Posted on 09/14/2022 9:47:19 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
This summer the San Francisco Chronicle polled 1,600 residents about the state of the city and yesterday the paper published a series of articles summarizing the results. As you can probably guess, the results were not good. The Chronicle described it as a “pervasive gloom” about the city’s future. And that is leading more than a third of residents to say they plan to leave.
Roughly one-third of the respondents said they were likely to leave within the next three years. A large majority, 65%, said that life in the city is worse than when they first moved here. Less than one-quarter of respondents said they expected life in San Francisco to improve in two years. More than one-third said it would worsen.
San Franciscans were largely in agreement about the city’s biggest problems: Homelessness took first place, followed by public safety and housing affordability. When asked if, three years from now, those problems would be significantly less severe, nearly 70% of people said either “slightly likely” or “not likely at all.”
During the pandemic, about 20% of the city’s younger population (25-29) moved away and the poll indicates that trend will continue.
People who expect to move away in the near future tend to be younger adults — the people who will determine the city’s cultural identity, drive the local economy, and start businesses and families.
“San Francisco’s risking a brain drain,” said Rebecca Eissler, assistant professor of political science at San Francisco State University. “It’s worth considering for a politician. What do we do to keep young innovators?”
Here’s a Chronicle chart showing 37% of respondents overall planned to move away within three years but among young people that number jumps to 54%!
The reasons for this aren’t terribly difficult to fathom. As mentioned above, the big three are homelessness, public safety and the cost of housing. And on those fronts, there is absolute agreement among all segments of the population, regardless of age, gender, race, income or education level that things in the city have gotten worse. Just look at all the red in this chart created by the Chronicle.
There’s a separate article about one of the major drivers of this gloom: public safety. Remember just a few months ago former DA Chesa Boudin was traversing the media landscape claiming that crime in San Francisco was heading down. That may be true for some categories of crime but I think the results of this poll help explain why he was recalled anyway.
Forty-five percent of people surveyed for the poll said they had an item stolen within the last five years. Proportionally, Black and mixed-race respondents felt a more severe impact than other groups, with a majority — 54% of Black respondents and 55% of mixed-race respondents — reporting they had suffered theft. Property crime rates were lower for white residents, 43% of whom had a possession swiped within the time period.
“I think that’s extraordinarily high,” former city supervisor Michael Yaki, who is now a political analyst, said of the overall numbers. While personal property theft may not elicit the same degree of terror as a violent attack, it still affects people’s feelings of security, he said.
“When a car is broken into, and things have been stolen, there’s a sense of personal violation — especially if it occurred on the street that you live,” Yaki said. “The fact that you could have been out there when it happened, and what if you had interrupted it? Those things go through people’s minds.”
What is the old saying? A conservative is liberal who has been mugged. When nearly half of the population has been personally ripped off in the previous five years, that’s a lot of mugged liberals. The poll showed that police are not held in especially high regard. Just 18% of respondents said they were doing a good job. Still that’s higher than the ratings for the Board of Supervisors (12%) or the School Board (11%).
The Chronicle also asked people what they love and hate about the city. Things they loved included the weather, the beauty, the diversity and the fact that the city was politically liberal. But the things they didn’t like about the city once again sounds like liberals who’ve been mugged by reality.
To be fair, we also asked poll respondents what makes them saddest about life in San Francisco. Those responses weren’t surprising but were still disheartening. The word “filth” seemed to show up in every other answer.
It’s become openly filthy, and no one seems to care. The state of disrepair. I only see the city being cleaned up when celebrities and dignitaries come to town. The city is littered with garbage and dirt everywhere except Pacific Heights. Drug paraphernalia littering the sidewalks. It is almost embarrassing to say I am from San Francisco when I travel.
Other respondents focused on crime — and the feeling our leaders don’t know what to do about it.
Drug dealers. Break-ins. Crime. My car windows have been broken four times this year. It’s sad when people are afraid to come here. Our politicians running the city do not have a clue.
That particular story ends with a criticism of people like me: “Fox News and all the other faraway haters who relish criticizing San Francisco don’t get a say. The people who live here and are striving to make the city better most definitely do.”
I’ve been to San Francisco many times and I don’t hate it. It is a beautiful place or at least it could be. But it has clearly taken a turn for the worse in the past few years. That’s evident to anyone who looks. I’m not hoping people give up and move away but I think that’s probably inevitable unless the city can get a handle on some of the big problems it is facing (to be fair most cities on the west coast are facing the same big problems). And I’ll give the residents of San Francisco credit for trying. Recalling the woke school board members was the right call. Getting rid of DA Chesa Boudin was the right call. But San Francisco has been digging itself into this hole for a long time. It’s going to take a sustained effort to get out of it and bring the city back to some level of sanity and safety on the streets.
“Only a fool, tech billionaire or a homeless person would live in San Francisco.”
I live most of the year in S.F., though I have another home elsewhere. I’m not a billionaire nor homeless, so, by your reckoning, I must be a fool. In my defense, however, I will note that I’m a native and have family and business interests in S.F. that more or less require my presence. That’s life.
I will say that I like the weather and the natural surroundings, and we have some good restaurants. But, believe me, I’d significantly reduce my presence here if I could. Everything you hear about the homeless and drugs and filth is true.
Texas haas had a lot of dem leanings in the past several years. Some have been shocking . TN is infested with them also. They are wearing masks outside, in August. They proudly announce they are from California, the ones that announce that say other things which confirm they are infesting and voting dem. They need to be walled in.
Maybe 1 in 40 are not screaming libs. They are here in shocking numbers after getting the government they voted for.
State governments are pure democracies. Californians need to go back and fix they state they are so proud of.
Washington had Mail in voting codified into law in early 2000’s. That’s when Washington started going downhill.
Oregon was okay, but their last/current bull dyke Governor torched it terribly.
Texas has a problem and it’s getting worse. Tesla HQ moves and their eco nazis move with it.
North Carolina(tech hub), Georgia(thanks to Hollywood), Florida and Idaho, specifically Boise, are next on the locus list.
Secession and boarders on liberal states are in order.
Not everyone in California or San Francisco specifically is a liberal.
Texas might be blue in the next decade with the millions of new illegal aliens calling it home...most illiterate in their birth country language to boot.
I have friends who live in SF. They are conservatives and find the area great for many reasons….the political climate ain’t one of them
I’ve been to New York as well as SF. Much prefer SF
BS. They ABSOLUTELY have a clue and that clue is the more chaos there is the more "fix it" money the stupid voters will give them.
Earthquake will finish off the city for a very long, long time. Maybe become a fishing village.
I’m aware of that.. but most of the young people moving from there into Texas and other red states are moving to liberal hubs in those red states.
Leave? NO WAY! Wall them in. Make them stay and live in what they voted for. Nobody wants these Typhoid Mary’s spreading their socialism and their stupidity elsewhere.
The Southern states were Democrat yes.....but in those days the Democrat party was still reasonable. The continued leftward drift of the Democrat party was precisely why all those Southern states left them and became Republican strongholds.
A tsunami would have the added benefit of washing all the turds on the sidewalks out to sea thus cleaning the place.
We have one I know here in Charlotte. She can’t answer when I ask “if California is so great and all and it has the politics you support......what are you doing here among us backward rednecks in this red state?”
One time she even said how happy she was being here “where her vote counts” unlike in California where its a one party state.....only what she meant was she was happy to be here infesting this state and trying to turn it into a commie shit hole just like California is. I just about barfed when I heard that.
All that data, they will still vote democrats into office. Insanety.
Let us be real, the democrat party has been promoting socialism and communism since the first civil war. Just not everyone wanted to admit it.
They created their utopia and its not to their liking so they will bring their cancer to you
[of the tree that brings forth such grapes of Sodom]
Boy does that ever describe much of the Western world these days; and frighteningly so...
On my last trip to San Francisco, just prior to the lockdowns, I was speaking with a newly retired couple whom I met in a bar in Cow Hollow. They had just relocated from Chicago. When I asked them why they chose San Francisco as their retirement spot, they answered, "We wanted to live in the most liberal city in the country." Go figure.
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