San Fransicko: why a once-great city is now on its knees

San Francisco looks like a city in the process of being abandoned. A slow-motion suicide. This is the disturbing story of how progressives ruined the place.

A man walks his dog past a homeless man sleeping under a message painted on a boarded up shop in San Francisco, California. Picture: AFP

The road to social catastrophe is paved not only with good intentions but with huge amounts of taxpayer funds as well, according to this disturbing study about the decline of San Francisco, once one of the world’s most beautiful cities. And the spiral of disaster, says Michael Shellenberger – who identifies as a progressive and has spent many years fighting for left-wing causes – is the outcome of deliberate policy choices by people who should have known much better.

In San Fransicko he points to the burgeoning number of homeless people in the city as a cause and indicator of the shift: more specifically, the interaction of homelessness and drugs. Walking down the street means stepping around human excrement and discarded syringes, and avoiding half-naked people screaming at demons only they can see.

San Francisco has always had its problems, with the central Tenderloin area long been a morass of drugs and crime. But the plague has spread.

As a long-term resident of the city Shellenberger readily acknowledges that San Francisco has always had its problems, with the central Tenderloin area long been a morass of drugs and crime. But the plague has spread into the rest of the city, fuelled by fentanyl and crack. Open-air drug markets are common, and it is hard to miss the stoned-out addicts lying on the footpaths.

How did this happen, he wonders. One issue is the generous cash payments that the city provides to homeless people, much more than that of other cities. Another is the cheap cost of drugs, due to the large number of dealers. More than half of the homeless people in San Francisco migrated there for exactly those reasons, and still they come. The city has become a magnet.

Another point is the emphasis that activists put on permanent housing rather than basic shelter, regardless of cost or practicality. One activist even says that a good apartment with a granite-top counter is a human right. In fact, giving an addict top-level accommodation apparently does little to counter their drug dependence, and might even make it worse.

Shellenberger’s research includes talking to homeless people, addicts and ex-addicts, social workers, police, and government figures. He concludes – somewhat reluctantly – that in many cases life on the street is a choice made by homeless people, if it means ready access to drugs. It is hard to help anyone who, when having to choose between drugs and food/shelter/security, chooses the dope.

There is no shortage of drug rehabilitation programs but they are voluntary and successes tend to be only temporary. Some of the churches run programs that tie assistance to mandatory treatment but these are usually opposed by the city council. There is a strong left-libertarian streak in the political elite that defines addicts as ‘victims’ and any sort of compulsion as an attack on rights. Shellenberger is wary of some of the studies and statistics cited by activists, and when he tracks them down he finds that they often do not support the activist case (in his 2020 book, Apocalypse Never, he found a similar pattern).

A demonstrator taunts a San Francisco police officer during a protest outside City Hall in 2020.

It is this same attitude from the city leaders that has led to remarkable surge in crime.

The mayor, London Breed, took the view that the police were more part of the problem than part of a solution, and judicial prosecutors (who are elected officials in California) declared that a range of property crimes would be effectively decriminalised.

Unsurprisingly, many officers left the force and left the city: what else was going to happen? And then there was a wave of assaults, shoplifting, theft, and flash-mob robberies, so much that many stores simply closed. Again: what else was going to happen? Breed has recently backtracked on her policy of defunding the police but the rot has set in.

The city is becoming too dangerous to live in, and the result is a stream of people moving away.

Shellenberger makes some proposals for reform, such as consolidating the existing piecemeal programs into a single government agency, with clear lines of accountability.

Some programs, he says, should be terminated as failures rather than having more money poured into them. At the social grass roots, more people need to demand tough action from the authorities.

And policymakers have to accept that giving addicts wads of cash without requiring something in return is a bad move for everyone.

Sensible ideas, but they are unlikely to see daylight, and there is a feeling that Shellenberger is going through the motions. Since he finished the book the decay has become even worse. A drive through the once-bustling downtown section of the city reveals boarded-up stores, abandoned cars, broken lives. The only businesses are drugs and drug-driven prostitution. It looks like a city in the process of being abandoned. Slow-motion suicide.

Is this the end? It seems that way. Perhaps San Francisco will remain only as a lesson to policymakers on what to not do. Which is a pretty sad epitaph.

Derek Parker is a freelance writer and reviewer.

San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities

By Michael Shellenberger
HarperCollins
416pp, $30