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| Angelika/Mike Schilli |
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Angelika Even German newspapers have written a lot about the decline of San Francisco this year, and especially Downtown San Francisco was characterized as an apocalyptic place where only homeless and drug addicts wander through the streets. It's not quite that bad yet, although it is true that San Francisco's downtown has been struggling with horrific problems that have exacerbated during the pandemic, and then continued into a downward spiral.
Since the pandemic, over 30% of office buildings in San Francisco's downtown area have been vacant, coinciding with new trends like remote work on three days of the week. Many companies have downsized their offices, leading to fewer people frequenting the shops in downtown San Francisco or buying and eating lunch there, which then leads to more shop closures due to a lack of customers. A vicious cycle.
Even before the pandemic, cities worldwide have struggled with the concept of a downtown shopping district, primarily due to the boom of e-commerce. San Francisco compensated for this quite well pre-COVID and lockdown by attracting tourists and conferences that filled up hotel rooms in downtown and kept nearby stores afloat. And as long as the city's tax revenues was stable, city politicians blissfully ignored complaints from companies, like those hosting large conventions regularly at the Moscone Center, who threatened to take their conferences elsewhere if San Francisco didn't fix its safety problems. After all, convention attendees shouldn't have to navigate between tents on public sidewalks or painstakingly avoid stepping into used needles.
The situation now is that although tourists are slowly returning to the city, the vacancy rate of offices has not significantly improved. The Fentanyl crisis raging in downtown San Francisco, especially in the adjacent Tenderloin district, has made the decades-long homelessness crisis even worse. It will take years, if not decades, to see structural change. As of recently, the city has been relying on superficial improvements and enhancements like building a central skatepark as mentioned below.
For the APEC conference (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation), which took place mid-November at the Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco, this machinery was running at full speed and was already taking on almost grotesque forms. San Francisco was not only expecting high-ranking diplomats but also US President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping in the city. As is customary when guests are expected, everything was spruced up and polished like there's no tomorrow. In the process, many issues were swept under the rug - all good, as long as the dirt wasn't visible anymore. This brings back memories of my teenage years when I used to stash everything away into my wardrobe so that my room looked neat and tidy.
San Francisco's officials in not only ensured that Biden and Xi Jinping did not see any tents with homeless people. Even the graffiti disappeared overnight, there were no more trash strews around in the streets and even the streetlights received a new coat of paint. Due to the strict security measures, workers then swiftly fenced off the entire area around the Moscone Center. The population of San Francisco was puzzled as to how it could be that the city was suddenly cleaned up overnight for high-ranking visitors, where previously no one cared for years.
Funnily enough, our governor, Gavin Newsom, admitted orchestrating this charade, although only by ways of a Freudian slip, saying "Oh, they're just cleaning up this place because all those fancy leaders are coming to town. That's true, because it's true." We were laughing pretty hard.
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