Hotel Owners Start To Write Off San Francisco as Business Nosedives (wsj.com) 327
San Francisco's once thriving hotel market is suffering its worst stretch in at least 15 years, pummeled by the same forces that have emptied out the city's office towers and closed many retail stores. From a report: Hotel owners in New York and Los Angeles are filling nearly as many rooms this year as they did in 2019, according to hotel-data firm STR. Their revenue per available room exceeds what it was before the pandemic. But in San Francisco, hotels are still struggling badly in both occupancy and room rates compared with before the pandemic. Revenue per available room was nearly 23% lower in April compared with the same month in 2019. The city's lodging business has been squeezed by crime and other quality-of-life issues that have kept many convention bookers away. Tech companies' embrace of remote work also undercuts business travel to the city and hotel activity.
Now, a growing number of San Francisco hoteliers are signaling they may be ready to give up. In recent months, the owner of the city's Huntington Hotel sold the property after facing foreclosure and the Yotel San Francisco hotel sold in a foreclosure auction. Club Quarters San Francisco, which has been in default on its loan since 2020, may also be headed to foreclosure, according to data company Trepp. Other lodging properties in the city are also vulnerable. More than 20 additional San Francisco hotels are facing loans due in the next two years, according to data company CoStar. In San Francisco's biggest potential hotel default yet, Park Hotels & Resorts last week said it has stopped making loan payments on debt secured by the Hilton San Francisco Union Square and Parc 55 San Francisco. The two hotels, with nearly 3,000 rooms between them, are in the heart of San Francisco's shopping and cultural district.
Now, a growing number of San Francisco hoteliers are signaling they may be ready to give up. In recent months, the owner of the city's Huntington Hotel sold the property after facing foreclosure and the Yotel San Francisco hotel sold in a foreclosure auction. Club Quarters San Francisco, which has been in default on its loan since 2020, may also be headed to foreclosure, according to data company Trepp. Other lodging properties in the city are also vulnerable. More than 20 additional San Francisco hotels are facing loans due in the next two years, according to data company CoStar. In San Francisco's biggest potential hotel default yet, Park Hotels & Resorts last week said it has stopped making loan payments on debt secured by the Hilton San Francisco Union Square and Parc 55 San Francisco. The two hotels, with nearly 3,000 rooms between them, are in the heart of San Francisco's shopping and cultural district.
Neat (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Neat (Score:5, Funny)
And in turn that will attract more businesses to the area creating a success spiral of sorts. Three cheers for communism.
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Well, I guess in a way, it would be better for them to be pooping and dropping their needles in the hallways rather than the open streets....
See? There's always a way to put a positive spin on things!!
Don't be so negative.
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Why would they crap in the hall when they have a bathroom in the room?
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It was a bit tongue in cheek joke....but a bit in truth too.
These people are defecating in the streets currently...when they have public restrooms they could be using.
These are druggies...zombies for the most part that don't give a crap where they crap.
If they open these hotels to them, they'll be totaled within weeks....if not on fire.
But yes..they do and will poop where they live.
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Yes I believe it should be investigated with some actual experiments to figure out if private bathrooms or a shared bathroom are cheaper. The idea is that they may trash a private bathroom less but I have doubts about this, it should be tested. The problem is that absolutely nothing is being done, except for useless expensive measures being pushed by NIMBYs to make sure they fail.
The housing provided should be shit, but it HAS to be better than living on the street or they are not going to willingly move to
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Why would they crap in the hall when they have a bathroom in the room?
Maybe the toilets are clogged/broken. Maybe they're just too whacked out on drugs or mental problems to even find the toilet and just drop a turd wherever they want. NEVER underestimate how some humans can sink to sub-animal levels of behavior. An in-law's German Shepherd who I looked after for a week had the good sense to discreetly poop at one end of my back yard instead of doing it whenever and wherever the urge struck.
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Remember - it's not a crack house, it's a crack home.
https://www.theonion.com/its-n... [theonion.com]
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In business when the market changes considerable you try to stay with your core but cater to the new paying customer. And cutting costs. -refits will sink, so if this is ju
Full circle (Score:2)
So, the full process is:
1. Landlords turn apartments into AirBNBs to make more money
2. Renters have trouble finding long-term apartments, driving up rent prices
3. Hotels go out of business due to lost income
4. Landlords buy up hotels, turning them into long-term apartments
5. Goto step 1
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In many cases...banks could be getting the property handed back to them as landlords stop making payments.
The Westfield folks did that with the mall that they operated. The banks are now responsible for that property.
Re:Neat (Score:4, Funny)
Except it's nowhere near true throughout the city. Many smaller neighborhoods are thriving [sfgate.com]. It's only the downtown/Union-Square/convention area that's currently in decline. Of course that's what the media picks up on. "The rest of San Francisco is doing fine" isn't generally newsworthy.
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You could also point out that violent crime is worse in red places.
https://www.thirdway.org/repor... [thirdway.org]
Union square was pretty much the only "disaster area" that we saw. I've seen just as bad in my home town of Salt Lake City though.
Re: Neat (Score:4, Funny)
And the best way to fund that is to reduce police funding. Just as we know for certain that UBI will make people want to work even more, something we're totally not speculating about, we also know that replacing police with social workers also reduces crime.
Or better yet, if we simply legalize assault, shoplifting, and burglary, that will also reduce the crime rate, and the city will be better off for it. It's not as if those are actually prosecuted anyways.
Re: We're not speculating about UBI (Score:4, Insightful)
We've got the studies Studies from long before it was called UBI and when we called it "welfare".
Like Will Rogers said:
The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover didnâ(TM)t know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellows hands
That doesn't look like a study to me, it looks more like speculation, but it also doesn't even touch the topic of scarcity.
If you give people enough money and security to live they won't shop lift. I don't shop lift. I'm also not living hand to mouth.
Oh yes they will. They definitely will. Even people who have a lot of money shoplift. Remember how you said that people in Iran would suddenly be more civilized if they just had a job and education? Well...actually they already do. But also we tried that with Afghanistan, even providing them with an entire generation of educated and employed people. Yet when we left, they just went right back to Islamic fundamentalism. And regardless of whether you believe this, that is what the majority of them want. If they really wanted to stand up to the Taliban, they would have. The disparity of military power between Ukraine and Russia was much bigger than that, and yet look what happened when the majority decided to stand up to it.
You know where this disconnect comes from? Like all socialists, you have it in your head that everybody thinks the same way you do and have the same motivations. They simply don't. You have no idea how the world actually works. Neither did Karl Marx; when anthropologists look at his claims about how primitive civilizations worked, they think he's nuts, because unlike him they actually study it, and they know better.
Crime rates are back below their pre-pandemic levels. They shot up a bit during the pandemic because people didn't have food, shelter & medicine.
No, that's not at all why. Unlike you, I wasn't getting high during the pandemic, so I remember pretty clearly how it all happened. First, there was a lot of panic buying, so we had an acute shortage of daily essentials like toilet paper and face masks. There was a light shortage of certain kinds of foods, but nobody went starving. Nobody had to go without medicine either, because people can't exactly panic buy prescription drugs, which were always available alternatives even in the very rare cases of no over the counter medications being available.
As for legalizing assault, we did that. It's called "Stand Your Ground". The people you're making fun of were against it. They said it would lead to people getting shot. They were right.
Actually that would fall under self-defense rather than legalized assault. The castle doctrine is basically the same thing, only specific to your domicile.
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Or, just renovate them and convert them to apartments. Shouldn't be too hard to make a hotel into an apartment building.
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Oh really?
So you just think that wiring and plumbing exists in every hotel room for a full kitchen? Or would you be happy renting an apartment that doesn't have a kitchen?
Just rewiring a hotel to have 240VAC in each room for an oven would sink the project.
Re: Neat (Score:3, Interesting)
homeless shelters
Sounds good. But that might not work. Here, in Seattle, the homeless will attempt to burn down anything that doesn't meet their expectations. A few converted hotels have been closed due to fire damage.
The current thinking is that homeless shelter has to be "non congregate". Which originally meant that dormitory style shelter will not do. But advocates for the homeless-industrial complex have been pushing the idea that it has to be single family type housing. Mixed in to upper middle class neighborhoods. Or
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In short...Fuck That.
All that will do, is bring down home values, and raise crime and make normal neighborhoods more dangerous.
Is your idea of "equity" makin
Re: Neat (Score:5, Interesting)
homeless shelters
Sounds good. But that might not work. Here, in Seattle, the homeless will attempt to burn down anything that doesn't meet their expectations. A few converted hotels have been closed due to fire damage.
The current thinking is that homeless shelter has to be "non congregate". Which originally meant that dormitory style shelter will not do. But advocates for the homeless-industrial complex have been pushing the idea that it has to be single family type housing. Mixed in to upper middle class neighborhoods. Or the homeless' self esteem will be harmed.
Personally, if I were homeless, I wouldn't want to live in a high rise building with questionable escape options next door to a tweaker who will set his room on fire if housekeeping doesn't replenish his toilet paper fast enough.
It's not about self esteem, it's about influences.
You stick people around a bunch of drug addicts they're probably going to stay/become a drug addict.
If you stick them into a middle class (more likely lower than upper middle class) neighbourhood, they have a much better chance of escaping addiction.
The downside is you're also bringing those influences into that lower middle class neighbourhood.
You're free to disagree, but try not to deliberately misunderstand.
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And have a negative cash flow position.
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You could then take the first floor and open clinics and things of that nature to help.
You would be in a much better place to screen people to get them proper help if they were all in one location.
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They generally do not want help, they just want there next fix.
The few that would benefit get overshadowed by the majority that will just trash the place.
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I don't know about the US, but in the UK, if you are in a homeless shelter, you are still classified as homeless. A homeless shelter gives you a bed and a roof over your head, but it doesn't give you any of the other benefits of having a home, like a place to safely keep your stuff, an address to get things delivered to, and so on.
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Many people are not aware of the extent of the HIC - Homeless Industrial Complex. There's an entire cottage industry of shady "non-profits" that make shitloads of money for purportedly providing various homeless outreach services. All they really do is give them enough food and materials to survive on the streets, while keeping the remainder of the funds for themselves and their well-compensated staff of various directors and executives.
The last thing the HIC wants is for people to get off of the streets. T
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When people are talking about homeless issues with crime, business, and trash accumulation, it's about the unsheltered homeless. And they, by far, have the lions share of substance abuse and mental illness in the "homeless" catagory.
It is worth pointing out, of course, that these substance abuse and mental illness problems are usually the reason why they are unsheltered. Although the stress of losing a job and losing your home can certainly be a contributing factor in causing substance abuse, and chronic substance abuse can cause mental illness, neither of those conditions is typically caused by not being in a homeless shelter. Rather, the reverse is true — people get kicked out of homeless shelters for having a psychotic break
Re: Neat (Score:3)
Bullshit. It might be close to true that women can always find a shelter, but for men there are many places where there just aren't enough shelter beds to accommodate the numbers.
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The NYC homeless go indoors for a reason: NYC is a lot colder than LA.
Re: Neat (Score:2)
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You can get people off the street. Improving their lives and the life of the city.
The people you're seeing in Youtube videos don't want to be off the street. Living on the street is their lifestyle choice and it's safer with a lot of people around. The only thoughts in those people's heads are where to get their next fix.
The ones who don't want to live like that already have places to go and people who'll help them.
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Forced rehab (Score:2)
Does not work. People are addicts to fill a hole. Making them get clean off one substance makes them substitute addictions. It's how they fill their personal hole.
They'll recover when they want to, if they ever do. Some people with profound personality disorders probably never will recover.
Forcible rehab is the equivalent of torture. If we are actually civilized, we wouldn't tolerate it.
I'd take an island and put them on it, drop off food and drugs and provide them with the resources to get clean
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It's worth looking into some of the "housing first" homeless programs. The long and short of it is get folks into housing, not contingent on anything else, and give them a solid home base and a lot of other problems take care of themselves or at least have a much much higher success rate.
It's borne out by evidence and studies as well. It's also critical that it's "housing first, but not housing only." It needs to be a comprehensive plan to address addiction, mental illness, and the like. A lot of places hav
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euphemisms (Score:3, Insightful)
from the /. summary:
"...pummeled by the same forces that have emptied out the city's office towers and closed many retail stores.
"pummeled by the same forces" means run by Democrats.
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That and the urine and feces on the street to give you that extra authentic sense urban environment.
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Don't worry, we still have the poop map. [twitter.com] Oh wait it's everywhere. Nevermind.
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That might not be an entirely unrelated issue...
Re:euphemisms (Score:5, Informative)
That's just the spin their putting on the story. Bad news in a blue state - hype it as caused by wrong headed state politics! Bad news in a red state - a sad time due to wrong headed federal politics.
And no, the feces on the street is rare, and you'll see that in Dallas as well, it's just not hyped. Homelessness is a problem *everywhere*, only some states cover it up. And when someone is homeless, where do they go? Not to a conservative rural area where they'll starve in a field unseen by anyone; but to a city, one with services, somewhere to park the car, somewhere with a public restroom close by, etc.
It's tough times for hotels, period. Yes, it might be rising somewhere. But the pandemic has seriously hit the tourist towns and the convention towns. Except in red states where they think the virus was a hoax. Tech travel is down, more so with techies refusing to even go to the normal office, and that's the big money maker for many hotels in S.F; and with travel plus inflation people are looking for a bargain in the vacation, which means budget hotels. This problem isn't due to bad politics.
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I just saw this part after original post.
You speak in terms sounding like you think the pandemic is still going on?
It ended a long time ago my friend...most of us are past and and have been living 100% normal lives again.
We did get hit hard initially...but once the virus mutated a time or two...it became basically harmless to most people alive.
Are you still wearing
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It ended a long time ago my friend...most of us are past and and have been living 100% normal lives again.
As the summary stated: Work. From. Home. Tech CEOs don't want to bring investors to tumbleweed-filled offices.
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Not our problem.
Make vagrancy an arrest able and punishable crime again....
"Not our problem, now let's pay $50k a year to house each person we want off our streets."
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So you're in favor of setting up shanty towns outside of town... on private property then?
And when those private property owners complain, where do we then involuntarily send these people? Where does compassion fit into all of this? How is a homeless guy supposed to eat if he's dropped off in the middle of fucking nowhere and told "good luck!"
"Bus them far enough out of the city" is how unreasonably large homeless populations have ended up in some cities already - from craven assholes in charge of some ci
Re:euphemisms (Score:5, Informative)
That has little to no meaning post pandemic in a (formerly) VERY popular tourist city.
This is a dying city...because due to policies and their resultant consequences, no one wants to live, work or visit there anymore.
Plenty of other tourist cities post pandemic have NO problem filling hotels with tourists and conventioneers.
Hell, even New Orleans, with its sad bump up in crime still packs the tourists and conventions in and has been for years now.
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How much is (Score:5, Interesting)
How much of this is really less revenu on rooms ( presumably mostly offset by less staff to manage and clean up after fewer guests) and how much is variable interest rate structures on the loans?
Honestly I feel bad for the management. Its kind of the perfect storm of increased financing costs and declining revenue at the same time. In both cases the drivers behind those things are largely forces outside their control.
The financial structure of these big hotels might be more vulnerable to than other commercial property but the trend seems to be getting clearer. We are NOT going back to office work as it was done pre-pandemic. Business should not want to either. There WILL be another pandemic and its likely to be as disruptive in terms of being able to cram large numbers of people into a cube farm, forcing everyone back to the office is actually a recipe for incurring huge costs down the line.
The supply of short term housing and office space is mismatched to the new market. Its going to have to change, everyone needs to accept that means commercial defaults, it means cities are going to find parts of the transport networks are in the wrong places and improperly scaled, its going to mean changes to tax structure, its going to me everyone's favorite urban planning pet projects need a reevaluation. The more people dig in and refuse to accept reality the worse it will be.
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I think THIS is the real reason why cities like SF are being deliberately allowed to go to shit.
Let's watch and see who ends up buying all of these distressed properties at a discount. I bet it's the same people who pumped money into "progressive" political campaigns to get dingbats like London Breed and Chesa Boudin elected in the first place.
Once they acquire the distressed assets, watch them suddenly throw their support around real leaders who will crack down on crime and filth and allow the city to be r
Those 2 and 37 more (Score:5, Informative)
Several of my family and friends work in hospitality in that area. They were all jaw dropped shocked that 2 of the biggest hotels were being abandoned.
Apparently there are as many as *_37_* more in SF where the owners are considering the same.
That's a catastrophe for the city and the hotel chains and the banks and the employees and the businesses in the area and yeah pretty much everyone.
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After the weakest few die it will drive up demand at the others.
Re:Those 2 and 37 more (Score:4, Insightful)
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All that means is...you're not doing it right.
fewer businesses, less tourism it all adds up. (Score:3)
I recently saw this video of Powell Street [youtube.com] one of the prime tourist sites in the city. Also, just the other day a major downtown mall operator indicated that it's defaulting on its loan payments and turning it back over to the lenders. [msn.com] This is in the past few days alone.
All of this is because of crime, declining foot traffic/tourism, and therefore lack of businesses. Why would I want to go to San Francisco as a tourist? There aren't many compelling reasons considering the crime, the homeless issue, and a city government that has lost focus on what makes San Francisco desirable; congratulations you've turned a beautiful city into a shit hole.
Don't pretend it's just hotels (Score:5, Insightful)
Local retail is imploding [zerohedge.com] as well.
It's ok, people. We can admit that Democratic policies in these cities are leading them off a cliff because Reaganomics was the driving force behind NAFTA which created the Rest Belt.
The greatest "threat to Democracy" in the USA is the actual behavior of democratically elected politicians and how so much of it is driven by mindless ideology that never yields to evidence that it's destroying the common good in real time.
Re: Don't pretend it's just hotels (Score:3)
No need to sugarcoat it. Democrats has ruined our cities, full stop.
Don't re-write history (Score:3)
I'll defend an Obama or Clinton when history is on their side, or a Reagan or Trump when it's on their side - we all need to face the reality that history is WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED or it's impossible to have sane discussions. In this case, you are WAY OFF when you tie Reaganomics to NAFTA.
1. While Reagan (and thus by implication, Reaganomics) was indeed for "free trade" most people forget the most important details. At that time, it was ILLEGAL for American businesses to do business with a number of countri
A different analysis (poorly timed REIT) (Score:5, Informative)
An contrarian view that this hotel mortgage 'crisis' is more strongly driven by the effects of poorly timed financial manipulation / leveraged buyout of old SF hotels by REITs
https://wolfstreet.com/2023/06... [wolfstreet.com]
They had a good run. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that sometimes people forget that bankruptcy is a normal part of a business cycle. It'd be nice if markets and circumstances allowed a business to be viable forever, but that just isn't true. Knowing when to pull the plug is important.
Sometimes the collateral damage is ugly. I'm sure there are a lot of service jobs involved that have no easy lateral move opportunities. But, make hay while the sun shines. It's a lot like layoffs. Lots of people get fixated the moment of the layoff and forget the personally profitable period that preceded it.
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The trouble is the ethos of 'make hay while the sun shines' has been entirely lost. The message in this country has been 'live life in the moment' for a long time now.
Nobody puts anything away for a rainy day. We have had a culture of "full employment" as well. (This is another area where Unions have really f*'ed up how capital and labor was supposed to work ).
Half the population walks around thinking a layoff is some kind of personal failing. The other half thinks its a personal attack on them, the little
Go woke go broke (Score:2)
Rational and serious people know that more policing helps the poor and disenfranchised the most, because those groups are disproportionately victims of crime. Public safety is fundamental to lifting people out of generational poverty.
Counter Point (Score:5, Interesting)
We just spent a week in San Francisco, and our hotel cost was actually reasonable. We were just a block away from the Presido, and had an amazing time all over the bay area. I'm not going to cry because "boutique" hotels can no longer charge $700/night for a studio room with Ikea furniture next to the ferry building.
Job 1 of government at all levels is Public Safety (Score:3)
Lock them up (Score:2)
Bunk houses with locks and guards are the answer. When they come to the bars and beg to be allowed to get a job and be a productive member of society, put them into social services, train them, and get them a job. If they screw it up, back to the bunk house they go. Just get them the hell away from the rest of us.
makes sense (Score:2)
SF used to be a favorite place to visit. Our family has a lot of history with the city. But not until and unless they can get it under control.
It makes me sad.
For those in the cheap seats (outside the US) (Score:5, Informative)
Just so you understand context: Every major metro area in the US is a Democratic stronghold.
However, San Francisco is - and has been for some time - a Democratic "utopia."
Unconstrained by a state government with any interest in curtailing their policies, SFO has aggressively pursued the most liberal of policies protecting illegals, limiting police power (and now prosecution of the few the cops do arrest), expanding drug access, and generally advancing every liberal hobby-horse issue in American politics.*
*with the awkward occasional program that they don't want to talk much about, like the "if you're homeless, SFO will buy you a bus ticket anywhere ELSE" which has become highly political and criticized since Republican city leaders in TX have now started doing the same thing. OOPS!
To be clear I'm not saying that a completely Republican-run major city would be any better. Personally, I favor both parties in power to check each others' political excesses.
Of course, one example might be NY under Giuliani and then the less dogmatic Bloomberg that basically rescued the city from decades-long catastrophic decline...
Re:If crime is really a factor (Score:5, Insightful)
More cops doesn't matter when the DA won't prosecute and juries won't convict.
Yes, it is a social problem but not the one you imply.
Go look up how Giuliani dealt successfully with crime in NYC when he was Mayor. Whatever else you think of him he "solved" NYC's crime problem.
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Whatever else you think of him he "solved" NYC's crime problem.
This is funny because there was a story about NYC on the front page of Slashdot yesterday, and the very first comment assured everyone that riding the subway there is a sure fire way to get robbed or pushed onto the tracks. Yet you're here saying that NYC has solved crime.
I suspect one of you is lying (or at least being facetious to the point of absurdity), but the I'm reminded of a tiny Mexican girl in a taco advert. "Why not both!"
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Whatever else you think of him he "solved" NYC's crime problem.
This is funny because there was a story about NYC on the front page of Slashdot yesterday, and the very first comment assured everyone that riding the subway there is a sure fire way to get robbed or pushed onto the tracks. Yet you're here saying that NYC has solved crime.
I suspect one of you is lying (or at least being facetious to the point of absurdity), but the I'm reminded of a tiny Mexican girl in a taco advert. "Why not both!"
Indeed, poor choice of wording. Crime was largely solved in Giuliani's day, and was celebrated as having saved the city and propelled it to new heights. It has since slid backward. FWIW my wife and I traveled to NYC for a week only months ago, and it was not nearly as scary as the media made it out to be. We went on subways from Harlem to Manhattan, walked Brooklyn, and plenty of nighttime... didn't so much as /notice/ crime much less encounter it personally.
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Omg, duh, it wa solved during his time as mayor. There have been others with radically different pro crime policies after him. You are so incredibly intellectually dishonest I'm surprised your laptop doesn't melt from trying to process your complete bullshit.
What an asshole.
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Guliani (sp?) hasn't been in office in NYC for many, many years....
What he had cleaned up....has fallen apart again over the years since he left....and yes, all those suc
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The numbers don't match that AT ALL. Looking at the stats from NYC: https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/... [nyc.gov] crime has increased in the past couple years, but it's still not reached what it was back in 2001 when Giuliani was mayor.
This seems like a right wing fantasy.
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More cops doesn't matter when the DA won't prosecute
I don't live in California, but this does indeed seem to be a very real problem there.
and juries won't convict.
You lost me on this one. I don't believe that. I've served twice in juries and it left me really jaded about the US legal system. Nobody who believes in the righteousness of the US legal system should see what actually goes on in jury rooms and the kind of deal making that gets done to get 12 people to agree to a verdict. But I seriously doubt that juries are simply refusing to convict people when rock solid eviden
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Girl with her dad at SF pier about 3-4 years ago. Shot dead by illegal alien with a criminal record.
Not guilty jury verdict.
Hardly the only one but one of the most well publicized and shocking.
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Girl with her dad at SF pier about 3-4 years ago. Shot dead by illegal alien with a criminal record. Not guilty jury verdict. Hardly the only one but one of the most well publicized and shocking.
I see how you failed to disclose important details of the shooting to paint a false narrative. Based on your limited statements, it seems a California jury for no reason acquitted a man who shot a girl for no reason.
The facts [wikipedia.org] are a different matter. On July 1, 2015, 32 year old Kate Steinle was killed on Pier 14 when a gun was fired from 90 feet away after the bullet ricocheted off the concrete deck of the pier. The gun was fired by José Inez García Zárate an illegal immigrant who claims th
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Also look up how Giuliani may not have had anything to do with it.
https://www.politifact.com/art... [politifact.com]
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Your opinion piece only says he wasn't responsible for 100% of the drop in crime. No social effect is easily attributed 100% to any one cause.
So what?
You think it was better during Dini\kin's soft on crime era? Was Dinkins responsible for only most of the increase in crime?
Sure. Let's roll with this.
Logic now says that tough on crime reduces crime and weak on crime increases crime.
And here we have SF which crime itself has been decriminalized.
People go into stores with calculators to make sure they]re st
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So what?
So the claim that Giuliani fixed the NYC crime problem is somewhere between exaggerated and baseless.
More cops doesn't matter (Score:2, Flamebait)
Yes, there was an increase... during COVID. When millions were out of work
Giuliani did an awful job on crime. He benefited from the same trend in declining crime rates that correlates 1 to 1 with us taking lead out of gas and therefor the air and the economic boom from the
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People who lived or worked in NYC at the time, like me, would disagree with your analysis.
Being hard on crime and successfully reducing crime is what bought him so much good will until he threw it away in recent years.
Re:If crime is really a factor (Score:5, Insightful)
As opposed to redefining crime to make almost nothing criminal. Your stuff isn't your stuff it it's below $1000 so the police will not intervene and prosecutor will not prosecute. Crime rate is a whole lot higher than reported because most people affected never both with reporting 'petty' crime. California, we got what we voted for.
No, shoplifting is still illegal in California (Score:5, Informative)
That's funny, I do IT for a small grocery store chain in California and I know for a fact that we turn shop lifters over to the cops all the time and yes we do press charges!
Turns out shop lifting is still illegal in California with the following penalties https://www.egattorneys.com/sh... [egattorneys.com].
Shoplifting in California is normally a misdemeanor offense that carries a maximum potential penalty of:
up to six months in the county jail, and
a fine of up to $1,000.
Maybe consume something other than right wing news, you might learn something that's actually true!
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Looks like a lot of right-wingers took my post as bait rather than a statement of fact. I especially liked the one that blamed immigration.
Asking those kinds of people to look at anything more than the superficial 'evidence' is a waste of time. You can pile up evidence in front of them and they'll ignore it because they 'feel' they're right.
I don't believe it letting criminals run free, but ignoring the fact that there is an environment creating an above normal percentage of criminals just means you're goi
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That's funny, I do IT for a small grocery store chain in California and I know for a fact that we turn shop lifters over to the cops all the time and yes we do press charges!
Turns out shop lifting is still illegal in California with the following penalties https://www.egattorneys.com/sh... [egattorneys.com].
Shoplifting in California is normally a misdemeanor offense that carries a maximum potential penalty of:
up to six months in the county jail, and
a fine of up to $1,000.
Maybe consume something other than right wing news, you might learn something that's actually true!
Cool!
Meanwhile, a friend manages a local Target and watches a shopping cart of stuff walking out the door almost daily... and so long as the cart has less than $950 worth of stuff, there is little reason to do anything. The link you provided concurs.
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Your friend should consider hiring security. As store manager, they should have that authority.
$20 an hour will get you a guard to stand at the door and physically intervene. $50 an hour will get you an off duty police officer as a guard- an officer in uniform with a badge and gun. The charges quickly escalate from mere shoplifting to resisting arrest and assaulting an officer, thus ensuring an actual prosecution and jail time for offenders.
Unless they aren't actually losing enough to justify the expense
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Not sure why you'd think someone who does IT for a grocery store chain would know what you're asking.
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You do know the felony limit is $2500 in Texas, right? Crime must be 2.5 times worse there according to your fact-free spew.
Re:If crime is really a factor (Score:4, Insightful)
More cops arresting people does not help one bit, because the people are released and either not prosecuted, or given minimal sentences, plea deals, etc. by progressive DAs and judges. In addition, state law prevents many prosecutions.
The social problem of why more people are "turning" to crime is that it is a family thing. Dad passed his trade on to me. I can make a lot more money than working as ditch digger, which has been taken over by Mexicans anyway because they work too hard. The best way to stop this is to incarcerate these people before they reproduce, and to stop paying the moms to have more proto-criminal babies.
Re:If crime is really a factor (Score:5, Insightful)
It is the Wall Street Journal, so front-loading "crime" as the dominant factor has to be taken with a few grains of salt. Other reporting, like the Mercury News, cites the fact that San Francisco's hotel market was uniquely dependent on high tech conferences which have not come back like they were after the pandemic anywhere. Los Angeles for example was not so dependent on this one sector for bookings.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I stopped going to conference (post-pandemic) in San Fran due to crime and filth.
I go to MORE conferences than ever now, but non in San Fran, and 100% of that reason is crime and filth.
It's not a WSJ thing, it's a filthy street and high crime problem in SFO problem, period.
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I highly doubt that you've ever been to San Fran or if you have, ever experienced "crime and filth" there. It's not a problem you'd notice going to areas with conferences.
Maybe you saw something on Fox News and imagined you used to go there?
Re:If crime is really a factor (Score:5, Insightful)
And typically, "get more cops arresting more people" doesn't actually do much to solve the social problem of why more people are turning to crime.
LOL. "Why".
More people are turning to crime because they can, because the city (and the state) has undertaken policies that shouts with a bullhorn YOU CAN STEAL LOTS OF SHIT AND NOT GET IN TROUBLE. The result is young men taking bags into stores and loading them up like Santa preparing to go out on Christmas Eve.
Bad policies have bad consequences. It just usually takes awhile for those consequences to kick in. San Fran is at that point, now. Any city can overcome one or two issues in the press. But San Fran is drowning under a tidal wave of bad news and bad stats, from needles in the street to smartphone apps that tell you where to avoid the human shit on the sidewalk (not to mention skyscrapers that may be in a death spiral [boingboing.net]).
In the case of San Francisco, "more cops arresting more people" would go a long way towards fixing their problems. I don't see that kind of policy change anytime soon, though. San Franciscans are annoyed at the increased crime, but not enough to change their political leadership. Until those people change their views, and votes, the decay will continue.
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"more cops arresting more people" would go a long way towards fixing their problems.
America in the nutshell. Gotta remain number 1, regardless of whether it's for something good or for topping the list of percentage of population incarcerated.
I wonder how it is that other countries don't have that kind of crime level while also not having police going around and arresting everyone. Could it be there's an underlying social condition which needs addressing? Nah, lock em all up and throw away the keys.
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I find it pretty hard to believe that they crime situation has changed that much since these hotels were the top of the heap as far as occupancy. Changes like that take time and it takes even more time for a reputation to develop.
Maybe it has something to do with business travel, the rise of zoom and work from home has almost certainly resulted in a decrease in the amount of business travel, why go to another city just to sit on a zoom call with half or more of the people you are going to meet. I bet thes
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Police budgets have increased since BLM turned all the major cities into burning rubble.
Re: If crime is really a factor (Score:2)
Yes and clearly that has made the problem worse
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