https://www.realclearinvestigations...haos_of_san_franciscos_tenderloin_836918.html It is a long read but quite revealing. Even though it takes place in San Francisco, similar things are going on all over the country in a similar fashion. The Dealers: The Boosters: The Fences: The Larceny Industry:
And all this is happening on the streets with a backdrop of upper middle class people living in overpriced houses that cost $1.5-$2 million, squeezed in on small lots. It's a safe bet to say none of these drug dealers or drug users can afford to live in a home in the city, even as renters. Even Oakland, across the bay, which traditionally was the "ghetto" neighborhood has priced out much of the crime. I'd really be curious where these criminals are actually living.
"We have said above that man is regressing to the cave dwelling, etc.—but he is regressing to it in an estranged, malignant form. The savage in his cave—a natural element which freely offers itself for his use and protection—feels himself no more a stranger, or rather feels as much at home as a fish in water. But the cellar dwelling of the poor man is a hostile element, “a dwelling which remains an alien power and only gives itself up to him insofar as he gives up to it his own blood and sweat”—a dwelling which he cannot regard as his own hearth—where he might at last exclaim: “Here I am at home”—but where instead he finds himself in someone else’s house, in the house of a stranger who always watches him and throws him out if he does not pay his rent. He is also aware of the contrast in quality between his dwelling and a human dwelling that stands in the other world, in the heaven of wealth." --(1844 Manuscripts, Marx, p. 115)(pdf.)." "When thy house has been sold." I am so tired of the "California to Fall into the Pacific Ocean" stories. Whenever the US economy goes through a business cycle --San Francisco has always been a boom town--these stories come from Wall Street desk jockeys, and right-wing day traders sending out agitation propaganda because the state still has some business restraints left. Remember Enron that stooled $9 billion dollars from "Aunt Milley's" utility bill? All the problems mentioned above result from deliberate high-finance banking policies shifting capital around to corporate businesses blessed with laisser-faire autonomous economic capital to cannibalize large urban cities and suburbs with any scheme imaginable. The crime in the Tenderloin has always been an indicator of other forces at play in city government. Big business wants the poor out of the very valuable real estate in the center of San Francisco--a story as old as the Old Testament. With the appearance of Silicon Valley big money moving into San Francisco, rents already skyrocketing since the 1990s went even higher. The same 400 sq. ft. furnished studio apartment in the Tenderloin in the mid-eights in a building constructed during the 1930s was $465 per month including utilities, will rent now for over $2,000 dollars. It costs 40 dollars a day! Real-estate speculation has gone wild for decades in the Bay Area. I wonder why all those poor people on fixed incomes are in tents, living on the street. And the big sport team corporations come in and suck up tons of city money and split, sign shitty deals with the city and then craps on them, and leave town. The media is not about individual people any more except as representatives of business, but how the corporations are doing, how's business, stock market, and how about that new restaurant down the block that serves Mediterranean food and delivers from 8am to 5 pm, Monday through Friday...etc. etc,. Major corporations moved into SF with other corporations that no property taxes, or very little "to attract businesses." And the current Mayor, London Breed, is a proxy for Billionaire "Get Off Your ASS" Bloomberg and his economic interests. The "Oath Keepers" paramilitary terrorist group was first introduced to the Bay Area by Fox news (KTUV 20) in a stadium at the start of a ball game as some kind of Christian patriot group. Add to these problems the current fade in Business School Economics for Limited Liability Partnerships (LLP) to buy up healthy businesses, put those assets under heavy debt to pay off loans the Partnership took as profit. A classic mafia business strategy. Most of those businesses closing in SF are Boutique Shops setup as businesses fail while the investors split. The has happened in the suburbs with Orchard Hardware, Sears, Macy's, Target, J. C. Penny's were all taken over by these slash and burn business practices replacing decades old business with boutique high prices. What is most dishonest about this Neo-Liberal Free Market Fascist attack on the population of SF is that work and buying habits have changed because of a mild case of "it's just the flu" according to the former President (and mafia felon) Donald Trump announced to the nation and resulted in 1.12 million American deaths. This isn't on the local news either, by the way--it "How Burger King is doing." Before Trump's "Plan-demic," the population of SF during the day doubled as commuters entered the city. Now, many office employees do not drive into the city incurring costs for car insurance, gas, maintenance, parking, tickets, and daily risk. All those extremely temporary gorilla sandwich shops (that open at 8am and close at 5pm when the office worker go home) are gone! And saving a ton of money. And now about 50% of all retail store sales in America are being done through Amazon.com. So now the business community that the SF media is always concerned about, turns around and blames the victim for embracing their disastrous short-term economic policies. To make matters worse, the Right-wing Democratic Party is still allowing corporations to be pirates, tack on unnecessary costs, and raise interest rates increasing the cost of living, deliberate austerity programs put in place, and an attack on all social safety-net programs. San Francisco has been mugged by uncontrolled corporate interests and are now blaming the victim and abusing the corpse. We can't stop the dancing chicken.
There is a huge difference between this time and all the others. Baghdad by the Bay and the surrounding area has always had a diverse economy. Based on both import and export, as well as manufacturing. And to round it out, you had the "recession proof" income from all of the military bases. That can often pick up a region all by itself, and guaranteed that no matter what a percentage would always be employed regardless of how bad the economy got. However, in the last three decades that has sharply changed. All of the military bases are gone, almost all of the manufacturing is gone, and the economy became less diverse and started to retract to largely tourism, and supporting the large corporations that set up there more for the prestige of the city than any real reasons. But in the last decade, that has been changing. We have had a lot of recessions in the last several decades, but one thing is fairly common in all of them. Businesses do not commonly just walk away from a big city because of that. They might leave because they are losing money there, or the company itself goes bankrupt. But some cities have traditionally been "recession proof" when it comes to the value of their property, even in big cities. LA, SF, NY, Chicago, Las Vegas, and others rarely see organizations leaving unless they are going through either a bankruptcy or merger. They may consolidate multiple properties in an area into fewer, but in general do not decide to just up and leave. However, what we are seeing in Fog City is completely different. For one, COVID showed a lot of them that they do not really need the expensive property they had been using. And as they tend to see themselves on the "Cutting Edge", they can also often take the lead in that area. And yes, I am speaking as somebody that lived in the area for many years as well as having actually worked in the FiDi. Quite literally across the street from the Transamerica Pyramid on the original waterfront. And that was not even where they were when I first started working there, the original headquarters was on Front Street, literally across the street from the McDonald's that recently closed. Now we were a Dot Com telecommunications company, and I want to say in 2013 or 2014 when we had one of our typical BART strikes, they decided that the employees could telecommute if they used public transit. Which was a complete joke, as over 90% of the employees simply worked from home. We were based on an entire floor of one of the high rises, and normally had over 100 employees inside on any given day. Those days, it was literally myself and 4 others. We even jokingly referred to ourselves as "We Five" after the famous area musical group. However, a lot of those companies are now realizing that they do not even need that expensive and overpriced office space. And the fact that you are seeing companies simply walking away from their property that are not under serious financial strain or being bought out shows that they see problems also. And even the tourism is not recovering. While most tourist destinations have already recovered from and even pass pre-COVID numbers, San Francisco continues to decline. I knew things were getting bad when I saw videos recently of Market Street. Where just a decade ago it would have been crowded with people and every storefront occupied. Or even as malls in other communities were 50% vacant the few in the city were normally at almost max occupancy. Then seeing a video made just this year, where easily 9 out of 10 businesses on Market Street are gone and the places for rent. And watching other videos, all showing the exact same thing. Yes, that was a city that could afford things like a restaurant dedicated to only making Grilled Cheese Sandwiches, and a fancy diner that makes I have been told a great goat cheese pizza (but still does not take American Express even decades later). But the city is now in trouble, and it may or not pull out of it. I am still on the fence if it will be able to recover once again, or if it will become the West Coast Detroit. We recently saw a large change, because the leader of a foreign nation was arriving so they put on a dog and pony show. And not the first time I have seen such, I remember LA giving suits to the homeless in 1984. And that may sound like a joke, I assure it is was real. They actually gave suits and tuxedoes to the homeless in LA before the Olympics so they would not look like homeless bums but businessmen taking a break by sleeping on the bus stops. But the sharp decline is real, and it is continuing with no end in sight. It just remains to be seen if the city can turn itself around, or continue to slip until the city is a shell of what it used to be.
And to give an idea of what I mean, here is a video of Market Street ten years ago in 2013. That is the Market Street I remember. Almost every business open, and just regular people walking the streets. And here is another one at about the same time period. Now I literally drove across it every morning on my way to work, and it was always crowded with pedestrians and cars. Welcome to Market Street, 2023. And expect things to get worse for the exodus next year, as that is when the new vacancy tax will kick in. And property owners that has vacant property will be assessed a special tax in addition to the property and other taxes, and I predict the trickle of people abandoning properties there now will become a flood. And no, I am not kidding. Starting on 1 January 2024, property owners will be charged a special tax of $250 per foot of commercial frontage once their property has been vacant for six months or more. And for residential properties, it will range from $2,500 to $5,000. Now that is one thing I am watching closely, as it can be said it made at least a little sense when the property was all high in demand and many places had waiting lists for openings. But when most businesses are now closed and residents are leaving, that will only make things worse. As many property owners who would be willing to sit on a property for a few years as they wait for things to turn around will suddenly be hit with ever increasing taxes that will only hamper any recovery the area might see. And cause even more businesses and property owners simply turn in the keys and walk away. https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/san_francisco/latest/sf_business/0-0-0-50388 And having lived and worked there for years, I have no expectation that that will change and things will only get worse. And earlier this year, Wells Fargo took a $65 million loss on their office tower in San Francisco as they just walked away. To any that know that city, that is like Ghiradelli, Levi-Strauss, and the 49ers all decide to up and leave the city (wait, I forgot two of those three already left the city). Lately I have seen a lot of videos that were literally on my daily travels through the city, and I can hardly believe it when I look back just ten years. I do not think it is too late, but the longer it continues as it is the less likely it will recover. When you have major hotel chains and corporations simply walking away from millions of dollars in property, that should be like watching the rats flee a city under siege. As it means they do not see things turning around at all, and are deciding to get out before things get even worse. And as somebody old enough to remember New York and Times Square in the 1970s as it looked in the Joker movie, I know that cities can turn themselves around. But I also know that like in Detroit, they can continue to sink until it is unlikely they will ever recover.
Ultimately, what kills you? The disease itself, or the symptoms of the disease? Think about it. Literally, nobody has ever died from AIDS. They died of small infections normally like the common cold because their immune system was compromised. But one can live for years or decades with little to no immune system. The problems in the 415 are many, and they have been there for decades. But only recently have they all been finally coming home to roost and rot. Now realize, I am not a political person at all. But I think ultimately the problem can be boiled down to "Progressive Paradise" and "Liberal Insanity". I am very much a moderate, and actually do believe that going too far to either the Right or Left can be a recipe for disaster. And the corruption has been there for decades, with the local mindset of the politicians being that they can do any damned thing they want. Because so long as they are "liberal enough", nobody will tell them no and they can remain in power. Case in point, I was still there when the Leland Yee scandal broke. He was one of the leaders of the "San Francisco Democratic Organization", and campaigned constantly on gun control and strongly pushed for the banning of all semiautomatic weapons in the state. Meanwhile, he was the ringleader of a major international weapon smuggling operation. And was deeply involved in the Hop Sing Tong, a major organized crime operation. And when the FBI was investigating him, he told an undercover agent that he could do anything he wanted because he was a Democrat in San Francisco. And I don't see that ever changing. Pretty much the entire state of California is broken, and does not seem to realize or care it is quite often the butt of a joke to the rest of the country. But consider that even to most of California, San Francisco is the butt of a joke and it shows how far off the deep end they are there. I actually know of people there that had not left the city itself for 5 years or more, and think there is nothing wrong with that. Or that thought I was insane for commuting 60 miles each way to and from work, because for the $2,500 a month they were spending to rent a loft apartment in the city, I was renting a 4 bedroom house in a very nice area of Fairfield. And to give an idea how isolated they are, out of the over 100 people I worked with at the company there, I was one of only two of us that was a veteran. And the first hire they ever had who was in the military reserve at the time. They are so far out of step with the rest of the country that they have absolutely no idea. Even in 2013, I was seeing homeless crapping everywhere and seeing needles on the sidewalk was literally an every day thing. And even then the homeless and addicts were starting to take over the MUNI subway system as the place to go to shoot up and sleep. And each year until I finally left the area it just got worse and worse. I even worked in the city a few times doing loss prevention, and was sick of it. Even working in some of the real ghettos like Oakland and Vallejo was better than San Francisco. At least the cops in Vallejo would shop up 1 time in 10 if called, they never showed up when we called for them in Baghdad by the Bay. And the solution to the problem of out of control crime by the leadership of that city? To forbid anybody from actually stopping criminals from stealing. And forbidding even licensed security guards from having weapons. I am a "militant moderate", but even to me that is a level of insanity that I can't comprehend. Like insisting on imposing a new tax upon unrented property in a city that is currently seeing the lowest occupancy levels in the history of the city and only growing worse. Not unlike Detroit, which did the same damned thing when the auto industry left. They got use to over a century of easy living from the money the steel and auto industry brought in. And when they started to leave, instead of tightening the belt and trying to bring in more industry they actually raised taxes to try and make up the shortfall in their coffers. Which only served to prevent new industry from moving in and drive out many of those that remained. And San Fran is looking to do the same damned thing. I have been watching for over a year to see if they strike down that damned vacant property tax, and even though many landlords are screaming about it the city has no intention of removing that. And it will not surprise me if in 2 decades people will look back on that and see it as the start of the end of SanFran. And some are now talking about converting now empty offices to housing, but that is a concept guaranteed to fail. Because as the corporations leave, so do the jobs. And who is going to want to live in the city if there are no jobs there? When I was working in town, there was a huge stink about the "Google Busses", that were picking up residents that lived in the city and taking them to work in San Jose. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_tech_bus_protests And even a decade ago, people started to leave the area to move closer to where they worked in San Jose and other communities. So making more residential property out of the vacant commercial spaces will ultimately fail, as it was those commercial properties that provided the jobs that made people want to move there in the first place. And I am probably the only person in here you will find that actually lived and worked there. And I did enjoy it, walking to Chinatown most days for lunch. And once a week stopping at Boudins for dinner before crossing the Golden Gate Bridge and heading home. Or sometimes heading over to Cafe Zoetrope for lunch.
That vacancy tax sounds like a brilliant idea that could only be hatched in a progressive liberal mind. That's like seeing that something is on fire and hey, instead of getting some water let's go get some gas and dump all over it.... Where do these idiots come from and why the hell do people vote for them? Probably won't be long until the place takes on the flavor of Detroit
The problem is that there are some trying to claim that the reason there are so many homeless there is that greedy landlords are purposefully keeping units vacant in order to drive up an artificial demand to charge more money. But the biggest problem there is that the vast majority of the homeless are not even from California, let alone San Francisco. While doing loss prevention I arrested hundreds of them, and the majority were from other states. Not unlike most of the Hippies in the 1960s that flooded there. Most were not from Baghdad by the Bay, they moved there from other states. To give an idea, Charles Manson was from Ohio. Mary Brunner was from Wisconsin. Linda Kasabian was from Maine. Terry Melcher was from New York. About half of the Manson Family were transients he met in San Francisco who moved there during or after 1968. And it is no different there today. Many move to California because it is believed they can do pretty much anything they want without worry of being arrested. Things that if they tried back home in say Wyoming or Texas would get them thrown in jail. Their claims might make sense, if the homeless problem was actually caused by San Franciscans who were priced out of their units. But probably 99% of the homeless never lived nor worked in San Francisco. They moved there because it is believed they can live rent free without jobs, and the people, city, and state will give them things. Use drugs? They will even give you free needles and places to shoot up without fear of arrest. No money? No problem, steal what you want and sell it. Nobody is going to do anything even if you are caught. That is a special level of insanity that I simply can not comprehend, and I used to live there. And there is a reason why I say that in the past tense.
Also don't forget the weather and climate. Much like Florida, many homeless came here specifically because it's kind of hard to sleep on the street in Sub-Zero weather. If I was ever to fall on such hard times as to be homeless, I already know what I would do and it certainly wouldn't be hanging around in this small interior town. I would go camp somewhere on the coast and see if I could make a little daily bread by cast netting bait fish and selling to fisherman. If nothing else you could always eat what you caught. If you're going to be homeless you might as well live somewhere nice while doing it. But let's just say that's plan B and that's not what I'm shooting for. Lol
Almost the same. I know I could survive roughing it out in the wilderness. Heck, when I was living in Oroville I knew a couple of guys who were professional homeless. However, they were not thieves or addicts. They literally were prospectors who made a living getting gold from the rivers up and down central California. The three I knew all had bicycles with rather sophisticated trailers they built that had all of their equipment on them. And they would travel up and down the Central Valley, from around Stockton all the way up to north of Chico. Spending a week or so at one spot, then moving on to the next one. Never "making it rich", but making a decent enough living that was all they needed. They simply lived for prospecting. Go back in the past a century and they likely would have been doing the same thing from the back of mules. And they had a great disdain for the "bums" themselves. As they would spend hours on the banks of a river working to extract $100 or so of gold by working for it, and could not understand the people that were living in plywood shacks on the banks of the same river that did nothing but steal and scam for a living. And on public land it is perfectly legal to do that, anybody can pan for gold, it just takes work to get it. And with all of them, we got to talking as I have been an amateur prospector myself off and on for years and my wife was also. But I never got the Gold Bug so bad that I considered giving up my life to go chasing the stuff like they did. And I have also known transients that were ski bums, who simply cared for nothing other than making enough money to support their passions for their sport. Driving tractors on the farms most of the year, and snow cats on the slopes in the winter. Where in addition to getting paid they got a free pass so they could ski as much as they wanted. I know I could live in the wilds of the NW and survive on hunting and fishing. I even know a great many edible plants, and even how to leach the tannin out of acorns and turn it into flour.
That sounds about like something I could see myself doing in another life. Or hunting semi-precious gems in the Carolinas. I'm pretty adept at Urban and wilderness scavenging. Was I to ever do the homeless bicycle thing I would fabricate a bicycle camper just big enough to lay down in and sleep. I would make it very lightweight, probably 60 lb or less made of conduit like many of the bikes and trikes that I have fabricated. Mosquito net underneath with a tarp over that so you could lift the tarp when you are parked and still have the mosquito net. To live rough in Florida you must keep the rain and bugs off you unless you are just into being miserable. I've been meaning to build it for years and I may do it just for the hell of it. That way you could always have your bike and your camp with you and if someone came along and told you you couldn't be there well in 5 minutes you could roll out. But I'm getting older and fat so I kind of prefer a motor nowadays. Between a cast net and bowfishing and a fishing rod, I would never starve in a coastal area.
Well, then no one has has ever died of jumping out of a twenty-story building....because it's the landing that kills you. I would try a better argument.
