Covid-induced crash sped up downfall of San Francisco

It has been one of America’s most popular cities and tourist hotspots — now thousands are leaving in droves as crime takes over forcing people out.

If you love it, don’t leave it. You see that message everywhere in San Francisco.

It’s a warning to motorists not to leave anything valuable in their cars, because thieves are known to smash through windows regardless of whether they spot a forgotten wallet or not.

But as one of America’s most famous cities spirals down an urban doom loop, the signs feel more like a plea to San Francisco’s residents – one they are increasingly ignoring.

About 873,000 people called the Californian city home before Covid hit. According to US census data, San Francisco’s population is now about 808,000.

San Francisco was propped up by the massive success of its tech sector. Picture: iStock

The tech giants that have long been the city’s economic engine – including Meta, Google and Salesforce – are also abandoning giant office towers and heading for the exits.

This is how the doom loop begins. Without workers filling offices downtown, restaurants, bars and shops go out of business. Tax revenue dries up. Public services have to be cut. And then a city faces real questions about its future.

“It is a train wreck in slow motion,” according to Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, a Columbia University real estate professor dubbed the prophet of urban doom.

A vacant shop in downtown San Francisco. Picture: Paul Kuroda

In San Francisco, while Covid quickened this crash, a troubling combination of crime, drugs and homelessness has added more fuel to the flames. Barely a day goes past in the American news cycle without a frightening headline about the city by the bay.

In August, a member of the council’s community investment commission decided to cash in by offering a $US30 “doom loop walking tour”, giving visitors a “close and personal” look at the “squalor” and “urban decay” of San Francisco’s downtown area.

He later cancelled it and apologised. But those who venture downtown – instead of enjoying the tourist-friendly Fisherman’s Wharf neighbourhood – can see the problems themselves.

Unhoused people along a sidewalk facing Glide Memorial Church. Picture: Paul Kuroda

Prior to the pandemic, office work was responsible for a massive 72 per cent of San Francisco’s economic output. But the work-from-home revolution has endured, particularly in the tech sector, meaning there is now 30 million square feet of empty office space which marks a record vacancy rate of 34 per cent, according to real estate brokerage CBRE.

In turn, foot traffic downtown is just 32 per cent of what it was before the pandemic, ranking San Francisco dead last in a University of Toronto study of 62 US cities. Public transport patronage is similarly down 61 per cent compared to 2019.

This has robbed retailers of the critical mass of customers they need. Around Union Square, in the heart of the city, about half of the 200 stores have closed over the past four years. That doesn’t include a major shopping centre which its owner Westfield ditched in August.

An empty Westfield shopping centre in downtown San Francisco. Picture: Paul Kuroda

It also blamed “unsafe conditions for customers, retailers and employees” for its decision. Clothing label American Eagle, one of the centre’s last remaining retailers, later accused Westfield of “letting the mall deteriorate into disarray” with more than 100 serious incidents at its store in the 12 months to May, including gun violence, physical assaults and robberies.

Supermarket chain Whole Foods tried to defy this trend by betting on San Francisco’s post-Covid comeback with a new store. It lasted barely a year after 568 emergency calls over shoppers wielding machetes, hurling food, defecating on the floor, and overdosing.

The high-end retailers that remain downtown are manned by security guards, while convenience stores keep even their cheapest products locked behind plastic screens.

John Chachas, the owner of luxury furniture store Gump’s, says its 166th year in San Francisco is likely to be its last because the city’s leaders have given in to the “tyranny of the minority” by allowing homelessness encampments and open drug use.

“Such abject disregard for civilised conduct makes San Francisco unliveable for its residents, unsafe for our employees, and unwelcoming to visitors from around the world,” he recently wrote in a scathing letter to Mayor London Breed and California Governor Gavin Newsom.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed. Picture: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images/AFP

California Governor Gavin Newsom. Picture: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images/AFP

Authorities recorded 84 overdoses in August, putting San Francisco on track for a record 845 drug deaths this year. Fentanyl – an opioid 50 times stronger than heroin that has ravaged the US – is largely to blame.

Drug crime around the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building has become so common that after spending months trying to attract public servants back to the office, managers recently told them to work from home “for the foreseeable future” for their own safety.

More than 4000 people are sleeping on the streets, according to the council’s latest count, with many camping in the problem-plagued Tenderloin district next to Union Square.

Breed argues she has been hamstrung by a controversial court decision preventing the council from dismantling tents on public property, although a recent reinterpretation means she is now vowing to move on people who they refuse offers of shelter.

During the pandemic, rectangles are painted on the ground to encourage homeless people to keep social distancing at a city-sanctioned homeless encampment across from City Hall. Picture: Josh Edelson/AFP

Newsom, a former city mayor, says he feels he is “being pulled back” to the job amid the national scrutiny on San Francisco. Republican presidential contender Ron DeSantis recently visited to shoot a campaign ad about how “leftist policies” ruined “the once great city” – a direct shot at Newsom, a Democrat with his own White House aspirations.

Next month, the eyes of the world will be on the city when it hosts the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, including US President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and potentially Chinese President Xi Jinping. A successful event could begin to reverse San Francisco’s doom loop. If not, it may accelerate the city’s decline.