San Francisco, CA
San Franciscans sound off on study labeling city 'worst-run' in the US for second consecutive year
San Franciscans had mixed reactions while sounding off on a recent study that dubbed their city the “worst run” in the United States for the second year in a row.
The ranking comes courtesy of WalletHub, a personal finance company that measured the “effectiveness of local leadership” by comparing the quality of city services matched against the city’s total budget to determine its operating efficiency. Their “Best & Worst-Run Cities in America” report casts an analytical eye on 148 sizeable U.S. cities, scrutinizing their performance across several critical service categories and 36 key metrics, while also considering their per-capita spending.
“The best-run cities in America use their budgets most effectively to provide high-quality financial security, education, health, safety and transportation to their residents. Many of the top cities also have a very low amount of outstanding government debt per capita, which can prevent financial troubles in the future,” WalletHub analyst Cassandra Happe explained in a report detailing the study earlier this month.
Despite coming in at 24 in quality of services, analysts placed San Francisco last in its total budget per-capita rank, along with having the highest amount of long-term debt outstanding. The city ranked 148th overall.
SAN FRANCISCO DUBBED WORST CITY IN THE UNITED STATES, ACCORDING TO NEW REPORT
San Francisco, California’s Golden Gate Bridge. (iStock)
“I’m not surprised at all,” Tom Wong, a lifelong San Francisco resident who owns a private security firm in the area, told Fox News Digital of the ranking last Monday. “What we have in San Francisco is not a problem of governance. We have a problem with criminals in governance.”
Wong, a Republican, has voiced his dissent with local officials multiple times, including on the Fox News Channel and the FOX Business Network. When asked what he believes caused many of the city’s issues he identified, he restated that dissent.
“The progressive movement is not about making things better. It’s about how much they could grift before it bellies up,” he said. “They’re pushing the limits of how much people will tolerate beforehand so, in order to fix what we have in the city, we need to change just about everything… The city’s broken. That’s because every level of governance is corrupt.”
A second respondent, who asked to remain anonymous, also agreed with WalletHub’s findings.
“As a New Yorker that has been here in San Francisco for well over a decade, I would say, yeah, it’s pretty poorly run. I wouldn’t argue with the findings,” she told Fox News Digital during an interview last Wednesday.
“The budget is $49 billion, and so I think a lot of people and the residents of the city wonder where that money’s going. We know that it’s going to inflated salaries or whatever, but why aren’t they paying teachers and cops? Teachers sometimes have to pay out of their own pocket for supplies for their classrooms, and we’re understaffed with cops. We can’t attract talent because cops aren’t respected here.”
The respondent identified herself as a “left-leaning progressive” who has become more moderate over time. When asked for her thoughts on city leadership, she pointed out a great divide between progressive Democrats and moderates.
“The city supervisors are split. They prevent Mayor Breed from doing her job. We have a lot of city supervisors that are just really toxic, and they are just bottlenecks for Breed,” she said, particularly naming Supervisors Connie Chan, Hillary Ronen, Dean Preston and Shamann Walton.
“They literally oppose law and order,” she added.
SAN FRANCISCO BECOMES ONE OF THE FIRST MAJOR US CITIES TO DELCARE ‘SANCTUARY’ STATUS FOR TRANSGENDER PEOPLE
San Francisco Mayor London Breed listens at a press conference at City Hall on Feb. 16, 2022, in San Francisco, California. Breed criticized WalletHub’s report, calling it “misleading and inaccurate.” (Gabrielle Lurie/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
Ben Wang, owner of San Francisco clothing store Dare Fashion, offered a different take on the study. While speaking to Fox News Digital last Thursday, he emphasized San Francisco’s unbreakable spirit and its longstanding reputation as a progressive haven, where people could go if they felt they didn’t belong anywhere else.
“I totally disagree that San Francisco is the ‘worst-run’ city,” he said.
“I mean, I don’t know because I don’t live in another city,” he continued. “But it might be a little bit unfair because most of the bigger cities on there [the study] have lower ratings… and that makes a lot of sense because problems get more complicated when you have a bigger city and more diverse neighborhoods, and it doesn’t work all over the city. Whereas smaller cities tend to be a bit more homogenous.”
Wang additionally disagreed with the study’s general premise and methodology.
“Philosophically, I don’t agree with these types of rating systems because you’re trying to take something that’s very complicated and put it into a numbered list,” he said.
“As a former scientist, I can understand doing some sort of what’s called a multivariate analysis. You’re putting a lot of variables into something, and you’re trying to get it into one metric, but I didn’t see anything that took into account the size of the city, the population of the city or the population density, as a factor in their multivariate analysis. Without those factors, New York City is really low on their list. So is Los Angeles, so is San Francisco, because I feel like maybe a factor was being left out, which is actually very important.”
Wang feels that pinning the blame on city officials is largely unfair, given the complex nature of commonly-cited problems like drug use and homelessness. He emphasized the need to “dig around for the roots of the problem” instead of blaming those problems on the people who are trying to fix them, even if their efforts sometimes might not yield positive results.
“Where did this problem start? A lot of the homelessness comes from habitual heroin users, and where did they start? I think Big Pharma started that problem with the opioid crisis, pumping out cheap pills, and telling people they weren’t going to get addicted, and they did.”
SAN FRANCISCO OFFICIALS PUSH FOR DRUG-FREE HOUSING IN REVERSAL OF ‘DRUG PERMISSIVE’ POLICIES: REPORT
Ina Coolbrith Park, San Francisco, California, USA. (iStock)
Despite the respondents each having their own take on the study, they shared a few common themes. For one, they had all witnessed crime to some extent.
Tom Wong, for instance, told FOX Business’ Ashley Webster last year that his private security firm had been rattled by thieves – both the physical business location and vehicle break-ins as well.
“Safety-wise, it’s not good,” he said of the crime conditions in San Francisco last week. “The reason being is that a lot of the crime is being underreported because there are not enough detectives, so the police are not responding to a lot of calls. The business owners, the homeowners are so fed up that they don’t even report the crime.”
Law enforcement, he elaborated, tends to go after more violent crimes under the assumption that insurance will help cover expenses incurred from burglaries.
“After dark, it’s a Third World country,” he added.
Despite his fashion shop being robbed twice in the last three years – with the most recent incident costing the business a whopping $300K that forced him to set up a GoFundMe page to help alleviate the cost – Ben Wang remains determined not to give up on San Francisco.
“I think it’s a big problem,” he said when asked about crime. Linking back to his cause-and-effect example of Big Pharma instigating drug usage and homelessness, he added that income inequality exacerbated by the COVID pandemic made poorer residents more desperate and therefore more likely to commit crimes.
“I love that San Francisco is a very progressive place, and that the whole idea of this place is that we’re going to try new things. The environmental movement started here, all these cool things, Dotcom and the Silicon Valley… it encourages people to try new things, which is fantastic. One of the things that we tried was not prosecuting, shoplifting and small crimes and also going easier on drug crimes and users and all that stuff, and it didn’t work out well,” he added.
The anonymous respondent shared an experience from her own neighborhood, when a nearby abandoned home was burglarized earlier this year.
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“The cops are called at 2:30 in the morning on a Monday morning, and you have a bunch of SFPD respond to this call. You could see that the gate was broken. You could see that there was a light on. You could see that there were burglars in the house. The cops even had nest cam footage showing the casing and them coming back with crowbars and flashlights. You had all the evidence,” she said.
“My husband dealt with the cops and the neighbors. I went back to bed. When I woke up at 8:30 in the morning, their getaway car was still parked outside. The cops left the burglars inside the house because they stated that there wasn’t a homeowner to give them permission to enter the house.”
Meanwhile, Mayor London Breed called WalletHub’s ranking “misleading and inaccurate” because she said the study compared San Francisco’s city and county budget with other cities, which only have city budgets, according to FOX 2, an affiliate based in San Francisco,
The report highlighted her previous remarks from her State of the City Address, where she said, “I’m tired of the people who talk about San Francisco as if our troubles are inevitable and our successes a fluke. Our successes are not a fluke, and they’re not fleeting,” adding, “They’re the product of years of hard work, collaboration, investment, creativity, and perseverance. They’re the output of thousands of people, in government and out, who believe in service not cynicism.”
All three respondents have their own unique bond with the city – and each raved about it in their own way.
“It is the most beautiful place,” Wong said, adding later, “There’s plenty of good food here.”
The second respondent had some similar opinions to share. “There’s a lot of creative, smart people that live here. We have excellent culture and food. The weather is amazing. We’re close in proximity to Big Sur and Napa. And, if you feel like you need services – not that I do – but it’s nice to know that those services are available to people.”
“You just can’t kill the spirit [of the city],” Wang said. “That’s what San Francisco has been from the times of the Gold Rush. Chinese people came here early… this was always a place that there was opportunity… Even if it’s taking us a little longer, and we should be backpedaling from some misguided policy or things that we tried that didn’t work, I just I find it difficult to believe that you’re going to really kill the spirit of the city.”
Fox News’ Lindsay Kornick contributed to this report.
Cross that big street
Major arteries like Market Street and Van Ness constitute mental borders for many drivers. If your destination is near a popular street, aim for the other side of it, where there’ll typically be more vacancies.
Stray uphill
Hills, too, create mental obstacles for people looking for parking. If you’re willing to walk up one of San Francisco’s many hills either before or after the show, you’ll find more spots.
Always check signs
Pay attention to posted time restrictions to avoid tickets. Some meters in San Francisco mercilessly run until 10pm. Also, street cleaning hours can start at 12am, before some shows get out.
Know when you’re beaten
Some neighborhoods are hopeless. North Beach, Nob Hill, Divisadero — forget about it. The sooner you accept this, the more inner peace you will find.
Trust your gut
I acknowledge that I am a 6’1” man, and not everyone feels as comfortable as I do walking alone at night. If you’re not a local, and you’re feeling unsure, read up on the neighborhood beforehand.
Realize the ‘right’ way can be painful too
If you’re tempted to suck it up and pay for a parking lot or garage, remember: after the show, you may be stuck for a long time in a parking-lot traffic jam as cars try to get out all at once.
Okay! On with my list, with suggested free parking areas marked red.
Where to find parking for Davies Symphony Hall, War Memorial Opera House, Herbst Theater or Bill Graham Civic Auditorium
East side of Gough Street, between Golden Gate and McAllister
Pro tip: Park on the left side of the street. Quick eats to go are almost nonexistent in the area, so pick up any pre-show provisions you may need at the Super Sam corner store.
Where to find parking for SFJAZZ, Rickshaw Stop or Mr. Tipple’s Jazz Club
North side of Oak Street between Buchanan and Octavia
Pro tip: The right lanes are almost always congested due to the upcoming freeway onramp. Watch for cars speeding down the hill behind you in the left lanes, and nose in rather than backing into the spot, if possible.
Where to find parking for the Castro Theater
Castro Street, between 14th and 16th
Pro tip: Separated from the Castro by Market Street, and up the hill a little, most people don’t think of parking here. I found a cool old metal dustpan on the street here once. Still use it.
Where to find parking for the Chapel
South Van Ness Avenue between 17th and 21st
Pro tip: Parking in the Mission District can be maddening; find solace on either the east or west side of the main artery on the edge of the neighborhood. Say hi to Whiz Burger for me.
Where to find parking for the Great American Music Hall
Franklin Street between Ellis and Geary
Pro tip: I’ve also found Geary Boulevard, between Van Ness and Franklin, to usually have open spots. (Plus, you’re right next to Tommy’s Joynt for post-show eats.)
Where to find parking for the Regency Ballroom
Franklin Street between Post and Bush
Pro tip: Separated from the venue by Van Ness, and up the hill a little, most people don’t think of parking here. Aim for the left side of this one-way thoroughfare, where parking is usually more open. Pour one out for the closed Walgreens.
Where to find parking for Mabuhay Gardens or On Broadway
Leavenworth Street between Francisco and Chestnut
Pro tip: Trying to find parking in North Beach is like repeatedly hitting yourself in the face with a hammer for a half hour. I park an entire mile away, and enjoy the walk along Columbus, which is teeming with action on weekends.
Where to find parking for the Midway
Illinois Street between 23rd and 25th
Pro tip: Do not be seduced by the road leading toward Pier 80; it looks wide open, but is full of private parking, and Pier 80 itself will be closed off.
Where to find parking for Chase Center
16th Street between Carolina and Connecticut
Pro tip: For concert parking, the Chase Center garage currently charges $75. Ahem. I think you’ll agree that a nice 10-minute stroll down 16th Street is a better alternative.
Where to find parking for the Bottom of the Hill
16th Street between Carolina and Connecticut
Pro tip: Parking’s not nearly as plentiful as it used to be here; be aware of the new-ish protected bike lanes on 17th and the many time restrictions. (Also, bring presents for the excellent staff at one of the city’s best clubs before it closes at the end of the year.)
Where to find parking for the Fillmore
Geary Boulevard between Divisadero and Scott
Pro tip: I agonized for years driving in circles on neighborhood streets until finding this wonderful stretch of Geary, down the road and on a slight curve, where no one thinks to park.
Where to find parking for the Warfield
Folsom Street between 7th and 6th
Pro tip: This one’s tough, being close to both Union Square and the Tenderloin. I shoot for the less-populated area south of Market and walk up 6th Street, home of harm-reduction services, pizza-by-the-slice joints, SROs and Tú Lan.
Where to find parking for the Brick and Mortar Music Hall or Public Works
Gough Street between Market and McCoppin
Pro tip: This is on an odd little diagonal block that’s off of most people’s radar, on the other side of a freeway overpass. It’s never let me down.
Where to find parking for Oracle Park
Harrison Street between 3rd and 4th
Pro tip: Optimal ballpark spots used to change each year. In a coincidence that I won’t overanalyze, I’ve had luck parking on this block ever since Buster Posey left the Giants in 2021.
Where to find parking for the Masonic
Van Ness Avenue or Franklin Street between Sacramento and Pine
Pro tip: Sorry, man. You will not find parking on Nob Hill. You can try driving up California while looking for a spot, but likely, you’ll have to head back and make the five-block walk.
Where to find parking for August Hall
Mission or Howard Streets, between 5th and 6th
Pro tip: The “park up the hill” trick doesn’t work here, since the nearby hill is Nob Hill. If you strike out on Mission or Howard, Folsom is often open.
Where to find parking for the DNA Lounge
Treat Street between Florida and Alameda
Pro tip: Luckily the DNA is surrounded by a pretzel of strange, short, wiggly streets, good for finding parking; head south of the freeway overpass to this hidden curve. (It’s where I parked when I saw Prince at the tiny club in 2013; yes of course I am bragging.)
Where to find parking for Golden Gate Park, Outside Lands or Hardly Strictly
Clement Street between 34th and 38th
Pro tip: The best way to get to these festivals is to throw a bike in the trunk, park near Ocean Beach, and ride in past the bison to the free bicycle parking area. Barring that, your other best bet is to park up the (very) steep hill, near the VA hospital.
Where to find parking for the Cow Palace
Geneva Avenue between Stoneridge and Carter
Pro tip: I don’t really have a pro tip for this one. I just want to say that there should be more concerts at the Cow Palace, which is cool as hell.
Where to find parking for Stern Grove
Portola Drive between San Fernando and Santa Clara
Pro tip: Park across the major artery of 19th, and up the hill a little bit. And, since Stern Grove concerts always take place on Sundays, there are no two-hour parking restrictions to contend with.
Where to find parking for the Independent
Divisadero Street between O’Farrell and Turk
Pro tip: You’ll have to go back in time to when you could park at the DMV lot, because this neighborhood is impossible now. I go down the hill a ways, and usually find a spot north of Primo Pizza.
Where to find parking for the Black Cat
East side of Van Ness Avenue, between Turk and Ellis
Pro tip: Aim for Van Ness, the west boundary of the Tenderloin. For a major thoroughfare, Van Ness often surprises me with open spots, especially on the east side heading north.
Where to find parking for Cafe du Nord or Swedish American Hall
16th Street between Guerrero and Sanchez
Pro tip: Once the daycare that’s just east of Dolores on 16th closes for the day, the white curb — which tends to scare off many drivers — is free for you to park at. Bonus points for the view of the Mission Dolores basilica, just a beautiful building.
The SF venues you don’t need my help parking at
San Francisco is having a civic nervous breakdown because the brother of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law is buying a minority stake in the Giants.
Not Donald Trump. Not Jared Kushner. Joshua Kushner. And not control of the team. A minority stake.
Apparently, that is enough to send parts of San Francisco’s activist and media culture into full panic mode.
One Giants employee posted a video from Oracle Park turning in their uniform and quitting because Kushner was buying into the team.
Social media lit up with complaints about “MAGA ownership” and Trump-world influence invading one of San Francisco’s most beloved civic institutions.
There is just one problem. Joshua Kushner is not exactly Steve Bannon in a Giants cap.
He has historically donated heavily to Democrats and has occupied a very different political lane than his brother Jared and the Trump orbit. But nuance never stood a chance here.
For some in San Francisco, the name “Kushner” was enough. That is the story.
The Giants are not some random expansion franchise nobody cares about. They are one of the oldest and most storied franchises in Major League Baseball history — with eight World Series titles and a lineage that includes Willie Mays, Barry Bonds, Buster Posey, Madison Bumgarner, and Bruce Bochy.
Oracle Park is one of the great settings in American sports. Giants-Dodgers is still one of baseball’s defining rivalries. Generations of Northern Californians are emotionally attached to this team.
Which is precisely why the reaction has been so revealing.
Nobody was arguing about payroll. Nobody was debating the farm system. Nobody was asking whether this helps the Giants close the gap with the Dodgers in the NL West.
The panic was political from the first pitch.
That tells you where we are now.
Sports ownership used to be judged mostly by whether owners were competent, stable, and willing to spend money to win. Now it is an ideological background check.
Who donated to whom? Who attended what fundraiser? Whose brother married whose daughter? Who might show up in the owner’s suite?This is what happens when politics becomes religion. Everything becomes a loyalty test. Even baseball.
The irony is almost too perfect.
San Francisco is not exactly at risk of becoming a MAGA beachhead because a Democratic donor with the wrong last name bought a small piece of the Giants. But symbolic politics runs the city now.
In Democrat circles in San Francisco, politics is not just something people believe. It is something they perform. It is identity. It is status. It is social sorting.
So even indirect association becomes contamination. Joshua Kushner does not have to be Trump. He does not even have to be conservative. He just has to be Kushner.
That is enough.
To be fair, Giants ownership was already politically sensitive. Current owner Charles Johnson has drawn years of criticism for conservative political donations.
So this latest development landed on dry grass.
Still, the reaction says more about San Francisco’s liberal elite than it does about the Giants. The city’s activist class cannot even let baseball remain baseball.
A minority owner becomes a political emergency. A family connection becomes a scandal. A business transaction becomes a moral crisis.
This is not normal.
Fans used to argue about batting orders and pitching rotations. Now they investigate ownership family trees.
And the Giants are not being bought by Donald Trump. They are not being turned into a Trump campaign surrogate. They are not replacing team mascot Lou Seal with a MAGA hat.
A minority stake is changing hands. That’s it.
Yet for the loudest voices in San Francisco, even that apparently requires public anguish.
If this is the reaction to the brother of Trump’s son-in-law buying a minority piece of the Giants, imagine what happens if Donald Trump ever throws out the first pitch at Oracle Park.
Jon Fleischman, a longtime strategist in California politics and a lifelong baseball fan, writes at SoDoesItMatter.com.
San Francisco, CA
Casting shade on shadows: S.F. supervisor seeks to bar using shadows to block new housing
Shadows cast by tall and not-so-tall buildings alike have long been used to block housing in San Francisco, and Supervisor Bilal Mahmood wants it to end.
The District 5 legislator is announcing a law on Thursday that would eliminate the ability for people to say shadows cast by a building are an “environmental concern” that can be used to delay, and possibly block, new housing.
“In San Francisco, we’ve literally paid the price of being too afraid of our own shadow,” Mahmood said, pointing to data showing that shadow-based concerns were used to delay or block 2,195 housing units in 11 projects since 2017.
Whenever a new housing project is proposed in the city, its developer must create an environmental impact report on a variety of factors, like toxic waste and seismic hazards.
San Francisco requires that report to include a shadow analysis noting whether the new building will cast shade on any open space in the city. Mahmood’s legislation would get rid of that requirement; it is not in state guidelines, and most California cities do not consider shadows an environmental factor.
The environmental impact report is intended to help politicians make an informed decision about whether to approve or deny a development proposal. But any resident can file an appeal if they think environmental impacts were not fully considered, which can delay, block, or alter projects.
Shadows ultimately led to a delay for the infamous 469 Stevenson St. project from 2021, a 495 unit building on the site of a Nordstrom parking lot in SoMa.
Some SoMa residents were concerned that the project, which contained about 100 affordable housing units, would gentrify the area.
But gentrification alone is not a legal reason for supervisors to block a project. So residents filed an appeal alleging the project’s environmental impacts were improperly evaluated. The Board of Supervisors ended up siding with them in an 8-3 vote, citing shadows cast on nearby Mint Plaza in their decision.
The developer was forced back to the drawing board and had to redo his environmental report, delaying the project by several years.
Even when projects are 100 percent affordable, shadows cast uncertainty: Residents near 16th and Mission’s “La Maravilla” housing project, a 380-unit project next door to Marshall Elementary that broke ground last month, raised concerns that the development would darken the school’s playground. That forced the nonprofit developers to hold meetings and negotiate with residents about the issue.
Mahmood said even if appeals are ultimately rejected, the length and cost of the appeals process makes it difficult to produce housing projects and leads developers to avoid building in San Francisco.
“The housing problems we’re facing are death by a thousand cuts,” said Witt Turner of the Housing Action Coalition, a proponent of the bill. “We need to start sewing them up one by one.”
San Francisco is required by the state to plan for 36,000 more housing units by 2030, and the city’s best guess is that even under the most favorable scenarios developers will build less than half of that, and in four times as much time.
Mahmood, a YIMBY, has made streamlining housing a focus of his 15 months in office. His new legislation eliminates certain intermediate appeals and hearings and shortens appeal timelines, mostly from 30 days to 15 days.
The bill will be evaluated by the planning commission and the Board of Supervisors in early summer.
The bill is no silver bullet, however. Environmental appeals often cite more than just shadows when seeking to change projects. In the case of the Nordstrom parking lot building, for example, a failure to properly consider the seismic impact of a building was also a component of the decision.
YIMBYs have long pursued reform to CEQA, a California law outlining the environmental appeals process.
“We shouldn’t let outdated laws get in the way of building housing, which is actually important to making progress on our climate goals,” Mahmood said.
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