The recall this past Tuesday of San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin has elicited an onslaught of articles by sympathetic, liberal news outlets admitting the city is in a terrible state — including the latest and most surprising from the flagship paper, the San Francisco Chronicle.
On Friday, the San Francisco Chronicle published an interactive article titled “Downtown S.F. on the brink: It’s worse than it looks.” The article took readers on a virtual walk through the center of the city highlighting all of the abandoned offices and empty storefronts.
The Chronicle reported: “The downtown area, the city’s primary economic driver, is teetering on the edge, facing challenges greater than previously known, new data shows. The wounds suffered by the economic core are deep, and city officials have yet to come up with a plan to make the fundamental changes that some economists and business leaders argue could make the area thrive again.” Office vacancy is up nearly 300%; convention attendance in the city is down nearly 90%.
San Francisco’s crime, homelessness, and pandemic restrictions prompted an exodus that one recall election won’t solve easily. https://t.co/noL7rzEMNc
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) June 10, 2022
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that office attendance in San Francisco is down 52% from what it was before the coronavirus pandemic. In April, the real estate website SocketSite reported that “the amount of vacant office space in San Francisco has ticked up to a pandemic high of 18.7 million square feet versus under 5 million square feet prior to the pandemic.”
Crime, homelessness, the delay in schools reopening, and outrageous pandemic restrictions resulted in a mass exodus from the city and a preference for many tech employees to work from home. While many of the tech companies have continued to thrive, the irony is that many businesses that exist to serve them and their employees have struggled to stay afloat in the post-pandemic landscape.
The Chronicle went on the state the following: “Over time, multiple tax revenues for City Hall could be at risk: property taxes, from emptied buildings that drop in value; sales taxes, from businesses that are struggling or gone, and others. That could lead to a reduction of public services, [Stanford University economist Nicholas] Bloom said.”
“San Francisco is not likely to ever get office workers returning more than 50% of the time,” or 2.5 days per workweek, says Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom. Attempts to surpass that threshold will be like “trying to push water uphill.”https://t.co/RqMSH4qDSH
— Dan Brekke (@danbrekke) June 11, 2022
The left-wing magazine, The Atlantic published a haunting essay this week by San Francisco native Nellie Bowles about how the town became a “failed city,” one in which Good Samaritans cannot even call an ambulance for an injured homeless person without being confronted by “advocates” who urge the patient not to go to the hospital. Why would they do that?
Today, we’re publishing the first piece of @sfchronicle’s @sfnext project by @noah_arroyo and myself.
San Francisco’s downtown area and primary economic driver is worse off than we previously thought. What will it take to bring it back? https://t.co/epF07NkYcP pic.twitter.com/GOC4ZQfoxJ
— Jessica Christian (@jachristian) June 10, 2022
This story syndicated with permission from For the Love of News
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