huge fine? What’s the threshold before you have to do that?
I seriously suspect nobody in San Francisco, from the government down to the residents, really care much about the homelessness problem except they want them out of sight, out of mind. If they truly are serious about it, they wouldn’t have pushed these people out of their home in the first place.
SF people are very stuck up about this, they think they are the king of the world because they live in SF. If you think Taipei people are 天龍人, SF people are like that times 1000. They would basically tell the homeless people to GTFO regardless of what connections they have in SF or if they lost their homes due to gentrification. My parents live in the bay area and the times I were there I see it in the people.
The problems will be solved if they actually want to solve it. Right now I suspect any solutions that exist will involve ways to get them to leave, such as spikes all over the place and making the city as unwelcome to homeless people as possible.
I’m sorry, but the consequences you outlined simply aren’t true. First off, the Mission Bay area is already gentrified. I lived there when it was a no man’s land between Hunter’s Point and the Giants’ baseball stadium. At the time (about 10 years ago) there was pretty much nothing there. Now it is completely gentrified. The University of California school system owns the majority of the land around Mission Bay. They slowly built new research buildings, dorms, and hospital facilities. As they built more, expensive shops and restaurants followed. This is also where the Warriors will open their new basketball arena next year. So, to be clear, there’s nowhere to build around Mission Bay. The land is pretty much all owned by the UC system or the Warriors.
Second, building along the south east peninsula would have very negative consequences for middle class families. That is one of the few parts of San Francisco where multi-generation locals have been able to maintain their homes. Building high rises there would displace them.
Lastly, the well off portion of the tech sector doesn’t want to live in SF. Salesforce is the only large tech company that only maintains its headquarters in SF. All of the rest are in or around San Jose/Silicon Valley. That’s easily an hour and a half away with traffic. And even if they did move to SF, it doesn’t drive down other housing prices, it increases them. Again, SF is tiny geographically, so if you charge huge amounts for a new condo that is 2 miles from apartments, it raises the rent at the apartments.
Most people who grew up in SF have no issues with homeless people. They talk to them and actually treat them like human beings. It’s SF transplants that have a problem with the homeless.
Like I said, the area he suggested is mostly two giant abandoned docks.
He doesn’t want to change any part of SF’s iconic neighborhoods.
As for the fault lines,
The docks are as far away from any as possible.
Also, since that video came out, plans to develop the area was announced to have low income housing built there, which sounds like to have the right intentions, but in the wrong direction.
When I lived in Mountain View, most of the PMs, who were young (in their 30s), loves socializing, and enjoys nightlife, would live in SF and commute to work in San Jose.
Heck, they would even get up early to surf and then come to work, and then go surfing again right after work, and head to a bar before they turn in. I don’t understand how they are so full of energy, but good for them.
I get plenty of us boring engineers would find the prospect of making that hellish daily commute daunting, but for some people, living in the suburbs would be the hellish part of life.
Yeah, I saw that when I was looking up SF. By doing so they’ve created a lot more well paying jobs and as such a lot more demand for housing and don’t have anywhere to build them.
My Dad finally returned after 3 decades or so. He agreed that homeless thugs, spaced out druggies and aggressive buskers have ruined this once great city. What a shame…
San Fran needs a Mayor who isn’t afraid to clean it up, ala Giuliani 1990s New York. But of course such an authoritarian figure would never get voted in there.
Being a geek I can’t help thinking about a Star Trek Deep Space 9 episode where our protagonists time traveled back to San Francisco in 2024 due to a transporter accident.
In that 2024 San Francisco, there are so many homeless people and people without jobs, the city cleared out an entire section to house them, called the Sanctuary.
It’s pretty much a slightly gentler version of the Warsaw ghetto. The homeless had no way out and were only placed there to keep them out of sight. They were largely left to their own devices and to die.
It’s almost 2020. Let’s hope nothing like that ever happens.
It’s how America deals with anyone that needs help. Rather than spending even a little resource to help them, let’s spend a LOT of resource to keep them out of sight.
Mark my words, these people will become frustrated and something is going to happen.
I think it deals with them by passing out free guns and bullets.
Those people are already frustrated, it’s called Trump.
The regular homeless people have nothing to rally around , their enemy is the super capitalist system, it’s the system itself. I often watch the invisible people homeless channel on YouTube, most of them are regular Joe soaps that fell on hard times and became addicts and then developed further medical complications along with criminal records. A large number have psychiatric problems also.
But their real problem is THEY AINT GOT NO MONEY because the vast majority would like a safe and comfortable place to sleep and keep their stuff. The homeless shelters are violent dangerous places and many of them actively avoid the ‘shelters’.
Yes, there was no homeless people there before trump. It has nothing to do with the Democrats who run those places making horrible decisions that make it impossible to live for most people. Stupid zoning laws that don’t allow for more houses to be built, fuel tax that makes gas 2x more and the highest property and state income taxes.
