He’s right about the “narrative part”, sure. The undeniable truth is though, San Francisco has a very serious crime problem due to mismanagement. They can try to handwave it away, but at some point self-preservation kicks in, even with a looney tunes leftist. He’s trying to manage perceptions.
Because even the mere perception that an area is unsafe is more than enough to kill a business district. Permanently. It starts a negative feedback loop of sorts. Revenue declines. Businesses close. Policing goes away, and “nobody goes there”, and not because it’s too crowded. Nobody will relocate there or start a new business. Old school ward Democrats understood this, and they knew better than to allow thousands of bums to camp out in their tony districts and shit on the sidewalks.
One of the South American presidents recently remarked that they must be doing all this on purpose, because nothing else fits.
That’s right; the market will determine its fate, and it doesn’t look promising. No propaganda will deceive businesses to risk moving there, and few newbies will risk 30 years of mortgage payments to move there.
NJ and NY are facing the same problem, though really because of high costs, entrenched (and expensive) gubmint workers, and a brain drain of young workers due to the horrible business climate. AS a result, they are Ground Zero for the Great Replacement; the trafficked Thirdworlders are the only ones who would see this as an improvement. NY has gone so far as proposing removing licensing and/or degree requirements for various jobs as they pose “barriers nto entry”; the real problem is they know nobody will invest the time/money in the training then stay in the dead zone (they leave). “Free tuition” at state schools is another example in NY; the tuition is “free” contingent on the student remaining in NY for the same number of years after graduation (basically indentured servitude, similar to early colonists earning their passage with 7 years “free labor”).