The SF problems exist in a lot of American places.
Hard not to think that American governance plus American culture are both a bit broken. Without a social safety net, the troubled and in-trouble layers of our society can’t find a hold for recovery.
I’m in SF right now. It’s a lovely place across many dimensions. But when the bus dropped me off near Civic Center and City Hall, I had to walk through and around a crowd that is in need of help.
My office used to be at 8th and Howard. I had to walk around the troubles. My employees would sob after wading in. The hardened part of me thinks “the addicts on the street have done this to themselves”, and the supportive part of me says “other places have figured out the minimum viable social safety net” to avoid the worst of it.
Hard to believe that a Whole Foods went into a giant residential development center and no one could figure out how not to lose it.
EDIT:
Amending with the following thoughts:
Cities and states will struggle to solve problems that need to be built at the federal level. Social support infrastructure for medical, unemployment, housing. Lose your job? Here and now you’ll be losing health insurance immediately and eventually housing. Other places have paid up to mitigate that and have lower levels of our acute issues.
Going into the future, with climate change, California will someday carry greater recognition that among the biggest and greatest cities on the planet, SF and LA arguably have the best weather and by quite a huge margin. I love NYC and Berlin and Singapore, but their weather sucks compared to the west coast’s. We’re beyond lucky and we act/vote selfishly and NIH/NIMBYish.
My company HQ is in SF still, not sure how much longer. I get to visit downtown fairly frequently. SF is so bad today that people just leave their car windows open lest some thief accidently believe they had the audacity to lock their cars. Many major retailers that I was used to seeing downtown have left. The criminals and homeless run the show in SF. Really sad to see how far it has gone in such a short period of time. I'm not sure why X is leaving, but X is just another company in a long list of companies. Often they'll take with them the people who worked there, then there's just that many fewer functional citizens as a percentage in the city. When does it become a vicious cycle?
What's especially galling about SF is how brazen the criminality is. I spent a number of years across the bay in Berkeley, and I still don't understand why they can't put a stop to obvious menaces to society, like people who steal laptops out in front of people using them [1] [2], or repeat violent offenders who randomly attack citizens and police alike [3], or carjackings in broad daylight [4] [5].
I live near downtown, actually I think the car breakins have gotten less frequent or people have learned not to leave anything showing.
There was a time when you would see SoMa diamonds along the sidewalk all over the place (broken cubes of car glass). Haven't seen much lately.
But SF govt seems intent on killing the Golden Tax Goose. They want to build a ton of low income housing and drive all tech out. Not sure how they think they're going to pay for everything once everyone who works and pays taxes are gone
My buddy lives in Oakland. We park and walk around lake Merritt. He always leaves the windows down. His have been smashed four times. Oakland is not SF, but the practice isn’t unheard of.
Last time I was in Oakland to do some volunteer work, the airport car rental staff said “don’t stop until you’re 20 min away from the airport.” When I had dinner with a friend in Piedmont and left her apartment after midnight, she said “you might get mugged on the way back to your car, sorry about that” which was half a mile away. It boggles the mind.
Shh, you’re not allowed to say anything positive about SF, you’ll interrupt the ancient and sacred internet ceremony of people-who-don’t-live-in-SF-talking-about-how-horrible-SF-is.
San Francisco needs to get its act together. Richest, smartest city in the US, perhaps the planet, and its downtown is barely habitable, and development/improvement is relegated to very exclusive rich areas.
As if this is exclusive to SF. The urban decay is happening everywhere. The US is very poorly planned and built. Car centric transportation simply does not scale. It's not good for people nor is it good for the environment. (No, electric cars and FSD will not salvage the situation)
Downtown has never been where the bulk of the ppl in SF live or hang out. It is for the “bridge and tunnel crowd” —- mostly offices and businesses; and not meant to be habitable.
Not true; for a long time, the rich people lived around second street/rincon hill (neighborhood known as "East Cut" today referring to the Second Street Cut, which levelled the area to improve transportation).
The residual damage from large companies moving out of downtown cores seem to be lost on the local politicians. They will say everything is fine as the service industry meant to sustain companies evaporate.
To the contrary, the damage of displacing their core service workers with overpaid startup employees can't go on forever. Pumping more money into the city isn't going to change the core issue, and businesses are starting to realize that they are the problem.
There are only two ways for a city to relieve a housing shortage: either build more housing or make the city less desirable to live in. SF has decided that the first is impossible, so they're going with the second.
San Francisco has been saying good riddance to a lot of good companies for a while now. Maybe not out loud, but certainly through their policies have they driven away a lot of business. Downtown is a ghost town now.
I am not sure about SF, but there is tension in LA now because Newsom is doing sweeps on state owned land and has pressured LA officials to do sweeps, which they are against.
Comparing X, which is one company (with a far reduced headcount and much smaller revenues compared to pre-Elon) in a tech hub city to an entire oil industry in an oil-rich state seems beyond hyperbolic.
Saudi investment in diversified industries in SA and overseas is huge. For some worryingly huge. If you disliked former soviet oligarchs investing in property and football teams, the Saudis are there too.
It's also exploring tourism. Western women are welcome to sun-bake around pools in designated areas of KSA. It's only local women who are under stricter controls.
But their diversification efforts are pathetic. It's still like 80% of people being employed by the state. They will never find anything other than oil.
That's not the definition of "gross receipts". Perhaps Elon thinks he's too smart to ask an actual accountant, or perhaps he's mad about the "Overpaid Executive" surcharge on the gross receipts tax. [0]
The question of how the SF officials feel about X moving headquarters out of SF. I highly doubt David Chiu picked up the phone to call the New York Times to offer up his opinion unprompted.
Hard not to think that American governance plus American culture are both a bit broken. Without a social safety net, the troubled and in-trouble layers of our society can’t find a hold for recovery.
I’m in SF right now. It’s a lovely place across many dimensions. But when the bus dropped me off near Civic Center and City Hall, I had to walk through and around a crowd that is in need of help.
My office used to be at 8th and Howard. I had to walk around the troubles. My employees would sob after wading in. The hardened part of me thinks “the addicts on the street have done this to themselves”, and the supportive part of me says “other places have figured out the minimum viable social safety net” to avoid the worst of it.
Hard to believe that a Whole Foods went into a giant residential development center and no one could figure out how not to lose it.
EDIT: Amending with the following thoughts:
Cities and states will struggle to solve problems that need to be built at the federal level. Social support infrastructure for medical, unemployment, housing. Lose your job? Here and now you’ll be losing health insurance immediately and eventually housing. Other places have paid up to mitigate that and have lower levels of our acute issues.
Going into the future, with climate change, California will someday carry greater recognition that among the biggest and greatest cities on the planet, SF and LA arguably have the best weather and by quite a huge margin. I love NYC and Berlin and Singapore, but their weather sucks compared to the west coast’s. We’re beyond lucky and we act/vote selfishly and NIH/NIMBYish.