I grew up in a violent town (high murder rate - even blatant). The difference between that and SF is that you don’t personally experience that violence in my home town. It’s really quite rare it affects someone you know. It’s even rarer for it to be direct.

SF is different. Within my first year there i had already seen someone shot in front my building (i didn’t witness it but the aftermath). An asian friend was slapped and her phone taken - she’d have given the phone anyway so the slap felt unnecessary. You fear parking your car - not trembling in your pants fear but a dread that you’ll have to deal with that shit again (now the breakins happen while you’re still in the car). You don’t know when someone is yelling on the street whether they are harmless or gonna attack you - doesn’t have to be a weapon just yelling at your face with saliva splattering all over you would traumatise you enough - yup, that happened too. My girlfriend and I used to try to help them. We’d give them leftover food - bakery items mostly. We’d see that all tossed on sidewalk when we walk that way again. There was always glass on the sidewalk. There’d be random tents you’ll have to get around. This is daily and adds up.

Like I said, I grew up in a violent town. So avoiding travel at night or going around the house locking windows or being aware of the approaching blind dark spot is something I’m used to. Most everyone around me was not. Even those from the Bay Area haven’t seen. I used to think they were weak but the truth is no one has to put up with it and I think people have the right to “feel” safe as well.

(Again, none if this will show up in a statistic and I’m not saying these people should be locked up in the name of tough on crime either. These are absolutely property crimes and quality of life crimes but you do feel fear and dread almost everyday)

I went to Portland for a week last year. I saw 6 different instances of a violent, obviously mentally ill, presumably homeless person physically attack a random person (once at a restaurant, twice at a tram station, thrice on the street, all broad daylight). That was more instances that I had seen in 5 years in Philadelphia, a city jokingly referred to as Killadelphia.

Portland might not have a lot of gang violence (which is what really gets numbers up), but not violent isn't how I would describe the city.

This data is from 2019, pre-pandemic and almost 5 years ago. Things have changed.

> but objectively SF is actually just average or less.

Did you look at your own source? SF is 37 out of 100 for violent crime. That's comfortably above average, not "average or less"

So sorting by Violent Crime (Total), we see San Francisco is 37th out of the 100 listed.