The once great American city of San Francisco is now routinely criticized by tourists and residents alike for rampant crime, filthy streets, and a homeless problem that’s out of control.
It’s beginning to look like something out of a science fiction film set in a dystopian future where the population has been reduced to two classes. One class is wealthy, progressive, and politically connected. The other class is a poor, dependent underclass which will never vote out their benevolent overlords.
Many people who fall in between are leaving. Patrick Chu reports at CNBC:
Why nearly half of San Francisco Bay Area residents plan to leaveNearly half of San Francisco Bay Area voters plan to leave the region in the next few years, fed up with exorbitant housing costs and the long commutes caused by the lack of available homes near their workplaces.Less than 48 hours before polls open for the California election, the business-sponsored Bay Area Council advocacy group released its annual survey of registered voters in the nine-county Bay Area showing that 46 percent are likely to move away, the highest percentage in three years.Bay Area employers are losing talent and many companies are relocating to more affordable housing venues in the state, or much more likely, leaving California altogether, the Council says, as rising housing costs far exceed the compensation to cover monthly payments. Housing costs topped the list of issues for the fourth straight year. Not surprisingly, 42 percent of those polled in an open-ended question said the housing crisis was the most troubling issue.
The left loves to talk about income inequality. Yet in San Francisco, undoubtedly one of the bluest cities in the nation, the wealth gap has grown so vast that even people who would qualify as high income in other parts of the country are considered economically disadvantaged.
Emmie Martin of CNBC writes:
In San Francisco, households earning $117,000 qualify as ‘low income’The increasingly steep cost of living in the Bay Area means that even earning six figures in San Francisco might not be enough to make ends meet.A new report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development says that a San Francisco metro area family of four bringing in $117,400 a year qualifies as “low income.” Last year, the cut off was $105,350. An annual salary of $82,000 now puts single adults in the “low income” bracket as well.Other notoriously expensive cities aren’t nearly as extreme. In New York, the “low income” threshold for a family of four is $83,450 per year. In Los Angeles, it’s $77,500.Making ends meet for a family of four in San Francisco requires a household income of $92,139, according to MIT’s living wage calculator.
These disparities are not only affecting the way people live. They are having an adverse effect on the city’s economy because people see the city as unsafe.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports:
SF’s appalling street life repels residents — now it’s driven away a conventionIn a move that is alarming San Francisco’s biggest industry, a major medical association is pulling its annual convention out of the city — saying its members no longer feel safe.“It’s the first time that we have had an out-and-out cancellation over the issue, and this is a group that has been coming here every three or four years since the 1980s,” said Joe D’Alessandro, president and CEO of S.F. Travel, the city’s convention bureau.D’Alessandro declined to name the medical association, saying the bureau still hopes to bring the group back in the future.As a rule, major conventions book their visits at least five years in advance. So when D’Alessandro and members of the hospitality industry hadn’t heard from the doctors about re-upping, they flew to the organization’s Chicago headquarters for a face-to-face meeting with its executive board.
What has to happen in order for city and state leaders to call for a change of course?
Featured image via YouTube.
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