A recent poll commissioned by Probolsky Research found 60% of voters in San Francisco "disapprove" of Mayor London Breed's performance, and only 22% believe she deserves re-election. There's plunging confidence among the business community that progressive leadership in the crime-ridden metro can revive the poop-infested downtown area. Businesses are closing up shops in droves, while some building owners have stopped payments on malls and hotels as the city's economic recovery appears bleak.
San Francisco Chamber of Commerce CEO Rodney Fong recently drew a dire historical parallel of the faltering metro area to the 1906 earthquake: "We have a lot of work to do as residents are more pessimistic than ever."
Marc Benioff, the chief executive officer of Salesforce, the city's largest employer and anchor tenant in its tallest skyscraper, warned this week that the metro area is in trouble.
Benioff offered this grim outlook: The downtown area is "never going back to the way it was" in pre-Covid times when workers commuted to offices daily.
"We need to rebalance downtown," Benioff said, adding Breed needs to initiate a program to convert dormant office space into housing and hire additional law enforcement to restore law and order.
San Francisco's demise is much more than just the remote or hybrid work narrative, and a record 30% of office space is vacant. Remember, without office workers, local shops can't thrive.
This leaves us with Youtuber METAL LEO, who walked the downtown area, revealing empty streets and closed-up stores.
He wrote in the description of the video, "Embarcadero Center is a commercial complex of five office towers, two hotels, a shopping center with more than 125 stores but only two remain open on three levels located in San Francisco, California."
The video is an eye-opener of the economic collapse of the downtown area as it has transformed into a "ghost town" overnight. The exodus of companies and people is a vote of confidence that Breed's progressive administration has failed. There are attempts to rebuild the downtown district, but that could take many years, meaning the city's economic recovery won't happen anytime soon.
