But, what is SF truly like now...like in the past 5 years? I have not been in probably 10 years, but can you still go walk downtown without having to step over homeless people and crap like I read on the factual internet...?
I love living here. It's tough right now, but I'd reckon it's tough in every major city. I have a job, I have rent control, I walk around my neighborhood safely and love being able to interact with some of my neighbors and merchants.
Homelessness and drug addiction are a problem, as they are in most major cities, and it's become more and more apparent this year. Many cities deal with this by shuffling people around, criminalizing addiction and homelessness, locking people up, and SF seems to be trying to address it in the open.
Is it working? I don't know. It doesn't seem like it. Do I have answers? no. Would I feel differently if I owned a business near the Civic Center, Market, or Tenderloin, East Mission instead of Russian Hill? Probably.
I drive down Hyde to get to Physical Therapy and once you get into the TL -> the encampment at City Hall it's kind of an epicenter of a lot of the concern. It reminds of of Hamsterdam for those of you that watched
The Wire. It feels as if open drug use and sale has been allowed within a certain radius. But open drug use and sales are not looked at the same way when the users are blowing lines off the bar in the Marina, or people are passed out on pills and booze inside an apartment building, rather than on the street.
I applaud the fact that SF seems to be acknowledging that old solutions aren't really solutions, but I'm not sure how well it's working. The most salient answers always seem to be that the "answer" is investment in communities 20 years earlier. Schools, after school programs, jobs, loans for minority businesses, affordable housing with outreach services imbedded, etc.