Which politicians and what party is in charge of governing San Franscisco?

[Al Swearegen]

Scrap get in here. Your insight would help me understand

[Yuri Bezmenov]

What part don't you understand?

Costal cities in Cali have always had higher than the US average amount of homeless due to the extremely mild, year round weather. It makes being homeless fairly comfortable. Since most homeless people tend to travel and talk to other homeless, Cali quickly gained a reputation for easy living for them.

When you couple this with the extremely permissive attitudes of big city liberals, stagnant wages for the working poor and unaffordable property (IIRC, Marin county in the northwest bay area, just over the Golden Gate Bridge, is the most expensive real estate in the US), you create the perfect conditions for this particular shitstorm.

I'm sure that many of these working poor eventually slip into depression and start doing hard drugs. Thus their downward spiral begins.

[Minister Of Silly Walks]

What have you done with the real Pappy?

[Al Swearegen]

What part don't you understand?

Costal cities in Cali have always had higher than the US average amount of homeless due to the extremely mild, year round weather. It makes being homeless fairly comfortable. Since most homeless people tend to travel and talk to other homeless, Cali quickly gained a reputation for easy living for them.

When you couple this with the extremely permissive attitudes of big city liberals, stagnant wages for the working poor and unaffordable property (IIRC, Marin county in the northwest bay area, just over the Golden Gate Bridge, is the most expensive real estate in the US), you create the perfect conditions for this particular shitstorm.

I'm sure that many of these working poor eventually slip into depression and start doing hard drugs. Thus their downward spiral begins.

Yes so many things are boggling my mind as to how it has been let come to this. In Canberra, begging is legal, I don't like it but there it is (It was not in Perth) . Even so we have police moving people along and in the city you will down any given alley have 50% chance of finding a beggar, they are not stacked up and the city would not allow that.

I can't see how they are not forcibly removed as a health hazard and general blight on society.

[Jack]

Someone on youtube made a great comment.

Pay the addicts 10 cents for every used syringe they turn in to a collection station. I guarantee within 30 days you won't see any syringes anywhere.

Not a bad suggestion since the city is paying to put the syringes out there in the first

[Yuri Bezmenov]

Yes so many things are boggling my mind as to how it has been let come to this. In Canberra, begging is legal, I don't like it but there it is (It was not in Perth) .

I'm not sure about the ratio of beggars vs working poor. It would probably take 6 adults earning shit wages (working at Wal-Mart, Home Depot or fast food) to afford a 2 bedroom apartment in the Bay Area (easily $2k per month, $4k per month in city limits), so it's probably a majority of the homeless who have jobs. Hell, even here in central Oregon, we have the same problem. About a 1/4 mile from where I work, there's a homeless tent city of working poor. Many of them stay for the winter through the snow and ice so obviously they have jobs, otherwise they'd go to the Willamette valley which is warmer.

Even so we have police moving people along and in the city you will down any given alley have 50% chance of finding a beggar, they are not stacked up and the city would not allow that.

I can't see how they are not forcibly removed as a health hazard and general blight on society.

At this point there's too many of them and the politicians have enabled them to live this lifestyle. There's also the problem of, if you move them, where will they go?? Since they don't disappear, they become someone else's problem. And for those who have jobs, they can't go far anyways, unless their employer will allow them to transfer to a different store.


(edit: rent inside city limits is actually over $4k per month)

[Minister Of Silly Walks]

Well said Pappy.

Where I live the minimum wage is a lot higher than anywhere in the US, and rents around the city are similar to San Francisco I guess. A typical ad for share accommodation in or near the city goes something like "share large bedroom with 3 others". Squeeze 8 people into a 2 bedroom apartment and it becomes almost affordable.

Many, of course, choose to commute an hour or two each way from somewhere where they can afford a reasonable lifestyle.

Homelessness is less about the working poor here. More about people with more serious issues than simply being poor.

We can't afford to do anything about it. We can, however, afford to give $80 Billion in tax cuts to large corporations. Our government has similar priorities and loyalties to Trump.

[Yuri Bezmenov]

California's issues go far deeper than that. Despite being the "5th largest economy in the world", its economy is largely a paper tiger. Most of that income is from Silicon valley which is subject to huge fluctuations in income and value.

Cali has some of the highest taxes in the nation and its bureaucracy and infrastructure are the most expensive to maintain in the US. It's rapidly reaching the point where it can no longer afford its pension obligations to state employees. Cali will go bankrupt within the next 20-30 years or so as its middle class (people like me) continue to leave at the rate of about 500K per year and are replaced with the Democratic parties' pet Mexicans.

The white flight out of Cali is so bad that U-Haul and Penske can't keep moving trucks in the state, they have to pay people to drive trucks empty, back to Cali from states like Oregon, Nevada, Arizona and Texas. When I rented a truck to move my stuff up here, it cost $1,500. The reverse trip only cost $100 (that's for an 800 mile trip).

That's just one of the several reasons I left Cali, I knew I would never be able to afford a house there, even in northern Santa Barbara county, that's relatively cheap for the coast. Here in Oregon I'm already looking at paying cash for 2 acres of land about 10 miles out of town. I could never dream of doing that anywhere near some town in Cali that was decent to live in.

[Minister Of Silly Walks]

I finally watched about half of the video in the OP. Holy shit! I've spent a bit of time around Washington DC and NYC and done a few weekend road trips from there. I never saw anything like what's happening in San Francisco.

Yes. Big problems. And not easily solved. The war on drugs has obviously been a massive failure, maybe some serious reform is required there. Safe injecting rooms and needle exchanges work well here, at least in terms of no used syringes and wasted junkies on the street That I've seen in the past decade.

[Gopher Gary]

Holy shit!

I know, right? There's a lot of homeless here too because of the weather, especially in the winter because they migrate here like the birds, but I've never seen anything like that. I'm sure cost of living has something to do with it, but I think maybe it's because there also seems to be a lot of resources here for food, clothing, and shelter. 

[Yuri Bezmenov]

For a mere $2.59M, you can have this sprawling 897 square foot estate in Palo Alto.   

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/silicon-valleys-housing-crisis-is-so-dire-that-this-897-square-foot-palo-alto-home-is-selling-for-dollar259-million/ss-AAzA0Bk?ocid=spartanntp

[Yuri Bezmenov]

This also helps explain high housing costs in San Fran.