The Left's Vision for America, Captured in One City

San Francisco, once a jewel, now a warning.

Paul and I went to law school a half century ago 30 miles south of San Francisco. The city was a big attraction, and not just because of its exotic beauty and artistic entertainment (sometimes known by ruffians — but not the two of us, of course — as “topless bars”). And it wasn’t a magnet only for law students in their twenties. It attracted tourists from all over the world.

But that was long ago. For the last few decades, the city has been run by far Left politicians — people with a “compassionate” and “progressive” vision for dealing with urban planning, commerce, crime, drug use, homelessness and numerous other social problems.

The results are in. And the people, or at least those who can leave, are out.

As the Washington Post no less reports:

The excitement around what AI could do for San Francisco stands in sharp contrast to the doom-and-gloom narrative that has come to define the city — much of it undeniable. Boarded-up storefronts are a common sight in downtown Union Square, once a ritzy and bustling area for tourists. Office vacancy rates hover around 30 percent, yet commercial and residential rents are still some of the highest in the country. Meanwhile, homelessness remains a stubborn and tragic issue, with city leaders struggling to address it.

And how long have they had to “address” it? Twenty years? Thirty?

Even outside of tech, the city has seen an exodus of retail from downtown. Big names like Walgreens, Old Navy and Nordstrom have closed — or plan to close — their locations in downtown San Francisco, citing dwindling foot traffic and deteriorating street conditions related to the city’s homelessness crisis.

You might think that the wonderfully opaque phrase, “deteriorating street conditions” means, well, that the asphalt is aging. Of course it means no such thing. It means that customers have been scared off by marauding gangs of shoplifters who have their fun while (per management’s orders) employees do nothing and the police are never so much as called — not that they would do anything either.

This week, Westfield announced that it will stop paying the mortgage on its downtown San Francisco mall and that it plans to hand the property back to lenders.

This is a huge story. A major business walks away from a mortgage of over a half billion dollars because, in one of America’s foremost cities, everyday commerce has become impossible.

The Wall Street Journal has also noticed, and started its piece on San Francisco with a revealing anecdote:

Author Shelby Steele and his son, Eli, were filming a documentary in San Francisco last week when someone broke into their rental car. “In the 10 minutes we were gone our SUV was broken into and nearly $15k of cameras stolen,” Eli tweeted. “Called 911 & they hung up twice.”

Welcome to another day ending in the letter Y in San Francisco.

“Many Twitter employees feel unsafe coming to work in downtown SF and have had their car windows smashed,” Elon Musk tweeted in response. “They also got such a null response from the police that they rarely even bother reporting crimes anymore, because nothing happens.”

Part of the reason nothing happens is that the DA, until recently “progressive prosecutor” hero Chesa Boudin, simply will not file charges for the great majority of property crimes. It got so bad with Boudin that he got recalled in a landslide. But by then — indeed, well before then — it was too late.

The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. Yet San Francisco’s leaders refuse to acknowledge how their own policies have caused the spiral of public disorder that’s driving away businesses and residents in droves.

The WSJ then fills in some of the revealing and depressing details (emphasis added) oddly absent from Washington Post story:

Add to this list the Westfield San Francisco Centre, whose owners last week handed their property to their lender. “A growing number of retailers and businesses are leaving the area due to the unsafe conditions for customers, retailers, and employees, coupled with the fact that these significant issues are preventing an economic recovery of the area,” the mall’s owner said last month after the center’s Nordstrom store announced it is closing.

Nearly half of the mall’s retailers have closed since 2020 as San Francisco has lost some 7.5% of its population—a larger share than any other major city.

You won’t have a hard time guessing who, specifically, is getting out:

Those leaving are by and large affluent. According to Internal Revenue Service data, about 14,700 San Francisco taxpayers with an average adjusted gross income of $415,000 moved to other states in 2020 and 2021. Tens of thousands more flocked to Bay Area exurbs.

So who’s left behind? Very good, class! Those left behind are the working class the progressive politicians claim so loudly to care about. Somehow I don’t think the Bay Area’s leading Congressperson — multi-millionaire Nancy Pelosi — is going to be worrying much about this.

And COVID, the Left’s all-purpose excuse for dragging down standards in every aspect of life it can reach, got the call here as well:

One could say that Covid lockdowns were the match that lit the city’s dumpster fire. Mayor London Breed joined five other Bay Area counties on March 16, 2020, in imposing the country’s first “shelter in place” order. “It’s the new normal temporarily in an effort to protect public health,” she said at the time.

But it wasn’t COVID. It was what it always is, namely, the Left’s ideology of strangling standards of productivity and normal decency:

As the new normal dragged on, families and workers moved to places with more freedom, less crime and lower housing costs and taxes. Once the Bay Area’s lockdowns were lifted in May 2021, many former residents had no desire to return to San Francisco’s dirty, dangerous and deserted streets that were studded with tents, needles and human feces.

The city has long been grungy, but the blight and crime worsened during the pandemic as city officials reduced the jail population by about 40% by releasing hundreds of inmates—never mind that they were far more likely to die of drug overdoses on the streets than of Covid in their cells.

And the blight, including and especially the moral blight, is going strong to this day:

Some hotels have fallen into such disrepair that even many of the city’s homeless are refusing offers to be put up there….Is it any wonder that tourists and businesses are staying away? Hotel occupancy nationwide has returned to pre-pandemic levels, but not in San Francisco. Hotel owners are walking away from their mortgages. So are office-building owners. They don’t foresee an end to the blight or a return to the pre-pandemic normal. [And] public-safety problems are growing worse as the city struggles to recruit and retain police officers.

Paul has explained why “progressive” jurisdictions can’t hire or retain police, not that it’s a big mystery. It’s hard to get people to work as police when you savage police as bloodthirsty racists.

Still, there’s hope……………….all depending on how you define “hope:”

Businesses are being replaced by nonprofits that consume rather than contribute tax dollars, including social-service organizations and outfits like the Excessive Wealth Disorder Institute, a new think tank that seeks to remedy income “hoarding” by the rich.

The police are weak and getting weaker; vagrants are taking over the sidewalks in center city; drug overdose deaths are spiking; gangs of hoodlums rifle retail stores without consequence; productive citizens by the tens of thousands are headed for the exit; and you can’t sit down on the subway without first checking to make sure your backside won’t get poked with a heroin needle. But at least we have the Excessive Wealth Disorder Institute.

America, you don’t need to wonder what “progressive” leadership will bring you. You already know.