If you've been following the descent of once-great American metropolises, you know Detroit's name sits atop the leaderboard of urban decay. But there's a new contender vying for that ignominious title at a shocking pace - the one and only San Francisco.
The city by the bay has historically been a shining beacon of prosperity, progressivism and pacifism. But a disturbing confluence of terrible governance and toxic politics has catalyzed a freefall for the ages. The numbers tell a jaw-dropping tale: Between 2019-2021 alone, San Francisco hemorrhaged 6.3% of its population - a rate of decline unmatched across any two-year stretch in Detroit's painful multi-decade implosion.
The $7 billion in vanishing household income as high-earning entrepreneurs and tech elite fled for greener pastures merely hints at the cataclysmic economic toll. While San Francisco's exorbitant living costs have long been an irritant, the mass exodus underway is propelled by a far more toxic malaise - a descent into chaos bred from disastrous policymaking.
Just ask "Shark Tank" star and entrepreneur Kevin O'Leary, who has roundly slammed San Francisco as a "wasteland" thanks to senseless policies like defunding the police, abolishing rent control and obstructing business development. He laments the once-bustling city has devolved into something totally un-American, a place you wouldn't dare host a convention lest your own safety comes under threat.
"It's not a partisan argument," O'Leary stresses, pointing to shuttered Walgreens, theaters and convenience stores littering neighborhoods - all victims of spiraling crime, drugs and inflated costs of operating. While the likes of Jackson Hole and Palm Beach have become landing pads for fleeing San Francisco wealth, those left behind have borne the brunt of a rapidly decaying downtown core.
A staggering 27% office vacancy rate amid the shift to remote work has depleted foot traffic by 64%, leaving once-vibrant sidewalks desolate. Coffee shops, restaurants and bars that catered to the downtown crowd now board up their windows in defeat. San Francisco faces a $200 million property tax shortfall stemming from this economic evisceration.
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You'd think these crippling blows might catalyze an urgency to change course. But the city's directionless leadership remains mired in total detachment from reality. Business revival plans amount to hollow PR fluff about "pedestrian paradises" and "activating public spaces" - all while ignoring the rampant homelessness, drug epidemics and crime sprees plaguing the streets. Yes, you read that right - a 143-page downtown revitalization proposal doesn't utter the words "homeless," "crime" or "drugs" a single time.
Even more galling is how City Supervisor Aaron Peskin completely dismisses the economic carnage, deeming it not "profound" while insisting San Francisco needn't aspire to regain its former powerhouse status. That such delusional gaslighting could emanate from an elected leader tells you all you need to know about the city's governing disgrace.
For those who still clung to nostalgia about San Francisco's glory days, its breathtaking descent lays bare an inconvenient truth: Years of disastrous policies and fringe political pandering have irreparably tarnished this once world-class destination. Rampant homelessness, drug over-doses, property crimes - all now trace directly back to elected leadership too dysfunctional to course-correct.
In a nation where economic and cultural influences increasingly flow from flourishing megacities, San Francisco finds itself on the outside looking in. Shedding jobs, businesses and wealthy residents at a staggering clip, this progressive utopia has been laid to waste by its very own overzealous design.
While much of urban America wrestles with its own challenges, San Francisco remains peerless in the speed and severity of its unraveling. Without an immediate change in the toxic political winds, this former crown jewel risks becoming America's first truly 'failed city' in the modern era.
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