San Francisco is a mess. But you’d be wrong to count it out.
By Adam Lashinsky
Contributing columnist
The Washington Post
June 27, 2023 at 5:45 a.m. EDT
Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way first: San Francisco is a multifaceted mess. Not even the city’s cheeriest boosters can deny that an ugly “doom loop,” prophesied by the local newspaper, is underway here.
The problems can be organized into three silos: the physical perils of homelessness, crime and drugs; a financial crisis that has hollowed out the city’s downtown and sapped city coffers of revenue; and a dysfunctional government that prevents elected officials and bureaucrats from solving problems.
The first two sets of issues are well known — and are neither unique to San Francisco nor particularly new. They’ve just gotten quantifiably worse since the pandemic set in. Car smash-ins and thefts of property are so numerous that San Franciscans mostly shake their heads. Homeless camps are as much a fixture of life here as the Golden Gate Bridge.
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