40% of San Franciscans Look to Leave the City

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.