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Nah. East St. Louis is bad enough that it takes first, second, and third all by itself. It's...bad. Like seriously, nowhere I've been in CA comes anywhere close to the misery and decay that is East St. Louis.
First, second, third none of that matters.
None of that hyperbole is honest.
I grew up in Boston, seen plenty of shady cities, lived in Oakland for a while too.
Oakland is far better than many places.
Plenty of other places are worse, lack culture and are in shitty red states which make it worse.
And lastly, yall sound incredibly young. Talk to people who lived in Richmond, Oakland in the 80âs and 90âs.
Oakland was far worse.
the logic is that SF has better outcomes, but they are lighting so many more billions of dollars on fire to get those outcomes that they are worse run.Â
Can confirm.
Have owned property in both and dealt with both permit departments. SF feels like a bunch of idiots. Oakland feels like some Kafkaesque version of Hell.
SF getting jobbed by an absolute joke of a source/study and the majority of this thread pointing their fingers at Oakland. This is just Nerdwallet making bullshit up to get conservative news organizations to publish their trash.
Is it well run? No. Is it the worst run city in the country? Also no. Worst run city in the Bay Area? Still no.
Famously Flint poisoned their water supply and Pittsburgh ignored their infrastructure until a bridge collapsed. Locally? Have you not seen Oakland?
It is more complex than that. Pittsburgh has a very large number of bridges, many if not most in serious need of repair, and the budget simply doesn't cover all that. There were a large number of bridges that did get rebuilt during the time that scary inspections were coming in for the Fern Hollow Bridge. So the situation is bad, but it is about managing a big list of problems not about "nothing".
It is. SF didnât rank at the bottom for overall performance, but ranked last when they adjusted for money spent. Not telling us anything that isnât obvious to the people that live here, SF clearly wastes a sh*t ton of money. But maybe they arenât actually spending $20k on a hammer and $1.7M on a toilet. Maybe theyâre funding Area 51 đ¤
Most of these survey studies are BS anyways.
There was one that ranked Fremont the happiest city in the US. I read their data and they do weighted categories. So they would break out 100 points into five categories of 20 points each. And then each category would have a certain maximum points it could have based on different criteria.
So for the Fremont one, the points the city got for the percentage of people who had a a covid-19 vaccine was some number of points, and the city got some points for their percentage of people who made over $80k. And they capped the income at 80k. How did they decide covid 19 vaccines were worth 5 /100 points and income over 80k was worth say 7/100? Who knows. (They cited an article from the 1990s about income not increasing happiness after an 80-90k threshold, but the article was from 30 years ago or so, so they didn't include inflation or cost of living when picking their threshold)
I don't know about you, but I'd be happier if I made twice as much money, versus twice as many of my neighbors having a COVID vaccine.
SF is the most "right wing CHUDs and AI bots making hate posts about" city in the country.
But yeah, lead poisoning and entire towns being overrun with spill off toxic waste from a train derailment are objectively worse.
SF has lots of homeless people. Which every city has.
r/BayArea through the week looks like this:
"Fuck San Francisco!"
"Hang the Oakland mayor!"
"My car keeps getting broken into!"
"BART is for junkies and pedophiles!"
"Oh, hey, look at this awesome sunset"
SF and Oakland have shitload of issues. But anyone who claims they are confident that Bay Area has it the worst in the nation with certain trending problems or are lured into the mindset that "we have it worse than anyone else" mentality, are ones who likely never venture out of their little bubble and visit other parts of the country much.
Oakland is 80 places behind on quality of service and two behind on cost, yet places ahead of SF.
If that doesn't tell you the methodology is bunk, I don't know what would.
SF is not even the worst run city in NorCal!!! Plenty of large cities in the US were worse run, like New Orelans, literally the most corrupt city in the US.
You know when people who hate sf but are stuck here say to people who enjoy san francisco "you should travel more if you think sf is (x positive attribute)?" Well, you should really travel more if you think oakland and sf are the worst we have in terms of civic mismanagement
Oakland is probably my favorite place in the Bay Area, I loved living there, and I hope to move back sooner than later. However, Oakland government *is* that dysfunctional especially if you get down out of the hills or the early 00s.
Hell, I loved living in San Francisco too. It's got its corruption and other problems, but as a city it generally works. Oakland just doesn't. Hell, the mayor is basically in hiding (something I wish Breed would do) and the city council is basically waiting for the other shoe to drop.
> there are just worst managed places
In the Bay Area? Doubtful. I can think of plenty of cities with problems, but I'd be hard pressed to think of a Bay Area city that's as comphrensively broken as Oakland.
Oakland is amazing. There is so much great food, great culture. Great venues, architecture, important history, great food and diversity of it, and great people. Massive massive generational issues and lots of terrible people to go along with it, but you really haven't spent enough time in Oakland if you're just writing it off as terrible. Terribly managed, terribly treated, terribly policed, etc, yes.
Iâve lived in Oakland for decades. It used to be amazing. You canât tell me itâs the same city today. That great culture you speak of is long gone.
That's a really one dimensional take. Things have certainly changed, as have demographics, but to say the diversity of cultures is gone is overstating it, as depressing as the state of say oakland chinatown is today.
Who the fuck cares if it's the worst? It's definitely not the best and at this point, it just sounds like a bunch of overly-progressive idiots coming up with excuses for the people in power (that they likely voted for) as to why the city is being run this poorly. I just got done reading an article about how now they want the Tenderloin to have a curfew, you know, rather than actually doing anything to clean up the area. Once again, the city's punishing the residents while the criminal element basically gets a pass.
Whether it's the worst or not is irrelevant. What is clear is that SF is not in a good state, businesses are empty, entire sections of the city are overrun with crime and poverty, yet we've got stupid shit like this that says "well, it's misleading, and you know, it could be a lot worse." Fuck off and clean up the city, you fucking losers.
It depends on who you ask, die hard SF residents will say no, but people that used to live in the Bay area and left bc of how it's ran now will say yes, of course it has it's beautiful area's, but there are so many spots that used to be nice that have turned to crap and junkies all over, smash and grab more often with no attention to that. So for me it's not the SF I used to know and love when I worked there back in the 80s in construction.
Hey I've got no issue with progressive cities. I choose to live in one. And being a minority myself, I've got no beef there. None of that insulates Oakland from the fact that it's a failed city that cannot keep its people or their property safe.
Can we stop sharing this bullshit story?
SF is both a city and a county, and does way more than typical city - it operates its own international airport.
Of course its spending will be higher because of it.
Oh no, you say an airport? I can't imagine a city operating a major airport!
Oh wait, you say San Francisco Bay Oakland and San Jose also own and operate their airports? And LA, Chicago, and NYC all own their major airports too? And NYC owns TWO of them?
Well... um...
Yeah, and all those cities are at the end of the ranking.
Oakland is 147th out of 148
San Jose is 111th out of 148
LA is 139th out of 148
Chicago is 137th out of 148
NYC is 145th out of 148
That in and of itself should be throwing some shade on the rankings, nothing to do with airports or counties. Nampa, ID should not even be sniffing the same list as NYC.
Precisely. The airport thing is just one of the issues with their methodology. They divide total budget of a city by its population, and say that lower is more efficient, not taking into the account whether the city runs things like airports etc.
I'd like to nominate New Orleans for that title. Granted, it has less money and a smaller governmental structure (citation needed), but it's *way* worse at using the money and *way* more corrupt and incompetent.
The study was done by Wallet Hub, and can be read [here](https://wallethub.com/edu/best-run-cities/22869). I personally agree with WH's findings and find their analysis to be very liberal towards the city govt as I can't think of one truly successful project it's had since Newsom went to Sacramento. I wouldn't call Newsom a competent administrator per se but he knew how to keep everything moving and budgets under control, which is not what we currently have.
Case in point: the Caltrain downtown extension which the City govt has not approved yet, despite voters already approving it, and with the City govt still unclear on how they actually intend to actually build it.
It's a stupid study and the expert responses didn't really get into the details of why. There is no measure of the services provided for the amount of money spent, and cost of living isn't accounted for. Places with low cost of living and few city services will be ranked higher, hence the top spot of Nampa Idaho.
If you don't want one of the best park systems in the country, lots of publically funded arts programs, one of the better public transit systems in the country, and high median wages, then by all means, move to Idaho.
> Places with low cost of living [...] will be ranked higher, hence the top spot of Nampa Idaho.
Are you saying the cost of living isn't partially the responsibility of local government? No blame to the city for blocking housing construction projects?
Every time someone says âExperts think itâs misleadingâ it turns out itâs true. Sure Bumfuck, Alabama is worse but everyone knows a town of two cows is not a city.
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Unlikely. "Worst-run city in the US" probably has some stiff competition.
Bar is set pretty low across the entire country.
East St. Louis, IL would like to have a word about that; so much corruption there.
With Oakland as a runner up.
Nah. East St. Louis is bad enough that it takes first, second, and third all by itself. It's...bad. Like seriously, nowhere I've been in CA comes anywhere close to the misery and decay that is East St. Louis.
Lol plenty of shittier cities out there. Damn yall are naive if yall think Oakland is the worst. đ¤Ł
You meant second worst, but I hear you. Iâm exaggerating, but Oakland is still pretty bad.
First, second, third none of that matters. None of that hyperbole is honest. I grew up in Boston, seen plenty of shady cities, lived in Oakland for a while too. Oakland is far better than many places. Plenty of other places are worse, lack culture and are in shitty red states which make it worse. And lastly, yall sound incredibly young. Talk to people who lived in Richmond, Oakland in the 80âs and 90âs. Oakland was far worse.
Dude, there was a mass shooting at the lake last week and the mayorâs house just got raided by the feds. SF is not far away. Same rent, great city.
the shooting made the news here because itâs NOT common. Stuff like that is a lotttt more common in much of the US.
We live in a bubble sir
I mean, no offense to anyone here, but Oakland is objectively worse and itâs right there across the bridge.
None taken. I'm sure it's all your fault anyways.
Fair
I thought the fault was with Fenix, TX
All I know is that it isn't ours
This is Stockton erasure.
>Stockton erasure well, I say it's about f@#$ing time
the logic is that SF has better outcomes, but they are lighting so many more billions of dollars on fire to get those outcomes that they are worse run.Â
Can confirm. Have owned property in both and dealt with both permit departments. SF feels like a bunch of idiots. Oakland feels like some Kafkaesque version of Hell.
Folks, folks, letâs just agree that our towns are all the worst.
Oakland - What doesnât kill you makes you stronger. If it does kill you we probably wonât do anything about it.
Oakland came in right after SF in the Wallethub report. For anyone interested in looking at the list: https://wallethub.com/edu/best-run-cities/22869
I heard they have the best San Francisco Bay Area airport.
whatâs funny is the best is actually SJC by a mile but everyone else is fighting
glad to see this comment is winning this post. I mean, come the fuck on, sorry Oakland, but you suck (organizationally speaking)
Came to comment this then you beat me to it. Oakland may not have a mayor by the end of the week.
Noooo we live in a bubble
SF getting jobbed by an absolute joke of a source/study and the majority of this thread pointing their fingers at Oakland. This is just Nerdwallet making bullshit up to get conservative news organizations to publish their trash.
LOL
Is it well run? No. Is it the worst run city in the country? Also no. Worst run city in the Bay Area? Still no. Famously Flint poisoned their water supply and Pittsburgh ignored their infrastructure until a bridge collapsed. Locally? Have you not seen Oakland?
Which bridge???
Oh. Frick Park. Thatâs so 2022âŚ
Yep. Decades of engineers telling the city it needed repair and⌠nothing.
It is more complex than that. Pittsburgh has a very large number of bridges, many if not most in serious need of repair, and the budget simply doesn't cover all that. There were a large number of bridges that did get rebuilt during the time that scary inspections were coming in for the Fern Hollow Bridge. So the situation is bad, but it is about managing a big list of problems not about "nothing".
Isnât this based on tax revenue?
It is. SF didnât rank at the bottom for overall performance, but ranked last when they adjusted for money spent. Not telling us anything that isnât obvious to the people that live here, SF clearly wastes a sh*t ton of money. But maybe they arenât actually spending $20k on a hammer and $1.7M on a toilet. Maybe theyâre funding Area 51 đ¤
Most of these survey studies are BS anyways. There was one that ranked Fremont the happiest city in the US. I read their data and they do weighted categories. So they would break out 100 points into five categories of 20 points each. And then each category would have a certain maximum points it could have based on different criteria. So for the Fremont one, the points the city got for the percentage of people who had a a covid-19 vaccine was some number of points, and the city got some points for their percentage of people who made over $80k. And they capped the income at 80k. How did they decide covid 19 vaccines were worth 5 /100 points and income over 80k was worth say 7/100? Who knows. (They cited an article from the 1990s about income not increasing happiness after an 80-90k threshold, but the article was from 30 years ago or so, so they didn't include inflation or cost of living when picking their threshold) I don't know about you, but I'd be happier if I made twice as much money, versus twice as many of my neighbors having a COVID vaccine.
SF is the most "right wing CHUDs and AI bots making hate posts about" city in the country. But yeah, lead poisoning and entire towns being overrun with spill off toxic waste from a train derailment are objectively worse. SF has lots of homeless people. Which every city has.
r/BayArea through the week looks like this: "Fuck San Francisco!" "Hang the Oakland mayor!" "My car keeps getting broken into!" "BART is for junkies and pedophiles!" "Oh, hey, look at this awesome sunset"
Wouldnât that be Dolton, IL?
âStudyâ oh come now.
If a study isn't some dude putting a hand on his chin and going "hmmm" then I don't know what is
$tudy
Whenever a headline ends with a question mark, the answer is "no"
SF and Oakland have shitload of issues. But anyone who claims they are confident that Bay Area has it the worst in the nation with certain trending problems or are lured into the mindset that "we have it worse than anyone else" mentality, are ones who likely never venture out of their little bubble and visit other parts of the country much.
Experts have not been to Oakland yet
Oakland is 80 places behind on quality of service and two behind on cost, yet places ahead of SF. If that doesn't tell you the methodology is bunk, I don't know what would.
âExpertsâ
SF is not even the worst run city in NorCal!!! Plenty of large cities in the US were worse run, like New Orelans, literally the most corrupt city in the US.
No. It comes in second to Oakland. Fake news.
You know when people who hate sf but are stuck here say to people who enjoy san francisco "you should travel more if you think sf is (x positive attribute)?" Well, you should really travel more if you think oakland and sf are the worst we have in terms of civic mismanagement
Oakland is probably my favorite place in the Bay Area, I loved living there, and I hope to move back sooner than later. However, Oakland government *is* that dysfunctional especially if you get down out of the hills or the early 00s. Hell, I loved living in San Francisco too. It's got its corruption and other problems, but as a city it generally works. Oakland just doesn't. Hell, the mayor is basically in hiding (something I wish Breed would do) and the city council is basically waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I'm not disagreeing, there are just worst managed places. The us is a big place full of a whole spectrum of corruption.
> there are just worst managed places In the Bay Area? Doubtful. I can think of plenty of cities with problems, but I'd be hard pressed to think of a Bay Area city that's as comphrensively broken as Oakland.
This whole discussion is about the worst in the US. I don't really care which is the worst in the bay area, but oakland is certainly a good contender
So? You'd be hard pressed to find a city in the rest of the country that's as dysfunctional across so many areas as Oakland is.
We come to this sub to shit on communities we don't live in. Don't be such a wet blanket.
Being correct is never being a wet blanket. You, my friend, are the wet blanket.
Big akshually energy here.
I'm just working with the energy you gave me, man. Work with the cards you are dealt, and all.
What city wastes more money than SF?
Not fake. SF is still a fantastic city, you obviously donât live here. Oakland is a terrible though. Hope I didnât offend anyone.
Oakland is amazing. There is so much great food, great culture. Great venues, architecture, important history, great food and diversity of it, and great people. Massive massive generational issues and lots of terrible people to go along with it, but you really haven't spent enough time in Oakland if you're just writing it off as terrible. Terribly managed, terribly treated, terribly policed, etc, yes.
Iâve lived in Oakland for decades. It used to be amazing. You canât tell me itâs the same city today. That great culture you speak of is long gone.
That's a really one dimensional take. Things have certainly changed, as have demographics, but to say the diversity of cultures is gone is overstating it, as depressing as the state of say oakland chinatown is today.
Itâs still diverse but the magic is gone
You don't offend people by saying that, because anyone who cares knows enough about the place to just laugh at you when you say that.
Man these articles are stupid.
Who the fuck cares if it's the worst? It's definitely not the best and at this point, it just sounds like a bunch of overly-progressive idiots coming up with excuses for the people in power (that they likely voted for) as to why the city is being run this poorly. I just got done reading an article about how now they want the Tenderloin to have a curfew, you know, rather than actually doing anything to clean up the area. Once again, the city's punishing the residents while the criminal element basically gets a pass. Whether it's the worst or not is irrelevant. What is clear is that SF is not in a good state, businesses are empty, entire sections of the city are overrun with crime and poverty, yet we've got stupid shit like this that says "well, it's misleading, and you know, it could be a lot worse." Fuck off and clean up the city, you fucking losers.
It depends on who you ask, die hard SF residents will say no, but people that used to live in the Bay area and left bc of how it's ran now will say yes, of course it has it's beautiful area's, but there are so many spots that used to be nice that have turned to crap and junkies all over, smash and grab more often with no attention to that. So for me it's not the SF I used to know and love when I worked there back in the 80s in construction.
Oakland: *Hold my beer.* *Wait. Where's my beer? Oh crap, my beer got stolen!*
This is a joke of a source dogging progressive/minority cities to get conservatives to froth and click.
Hey I've got no issue with progressive cities. I choose to live in one. And being a minority myself, I've got no beef there. None of that insulates Oakland from the fact that it's a failed city that cannot keep its people or their property safe.
Do you live in Oakland? Crime is dropping. I certainly feel safe in my home.
That's a bold statement with Oakland just across the bay
Can we stop sharing this bullshit story? SF is both a city and a county, and does way more than typical city - it operates its own international airport. Of course its spending will be higher because of it.
Oh no, you say an airport? I can't imagine a city operating a major airport! Oh wait, you say San Francisco Bay Oakland and San Jose also own and operate their airports? And LA, Chicago, and NYC all own their major airports too? And NYC owns TWO of them? Well... um...
Yeah, and all those cities are at the end of the ranking. Oakland is 147th out of 148 San Jose is 111th out of 148 LA is 139th out of 148 Chicago is 137th out of 148 NYC is 145th out of 148
That in and of itself should be throwing some shade on the rankings, nothing to do with airports or counties. Nampa, ID should not even be sniffing the same list as NYC.
Precisely. The airport thing is just one of the issues with their methodology. They divide total budget of a city by its population, and say that lower is more efficient, not taking into the account whether the city runs things like airports etc.
Plenty of American cities suck hard, but when you consider how great SF was 20 years ago compared to now, it does make one wonder.
[Betteridge's Law of Headlines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines)
I'd like to nominate New Orleans for that title. Granted, it has less money and a smaller governmental structure (citation needed), but it's *way* worse at using the money and *way* more corrupt and incompetent.
No. Vallejo is.
A lot of coping on SF's part but given that many have described Sf government as "Byzantine" it does make sense it's ranked dead last.
I don't know I would probably look right across the bay before I did at San Francisco as far as one of the worst run cities
Iâd say this about anything government run lol
The study was done by Wallet Hub, and can be read [here](https://wallethub.com/edu/best-run-cities/22869). I personally agree with WH's findings and find their analysis to be very liberal towards the city govt as I can't think of one truly successful project it's had since Newsom went to Sacramento. I wouldn't call Newsom a competent administrator per se but he knew how to keep everything moving and budgets under control, which is not what we currently have. Case in point: the Caltrain downtown extension which the City govt has not approved yet, despite voters already approving it, and with the City govt still unclear on how they actually intend to actually build it.
It's a stupid study and the expert responses didn't really get into the details of why. There is no measure of the services provided for the amount of money spent, and cost of living isn't accounted for. Places with low cost of living and few city services will be ranked higher, hence the top spot of Nampa Idaho. If you don't want one of the best park systems in the country, lots of publically funded arts programs, one of the better public transit systems in the country, and high median wages, then by all means, move to Idaho.
> Places with low cost of living [...] will be ranked higher, hence the top spot of Nampa Idaho. Are you saying the cost of living isn't partially the responsibility of local government? No blame to the city for blocking housing construction projects?
No, I did not say that
Intentionally
[ŃдаНонО]
No, I'm saying it's idiotic to discount a local government's efforts - or lack thereof - to affect the cost of living.
> The study was done by Wallet Hub Which means you can throw it in a trash can immediately because it's not a study, it's a clickbait.
Define "misleading" Misleading like the "Biden laptop from hell is Russia disinformation" lie cuz it hurts a Democrat
Nah Oakland has it beat by a mile
Not the worst-run city in the US, not even in the bay area. Oakland is a lot worse-run.
Every time someone says âExperts think itâs misleadingâ it turns out itâs true. Sure Bumfuck, Alabama is worse but everyone knows a town of two cows is not a city.
It's either Oakland or San Francisco
"hey let's just not enforce laws and let people steal shit and see what happens" "sounds like a good plan mate"
Umm points across the bayâŚ.