San Francisco’s Financial Crisis

[WirelessGigabit]

I think they surely can get rid of a lot of city personal. I've moved to a different state and just being in contact with government officials to get things done is just... easier.

Something not right? Let's fix it. Let's do this first and then that.

General California feeling: you're missing form 5858b. Can't help you. Come back later. Next available appointment: 3 months.

Half of their jobs could be filled by using proper software. But instead I have to print it, make an appointment, hand them the form, have them type it in and send it off.

That's half of your budget right there.

[monero-xmr]

You don’t understand. The incentives are all wrong. There is absolutely zero benefit for a bureaucracy to make itself more efficient and require less money each year. No one is incentivized to ensure money is being spent well. The biggest incentive for a lifelong bureaucrat is to increase budget and headcount - the more money and headcount you have, the more important you are. There is never a time when you aren’t requesting more money and more people. If you have money left over at the end of the fiscal year you 100% guarantee you spend it lest your budget is cut rather than increased.

I have seen so many bright and starry eyed idealists think they can fix government when they get in. In fact the best man at my wedding / best friend is a DC bureaucrat, and you get him a few beers deep and the stories he tells… My goodness. The money is not being spent well and he is jaded as fuck.

[opmelogy]

When I moved here a year+ ago, I was told by the leasing office for my apt that I needed to provide proof of rental information even though I had owned a house for 15 years (in another state, and had it fully paid off). They refused to process my application until I dug up contact info for a unit for a condo that was no longer being rented and for a property manager that did everything under the table.

Now we just found out that the company we started a year+ ago didn't get registered in CA "in time" so we owe $800 even though it's made no money. And by "in time" I mean it was two weeks past their grace period for being exempt for your first year.

So yeah, not really feeling CA nor SF at this point. We're looking to move and move the business somewhere else.

[NotYourLawyer]

1. Destroy your tax base by turning your city into a lawless hell hole / homeless paradise.

2. ???

3. Profit.

[matrix_overload]

4. Let people flee to other cities, vote based on identity/emotion and then be genuinely surprised why it's doing downhill the same way.

[maerF0x0]

2. Try a different strategy

[cphajduk]

If employee wages are a large part of the rising costs, then perhaps the cost of living for living in SF is too high. The cost of living is too high because rent is too high.

Since there is so much political contention to building more housing, there is no chance that housing prices will decrease (nobody wants to see their property lose value).

Now they are complaining about the problem they caused?!?

I don't know if this is ironic, justified or just funny. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

[zjp]

Somebody at a planning meeting for an apartment building in Nopa was arguing that it would go against the working-class history of the neighborhood (homes sell for >$1M there now btw). People here are in deep denial about SF being a world city, and the fact that people with (realized or paper) gains in the high hundred thousands are not "working class".

[slater]

They're a group of right-wing policy consultancy grifters, of course they'd complain.

[tomcar288]

They said SF's budget is 14 billion!! holy crap, that's more money than the GDP of entire countries! and it's still not enough.

[hackernewds]

how is it allocated

[CalChris]

SourceWatch on California Policy Center

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/California_Policy_Cent...

[mellosouls]

A left wing pressure group identifies the article publisher as a right wing pressure group.

Ok, cool, but whatever the quality of the arguments in the article that's probably not the devastating hammer blow to defeat them.

[poorbutdebtfree]

The fact checkers agree with Source Watch.

[hintymad]

Didn’t it cost $130K to offer just housing to a homeless person? That’s after-tax money. That is, it cost around 3x as much as the US median household income, right? If this is not corruption, I don’t know what is. But wait! People in SF elected the officials, so why should I complain about anything? /s

[29athrowaway]

Code of Ur-Nammu (2100 BC): If a man commits a robbery, he will be killed.

Code of San Francisco (2023 AD): If you try to prevent robbery, you will be killed.

/s

[ahahahahah]

Ah yes, 2100BC, the pinnacle of morality.

[rlt]

> undisciplined spending on programs to address San Francisco’s increasingly severe homelessness crisis.

Maybe throwing money at the problem is counter productive? Nah.

[cft]

"In the city’s Five-Year Financial Plan released in January this year"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-year_plans_of_the_Sovie...

[RC_ITR]

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58946

[simoncion]

> Additionally, retailers have been closing their San Francisco locations in droves, citing crime, homelessness, and drug use...

Evidently uncited are

* COVID concerns

* Rapidly increasing cost of goods and services that remains unmatched by wage increases

* Dwindling customer base as people find stores understaffed (thanks, "strategic" layoffs!), understocked, or both and give up and turn to online shopping.

* Dwindling customer base as people move the fuck away because they either just can't afford city life anymore, or (thanks to the overall success of the blood-drenched demonstration of the viability of remote work) are no longer forced to pay San Francisco rents to work for Really Solid software/IT companies.

[maerF0x0]

> COVID concerns

I left, in part, not because of COVID concern, but LOCKDOWN concerns. I was tired of "rules for thee, but not for me" policies that I disagreed with.

[pengaru]

> > Additionally, retailers have been closing their San Francisco locations in droves, citing crime, homelessness, and drug use...

"Walgreens Executive Says Shoplifting Threat Was Overstated" [0]

"Recent Retail Closures in U.S. Cities Follow Trends Established Before the Pandemic" [1]

Retail is just dying, but of course they're going to blame something other than their own failing / inability to compete with Amazon and the like.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/business/walgreens-shopli...

[1] https://www.planetizen.com/news/2023/05/123289-recent-retail...

[RC_ITR]

The problem of these articles is that they lean too far into kicking SF while it’s down, since it felt so invincible before.

Same kind of journalism happened in the early 2000s.

The problem is that they don’t recognize cyclicality.

Arguably the most important startup in decades is headquartered there, the CEO is stating remote work is a mistake, and the CTO is regularly calling SF the best place to start an AI startup.

SF will still face problems but a lot of this fiscal hand wringing will likely appear foolish in hindsight.

[onos]

Might be cyclical, or maybe it’s Detroit v2. We will see, hoping the former.

https://twitter.com/sfstandard/status/1662145831351336977?s=...

[hackernewds]

I'm guessing you mean OpenAI. Ironically they did their best work while working remotely not in an SF HQ. Also it behooves me to consider that a CEO/CTO in a competitive environment would be biased to dole out malignant advice, as evidenced against their own practice?

It's kinda like how you wouldn't want to use the toothpaste that "9 out of 10 dentists recommend". Or billionaires often mention their secret to success is merely "reading a lot" or "waking up at 4am" or doing dishes [0]

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/10/why-jeff-bezos-and-bill-gate...

[kaycebasques]

Back when I used to go to Stable Cafe a lot I often looked at the Pioneer Building and pondered that it was a strange, interesting building. Only learned in the last few weeks that it's OpenAI's HQ!

[fortran77]

There are many cities in California that are not having a financial crisis. Stop trying to confiscate homes from people because their neighbors paid too much money for their houses, condos, or apartments and "raised the property value." That's pure evil.

[8f2ab37a-ed6c]

Actually the other way around, the festering slum is the city center (Tenderloin, Skid Row, downtown Seattle, downtown Portland etc), but once you get out of the city, it's quite lovely, but with minimal public transportation and ideally far enough that the underclass wouldn't be able to get there without lots of hassle. See Marin, Los Gatos, Atherton etc.

[dehrmann]

> where if deranged homeless people show up, the cops swarm them within a few minutes of their acting out

Didn't stop the attack on Paul Pelosi, but he's married to a high-profile politician, so it wasn't a random attack.

[politician]

Even though it's after 7pm PT, I'm still surprised this managed to make it to the home page.

[jscipione]

Chicago and San Francisco were about to default on their debts before the mass reduction of American living standards through currency inflation payouts to state and local governments to make these city budgets solvent again in 2020 and 2021. I’m paying dearly for it, we all are, whether you live in San Francisco or not. I like many Americans are being crushed financially to pay off debts that I had absolutely nothing to do with creating and never supported in the first place.