“It’s Public Safety, Stupid”

As Public Safety Declines, the Doom Loop Rages on Unabated

This article was originally published in The Epoch Times on June 16, 2023

In February 2022, I wrote this in my article “What If San Francisco Doesn’t Recover:”

If you go downtown during the day, you can see the difference. The office buildings are empty. Vehicle and pedestrian traffic aren’t half of what they used to be. But what other effect does that have on the city?

Well, there are a lot of small businesses on the ground floors of those large buildings. These businesses have survived by servicing all the workers commuting to those buildings. As they start to realize the workers aren’t coming back, they’re forced to accept the new reality and close. The closing of those businesses will be the start of the economic death spiral.

Closed businesses put up boards to secure the storefronts. The closed-up shops lead to more homeless encampments taking over the area. Urban blight and homeless encampments don’t exactly inspire people to risk their savings, open a business, and try to clean up the area. That only exacerbates the problem and makes it increasingly harder to get out of the abyss. The encampments will spread like a virus to cover the entire area.

Well fast forward less than 18 months, and we are well into what I called an “Economic Death Spiral.” Since then, it has been renamed by the local press as the “Doom Loop.”

The Mayor, the Board of Supervisors, and all their lemmings can continue to downplay the looming disaster, but to anyone with eyes, the spiral is evident. In addition to the declining state of the streets, businesses are closing daily. I have truly never seen anything like it. The San Francisco Standard[1] reported last month, that since 2020, twenty retail stores had closed in the Union Square area. This disaster however, is continually overlooked by those in charge as not a big deal.

In an interview on May 29, 2023, Betty Yu tweeted[2] that Mayor Breed said, "this is not about the issues and the conditions, this is about the changes to retail. And that's just where we are at this time. And it's time for us to make some adjustments to that." Retail is obviously changing, but the quote still refuses to even mention the problem of out of control retail theft and the squalid conditions of San Francisco streets.

While the City government continues to have its head in the sand, reality is much more illustrative of what is to come. Just last week, Park Hotels decided to default on its debt payments for the Hilton Union Square and Parc 55 Hotels[3]. These two hotels contain almost 3000 rooms. The Hilton Union Square is the largest hotel on the west coast. Even with all of that going for it, Park Hotels decided to give the hotels to the bank due to the poor financial outlook. Park Hotels said on their decision to walk away:

After much thought and consideration, we believe it is in the best interest for Park's stockholders to materially reduce our current exposure to the San Francisco market. Now more than ever, we believe San Francisco's path to recovery remains clouded and elongated by major challenges - both old and new: record high office vacancy; concerns over street conditions; lower return to office than peer cities; and a weaker than expected citywide convention calendar through 2027 that will negatively impact business and leisure demand and will likely significantly reduce compression in the city for the foreseeable future.

Park Hotels clearly lays out the problems that led them to walk away from what should be a large cash-cow. Instead of riding out the storm, the street conditions and vacancy issues will cause problems for the “foreseeable future.” In other words, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.

In the wake of that news, Mayor Breed said in a KGO News interview[4], that we need to “diversify uses” for these properties. Mayor Breed talked about some of the vacant downtown space potentially being taken over by the University of California San Francisco.

Then just a couple days later, Westfield decided it would stop paying its loan on the San Francisco Centre and let the bank take it over[5]. This enormous mall sits in the middle of Market Street, downtown’s main artery. Westfield’s move should not be too surprising because their anchor tenant Nordstrom[6], who operated the top five floors of San Francisco Centre, announced it was closing shop just a few weeks ago. Maybe now it will all be available for these new “diverse uses.”

It did not take long for even more space to open up in the San Francisco Centre. Just two days later, Century Theaters announced it was closing the movie theater inside the San Francisco Centre. 

In a bit of breaking news, I can report a trusted source informed me that just across the street from San Francisco Centre, the flagship AT&T Store at 1 Powell will be closing in August 2023. How many businesses will be left on the 800 Block of Market?

All of these issues stem from San Francisco’s major public safety issue. For the past four years I have been writing articles about the SFPD staffing crisis[7]. While all of those articles seem to have fallen upon deaf ears, the crisis has only metastasized.

Since 2020, the SFPD has lost 435 members to retirements and resignations. This does not count the officers who were hired but could not complete the training program. In that time, less than 200 people graduated from the SFPD Academy, and only 67% of them were expected to make it through FTO.

Crime continues to become more blatant, homeless encampments are spreading all over downtown, and all the businesses are closing due to the lack of foot traffic, and the constant shoplifting. As crime is rising, the police force is shrinking and unable to hire enough people to help patrol the city. The public safety situation is getting worse, not better.

While these closures were happening, there was also a shooting in the Mission District where nine people were struck[8]. The following day, another three people were shot on Ocean Avenue[9]. Politicians will claim that crime is down, it’s just an anomaly. Well if true, there have been an awful lot of anomalies the past couple years. Some would say that makes it a trend.

In 1992, Bill Clinton campaigned using the now famous slogan, “It’s the Economy, Stupid.” Clinton eventually won his election over the incumbent President George H.W. Bush. This simple phrase made it seem like President Bush was unable to effectively do his job. Well in 2023, those in charge of San Francisco may need someone to stand up and tell them, “It’s Public Safety, Stupid.”

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[1] https://sfstandard.com/business/nordstrom-to-shutter-both-san-francisco-downtown-stores-citing-deteriorating-conditions-report/

[2] https://twitter.com/bett_yu/status/1663073385268805633?s=20

[3] https://abc7news.com/hilton-san-francisco-union-square-parc-55-hotel-sf-closures-park-hotels--resorts/13347802/

[4] https://abc7news.com/san-francisco-mayor-london-breed-hilton-parc-55-hotel-drug-crisis/13355639/

[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/14/business/westfield-mall-sf.html

[6] https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/03/business/nordstrom-san-francisco-closures/index.html

[7]

We’re Not in a Staffing Crisis…SHHHHH!!!

[8] https://apnews.com/article/san-francisco-mass-shooting-no-fatalities-2765b20223fd7b04e3f376e2e0c5273f

[9] https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/three-shot-outside-sf-nightclub-one-day-mass-18148632.php