1ºFriend of mine had to just go out there for a month for their job. He's a brutally honest person, and said that a lot of the people making troll comments as we know of course, have NEVER been there, and are only going by news clips they see. He was all over the city while there. His observation - yep, there are bad areas downtown just like there are in ANY city. And yep, there are A FEW areas where there are large numbers of homeless/drug people hanging out, just like in most larger cities. There are also quite a few places where you see NONE of that at all. It's not some apocalyptic movie as the news stations make it out to be.
A bigger problem there (as in MANY places now post-pandemic) is that work habits have evolved, and some companies literally have no need for large office spaces or buildings like they did years ago (and for decades). So like many places, SF and others are going to have to rethink what they do with these buildings, because yes, there are "empty" areas now.
2ºSusan Swift Brennan Center did a city analysis and even since 2016 a downward trend. Perhaps the crime is occurring in more affluent areas and is getting more attention. Would it not be better when government and social media has to censor that a person has to put their sources of why they believe that before deprecating accounts? That way we get the full view. So what street had human feces for all to see and crime right in front of someone. Human nature is we would all get our cell phones out and take a picture and post it. https://sfgov.org/scoreca...erty-crime-rate
3ºSusan Swift Oh Susan that was at least a 25-year ramp up making both parties responsible. So how much is local and how much is the other two layers or government on that? My position is local citizens created that mess but tolerating behaviors from upper demographic who needed a level of debasing activity to entertain or to cover client activities. Brennan Center says The violent crime rate also peaked in 1991 at 716 violent crimes per 100,000, and now stands at 366, about half that rate. That is national. Brennan also did a city analysis which shows San Franciso has a significant downward trend from 1990 to 2016 in violent crime and regular crime per 100000 people. https://www.brennancenter...201990-2016.pdf