I've lived in SF for almost 30 years. I agree 100%. Sure, there's a lot more sad/ugly homelessness in the post-covid era. The shantytowns out by Candlestick are depressing. The Tenderloin continues to be a mess.

But do I feel less safe? Absolutely not! The neighborhoods (where most people live) are just fine. I regularly walk home from the bars at midnight without a care. It's simply not a problem.

Compare back to the mid-90's, when there was active gun/gang violence in the Mission corridor ... quite frankly, I feel far safer today than I used to.

Beautifully put. I've noticed a lot of the barometer (if you will) for gauging peoples "feelings" of safety is if you're personally scared and/or uncomfortable with just the existence of homeless people. I live DTLA - 4 blocks off skid row - and I've never felt unsafe. Uncomfortable? Sure sometimes. Disheartened by the state of one of the richest cities in the world? Absolutely. But unsafe? never.

But if you equate homeless people near me = unsafe, then that's a different discussion.

Unsafe was 80's-90's Compton crack gang wars with machine gun drive-bys.

Unsafe is the current Baltimore or south side of Chicago.

The Tenderloin isn't anything remotely like that. Sure there are dealers on the street and people hawking stolen goods at the bus stops, but there doesn't seem to be violent unsafety.

One of the reasons it feels unsafe to people is the trash scattered across the streets and sidewalks, the rundown condition of those same streets and sidewalks, and just generally rundown feel of many buildings. It's a look that reminds people of neglected neighborhoods of the city they moved here from.

So you only feel safe because you have the means / are affluent enough to avoid crime ridden areas?

That‘s not entirely fair.

Sorry if it came across that way, wasn't my intent.

I live in the city, and travel through all parts -- including the less desirable parts. I ride down Market every day. I go to the central library at Civic Center. I do bike loops through Candlestick. I frequent bars in the Tenderloin.

So no, it's not just because I can avoid "crime-ridden areas". It's because I don't find those areas fundamentally unsafe.

It seems to me like a lot of the people claiming to feel unsafe are equally affluent.

Thanks for calling out privilege, but I think we should assume good faith. I don't think they were trying to say that everything is good, they're just saying the narrative isn't as simple as the media is making it look.

Depends on what media you're reading I suppose. Quite a lot of it paints SF is a city of haves and have-nots which fits nicely into the above poster's experience.

I've lived in a lot of places with, in many states, in many countries, all with different population densities and economic diversity... and that statement holds true for all of them.

One of these days the sheer weight and remaining shelter of class consciousness will break through the cognitive dissonance. One of these days.

Affluence is not always privilege. It can be hard earned.

> Affluence is not always privilege. It can be hard earned.

But once you're affluent, you're almost by definition privileged, surely?

My Google results defined it as follows:

“ A privilege is a certain entitlement to immunity granted by the state or another authority to a restricted group, either by birth or on a conditional basis”

My mailman quit because he was robbed at gunpoint two blocks from my house, in broad daylight, in one of the neighborhoods you mention. https://sfstandard.com/criminal-justice/mail-carrier-robbed-...

I don't understand why it has to be "SF is perfectly safe" or "SF is a dystopian hellhole". Why not pick a middle ground?

Nowhere on the planet is "perfectly safe" so no one is saying about that SF. Positive sentiment is probably in the middle ground you're asking for, whereas negative sentiment literally uses "dystopian hellhole".

No, you're not the only one. While I don't like the depressing level of homelessness, mental illness, and drug addiction, I generally haven't felt nearly as unsafe as people always play up. If there's a volatile situation around, GTFO, and don't walk in dark neighborhoods at night, de-escalate, that kind of thing helps a lot of course.

Also, why do we never factor gun violence into these conversations about safety? In SF there are relatively few people walking around strapped. I looked it up, and in my hometown of Louisville, KY (which is no Detroit or Baltimore), there were about 130 gun injuries/deaths per 100k in a recent year -- in SF, about 30! Which is worse, getting shot, or avoiding poop on the sidewalk?

But also, for what it's worth, I'm a reasonably tall white guy. I think that affects how many unsafe situations I'm likely to encounter A LOT.

> there were about 130 gun injuries/deaths per 100k in a recent year -- in SF, about 30! Which is worse, getting shot, or avoiding poop on the sidewalk

San Francisco is number 23 for violent crime in the list of cities on wikipedia.

Your options are not "get shot in another city Vs avoiding poop on the sidewalk in San Francisco", it's "don't get hurt or killed in the average city Vs get hurt or killed in San Francisco".

You're equivocating "lack of gun crime" to safety, which is as incorrect as you can get while still misleading the audience

> San Francisco is number 23 for violent crime in the list of cities on wikipedia.

No. It's number 37. It's number 23 with the default sort, which is alphabetical order. (California is early in the alphabet).

It's number 66 when you sort by homicides per 100k.

> No. It's number 37. It's number 23 with the default sort, which is alphabetical order. (California is early in the alphabet).

I checked, you're correct, but my point that it is more dangerous than the average city is still correct, even at #37.

> It's number 66 when you sort by homicides per 100k.

So? We're talking about safety here, not fatality. When people talk about safety, which is what I was responding to[1], they literally talking about violence, not "only violence that results in death".

I specifically addressed the posters dishonest equivocation that in other cities he is likely to be shot, while in SF all he has to do is step over poop.

The clear fact is that you're, on average, less safe in San Francisco than elsewhere; the gun argument doesn't factor into this so using it to show how "safe" SF is, is pointless ideology that is both irrelevant and dishonest.

[1] This is verbatim from the post I responded to:

> I generally haven't felt nearly as unsafe as people always play up.

> I checked, you're correct, but my point that it is more dangerous than the average city is still correct, even at #37.

It's actually probably 41st, but Durham, Toledo, Greensboro and Charlotte don't report rape numbers, but their murder, and aggravated assault numbers are notably higher than SF's, and their burglary numbers are similar.

> The clear fact is that you're, on average, less safe in San Francisco than elsewhere;

Among the top 20 cities, SF is basically smack dab in the middle in terms of safety, I didn't want to spend the time normalizing by crime rate and population (and that gives the opportunity to debate what to do with NYC, who is both a massive outlier by crime and size), but I think a reasonable summary is that SF is about average in terms of violence on a city by city basis or resident-by-resident basis. And is probably safer than average on a resident-by-resident basis if you exclude NYC.

That's a different conclusion than what you're coming to.

> That's a different conclusion than what you're coming to.

All I'm doing is contending the OP's claim that he is safer in SF while at the same time he is not living in a city that is noticeably less violent.

Even if you do the legwork to find that SF has average violence, the OP's delusional assertion is still incorrect, because he is not safer than the average person in the average city.

You know, when you make a statistical fail, the polite thing to do is take the correction in good heart and then sit it out for the day, instead of battling through the thread and tagging the person you originally disagreed with as 'delusional.'

> So? We're talking about safety here, not fatality.

So? Not all violent crime is equally severe. Being forced to hand over your money is not the same as being killed.

> I specifically addressed the posters dishonest equivocation that in other cities he is likely to be shot,

Your odds of being shot seems to be significantly less in SF.

>> while in SF all he has to do is step over poop.while

> Your odds of being shot seems to be significantly less in SF.

Irrelevant to his point that all he has to worry about in a less-safe-than-average city is to step over poop.

If you're living in a city that has more violent crime than average, it's dishonest to claim that all you have to worry about is non-violent crime because "guns bad, m'kay?"

> If you're living in a city that has more violent crime than average

It's not really clear to me this is the case. The average violent crime rate for the top 25 cities, excluding Charlotte (because they don't report most crimes to the feds) is 702/100,000; SF's is 715, which is a statistical tie. And then, the murder rate is way below the average.

You also need to consider demographics; e.g. a young city with an active club scene probably has a higher incidence of robberies.

I'd also appreciate you to cut the aggressive language in talking about this. If we're talking about fallacies, ranking cities in alphabetical order to determine their crime rates is not awesome. People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, so perhaps reduce the amount of scorn you're piling on other people?

There's plenty to complain about in SF. My considered opinion is:

* SF is somewhat safer than the average large US city (violent crime rate is comparable; severe crimes are at a lower rate)

* Quality of life crime is really bad; #4 in your list of 100 for property crime, at a rate that is a high multiple of the average.

Speaking of equivocation, no it isn't. It's number 23 for crime.

If you sort by total in the violent crime section, it's well out of the top fifty.

It's number four in property crime, which is awful, but not a measure of safety.

> If you sort by total in the violent crime section, it's well out of the top fifty.

As the other poster said, it's #37.

It's number 23 in alphabetical order, actually :D

I don't know where you got your gun injuries / death stats, but there are two things to be careful of here:

1) substitution effects. As a hypothetical example, we could have one city that has 30 gun murders per 100k and another that has 130 per 100k, but both have the same murder rate (because you can murder with things other than guns). IMHO the important rate is the murder rate, and how much of it is with guns vs. other stuff is an aside.

2) Make sure your numbers don't include suicides. If they include suicides, they're not informative.

> why do we never factor gun violence into these conversations about safety

Because it doesn't particularly matter if you are robbed, hurt, or killed by a gun, knife, bat, or fists.

(And when looking at stats, remember: over half of gun deaths in the U.S. are self-inflicted. Which is still tragic, but different than assault.)

It does matter as guns are obviously far more deadly than the others

Disease is even deadlier.

I've also lived in San Francisco for many years, in different neighborhoods. Now with my family including 2 young kids. The usual media narrative around SF is also very foreign to me and doesn't match my personal experience. Living in SoMa has very little in common with living anywhere west of Twin Peaks.

Therefore the need to rely on data to find more objectivity when debating public policies. Yes data can be twisted and most of the time is poorly reported and interpreted by people, but it's better than relying on personal anecdotes.

I imagine SF feels probably fine coming from another American city. But if you moved here from Seoul, it would be terrifying

Interestingly, during my one bar night out in Seoul on an overnight visit to change visas for Japan, some dude started a fight with someone and tried to grab a knife sitting on a table while being escorted out. The people around me didn't seem particularly horrified by that spectacle though. I lived in Tokyo for 6 years, SF feels fine coming from there.

Was it in Itaewon?

You're probably right. Similarly, the tolerated racism in South Korea would also be terrifying to people here.

American cities are more violent, yes. But it doesn't make a lot of sense to pin that on San Francisco politicians, which usually seems to be the endgame with these warnings about how dangerous it is.

I'd wager this is the case for most American cities if you are coming here from Seoul

100% agree with you. Asian cities feel much much safer. But there is a lot more context and history behind why it is.

I don’t live in SF, but I live nearby and take my kids there for outings pretty frequently. The news reports and anecdotes have made me a little wary of these outings, but our actual experiences never have. I don’t doubt that others have very different, equally valid experiences of the city, and I do hate to see the abject misery that’s on full display in some neighborhoods. But I’ve never felt unsafe there in the 30+ years I’ve been exploring the city, including while walking at night with little kids.

I grew up in "safe suburbs" and moved here 5 years ago. Saw a lot of sad changes with COVID... but in terms of safety, I'm 100% with you. On rare occasion, I'll cross a street if an individual is behaving particularly weirdly but I've never witnessed/experienced a "random act of violence". Broadly speaking, SF is safe from violent crime unless you're looking for trouble.

I'm sure parents with young children or elderly have a different experience but that's not different for any other larger US city.

With this said, the topic of the city turning a blind eye to property crime and "extreme", visible destitution is a whole different story.

Depends on what your baseline is though. You are perhaps feeling safe because you're used to SF.

Yeah, I agree with this. Visiting SF from other American cities that have nothing like the scale of its problems...is jarring. I'm sure you can get used to it.

Also, we should differentiate between the feeling of comfort / safety (which is what most people care about), and actual crime statistics (which are themselves fraught, I don't think people in SF even report car break-ins these days since the police and justice systems don't work any more).

People absolutely report car break ins because they want insurance payouts, people just don't expect the police to do anything about it.

I wouldn't walk in Valencia late at night. It's not a safe area. As evidence, a Twitter employee was shot and killed there in 2020; he was caught in the crossfire of a shootout.

> Brousseau was walking home from Dolores Park at 8:22 p.m. Friday when 50 to 60 shots were fired at the intersection of Rosa Parks Lane and Guerrero Street, according to San Francisco police. The gunfire left him critically wounded and caused non-life-threatening injuries to an 18-year-old victim https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/Twitter-employee-t...

And if you'd rather have the tl;dr version: https://www.sfgate.com/news/bayarea/article/22-Year-Old-Suff...

Rosa Parks Lane & Guerrero Street is one block away from Valencia Street.

I used to live in the area around the same time. I walked Guerrero frequently to go grocery shopping and get to my gym, usually between 7:00pm and 10:00pm. That easily could have been me. Needless to say I don't live there anymore.

I wouldn't walk alone in the TL or SOMA at night, but if you skip those neighborhoods entirely after 5pm you're going to miss some of the best bars and venues in the city!

Black Cat, Emperor Norton's, Zombie Village, Bar 888, Tempest, the EndUp...Maybe one reason the "SF is a hellhole" crowd are so negative about this town are because they shut themselves out of so many great places!

yeah you can drink and party for a few years but then the filth, the misery, and in many cases the idiocy of this city starts to wear one down. I've been working in the city for decades but now I'm just fed up and disillusioned. I can't help these people and this misery will not stop, and no amount of drinks at the tempest will change that.

Maybe if you live there.

I'm very comfortable with cities, but as a visitor to SF seeing someone break into a vehicle on a busy street, 8 pm on a Saturday night is pretty bad.

That sort of crime matters too.

Welcome to our world in Chicago, where we have been living in a hellhole for about a decade. There is a lot more violent crime here than SF but it is almost all in small pockets of the city.

This is simply a narrative that certain people are trying to portray to prove that certain policy doesn’t work. It’s nonsense.

For real. Avoid tenderloin and SOMA and everything else is fine.

In other words avoid density and transit. Best way to avoid bs in one of the densest cities in the US is to hang in the burbs.

The tenderloin is a tiny part of the city that is easily avoided. Plenty of dense places that are nice too.

I would disagree. I walk, drive and ride all over SF, including TL/SOMA because I'm not too squeamish and it's on the way between a lot of pairs of destinations.

I can tell you that if you took these 3 maps and overlaid them you'd have an SF sketchiness map.

Flat-land -> easy walking, access for transients

Transit -> access for transients

Zoned for density -> lower civic engagement, more likely to end up losing out and getting navigation centers and needle exchanges.

https://sites.google.com/site/sloanestopolesson/_/rsrc/14449... https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/imumv8YZu7u... https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/5eaf1365b8d39c82c3777a8b/5eb...

Most of the property crime seems to involve people in cars. In addition, drivers killed 50 people in San Francisco last year, mostly pedestrians. There were 55 homicides in the last year -- to be clear that 105 killings last year, about 50% by drivers.

Which part do you disagree with? That it is not the only dense area or that it is easily avoided?

Cool maps btw.