As for me I used to go to SF at every opportunity. Now I only go there if it is absolutely necessary for some short errand, and as soon as I'm done I leave ASAP before my car gets broken into.
In my view the main problem is not the politicians but the ineffective opaque police that does not have to produce any metrics and is not subject to any kind of oversight, not in SF and not anywhere else either.
For example, I had a car window smashed not in SF but in Fremont, and when I went to the police, they informed me that that is not even an arrestable offense. Window was smashed in front of a hotel with a prominent security camera overlooking the street. The police told me they left a voicemail with the hotel asking if their camera caught anything. The hotel never returned the police voicemail, the police never bothered to follow-up with the hotel, and told me they don't have authority to take the security footage of the public street without hotel's consent. Some time later I noticed that the hotel removed that street-facing security camera they had, leaving just an empty pole.
I wrote a letter to the Fremont city council regarding their police not wanting to work and lying to victims of crime. And that's when I got back some police action -- in the form of a mental Fremont PD police sergeant calling me in the morning to harass me and bitch about my letter.
So even if SF is bad, outside SF it is not much better. Another nugget to consider is that back in 2014, back when crime was nowhere as bad as today, CA voters, not liberal politicians, voted for Proposition 47 "Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act" which made potential felonies chargeable only as misdemeanors.
Vancouver is just as gorgeous as SF and much safer (downtown was kinda sketch years ago) but kinda tech hostile
All of the west coast suffers from high structural costs. People really only endure SF for the venture money and trips to GG bridge, otherwise it makes little sense as a founder to operate there. My dream tech scenario would combine Sand Hill or London VC with Eastern Europe operating costs and lifestyle. But SF is a hotbed of AI now and so ppl literally risk their lives to work there
If you could fund and run an AI startup on the Croatian coast, I imagine SF might empty out pretty quick
In my view the main problem is not the politicians but the ineffective opaque police that does not have to produce any metrics and is not subject to any kind of oversight, not in SF and not anywhere else either.
For example, I had a car window smashed not in SF but in Fremont, and when I went to the police, they informed me that that is not even an arrestable offense. Window was smashed in front of a hotel with a prominent security camera overlooking the street. The police told me they left a voicemail with the hotel asking if their camera caught anything. The hotel never returned the police voicemail, the police never bothered to follow-up with the hotel, and told me they don't have authority to take the security footage of the public street without hotel's consent. Some time later I noticed that the hotel removed that street-facing security camera they had, leaving just an empty pole.
I wrote a letter to the Fremont city council regarding their police not wanting to work and lying to victims of crime. And that's when I got back some police action -- in the form of a mental Fremont PD police sergeant calling me in the morning to harass me and bitch about my letter.
So even if SF is bad, outside SF it is not much better. Another nugget to consider is that back in 2014, back when crime was nowhere as bad as today, CA voters, not liberal politicians, voted for Proposition 47 "Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act" which made potential felonies chargeable only as misdemeanors.