As someone who was born in San Francisco (third gen) and has bounced around between the city and other areas of the state/country most of my life, I can assure you that swapping one set of politicians for another is going to have very little effect on the deep-seated problems facing the city and the Bay Area in general. Which issues are the most important are debatable, but these have to be considered:
(1) Jobs. There used to be a ton of electronics and garment manufacturing jobs in the region. Most such jobs required no more than a high school education, possible some vocational training, but the R & D and white-collar sections also provided employement for the college-educated. That's mostly all gone to China, Mexico, Indonesia, etc. Right out of high school I actually did a couple years doing electronics assembly line manufacturing in various locations, including in an exciting laser-welding shop, making ridiculously good money relative to my peers (I could afford my own apartment at 18) - and there were people who'd been there decades. Gets boring fast, so I went to college, as I didn't want to be there forever.
When you look at the huge homeless population today, I think it was less than 10% back then of what it is now, and my guess is that the availability of those jobs played a big role in that.
(2) Housing. The reality is, either you are in or near the 1% by wealth or you can't buy a home, and rents are ridiculously high, and there are confounding factors like AirBNB taking homes off the market and foreign investors using real estate as a tax haven / money laundering scheme, etc. Developers don't want to build high-density affordable housing as profit margins are lower. Increased population puts strains on public transportation and traffic. The whole region could turn into something like Mexico City (wealthy center protected by police, surrounded by miles of slums and shantytowns). Importantly, people who serve key roles - teachers, service workers, etc. - generally have to commute into the city, was they can't afford local rents. This wealth/poverty class divide is not very stable or pleasant to be around.
I think what a certain sector of wealthy SF wants (basically the people behind the recall effort) is for the police to mainly serve the role of kicking the homeless out of the pricey neighborhoods and concentrating them in areas where they never go, which will heavily impact these poorer neighborhoods, exacerbating the growing class conflict. Oh, and one job sector that is growing? Armed private security. I don't think the outcome of the recall will affect any of this significantly, however.
The only real fixes I see would be a massive jobs program to bring back manufacturing to the region and a push towards Tokyo-style tiny apartment construction across the region.
> When you look at the huge homeless population today, I think it was less than 10% back then of what it is now
I'm not sure when "back then" was, but homeless in SF has only increased by around 2% from 10 years ago, and has actually dropped by 15% compared to two years ago. (From https://hsh.sfgov.org/get-involved/2022-pit-count/ using the non-sheltered counts, as you were referencing the population you could 'look at')
Looking at earlier info, the NY Times in 1998 quoted the Coalition on Homelessness saying there were 16,000 homeless on the streets of SF then. That would mean a huge decrease today compared to then, but I suspect the two numbers may have been counted differently. (https://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/13/us/homelessness-tests-san...).
Anyway, it doesn't seem like the data supports your claim that there has been a massive increase in the homeless population lately, unless you go back to at least before the 1980s (https://projects.sfchronicle.com/sf-homeless/overview/)
> "The Bay Area’s homeless population today is larger, less sheltered, and growing faster than ever before. Between 2017 and 2020, the Bay Area’s homeless population grew by 6,878 individuals to a total of 35,118—accounting for more than a quarter of the growth in the total U.S. homeless population."
Some of the Covid emergency programs sort of worked by putting people in hotels, but those hotels are pretty sketchy places at best. This might account for the apparently flat rate in SF but anyone walking around the poorer neighborhoods can see it with their own eyes:
>The whole region could turn into something like Mexico City (wealthy center protected by police, surrounded by miles of slums and shantytowns). Importantly, people who serve key roles - teachers, service workers, etc.
Mexico City? That's almost every major US city already. Have you been to DC recently? That's it to a T. The government sector is nice, with a little buffer of upper class homes and businesses surrounded by miles of high-crime slums.
What? Which areas are “miles of high-crime slums”? SE DC and parts of suburban Maryland. But the vast majority of the city and suburbs are safe and far from being slums. Look at Arlington, Alexandria, Bethesda etc.
> His prosecutors are not permitted to seek cash bail, try juveniles as adults or seek longer sentences for perpetrators with gang affiliations.
For the kinds of crimes that frustrate San Franciscans, I don't know if any of these things actually make a difference. Whether prosecutors seek a 3 years or 5 year sentence doesn't seem like it will move the needle.
By the time crimes get to the DA's office, the horse has left the barn - agree or disagree with Boudin, SF crime is predominantly an enforcement (and/or cultural) issue.
I agree with this. I'll be on the record and say that I support most of these progressive sentencing reforms, but I do think they need to go hand in hand with better crime prevention/management.
What do you mean when you say it's "an enforcement (and/or cultural) issue."? Isn't all crime a cultural issue to some extent? What is the purpose of law enforcement, and prosecution in your mind?
Stopping/preventing crime is handled by police and other organizations. Prosecuting criminals who are caught is handled by the DA's office.
Simply put, it's not the DA's job to stop crime. So if the problem is "there is too much crime in SF", changing the DA themselves isn't going to do much in the short term (perhaps in the long term though, with more people locked up).
i agree it is an enforcement issue but the line i have heard is enforcement is lacking bc police officers think the convictions won’t happen on the other end so there is no point in them making the arrests in the first place. No idea if that is true or not just the claim i have heard.
I know this is the line, but I'm not sure if I actually believe it.
If I'm a police officer and I catch someone looting, am I really thinking "well, there's no more cash bail so I may as well not bother"?
It seems the core issue is that key SF voters do not want police pursuing low level crime, and they are on order not to. A lax DA might be a symbolic part of this, but they don't seem key.
I tend to think recalls in general are bug in a democratic system. For candidates who have done something actually terrible (like breaking laws) there's impeachment or other kinds of dismissal. Otherwise, you wait until the end of the term and vote the bum out?
But why have terms in the first place, if they're that up in the air? The nicest thing I could say for a recall effort is that voters who were too apathetic to vote for another candidate now feel motivated to engage in the process, but as it's an extra vote it incurs costs which the normal cadence of elections doesn't.
The problem is that in practice, recall elections have lower turnout, and so a sufficiently-aggrieved minority can pay to replace the choice of the majority. (Also you don’t get to vote for the replacement, the mayor chooses one in this case).
I think there are clear cases where a recall is useful, but it’s probably fair to say it’s too easy to initiate a frivolous recall in CA right now.
Because the term is long and the harm the bum can do in several years can be enormous. The people hire somebody to do the job, if that person botches the job, the people should have the ability to fire them, not just wait till the term ends.
I'm guessing you live in Texas (as do I), not San Francisco or California, and this is an expression of the "Everything in California is terrible" meme that's popular here.
I lived in California, near San Francisco. Not everything is California is terrible, but everything to do with SF DA is. SF got really really terrible - and it wasn't like that a decade ago. There are many opinions why that happened but I think "progressive" social engineering experimentation played a large role. I mean, if you decriminalize theft, you get a lot of theft. Who could have thought?
Corruption in Texas is super interesting in fact! The lengths that all of the segments of government seem to be taking in order to avoid taking the indicted Attorney General to trial is probably not unique but it’s interesting to see in real time.
I’m guessing he’s from Texas because his username says so.
But I’m from the SF bay area and he’s spot on. We have massive social issues here (homelessness, drug-related crimes, urban blight, etc.) which are being made worse by so-called “progressive” policies.
Applying what we could call progressive ideas without thinking them through is a problem. IMHO we should vote for smarter politicians who don't have ideological baggage limiting their decision making.
> Politicians claiming to be be progressive then pandering to corporate interests has.
That doesn't have much to do with SF's problems as far as I can tell. Quite the opposite actually.
Could you explain how enabling current crime wave is "pandering to corporate interests"? Corporations didn't demand to defund the police or stop prosecuting crime or develop a homeless camp on every major street, as far as I know. Did they?
By people who don't just ignore several thousand years of how various "not too dysfunctional" societies ran themselves for a few quick ideological virtue points.
Much of the shitting on "progressivism" is misguided. There's just as much progressivism and liberal ideology on the other coast and they don't have the same dysfunctionality and failings to nearly the same extents. These kinds of clowns are everywhere but at the end of the day it's the California public who is responsible for electing them and tolerating their poor job performance.
In California, excepting some rare corners, there's only one party. California has a lot of Republicans, in numbers, but they don't have any power in any major city, let alone on the state level. So your idea has already been implemented.
Readit News
(1) Jobs. There used to be a ton of electronics and garment manufacturing jobs in the region. Most such jobs required no more than a high school education, possible some vocational training, but the R & D and white-collar sections also provided employement for the college-educated. That's mostly all gone to China, Mexico, Indonesia, etc. Right out of high school I actually did a couple years doing electronics assembly line manufacturing in various locations, including in an exciting laser-welding shop, making ridiculously good money relative to my peers (I could afford my own apartment at 18) - and there were people who'd been there decades. Gets boring fast, so I went to college, as I didn't want to be there forever.
When you look at the huge homeless population today, I think it was less than 10% back then of what it is now, and my guess is that the availability of those jobs played a big role in that.
(2) Housing. The reality is, either you are in or near the 1% by wealth or you can't buy a home, and rents are ridiculously high, and there are confounding factors like AirBNB taking homes off the market and foreign investors using real estate as a tax haven / money laundering scheme, etc. Developers don't want to build high-density affordable housing as profit margins are lower. Increased population puts strains on public transportation and traffic. The whole region could turn into something like Mexico City (wealthy center protected by police, surrounded by miles of slums and shantytowns). Importantly, people who serve key roles - teachers, service workers, etc. - generally have to commute into the city, was they can't afford local rents. This wealth/poverty class divide is not very stable or pleasant to be around.
I think what a certain sector of wealthy SF wants (basically the people behind the recall effort) is for the police to mainly serve the role of kicking the homeless out of the pricey neighborhoods and concentrating them in areas where they never go, which will heavily impact these poorer neighborhoods, exacerbating the growing class conflict. Oh, and one job sector that is growing? Armed private security. I don't think the outcome of the recall will affect any of this significantly, however.
The only real fixes I see would be a massive jobs program to bring back manufacturing to the region and a push towards Tokyo-style tiny apartment construction across the region.
I'm not sure when "back then" was, but homeless in SF has only increased by around 2% from 10 years ago, and has actually dropped by 15% compared to two years ago. (From https://hsh.sfgov.org/get-involved/2022-pit-count/ using the non-sheltered counts, as you were referencing the population you could 'look at')
Looking at earlier info, the NY Times in 1998 quoted the Coalition on Homelessness saying there were 16,000 homeless on the streets of SF then. That would mean a huge decrease today compared to then, but I suspect the two numbers may have been counted differently. (https://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/13/us/homelessness-tests-san...).
Anyway, it doesn't seem like the data supports your claim that there has been a massive increase in the homeless population lately, unless you go back to at least before the 1980s (https://projects.sfchronicle.com/sf-homeless/overview/)
http://www.bayareaeconomy.org/report/bay-area-homelessness-2...
> "The Bay Area’s homeless population today is larger, less sheltered, and growing faster than ever before. Between 2017 and 2020, the Bay Area’s homeless population grew by 6,878 individuals to a total of 35,118—accounting for more than a quarter of the growth in the total U.S. homeless population."
Some of the Covid emergency programs sort of worked by putting people in hotels, but those hotels are pretty sketchy places at best. This might account for the apparently flat rate in SF but anyone walking around the poorer neighborhoods can see it with their own eyes:
https://www.kqed.org/news/11914346/more-people-became-unhous...
That's only part of the picture: the growing gap between wealthy and poor is a more significant long-term issue.
Mexico City? That's almost every major US city already. Have you been to DC recently? That's it to a T. The government sector is nice, with a little buffer of upper class homes and businesses surrounded by miles of high-crime slums.
For the kinds of crimes that frustrate San Franciscans, I don't know if any of these things actually make a difference. Whether prosecutors seek a 3 years or 5 year sentence doesn't seem like it will move the needle.
By the time crimes get to the DA's office, the horse has left the barn - agree or disagree with Boudin, SF crime is predominantly an enforcement (and/or cultural) issue.
If your model is that crime is a cycle and you need to rehabilitate more than punish, then this is the playbook to follow.
Simply put, it's not the DA's job to stop crime. So if the problem is "there is too much crime in SF", changing the DA themselves isn't going to do much in the short term (perhaps in the long term though, with more people locked up).
If I'm a police officer and I catch someone looting, am I really thinking "well, there's no more cash bail so I may as well not bother"?
It seems the core issue is that key SF voters do not want police pursuing low level crime, and they are on order not to. A lax DA might be a symbolic part of this, but they don't seem key.
https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/boudin-forced-to-rent-u-...
I don't see how that's a convincing argument for why it's a "bug". Quick remediation seems like a feature?
I think there are clear cases where a recall is useful, but it’s probably fair to say it’s too easy to initiate a frivolous recall in CA right now.
But I’m from the SF bay area and he’s spot on. We have massive social issues here (homelessness, drug-related crimes, urban blight, etc.) which are being made worse by so-called “progressive” policies.
>California’s state and local government revenues and spending are 60 percent higher than Texas on a per-resident basis
>K-12 spending per student is much higher in California, student outcomes are if anything better in Texas
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> Politicians claiming to be be progressive then pandering to corporate interests has.
That doesn't have much to do with SF's problems as far as I can tell. Quite the opposite actually.
By people who don't just ignore several thousand years of how various "not too dysfunctional" societies ran themselves for a few quick ideological virtue points.
Much of the shitting on "progressivism" is misguided. There's just as much progressivism and liberal ideology on the other coast and they don't have the same dysfunctionality and failings to nearly the same extents. These kinds of clowns are everywhere but at the end of the day it's the California public who is responsible for electing them and tolerating their poor job performance.
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