“the committee evaluates each project’s design, scale and massing for accessibility, safety and aesthetic merit.” The review process “ensures that each project’s design is appropriate to its context in the urban environment, and that structures of the highest design quality reflect their civic stature.”
This is a perfect example of why you codify requirements and any review for permitting is as objective as possible. In this case, it's totally subjective and will be abused to get money and other favors from developers that want the project.
This is pure corruption out in the open and they don't even try and hide it. They even mention that they might not need the full $1.7M and they'll find other uses for the money if it doesn't cost as much. This is theft of tax payer money by unaccountable officials.
Any extra money should be returned to tax payers and every single part and labor cost must be documented and justified.
Politicians will happily spend $1 million on consultants and studies to figure out how they should spend $100k on actual infrastructure. It's like it's been decided that money isn't wasted until you spend it on something physical, and they are paralyzed by fear of building a "boondoggle". But paralysis costs money too, in some cases more money than building the wrong thing.
> Can you crap in it? Does it get crap on you? Anything that meets the description will do (doo) .
Not quite. You can spread portable toilets for pennies, or even a shipping container with toilets, but that will make any city look terrible.
If you care about making things nice then it becomes necessary to invest resources making things nice which you would otherwise not have to spend if you just drop a portable toilet off the back of a pickup truck.
It's simple. It's not their money. When you ask any SF Department to give you a budget for something, they will just hallucinate a number and pull it out of their ass.
Matt Haney (the State Senator) asked the Parks & Rec Department for an estimate of what would it cost to build the toilet (given that the hookups are already in place). They shrugged and pulled a figure of $1.7M out of their ass. And he just accepted that! Any normal person would have alarm bells go off in their head about such a large amount. Imagine you walk up to a street vendor and ask about a hot dog, and he responds with $1000. You'll laugh at his face and walk away. But the politicians in SF thought this was perfectly normal, and were getting ready to celebrate this event (until the Chronicle published the article that went viral). Kudos to Heather Knight... but it shouldn't have come this far!
Building a whole house costs $1.7M. A public toilet? Definitely not even close.
But hey, it's not their money, so who gives a shit, right?
When I read cases like these, I feel like maybe the Republicans _are_ on to something: the government has become too big.
> maybe the Republicans _are_ on to something: the government has become too big.
Except this is SF, not the Federal Government, and part of the reason the costs are so high is because PG&E is holding the city hostage. Republicans want giant corporations like PG&E to have more power to hold the government hostage and loot it. Why do you pay attention to what they say, rather than what they do? They never actually shrink the government; the bigger the government is, the more there is to loot, after all.
> and part of the reason the costs are so high is because PG&E is holding the city hostage.
One thing you'll see when you live in SF long enough (20+ years here) is that they'll come up with all sorts of crazy excuses to justify bad behavior. Blaming PG&E for the $1.7M cost is bullshit.
You know people are actually Republicans, right? You think what they want is for big companies to loot the government? That sounds like you view Republicans as the villains on Captain Planet.
The Republican position is probably more like "With less regulation more companies could flourish and compete in the same space and then market forces would drive costs down" and less about wanting to steal from people.
It's crazy to think ~half the country just wants to empower big business to rob them. Not least because big business tends to support Democrats.
Democrats have a super majority in SF, have a majority in the CA state government, and PG&E is essentially a state (as in CA) controlled corporation. The democrats have had majorities at both the municipal level and the state level for a long time.
PG&E is not the reason for this particular high cost, but if it was it would be the D's fault. And it's squarely a local level problem. And yet you manage to somehow blame republicans at a federal level...
Why don't you demand some responsibility from your local politicians instead of blaming a caricature of the other party? If PG&E was at fault here, D's are literally doing what you're mad at the Rs for supposedly doing... Incredible.
How much of the $1.7m is going to PG&E? Especially since their profit margin is set by the state it seems weird that they'd be able to gouge the cost of running a few light bulbs by over a million dollars. If PG&E is such a problem why not just use some cheap solar lights?
This framing means absolutely nothing, which is why politicians love it. It just sounds bad, without actually saying anything and pretty much any negative news headline can be accommodated by it.
But it doesn’t actually shed any light on what the actual problems are. In this case, as you point out, there’s an agency issue. The people paying the money have no real representation in the effort to distribute that money. The problem has nothing to do with the size of the government.
I feel like that's a terrible false equivalency. One of the most liberal cities in the country making a bad decision over one toilet is not nearly enough to say "the whole concept of American government is too big, better reconsider my political party"
You can toss up a stick built or modular house for like 100k these days, and they can build these prefabs near instantly, at a better quality than a lot of stuff built during the 80's/90's.
The central issue in SF really is just that all the stakeholders with any power whatsoever are highly incentivized to minimize change, because most of the voting and bribery base (I mean, political donation base) is manically obsessed with keeping housing prices as high as possible, so every department in every place in government is designed to slow and reject permits as much as possible. The incentives have been there so long that it's seeped into appointed bureaucrats in every place in local government, so even if you vote for someone staunchly anti-obstruction, it would take years of intense work to get the rot out of the entire system, longer than a single election cycle for sure.
Plus, the people who would vote less obstructionist policies often are the ones who live out in Oakland or something and commute in to work, and thus can't vote on the SF policies, so those people get shoved out even more by the high costs. It's a vicious cycle and there's probably no answer to it besides state/federal intervention to force lack of obstruction (e.g. making certain zoning requirements like "single family home only" illegal). For now, the incentives of local voters are stacked in the "we'll take literal shit on the streets if it means higher housing prices" camp.
If the SF local government were to substantially change, particular political party officials would be out of a job, because the city is run by one party, and is in fact the breeding ground of a lot of major national politicians from that party.
People should think about this when they go to vote, because several SF politicians are attempting to potentially run for president and other national positions. One of them is already in the executive branch.
The 'both sides' nonsense I see in this thread needs to stop. It is a lie. There is only one side in San Francisco; we all know what side that is; and for someone reason, we're actually totally okay with those very same politicians becoming top dog nationally. Despite all the hand-wringing here by people saying they can't vote for SF politicians because they don't live in SF, everyone sure seems really happy to do it when it comes to the national elections.
> is in fact the breeding ground of a lot of major national politicians from that party.
Really? If Newsom runs for president, despite being somewhat moderate, he's going to have problems because Republican attack ads will frame him as the former mayor of the most liberal city in the country while showing pics of the TL in the background.
NIMBY-ism and the accumulation of power through real estate and capture of local power structures isn't an inherent to SF or any specific political party.
IMO the higher prices for shit on the streets camp make sure that the shit doesn't end up in their neighborhood. Go to various wealthier & busier places in the city and notice the curious lack of crap on the roads, or homeless people in general.
One of the reasons this toilet is so expensive no doubt, is that the new SF public toilets are self cleaning and will have attendants on duty to try to prevent this. The one on golden gate park and Haight closes after each visitor to spray the inside down like a dishwasher, and has an attendant on duty to make sure no one is inside while it does that (and to generally discourage people from shady stuff). It's not perfect but they have been clean every time I used it.
These were the type of public toilets in France, it was actually very interesting to see and a bit confusing as I couldn't figure out why I couldn't go in right after another person...
why not have a full time janitor who cleans after each visit? much cheaper than a self cleaning toilet. even if you pay $100k to the janitor in annual salary, it will take 10+yrs to reach 1.7M and who knows what kind of issues these self cleaning toilets will have in that 10yrs.
Because a human who can afford to live in San Francisco almost certainly costs more than this machine over 10 years (the 1.7 million is for the whole project, not just the self cleaning portion), and drugged out crazies can make a mess that would be a very hard and unpleasant job to give a human.
How does it work? I mean in France I saw many self-cleaning toilets (you can find some in Paris) and they don't need an attendant to function; they just wait for people to leave before the cleaning start and if you get sprayed it's just on you.
Public bathrooms in cities get destroyed and are very difficult to maintain; a lot of cities give up on free restrooms entirely. One of the biggest perks of working downtown in a moderately sized or larger city is being able to go to the bathroom there outside of work hours.
I priced out some relatively minor kitchen/bathroom renovation work in 2018 at around $100k. Put it off during covid times, and today the quote for the same work is well over $300k. Sure, some company with modular units is gonna sell you a stainless steel box public bathroom for that price, but it’s far from the same thing as a proper building.
I know this is a forum for tech bros who are generally well paid but responding to a story about a million dollar public toilet with "that's no big deal, I'm currently spending six figures on minor kitchen renovations" seems pretty out of touch to me. That is a ton of money to so many people.
Thank you. I laughed out loud when I read this part: <<I priced out some relatively minor kitchen/bathroom renovation work in 2018 at around $100k. Put it off during covid times, and today the quote for the same work is well over $300k.>>
In many parts of the United States, you can buy a whole house for $300k.
They clearly were emphasizing how expensive things are; they didn’t make a value judgement as to why. “Minor” conveyed that the work to be done is small.
This is a shit take, there’s no evidence for this person being out of touch with respect to anything
The point is that construction/materials are incredibly expensive compared to just a few years ago. Further, home construction is generally cheaper than public facilities in a huge city that must withstand a ton of abuse and use.
> One of the biggest perks of working downtown in a moderately sized or larger city is being able to go to the bathroom there outside of work hours.
I'm in a big city in Canada and there was a downtown farmer's market here for a while. Literally smack in the middle of the city, went up and down a few streets on Saturday mornings. Loved going, was a short walk and had lots of good eats, local produce, etc.
But no bathrooms. None of the local places would let you in if you weren't paying, and the only way I could make a head call was at the local YMCA -- and the only reason they let me in was cuz I was a member of their gym.
It's crazy to me how you can be in the center a huge edifice of planning, piping, conduits, etc. and still not be able to find a toilet.
edit: they did normally have porta-johns but didn't this morning. On at least one occasion I'd seen people tip them over, hopefully with no one in them.
I'm in the process of building a new kitchen in the NYC area and I can't really find a way to make it cost more than $150,000. And that's including demo work to expand the size, new floors and windows, and entirely new appliances, countertops, and cabinetry.
Why is it that the deepest blue areas of the country have some of the most abject inequity and poverty? It seems that there's a fine line between compassion and enablement when it comes to the deep blue municipalities of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, etc. Sure the rustbelt, deep south, and Appalachia are areas with similar problems and mixed politics, but they also somehow feel different.
The destitute are merely more visible in "big dense blue cities" but statistically there are more of them in rural red places like Mississippi and Oklahoma.
After all, in OK or MS you need a car, which is a $2000+ asset, just to even access any public space or resource or make yourself visible at all.
There's much more poverty in those places, but it is hidden away. You can see a slight bit of it at gas stations that are walking distance to poor areas, but for the most part, those are the lucky ones, and the unlucky ones are walking distance to nothing.
I would much rather be destitute in a big city where I can access all kinds of formal and informal resources like temp agencies or subways to sleep on, than in a rural area where I am totally dependent on rides to anywhere.
The advantage of the rural poverty accrues solely to the wealthier, who don't have to look at the poor as much as the urban wealthy and middle classes do. And perhaps that is why we are kinder (well, ok, slightly less unkind) to the deeply poor here, because we actually see them regularly rather than having locked them away so securely we can actually trick ourselves into thinking we don't have them here.
It is deeply ironic that you came to the opposite conclusion by accepting superficial appearances. The trick of hiding the poor by means of car culture sure worked on you.
> I would much rather be destitute in a big city where I can access all kinds of formal and informal resources like temp agencies or subways to sleep on, than in a rural area
This is why so many commuters forego cities' public transit in favor of driving.
"Hiding the poor" versus "letting the poor suffer in plain sight" doesn't seem to matter, then. If it was true that oblivious poverty resulted in more action being taken to help those in need, we wouldn't have a homelessness problem in San Francisco. Clearly that is not the case, so I'd much rather live in a place where it is hidden.
> After all, in OK or MS you need a car, which is a $2000+ asset, just to even access any public space or resource or make yourself visible at all.
Nah, you may need a ride every once in a great while, but in most counties you can get by just walking or biking so long as you live in the county seat. Most services are still consolidated within a couple square miles.
The bigger difference is that you can be incredibly poor and still have a house. We didn't have utilities a decent portion of the time growing up because we were so poor, house was in condemn-worthy condition for most of the time we lived there (roof, basement), but my mom's mortgage was, and still is, around $200 a month.
In my personal experience of living in both rural New York and Pennsylvania and NYC for decades, the ratio seems to skew more towards the city. But I can't say as much for the west.
A $2k car is a lot less than higher average taxes and housing costs.
Somehow those poor in rural areas find places to live other than tents, tarps, and heaps of garbage. That leads to me to believe your facts are wrong or somehow misconstrued.
The rustbelt, deep south, and Appalachia are not some beautiful, middle class paradises. They're full of towns littered with heroin and meth addicts subsidized by welfare and petty crime. You just don't see it or read about it because it's across thousands of small towns and not concentrated in major cities, where media also tends to live.
These places have a lot of violence, social issues, drug overdoses, etc. They may not have homelessness at the same level because housing is cheaper and in many cases involves a trailer or an old house in disrepair.
I just spent a few days in Birmingham, Alabama. The downtown streets were so clean you could eat off of them.
It is really hard to come back to Seattle and see all of the trash everywhere. In the Seattle airport one of the bathroom stalls looked like someone had used the floor as a trash can. There were orange peels, discarded shoes, and various other trash sitting on the floor next to the toilet.
Social problems exist everywhere, but that's no reason to give up on having pleasant and usable public spaces.
Because cities tend to go blue and tend to have their problems crammed into a small area, where a single person can observe it. Taking a photo of 10 junkies strung out on a city street corner tells a more compelling story than taking a picture of a rural junkie on their porch, then driving 10 minutes and taking another picture of a rural junkie on their porch, and then driving another 15 minutes...
In my personal experience of living in both rural New York and Pennsylvania and NYC for decades, the ratio seems to skew more towards the city. But I can't say as much for the west.
> Why is it that the deepest blue areas of the country have some of the most abject inequity and poverty?
Because urban areas tend to be blue, and urban areas attract more poverty (costs are higher, easier to get into poverty; but also there are plenty of public services around that make it "easier" to be poor). Poverty is also just much more visible in areas with denser populations.
I assure you that there's plenty of poverty in right-leaning areas in the US. They're just usually not as visible.
Other comments mention that it's more visible in cities, but I'd like to add that "abject inequity and poverty" are national problems that cities cannot solve individually. Rural areas are given disproportionate political power in our national elections while cities go underrepresented. So national problems that affect cities go ignored.
If rural areas are given disproportionate political power, why can't political parties that feel this disadvantage do better in those areas? Why change the rules of the game instead of winning it?
Chicago and New York do not belong in the same category as Seattle and SF. Chicago is orders of magnitude better than seattle wrt inequality and poverty
City vs rural have different challenges for one. Cities as a whole seem to lean left but it’s unclear if the policies are to blame or if it’s just a problem of unrelated political factors (eg bussing homeless into cities from red areas to “clean up your streets”)
I used to be a progressive and used to campaign for candidates. Then I stayed where I am and the rest of the bandwagon moved way way left. So, I will probably vote against any of the "progressive" policies, politicians and elections.
At this point, Florida and Texas have record net in-flux migration from California. Can't wait to see this competition completely kick California's butt. It is a shame, I am stuck here, I'd move otherwise. With all my heart, I want to improve California. I just don't see a way.
In contrast the tiny city of Zürich Switzerland has 106 public toilet facilities. [1] Some are staffed, some cost money to use and some are open 247. Does my tax money pay for this, yes, I have used them and I am glad they exist.
The maintenance of these 106 facilities cost around 6,895,000 CHF (~USD) per year. Around 40% of that is staffing costs and 23% is rent to 3rd parties.
Yearly investment in upgrades etc. is around CHF 1,796,000
Probably one of the best choices of my live was moving out of S.F to Switzerland five years ago, the culture here is a lot less focused on virtue signaling and
way more focused on working, being respectful about no making a lot of noise on your house and public transport, actually having good incentives and culture about recycling and the washing machine, ultra safe place in general.
It only took me about a year of about 2 hours per day learning german as my third language to feel confident enough to apply for a job that was similar enough to what I got in S.F, I was hired in about a week at a financial institution as an applied data scientist in the fraud deparment. Could probably have tried earlier but wanted to be able to integrated decently into the swiss society without feeling I was leeching too much.
I knew someone in S.F. who married a woman from Switzerland roughly 5 years ago and moved out there...did you work at a software consulting company in S.F.?
SF has something like 67 public toilets, 49 of them staffed, according to an article written two years ago. And the population of the city is about 50% greater than Zürich.
I remember finding the Zurich public toilets strange - they use the toilet bowl as the sink as well (notice in the photo how the water to wash your hands falls into the same bowl). It was a strange surprise, but seemed pretty efficient: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2F3...
Building a public toilet that remains reasonably appealing over its lifecycle (Zürich plans for a 20 year lifetime) is a non-trivial problem and has a non-trivial cost.
Readit News
This is a perfect example of why you codify requirements and any review for permitting is as objective as possible. In this case, it's totally subjective and will be abused to get money and other favors from developers that want the project.
This is pure corruption out in the open and they don't even try and hide it. They even mention that they might not need the full $1.7M and they'll find other uses for the money if it doesn't cost as much. This is theft of tax payer money by unaccountable officials.
Any extra money should be returned to tax payers and every single part and labor cost must be documented and justified.
Spend 15k on Airbnb in a week for one person? Expense approved.
Seems everyone took a cut somehow.
Not quite. You can spread portable toilets for pennies, or even a shipping container with toilets, but that will make any city look terrible.
If you care about making things nice then it becomes necessary to invest resources making things nice which you would otherwise not have to spend if you just drop a portable toilet off the back of a pickup truck.
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Matt Haney (the State Senator) asked the Parks & Rec Department for an estimate of what would it cost to build the toilet (given that the hookups are already in place). They shrugged and pulled a figure of $1.7M out of their ass. And he just accepted that! Any normal person would have alarm bells go off in their head about such a large amount. Imagine you walk up to a street vendor and ask about a hot dog, and he responds with $1000. You'll laugh at his face and walk away. But the politicians in SF thought this was perfectly normal, and were getting ready to celebrate this event (until the Chronicle published the article that went viral). Kudos to Heather Knight... but it shouldn't have come this far!
Building a whole house costs $1.7M. A public toilet? Definitely not even close.
But hey, it's not their money, so who gives a shit, right?
When I read cases like these, I feel like maybe the Republicans _are_ on to something: the government has become too big.
States like Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Kentucky etc. are absolutely not immune to corruption, I assure you.
Small-government Republicanism hasn't truly existed in decades.
However, that's not to diminish blame from cities like NY, Chicago, LA, SF. They need to get their flipping act together.
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Except this is SF, not the Federal Government, and part of the reason the costs are so high is because PG&E is holding the city hostage. Republicans want giant corporations like PG&E to have more power to hold the government hostage and loot it. Why do you pay attention to what they say, rather than what they do? They never actually shrink the government; the bigger the government is, the more there is to loot, after all.
One thing you'll see when you live in SF long enough (20+ years here) is that they'll come up with all sorts of crazy excuses to justify bad behavior. Blaming PG&E for the $1.7M cost is bullshit.
The Republican position is probably more like "With less regulation more companies could flourish and compete in the same space and then market forces would drive costs down" and less about wanting to steal from people.
It's crazy to think ~half the country just wants to empower big business to rob them. Not least because big business tends to support Democrats.
PG&E is not the reason for this particular high cost, but if it was it would be the D's fault. And it's squarely a local level problem. And yet you manage to somehow blame republicans at a federal level...
Why don't you demand some responsibility from your local politicians instead of blaming a caricature of the other party? If PG&E was at fault here, D's are literally doing what you're mad at the Rs for supposedly doing... Incredible.
This framing means absolutely nothing, which is why politicians love it. It just sounds bad, without actually saying anything and pretty much any negative news headline can be accommodated by it.
But it doesn’t actually shed any light on what the actual problems are. In this case, as you point out, there’s an agency issue. The people paying the money have no real representation in the effort to distribute that money. The problem has nothing to do with the size of the government.
Plus, the people who would vote less obstructionist policies often are the ones who live out in Oakland or something and commute in to work, and thus can't vote on the SF policies, so those people get shoved out even more by the high costs. It's a vicious cycle and there's probably no answer to it besides state/federal intervention to force lack of obstruction (e.g. making certain zoning requirements like "single family home only" illegal). For now, the incentives of local voters are stacked in the "we'll take literal shit on the streets if it means higher housing prices" camp.
People should think about this when they go to vote, because several SF politicians are attempting to potentially run for president and other national positions. One of them is already in the executive branch.
The 'both sides' nonsense I see in this thread needs to stop. It is a lie. There is only one side in San Francisco; we all know what side that is; and for someone reason, we're actually totally okay with those very same politicians becoming top dog nationally. Despite all the hand-wringing here by people saying they can't vote for SF politicians because they don't live in SF, everyone sure seems really happy to do it when it comes to the national elections.
Really? If Newsom runs for president, despite being somewhat moderate, he's going to have problems because Republican attack ads will frame him as the former mayor of the most liberal city in the country while showing pics of the TL in the background.
It happens in Texas, NYC and Idaho.
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Wonder if it cost Paris 1.7 mil as well?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanisette#In_Paris
Yes, I clean my own toilets at home.
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Public bathrooms in cities get destroyed and are very difficult to maintain; a lot of cities give up on free restrooms entirely. One of the biggest perks of working downtown in a moderately sized or larger city is being able to go to the bathroom there outside of work hours.
I priced out some relatively minor kitchen/bathroom renovation work in 2018 at around $100k. Put it off during covid times, and today the quote for the same work is well over $300k. Sure, some company with modular units is gonna sell you a stainless steel box public bathroom for that price, but it’s far from the same thing as a proper building.
To those touting ‘cheap’ self cleaning toilets:
https://missionlocal.org/2019/02/how-san-francisco-flushed-a...
https://dcist.com/story/19/07/29/this-self-cleaning-toilet-c...
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/nyregion/11toilet.html
In many parts of the United States, you can buy a whole house for $300k.
This is a shit take, there’s no evidence for this person being out of touch with respect to anything
I'm in a big city in Canada and there was a downtown farmer's market here for a while. Literally smack in the middle of the city, went up and down a few streets on Saturday mornings. Loved going, was a short walk and had lots of good eats, local produce, etc.
But no bathrooms. None of the local places would let you in if you weren't paying, and the only way I could make a head call was at the local YMCA -- and the only reason they let me in was cuz I was a member of their gym.
It's crazy to me how you can be in the center a huge edifice of planning, piping, conduits, etc. and still not be able to find a toilet.
edit: they did normally have porta-johns but didn't this morning. On at least one occasion I'd seen people tip them over, hopefully with no one in them.
Lmao what. 300k for minor renovations? Is it a minor renovation on the international space station or something?
Even in the bay area, those prices are astronomical. You're getting ripped off.
I still don't see how that will justify the 1.7m public toilet because someone spent 6 figure on minor renovation work.
After all, in OK or MS you need a car, which is a $2000+ asset, just to even access any public space or resource or make yourself visible at all.
There's much more poverty in those places, but it is hidden away. You can see a slight bit of it at gas stations that are walking distance to poor areas, but for the most part, those are the lucky ones, and the unlucky ones are walking distance to nothing.
I would much rather be destitute in a big city where I can access all kinds of formal and informal resources like temp agencies or subways to sleep on, than in a rural area where I am totally dependent on rides to anywhere.
The advantage of the rural poverty accrues solely to the wealthier, who don't have to look at the poor as much as the urban wealthy and middle classes do. And perhaps that is why we are kinder (well, ok, slightly less unkind) to the deeply poor here, because we actually see them regularly rather than having locked them away so securely we can actually trick ourselves into thinking we don't have them here.
It is deeply ironic that you came to the opposite conclusion by accepting superficial appearances. The trick of hiding the poor by means of car culture sure worked on you.
This is why so many commuters forego cities' public transit in favor of driving.
Nah, you may need a ride every once in a great while, but in most counties you can get by just walking or biking so long as you live in the county seat. Most services are still consolidated within a couple square miles.
The bigger difference is that you can be incredibly poor and still have a house. We didn't have utilities a decent portion of the time growing up because we were so poor, house was in condemn-worthy condition for most of the time we lived there (roof, basement), but my mom's mortgage was, and still is, around $200 a month.
A $2k car is a lot less than higher average taxes and housing costs.
These places have a lot of violence, social issues, drug overdoses, etc. They may not have homelessness at the same level because housing is cheaper and in many cases involves a trailer or an old house in disrepair.
It is really hard to come back to Seattle and see all of the trash everywhere. In the Seattle airport one of the bathroom stalls looked like someone had used the floor as a trash can. There were orange peels, discarded shoes, and various other trash sitting on the floor next to the toilet.
Social problems exist everywhere, but that's no reason to give up on having pleasant and usable public spaces.
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/s Wouldn't it make more sense for them to ramshackle up together in bobbies place down the road? I hear he's got the good meth.
Red states are filled with poverty/inequity it’s just more spread out.
Drive through the derelict areas in rural America and you will see similar issues.
Because urban areas tend to be blue, and urban areas attract more poverty (costs are higher, easier to get into poverty; but also there are plenty of public services around that make it "easier" to be poor). Poverty is also just much more visible in areas with denser populations.
I assure you that there's plenty of poverty in right-leaning areas in the US. They're just usually not as visible.
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At this point, Florida and Texas have record net in-flux migration from California. Can't wait to see this competition completely kick California's butt. It is a shame, I am stuck here, I'd move otherwise. With all my heart, I want to improve California. I just don't see a way.
The maintenance of these 106 facilities cost around 6,895,000 CHF (~USD) per year. Around 40% of that is staffing costs and 23% is rent to 3rd parties.
Yearly investment in upgrades etc. is around CHF 1,796,000
[1] https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/gud/de/index/gesundheitsschutz/...
It only took me about a year of about 2 hours per day learning german as my third language to feel confident enough to apply for a job that was similar enough to what I got in S.F, I was hired in about a week at a financial institution as an applied data scientist in the fraud deparment. Could probably have tried earlier but wanted to be able to integrated decently into the swiss society without feeling I was leeching too much.
I knew someone in S.F. who married a woman from Switzerland roughly 5 years ago and moved out there...did you work at a software consulting company in S.F.?
https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/hbd/de/index/immobilien-bewirts...
Building a public toilet that remains reasonably appealing over its lifecycle (Zürich plans for a 20 year lifetime) is a non-trivial problem and has a non-trivial cost.