Sad, Sad, Sad, San Francisco

San Francisco has always been one of my favorite cities. I love the fresh, cool air. The views. Fisherman's Wharf. The cable car rides up and down the hills.

There are not many sadder things that I have seen during my lifetime than what has happened to San Francisco.

It should be a lesson to anyone who believes that going all in on liberal progressive policies is going to improve society.

San Francisco has been at the epicenter of the tech revolution the last 25 years but who would have thought that one of the applications that would result from that high technology would be a website that maps where there is human poop on the sidewalks in the city.

I wrote about this first back in 2018 and it has just gotten worse over time.

Source: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=b6fab720912642b6aedafdb02a76d2a4

Of course, all of this has been caused by homelessness and rampant drug use on the streets of San Francisco that liberal policies encourage.

Source: https://manhattan.institute/article/theres-a-reason-the-homeless-flock-to-san-francisco

The claim that enough subsidized housing will solve the homelessness problem is belied by San Francisco’s efforts. In the past 15 years, the city has created more than 7,000 permanent housing units, enough to house every homeless person at the beginning of the period, but the problem has grown worse.

Just months after taking office as Mayor of San Francisco in 2004, Gavin Newsom pledged to end chronic homelessness in the city within 10 years.

20 years later, with Newsom now Governor of California, nothing has changed in San Francisco.

One of the more interesting factoids I have seen on this is that San Francisco still has all of this homelessness despite spending $1.1 billion on the problem in its 2021-2022 budget.

Tp put that in context, that amount is equal to about 80% of the entire city budget of Jacksonville, Florida which is more populous than San Francisco.

Source: https://www.hoover.org/research/despite-spending-11-billion-san-francisco-sees-its-homelessness-problems-spiral-out#:~:text=San%20Francisco%20is%20slightly%20smaller,of%20Jacksonville%27s%20entire%20city%20budget.

Add to all of this the crime issue in San Francisco that has been fueled by a California law that makes any theft of property of $950 or less a misdemeanor. This has caused police to almost never respond to any calls by retailers to arrest anyone for shoplifting.

Walgreen's has stated that theft in its stores in San Francisco are four times the chain's national average. As a result, it has closed 17 stores in the city.

The retail drug chain is not the only retailer that has decided that trying to operate in San Francisco is untenable considering both the crime issue and fewer people working (and shopping) in the city in the post-Covid world.

Half of the stores in the downtown retail hub have closed since 2019

Source: https://abcnews.go.com/US/san-franciscos-retail-exodus-crime-experts/story?id=101100884

The values of commercial real estate in San Francisco have been falling and look to decline much further. A recent report predicts that real estate values will fall 40%-45% between 2023 and 2025.

Source: https://sfstandard.com/2023/07/18/san-francisco-commercial-property-values-could-plummet-40-by-2025/

A study released this month by economic research firm Capital Economics found that San Francisco "still has the poorest outlook" among peer cities across the United States when it comes to declining commercial real estate values. The research firm forecasted that San Francisco properties will decline in value by 40-45% between 2023 and 2025, edging out Seattle as the hardest-hit city in the study.

The number of police in San Francisco has dropped dramatically over the last few years.

Some of this is clearly related to the "defund the police" agenda of many in the liberal progressive wing of the Democrat party.

Full-duty police officers in San Francisco
Source: https://missionlocal.org/2023/03/police-staffing-crisis-san-francisco/

As a result, the average time for the police in San Francisco to respond to a Tier 1 (critical) call has increased by over 30% since 2016. For Tier 2 calls the response time has increased by over 80%---from 17 minutes to 32 minutes.

In the meantime, traffic enforcement in the city of San Francisco has become almost non-existent as this chart shows.

Source: https://sfgov.org/scorecards/transportation/percentage-citations-top-five-causes-collisions

The police are not allowed to bust homeless derelicts and drug addicts on the streets.

The police are not responding to shoplifting calls.

They are not writing any traffic citations.

All of the above seems to show a city and a society falling apart.

Is there any hope for the future?

Looking at the education system in San Francisco does not offer much optimism for the next generation of San Franciscans.

The following statistics are taken directly from the San Francisco Public Schools Student Performance Analysis (June, 2022 report).

Only 46% of all students are math proficient based on their year in school. Blacks are at 9%. Latinx 18%.

Source: https://go.boarddocs.com/ca/sfusd/Board.nsf/files/CG5V977F8741/$file/6_28_22%20-%20SFUSD%20Student%20Performance%20Analysis.pdf

 

63% of African American students are chronically absent. By comparison, only 8% of Asians are.

Source: https://go.boarddocs.com/ca/sfusd/Board.nsf/files/CG5V977F8741/$file/6_28_22%20-%20SFUSD%20Student%20Performance%20Analysis.pdf

Only 15% of Black students and 24% of Latinx are considered ready for high school. 

Source: https://go.boarddocs.com/ca/sfusd/Board.nsf/files/CG5V977F8741/$file/6_28_22%20-%20SFUSD%20Student%20Performance%20Analysis.pdf

However, 86% of Blacks  and 77% of Latinx get their high school diplomas.

Consider me skeptical that all of these students who were not ready for high school miraculously got their acts together academically in order to graduate considering 64% of Blacks and 46% of Latinz are also chronically absent from school.

Do you think there is a possibility that most students are just passed on to the next grade no matter how they perform in class?

Looking at this data you also have to wonder how it is that only 25% of Blacks and 32% of students in San Francisco public schools are considered ready for college/career but 46% of Blacks and 55% of Latinx then enroll in a 2-year or 4-year college after high school. 

Do you see a disconnect here?

How is that possible?

It would not be possible without 1) aggressive affirmative action initiatives and 2) a very liberal federal student loan program for these students.

Source: https://go.boarddocs.com/ca/sfusd/Board.nsf/files/CG5V977F8741/$file/6_28_22%20-%20SFUSD%20Student%20Performance%20Analysis.pdf

All of it adds up to a sad, sad, sad state of affairs in San Francisco.

It is not likely to improve unless and until the voters of San Fransisco decide that the progressive liberal policies that underlie all of this are at the root of many of the problems facing the city. 

However, considering the past behavioral patterns of voters in San Francisco that is not likely to occur before things get even sadder there.

A Republican has not been elected Mayor of San Francisco since 1955 (68 years).

Sad. Sad, Sad.