San Francisco hogs limelight for wrong reasons

Political debate

San Francisco is a place that has long been a beacon for progressives. Many people attribute the city's decline to "progressive leaders" and their "left-wing values", blaming progressive policies for ruining the city.

This narrative holds that permissive policies have protected homelessness and have been soft on crimes, while police are unable to interfere because of politicians' unwillingness to enforce the law.

Critics of the city are calling for more policing and tougher treatment of suspects. They blasted elected officials for preaching unlimited "compassion", while their policies have resulted in "a system of incredible cruelty", with record-high levels of homelessness, addiction, and overdose deaths.

The city now spends more than $1 billion each year on homelessness to provide shelters, permanent housing, law enforcement, and medical programs. But the number of homeless residents has risen 32 percent in the past 10 years.

The Tenderloin neighborhood has become a "sanctuary" for those who are unwilling to participate in government programs designed to keep them off the streets, some critics said.

Despite good intentions, the city's policies amount to "a regime of extreme permissiveness", they said.

Among the critics of progressives is San Francisco Supervisor Joel Engardio, who described himself as a moderate. During his election campaign last year, he promised to remove roadblocks for small businesses and to put more police officers on the streets.

"For too long, we have not followed that definition of progressive," he said. "Progressive is a city that works and functions and builds toward the future."

San Francisco Mayor London Breed, also a moderate, expressed frustration with the progressivism in the issue of mental health conservatorship.

The conservatorship system compels people into treatment if they are unable or unwilling to do so voluntarily. The progressives attack the system for taking away people's rights.

A series of high-profile incidents fueled public fear and anger, which led to the recall of progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin last year.

He was criticized for being soft on crime, with critics alleging his left-wing de-incarceration and decriminalization policies led to an unprecedented boom in San Francisco crime.

With Boudin out of the picture, people shift blame from the District Attorney's office to City Hall.

Breed has been criticized for not doing enough to clean up San Francisco's streets. The mayor holds the power when it comes to public safety, homelessness and clean streets, and it is the responsibility of the mayor and the district attorney to arrest and prosecute suspects, her critics said.

Reasons for decline

When asked for the reasons behind San Francisco's decline in a March interview with comedian and political commentator Jon Stewart, Breed pointed the finger at the influence of social media and former president Donald Trump.

Social media can amplify those problems and create viral moments that take hold in the popular imagination, Breed said.

Trump "put a target on our back" and "used it as an example for a lot of things that are going wrong in the country", the mayor said.

During a 2020 campaign stop in Bakersfield, California, Trump said to people: "Look what's happened to San Francisco. It's worse than a slum, there's no slum like that."

Other Republican politicians also have used San Francisco to attack liberal ideology in their political campaigns.

Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis came to San Francisco last month to promote his presidential campaign. In a campaign video, he stood in a downtown city street saying he saw people defecating in the streets and using drugs, and blamed "leftist policies" for the city's problems.

Local officials and business leaders decry the narrative that San Francisco is decaying, saying the problems were exaggerated for political reasons.

"They're making up stuff," Rodney Fong, CEO of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, told San Francisco Chronicle. "It is absolutely unfair."

Last month, the Bay Area Council, a business association in San Francisco, said, "We take particular umbrage when media stories disproportionately focus attention on the city's ills without highlighting the many things that make San Francisco great."

Mayor Breed said she planned to reinvent the central business district, because hybrid work is not likely to go away. She has rolled out a strategy to revitalize the city, including tax incentives to boost office occupancy, attracting new industries such as artificial intelligence and biotech into the city, and converting unused office space into housing and cultural venues.

"People have constantly written the obituary of San Francisco, and I say to them, you better write in pencil because you're going to have to rewrite what happens as a result of what we're going to see change in our city," she said in an April interview with ABC7 News.

liazhu@chinadailyusa.com