40% of San Franciscans Look to Leave the City

Wendell Cox — Mon, 05 Jul 2021 12:48:23 -0400

The Washington Examiner reports on a poll by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce indicating that “Almost half of San Francisco residents are planning on moving out of the city due to rising crime and a deteriorating quality of life.” The poll, is an annual update in the Chamber of Commerce “Citybeat” series and is summarized in a press release “New Polling Shows That 8 Out of 10 Residents Believe Crime Has Gotten Worse in San Francisco; Vast Majority Support Increasing Police Officers and Expanding Police Work.”

According to the Chamber, “San Franciscans are overwhelmingly supportive of solutions to these issues that were proposed in Mayor London Breed’s recent proposed budget. 60% of San Franciscans believe that it should be a high priority for the city to maintain funding for police academy classes, so that we can recruit younger, diverse, progressive members to replace those who have retired or left the SF Police Department. 76% of San Franciscans believe that it should be a high priority for the city to increase the number of police officers in high-crime neighborhoods.”

Results of the poll were presented at the 171st annual City Beat breakfast on June 23. The Chamber also hosts an “Economic Recovery Dashboard” on its website, with statistics on issues such as “percent of small businesses opened,” a measure on which the city trails New York City, homeless tent complaints, broken storefront windows, overflowing trash cans, animal and human waste, etc.

The city of San Francisco has been particularly hard hit by the pandemic and related events. According to The New York Times, the city of San Francisco has trailed only New York in the percentage of job losses among major municipalities (as opposed to metropolitan areas)

For more information see: 40% of San Francisco residents plan to leave due to quality of life: Poll and the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce press release.

10 Questions on Public Corruption for LA’s “Progressive” Mayor

Jerry Sullivan — Sun, 24 Nov 2019 14:33:06 -0500

Anyone who needed a poll by the LA Times and LA Business Council Institute to tell them that overwhelming numbers of Angelenos consider homelessness the city’s biggest problem hasn’t been paying attention for quite a while.

And anyone who thinks homelessness in LA can be addressed without confronting public corruption overlooks a problem that tears the fabric of the city.

The odor of corruption hangs over a deal at a warehouse at 1426 S.Paloma Street on the industrial edge of Downtown LA. The City Council and Mayor Eric Garcetti approved a lease that requires $35,000 a month in rent for space to be converted into a 115-bed homeless shelter there. They’ve also agreed to pay a nonprofit $4 million a year to run the shelter.

The numbers involved are relatively small compared to the $1.2 billion voters approved under Prop HHH three years ago to address the crisis.

You can look here to see why they nevertheless indicate the potential for much bigger problems.

And you can consider these 10 questions, which Garcetti has been unable or unwilling to answer for weeks and months while the shelter has yet to open even as the city pays $35,000 a month to the landlord:

Why isn't there a homeless shelter in operation at 1426 S. Paloma Street?
What sort of market analysis was done on the lease
Do plans still call for the development of a shelter at the property
If so, when is it expected to open?
Are there any concerns that the landlord of the property has been involved in cases of money laundering and counterfeiting in the past?
How was Home at Last CDC chosen as the operator of the homeless shelter?
How was the $4 million annual value of Home at Last CDC’s services determined?
Are there any concerns that Home at Last CDC has recently demonstrated a lack of organizational capacity and transparency about its operations?
Are there concerns that city documents indicate plans for 60 fulltime employees to staff a 115-bed facility?
Has the city surveyed industry standards on staffing levels for emergency shelters?

These shouldn’t be tough questions for a mayor with hundreds of public employees on his staff, including dozens dedicated to communications and homelessness programs.

They are offered without apology because the people of anyrepresentative democracy has a right to know – and because LA will never meet the challenge of homelessness unless we start to talk about public corruption.

Jerry Sullivan is founder and chief columnist for SullivanSaysSoCal.com @SullivanSaysSC