SF is objectively poorly managed. It's not just anecdotal. Follow the money and see where it leads...

Personally I see the posts as a strong dose of red-pill happening here on NH as people wake up from their starry-eyed honeymoon with the city by the bay. From what I've seen, it's not just people saying "I visited and it sucked". It's people also saying "I lived there for 10+ years and it really has gone downhill".

People were willing to tolerate the politics and move there for a job. For awhile, it's okay. You're making two to three times what any of your peers are making right out of school, you're single so the rent and living situation is tolerable. You could hit Off the Grid and catch up with a few friends from the job you left 2 months ago, Uber back to Latin American Social club and get trashed on 1 3/5th margaritas, try to meet some random people at Elbow Room and then end up at Rock Horror in the Clay theatre after you didn't get a spot at the pinball machine. You walk back to coworker's rooftop over on nob hill, hit a pre-roll, and then obviously get roped into closing out Yamasho. Roll into work at 11:37am the next day just in time for catered chicken and waffles and then go interview 2 prospective new grads that your 12 person recruiting team has procured.

And then you grow up a little more. You want more space. You find a partner. You have to start thinking about schools and the type of community you want to actually help bring kids into the world. The trash and feces becomes more than just a nuisance, it's a glaring symptom of the endemic and it stares you in the face every morning as you go to work. All the fun just.. stops.. there's a global pandemic. Everyone elsewhere caught up to you in salary because you didn't want to commute 2 hours every day to work at FAANG. The FED pumps billions into the economy and your salary doesn't budge. All in all your 900 sq ft first floor apartment starts to feel really small for $3600/mo especially on top of a 13% state tax, 4% food "mandate", 1% "health tax" and general inflated retail prices across the board. Your politics mature.

I'm not saying you're wrong to be liking the area--I did for many years too and do miss it time to time. But don't just dismiss these posts as "inflammatory". The narrative is real. I even know VCs who've moved away from the area. While the issues of homelessness and crime aren't "single cause", they're also not unsolved problems in other areas. That's the point. SF, for a "world class" city, is doing an utterly terrible job of managing its population, providing resources to keep bodies off the streets, provide usable transportation, etc. Why does the city need an additional 1.5% gross receipts tax to help deal with homelessness? Because all the money is tied up in pension funds.

There's a saying: a democracy functions until the electorate realize they can vote themselves money directly out of the treasury. Couple that with rotten post-modern identity-based equity politics and you've got a recipe for a city constantly in a fiscal crisis ripe with corruption and unable to police actual crime because, quite literally, most of the well-meaning numb-sculls said "we don't want to police crime". The established landowners? "Fuck yours I got mine."

Anyway, I don't know what to say if you're tired of reading red-pill comments. Either ignore them (hit the [-] button) and participate in other threads, or help work out solutions? "I'm tired of hearing that" isn't really an answer/solution (it's not even an anecdote to the contrary). People leaving SF, while they might be giddy in the moment, probably are just as frustrated or annoyed having to make the move as you might be hearing about it. It's bittersweet for me, at least (although maybe more so because I'm a freakin' foodie).

I wrote this comment not because I enjoyed leaving or want to shit on SF or throw gas on the fire. I wrote it because it's sad to live through a city with so much potential turning out to be a corrupt "shit hole" (to use what seems to be the colloquial term nowadays) and ultimately coming to terms with the reality that SF is, like its iconic bridge, ultimately gilded. It doesn't have to be like that, and yet, with a collection of some of the brightest minds I've ever met, no real progress is made. Quite conservative for a liberal city, if you really think about it.