Posted on 03/09/2012 7:37:04 AM PST by SmithL
Last year, a family of three earning $111,000 a year could afford just 23 percent of homes for sale in San Francisco - mostly in southern neighborhoods, including Bayview-Hunters Point.
The median price of a house in the city in 2010 was $668,000. Just 2 percent of new housing units built in the city since 2001 are single-family, detached homes.
These were just a few of the scores of statistics presented at a special Board of Supervisors hearing Thursday to help explain why San Francisco is bleeding families with children - losing 5,278 people younger than 18 between 2000 and 2010, according to census figures.
There are actually about 3,000 more children younger than 5 in the city than there were in 2000, but about 8,000 fewer school-age youths.
The flight of families with children - particularly middle-income and African American families - is leaving San Francisco older, whiter and richer. That has concerned city officials and family advocates who say families with children are essential to a diverse, thriving city.
"This has been a personal issue for me for quite some time," said Supervisor Mark Farrell, who called the hearing and said his two young children are losing lots of their friends to the suburbs - and that his own adult friends are increasingly moving.
"Keeping families in San Francisco is important for a diverse city," he said. "Having children in our parks and our schools and strollers on our sidewalks is important to the vibrancy of our neighborhoods."
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
There’s nothing wrong with San Francisco that couldn’t be cured with a five megaton fusion warhead. That’s what Ive always said.
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Looks like the homosexuals are taking over San Fran!
You are a dingbat.
This sort of foolish and immoral statement ruins conservatives reputations. No decent person should want to be associated with you.
Even this city is 90+% composed of perfectly normal, decent people. The rest are more flamboyant sinners than most.
But even so they are people, and we are all sinners, and all of us can be redeemed.
They are being fashionable. It is hip to do things like this. It is being demonstratively conformist to the customs of a certain group - not the gays, but the upper middle class pseudo-bohemians.
Some of the population of this city is obsessed with fashion and its conformity, as in fact many out-of-towners who bring their kids in for such events.
The vast majority here (and elsewhere in the region) wouldn’t do something so foolish.
dang heteronormative breeders!!!
Don’t they know they’re the only reason gay/liberal/pro-abortion teachers have jobs!!!
What a bunch of haters!
They are politically powerful, and have been so since the late 1970’s.
This is however not in fact due to their numbers, which seem to have been stable or even fallen since the early 1980’s, but because the attitude towards them has become a social marker for the truly politically powerful. They are the mascots of the prevailing upper-middle class pseudo bohemian culture that dominates local politics, because these are the people with the money.
The Exploritorium is a great place to take kids.
So is the Aquarium and one other place I can’t remember the name of.
The rest not so much.
Most people don't want to have to attempt to raise children around such a "gay friendly" sinkhole like San Francisco. That choice was made a long time ago, and now the city reaps the 'reward' of said choice.
So, what will hizzoner do? Force people at gunpoint to stay in his sinkhole city to achieve his "vibrancy of our neighborhoods"? I wouldn't put it past him...
the infowarrior
OK... New Obama mandate. You can’t leave San Fran if you have kids or we will only let you move if you are moving to San Fran.
Its not the “gay friendly” part that is the problem.
We would very much like to think so, because of the blatant and easily publicized incidents, but it just isn’t much of an issue to the real inhabitants of SF - very few people see this sort of thing and it doesn’t intrude into normal peoples lives. People generally have to go out of their way to witness this sort of depravity.
Its far, far more common to see the plain misery of the homeless and the down-and-out. And they aren’t, for the most part, dangerous at all, just sad.
The biggest problems for families are high rents in good neighborhoods and the difficulty and uncertainty of getting the kids into good public schools.
Your contention is belied by even the most cursory examination of political life in SF. "Perfectly normal, decent people" would never vote for that collection of deviates and moonbats who proudly fly the rainbow flag and put up street signs extolling the virtues of abortion.
Academy of Science - its got the Aquarium, but has a lot more too.
The SF Zoo is excellent, for a small zoo. It is by far the best in Northern California.
Golden Gate Park is great, a wonderful place to wander and run around. Some homeless troubles but can be avoided.
There are plenty of playgrounds, in the good (and non-hip) neighborhoods quite decent and safe.
The beach is weirdly interesting. Lots of dogs though.
Moscone Center Ice rink is excellent, probably the best in Northern California also.
Sightseeing is a delight. SF is in a beautiful natural location, and the legacy of late 19th-early 20th century architecture is still there and in fine shape generally. Its a great city for kids to bike on the sidewalks over most of the city.
Public libraries - Very good availability. Easier to get to, more of them than is usual in most suburbs here.
Organized sports - Plenty ! People over-schedule kids into these things actually. Its easy to find and get kids into Little League, or pretty much anything else, even hockey.
Lacks -
- Organized child-centered entertainment. Lack of things like mini-golf, go-karts, water parks, etc. You have to go out of town for these. For the most part the lack is due to the lack of and expense of land, but also the limited clientele, there being few kids.
- Outdoor swimming pools - this is mainly due to the weather. There is no real summer here. There are quite a few accessible indoor pools but they tend to be over-organized, oriented mainly for swimming lessons and competition swimming.
- Toy stores - There are just a few small ones.
Which were, likewise, caused by local government actions. The choice to become *NOT* "family friendly" was made in the past, and now the results are plain to see. Again, I have to ask, what is hizzoner going to do? Force people at gunpoint to stay in this quagmire created by his predecessors, and which he has no intention of actually stopping, let alone reversing?
San Francisco made its bed a long time ago, and now has to live with the results, decine, and eventual extinction as a human habitation...
the infowarrior
Most people in SF don’t vote.
They are a majority of Asians who are either FOB’s (fresh off the boat) or are not citizens, as a very high proportion stay in permanent resident status. And even Asian citizens don’t vote much, being foreign born they believe in conforming to the local rulers.
And those people that do vote Democrat - a “normal” person certainly can vote in ways that their personal life wouldn’t predict. This city is full of people with unimpeachable personal lives that vote Democrat out of habit and out of conformity with the prevailing culture. Forgive them, for they really don’t know what they do.
And I live here, I know these people personally. My kids are friends with their kids.
It is plain fanaticism, by the way, to condemn people who don’t vote our way.
Certainly, you are correct.
The development restrictions, excessive bureaucracy, politicization of all property development, etc. are all long standing problems that come from the local political culture. By now they are institutionalized because the bloated city bureaucracy and all its mass of publicly funded hangers-on is in itself the most powerful political player in the city.
The city, and region, are certainly in decline.
He's right.
My wife is Korean. I know the Korean community well and I've watched its rise to prominence in the business world on the West Coast, while virtually ignoring politics. Very similar things could be said about the much larger Chinese community, to a lesser extent the Japanese community, and in some ways the Vietnamese and other southeast Asian communities.
If we could get the immigrant Asian and Hispanic communities to start voting and in the case of Christians, to start voting in accord with what is being taught from their pulpits, even some of our worst cesspools of city life could get fixed. There is no good reason that anti-Communist Vietnamese refugees in California didn't follow the model of the Cubans in Florida, and the same could be said about Chinese businessmen who fled Hong Kong out of fear of what could happen if China changed its policies.
For now, San Francisco is only an extreme example of what happens when decent people stand by and do nothing while the aggressive left-wingers push their agenda. Let that be a warning for people who think being part of the silent majority will work — defend what you value or you will lose it.
What normal married couple (man and woman) would voluntarily try to raise children there?
Many do. The vast majority of the parents of the 100,000 or so children in the city are “normal”.
Fewer and fewer every year, but even so.
The impediments to more people staying and raising children are indeed due mainly to the obsessions and failures of liberal politics, but are not really the ones that seem significant to outsiders.
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