Quote:
Originally Posted by iheartthed
How so? San Francisco is one of the most successful cities in the world. It is continuously growing, it regularly has crime rates lower than most U.S. cities, and salaries are higher than any other major city in the world.
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You're wrong regarding population growth and crime. San Francisco's
significant population decline began before the pandemic, and has only gotten worse since. That's why we see of all those "Californians moving to Texas/Florida/wherever" articles:
high housing costs have driven population decline in San Francisco. Meanwhile, the city most certainly does
not regularly have lower crime rates than most cities: San Francisco ranks in the top 10 of major US cities for each type of
property crime, and again, this predates the pandemic. I consider San Francisco the poster child for high housing costs pushing people and jobs out, but I don't want to pick on the city in which I spent over half of my adult life. My new home, Los Angeles, like other cities with housing costs that are also out of reach of the vast majority of residents, has also been losing population since before COVID (cue the "exodus" articles again).
I did not touch on salaries in the post to which you replied, and if you want to define "stability" as high salaries you're free to do so. However, in San Francisco the
median income has dropped along with the population, and of those remaining high salary-earners,
far fewer of them work in downtown SF. The desertion of downtown has in turn tanked
public transit ridership. And high housing costs have prevented San Francisco from rebounding from pandemic knock-on effects as quickly as less costly cities have been able to.
I don't buy the idea that high housing costs alone will bring "stability" to a city, and I disagree with the overall idea that high housing costs are a universal "good." They are good for the top 1% or 10% who can easily afford those costs, but none of this is obviously good for the vast majority of existing or prospective city residents.