As a local (and having a spouse who works for City & County of SF), this is a good take on the matter. The real concern I have is the commercial vacancy rate. It’s going to become a revenue issue. It’s a combo of factors related to the tech downturn and COVID work from home evolving into ongoing work from home. THAT is what will need some real attention and innovation, and then the businesses will come back. I know others feel differently, but I wouldn’t ever bet against San Francisco.
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I am certain that someone said that about Detroit in 1970.
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Funny how this person tries to minimize the behavior and claim it’s not criminal.
Last time I checked possession of illegal drugs, harassing/spitting/threatening/assaulting people, public defecation and the like ARE crimes.
“about drug use in the streets or antisocial behavior is equated in their minds with crime”.
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Let’s revisit in 25 years and see. It would be great, though, if housing prices would come down here! My kids want to come back to live here after college, and that’s not really an option at this point.
On second read through that CNN interview, it absolutely nails the situation. Just very smart analysis on the matter from someone who actually lives here. The national/politicized narrative — as is the case virtually always! — is pretty far off.
I do hope people who live in SF get to travel more. Their acceptance of a situation there, which is not the norm in other Western cities, baffles me, but presumably that is why it continues. It is normalized.
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People who live in San Francisco tend to travel a lot!
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Or what? What do people who cannot afford traditional housing in Marin have to do with crime in SF?
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Yup,
Looks like the incident started with him pepper spraying Doty. There are allegations that he has been caught on video pepper spraying the homeless on eight occasions. Two videos in the article show him doing it to two people minding their own business, one of which was Doty.
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As one of my s’s said, even when there is a depression and housing prices crash around the country, they have only softened a bit in comparison in SF.
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I don’t know much about Detroit so correct me if I’m wrong, but for comparison purposes it seems to be lacking a major international shipping port, multiple world class universities, a thriving tech sector, and highly desirable climate.
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Yep. Plus a hub of innovators and entrepreneurs. Just one reason I’m not ready to write off my city. Over the course of my half-century, there have been multiple cycles of “this is the end of SF” and yet… 
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In 1970 Detroit was the center of the auto industry. It was a place where blue collar factory workers could afford to own a home, maybe a summer home on the lake and raise a family. It was a thriving city. And San Francisco itself does not have world class universities, they are in Berkeley and Palo Alto. Shipping on the Great Lakes was a major business too. It is a port of entry for Canada/US trade.
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The comparison seems like more scare mongering to me.
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A once affluent city that hit the skids? I think there is a lot of denial among San Franciscans.
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I’m not a San Franciscan. IMO the comparison between the two cities is superficial at best, as the challenges they face are very different. Lots of cities have been falsely touted the next Detroit. It’s scare mongering.
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I don’t know, the comparison might be spot on. The one-two punch of covid and the tech downturn is taking a toll on SF in many ways.
WFH didn’t just mean work from your home in SF. In many case it meant work from your home in Colorado Springs, or Tucson, or Nashville, or Dallas. Bringing those heads back in SF will continue to be an uphill battle because the cost of living in SF is so high both socially and monetarily. Given the choice, many will prefer to continue to WFX (X= Colaorado Springs, or Tucson, or,…).
I don’t know what SF can do at this point to bring back all the workers into the city. Following the bank closures and the potential for more downside in commercial real estate, I don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel.
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Boston’s tech center is heavily weighted to biotech and robotics. Not much WFH in those industries. Biohazard labs in homes and condos are not easy to create. 
Several office buildings downtown are being converted to labs. While there are homeless in Boston of course it is nowhere near the level of the San Francisco Bay area.
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On behalf of San Francisco, to misquote Mark Twain as everybody always does: “Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” 
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Precisely. Which is what this entire thread was to begin with – kicking off with a story about a “random” killing that turned out not to be random at all.
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You are entitled to your opinion. Since the NY Times, the Washington Post, the Wall St Journal and the SF Chronicle have all run similar stories recently about the issue, others think differently.
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