A Self-Imposed Myth

There seems to be an understanding between many I’ve spoken to that the level of crime in Bayview is so high as to be unique. There is a sense, not among everyone, but among enough people I’ve spoken to, that this neighborhood is singular in its share of San Francisco blight, murder and drugs. While these things happen (most people I’ve spoken to who live here have more than one story of being witness to drug activity or the victim of theft), the statistics tell a different story.

Which is the truer take? Is there something the numbers don’t account for? Why is there this disconnect?

Shirley Moore, the vice president of the Bayview Hill Neighborhood Association, is an example of an exaggerated view. When talking about crime in her neighborhood, Moore’s voice becomes louder and more strained. She can’t walk her dogs anymore, she says, because one day she found a note in her mailbox. It said, “I follow you home.” She’s tired of seeing glass from car windows on the street when she leaves her home in the morning. When her car gets broken into, she says, she doesn’t report it, knowing it will just make her premiums go up.

“When I want a nice cup of coffee, I make it myself,” Moore says. “Or I have to drive in my car to a mall in Portola.” Continuing, Moore uses phrases like “held hostage.” When talking about where they live, she and others in Bayview Hill Neighborhood Association tend to paint a picture of siege.

Statistics tell a different story. A mapping application on the San Francisco Police Department Web site shows where various crimes. Incidences come up in color-coded dots, blue, green, yellow, red.

On the map, Bayview has its share of colored dots, certainly. But they’re nowhere near as dense as the dots in the Tenderloin and South of Market.

It’s the same for subsidized housing. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has a similar map for housing projects, it’s own, and those run by other organizations. Again, Bayview has a few, downtown San Francisco has many more.

The list continues this way, for the number of people who are homeless, the number of registered sex offenders. One by one, the statistics show something less dire than the picture painted by Moore and others.

But it’s comparative gain. Bayview’s bad numbers are consistently trumped by the Tenderloin’s.

Also, the financial center and the tenderloin are less residential, if you look at the numbers. Bayview has a much higher number of single family homes and rental housing units. Though downtown San Francisco has higher statistics of crime, that place may be less of a home to more people.

The Glamour of the Tough Neighborhood

Talking to residents and outsiders, Bayview’s reputation precedes it. I’ve seen craigslist ads for apartments in the neighborhood, many of them with qualifiers like, “yeah, I know, Bayview…”

When I’ve told people I’m reporting on their neighborhood, they tend to ask me to focus on the good things this place has to offer. This has happened more than once. More than once, I’ve also heard the phrase, “after a while I stopped calling the police when I heard gunshots.”

In reporting, there seems to be an almost willful focus on the neighborhood’s weakest attributes.

I’ve noticed it in myself. The Bayview district, according to the city’s formal boundaries, run much father north and west than the common understanding of where Bayview, as a neighborhood, begins and ends. I’ve often had to choose which information to use, data from the larger or smaller Bayview. In these situations, I’ve felt a dark little temptation to use the information that gives the worse impression.

This could also be due to expediency. Official data is easiest to get for the larger, district Bayview. Census data is easily had by zip code—94124 falls loosely in line with the district boundaries.

I can understand the temptation to paint a place you don’t live in as worse off than it is. But what seems unique to me, rather than Bayview’s crime rate, is the tendency of some people here to exaggerate the negative. To an outsider, which I am, it comes off as a myth.