10 ms·

San Francisco now at 35% office vacancy rate, highest ever recorded: data

129 points by kumarski 3y ago

roenxi 3y ago
There is also fairly steady migration out of the city [0]. Looks to be related to COVID policy although there is a longer term trend. If 10% of the population has left, there is a bias towards office workers leaving because they'd probably tend to have more money, WFH policies and people were building based on population increases ... 35% vacancy rate sounds pretty reasonable. [0] https://sf.gov/data/san-francisco-population-and-migration https://sf.gov/data/san-francisco-population-and-migration
- rapsey 3y ago
  Well crime and homelessness also probably has a lot to do with it...
  - slowhadoken 3y ago
    That's exactly what it is. That coupled with high rent. You can pay an arm and a leg just subletting a single room in the Sunset district.
- mrjh 3y ago
  "Looks to be related to COVID policy" COVID policy? Isn't that history now?
  - roenxi 3y ago
    It is historic data. We might expect to see history reflected in it.
usrme 3y ago
News like this remind me of the song "Why" by Chat Pile[1], which is almost always gives me a frisson. It's a damn shame how slow the bureaucratic cogs turn, all the while real people are suffering. --- [1]: https://genius.com/Chat-pile-why-lyrics https://genius.com/Chat-pile-why-lyrics
malermeister 3y ago
And this right here is why you keep hearing RTO pushes from C-Levels and corporate boards. Those folks all have investments in commercial real estate that they would like to not become worthless. What's wasting your employee's life time on a commute compared to that?
- bravetraveler 3y ago
  If not investment, I know for certain there are "deals" on number of asses in seats They get cheap rent because the business "guarantees" foot traffic by having people come in No foot traffic, no discount
- hd4 3y ago
  We've (workers, non-CRE owners) collectively known this all along. What I don't understand is how the green/net-zero lobby is relatively quiet about fewer people using transport to go to work. It makes far more sense for WFH to have been the default long before the covid lockdowns, frankly I'm sad that that's what it took to get us here. It shows how much hypocrisy there is about all the climate efforts if those same people aren't clamoring for WFH
  - rwmj 3y ago
    The calculation is not entirely straightforward because of the efficiency of heating or cooling private homes during the day vs doing the same for offices.
  - Symbiote 3y ago
    Is WFH automatically greener than an office? It means heating/cooling many buildings rather than a few, many individuals cooking alone etc. It seems it is better in the USA [1] and the UK [2] though there is considerable variance when comparing several European countries [3]. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/working-remotely-can-more-than-halve-an-office-employees-carbon-footprint/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/working-remotely-... [2] https://circularecology.com/news/the-carbon-emissions-of-homeworking-and-office-working https://circularecology.com/news/the-carbon-emissions-of-hom... [3] https://www.vodafone-institut.de/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CT_Homeworking-report-June-2021.pdf https://www.vodafone-institut.de/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/...
Animats 3y ago
San Francisco overbuilt in high-rise office buildings. There's no good reason to concentrate workers that much. Work from home works in tech. AI, reasonably enough, doesn't need that many people. That's kind of the point. Are residential prices, both buy and rent, dropping yet?
- vineyardmike 3y ago
  Eh. The world will partially go back to office. Offices in SF will be filled again one day. What will fill offices is a string of big bankruptcies that allow new owners to lower their cost basis and offer cheaper rent.
  - solumunus 3y ago
    Preferably offices get mass converted into housing, property prices fall and cities can become thriving, beautiful social hubs with better infrastructure and lower pollution.
    - kmlx 3y ago
      > Preferably offices get mass converted into housing in some places it’s cheaper to tear down the building than convert. that’s how unrealistic/expensive that idea is.
      - harambae 3y ago
        People say this but it so rarely happens (tearing down skyscrapers) that I really question the veracity of it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_voluntarily_demolished_buildings https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_voluntarily_...
      - solumunus 3y ago
        Then that.
- ActionHank 3y ago
  > Work from home works in tech. Could you please let big tech know, they seem to be ignorant or intellectually dishonest on this point.
tjmc 3y ago
Sounds like a good opportunity to rezone and modify some buildings to residential.
- ssss11 3y ago
  Precisely, but instead city councils will provide incentives to businesses to push their staff back to the office sigh
  - Solvency 3y ago
    But... why? Why not incentivize foot traffic via new interesting small businesses and vibrant culture? Why must it be offices always.
    - rtpg 3y ago
      Rossmann had some rant recently about NYC, talking about how the loans developers get when building out buildings tend to demand a certain minimum rent (or, if you don't meet that, you gotta basically show up with more capital). This leads to the whole "empty spaces but rent not dropping much" thing. I get there are costs with having people in the building but at one point it would be nice for society to just be like "let's not leave stuff entirely empty"
    - Moldoteck 3y ago
      Bc us society is relying on dependency: ppl will depend on cars to move/buy groceries, ppl will depend on jobs bc they neeed health insurance, ppl will depend on office working bc they should depend on cars and businesses will depend on office bc govt will get money.
  - jillesvangurp 3y ago
    They'll try and fail. Probably repeatedly. This is much bigger then them. There's a new reality where successful companies no longer cling to the past of overpriced office real estate that is populated by overpriced staff that commutes to town for hours every day. That was stupid before covid and there are now plenty of companies that grew past that and no longer need that. The next logical step here is that investors get the hint that their investments spending most of their money on SFO real estate (housing and offices) is not great from an ROI point of view. That too was true before covid but now much more obviously so as there are now a lot of companies with a lot less expenses on that front and a lot more runway. Paying people extra just to show up in an office isn't going to be the smart move here.
slowhadoken 3y ago
I love SF but it's as bad as PDX these days. Both cities are falling apart in weird ways. You'll be in a restaurant and a deranged homeless fentanyl addict will walk in and start screaming at a waiter for food. Most of the customers pretend like it's not happening and some act like they're proud of it or snicker. The staff has to bribe junkies with food to get them to leave. Weirdos snatch stuff off of shelves in the grocery stores. The alarms go off and no one does anything. People in self checkout look scared. It's surreal.
- peepeepoopoo51 3y ago
  [flagged]
- simonbarker87 3y ago
  I’ve been fortunate enough to travel all over the world and hands down the most dangerous feeling city I’ve been in is SF. I have no idea why people want to visit there, let alone live there. In fact the only cities I’ve been to where I felt like I needed to really have my guard up and head on a swivel were US cities. Not that I don’t keep my awareness up in other places but something about the US sets off my spidey senses. NY felt fine but SF, Miami, Buffalo all felt iffy. *clarification: I’m not saying that SF is the most dangerous city in the world, but of the cities I have been to around the world, it has felt the least safe.
  - soneca 3y ago
    Definitely do not come to Brazilian big cities then. It is another order of magnitude more dangerous.
    - slowhadoken 3y ago
      Especially for women, yeah. I grew up in rough neighborhoods but you need to know the area or have a guide and a good rep doesn't hurt.
    - wheels 3y ago
      Yeah, was looking to see if this comment existed. Sao Paolo feels like one of the richest cities in the world surrounded by one of the poorest cities in the world. I've been to more than 50 countries and hundreds of big cities, and Sao Paolo feels like it has the craziest gradient between rich and poor. I'm not even sure San Francisco would make the top 10. (High up would be: Sao Paolo, Rio, Bangalore, Mexico City, Johannesburg, Riyadh, ...)
lysecret 3y ago
A friend is constantly bugging me about moving to SF. I understand it is tech central but the PR of the city is just really not great currently.
- Melting_Harps 3y ago
  > A friend is constantly bugging me about moving to SF. I understand it is tech central but the PR of the city is just really not great currently. Currently? The place is unrecognizable to us Californians since the late 90s; it's been a cesspool created by a long series of events, which at it's core has to do with wealth inequality, and overt NIMBY-ism and gentrification coupled with mental health issues and ends with substance abuse and crime: and it's been like this for some time, but it's only now that the monied interests are having to deal with the very real prospect of having land/building depreciate they call foul and are using the media to leverage the undoing of WFH. This is big tech's blight, and I want nothing more for them to finally own up to this and do something about it, instead of enabling the squalor that they have created: even as a person in tech it's hard not to give credence to the techno-feudalism arguments many of it's detractors point out as the inevitable outcome from constant wealth and power consolidation given this reality.
  - DeathArrow 3y ago
    >which at it's core has to do with wealth inequality, and overt NIMBY-ism and gentrification Doesn't SF have the highest concentration of leftists and progresives in the whole US?
    - Melting_Harps 3y ago
      Do you mean progressives? But even so, those are loosely held ideals as the last few decades have shown that such trivial things will not get in the way of protecting their wealth. Idealism is set aside when it comes to ensuring inexplicable perpetual growth in one's most valuable asset.
      - DeathArrow 3y ago
jkelleyrtp 3y ago
I'm on the hunt for office space in the city, scoping out deals and such. The real numbers, according to folks I've spoken with on the ground, are much higher. Many units simply aren't listed or are in a "limbo" state. In a number of buildings vacancy rate is 70%+. I've been asking shop and restaurant owners how their business is doing during lunch - down 70%-80%. Buildings that were originally built at 70/sqft are now selling at 40 or less. For real estate investors, this can be realized to a loss of 30-40%. From what I can tell, many companies that remain in SF aren't renting in FiDi but are choosing to rent out entire buildings in Hayes and the Mission. It's bleak, and FWIW, having just gone through YC, there aren't going to be too many AI companies to "save the day." On the flip side, the city does seem cleaner and occasionally more vibrant. Market street is cleaner now than it was during the summer (might just be the rainy weather). The open air drug market has seemingly moved onto a side street and the "we robbed a walgreens" shops near the bart stations in the mission have also been cleaned out, for the most part.
- kdwikzncba 3y ago
  FiDi?
  - m0llusk 3y ago
    "Financial District" Much of the most profitable activity in San Francisco has historically happened in a small part of downtown.
  - crotchfire 3y ago
    Financial District
  - mathgeek 3y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_District,_San_Francisco https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_District,_San_Fran...
- SheinhardtWigCo 3y ago
  The improvements you describe in your last paragraph can be attributed to APEC, which was a few weeks ago. There is no reason to believe that they will persist.
SheinhardtWigCo 3y ago
Remote work is only part of the story. Having lived there for close to a decade, my take is that there is an accountability vacuum and rampant corruption among city leadership. For example, the 10-B program has turned the SFPD into a legalized quasi-mafia. The only way to protect your business in SF is to hire off-duty cops at their overtime wage plus a 15% admin fee. The city has no hope of recovery while things like this continue to be tolerated.
Devasta 3y ago
Rookie numbers; we need those rates higher.
tomohawk 3y ago
Poop coverage is good, though. https://www.openthebooks.com/daily-mail-online-interactive-map-reveals-the-staggering-number-of-human-waste-on-san-franciscos-streets/ https://www.openthebooks.com/daily-mail-online-interactive-m...
austin-cheney 3y ago
Reading these comments is absolutely wild. I am living the exact opposite experience in Fort Worth, the fastest growing big city in the US. More than 60% of our net increase per year is from California. My son tells me more than half of some of his classes are people recently relocated from CA. Office space remains well filled even with remote work and they cannot seem to improve the roads or build new schools fast enough. About every 3-4 years it seems like they are constructing a new enormous high school here. Residential real estate was soaring here until they started building the dozens and dozens of giant apartment complexes.
- keiferski 3y ago
  I encourage anyone with the means to visit San Francisco. It has some nice parts, for sure, but unfortunately the social problems are just as bad as you read about. It is a little shocking, honestly.
incomingpain 3y ago
It has been years since I looked at their data. The blame is not entirely San Frans. It is in majority the California government's policies which are crushing the city. though don't think san fran municipal politicians are angels, they have some serious things to resolve as well. I look at the politics and California fell into a Coleman Young trap. You as a politician see a problem like homelessness and you want to help but you don't see the big picture of the consequences of certain policies. Which often are counter intuitive, but politicians never actually build 'tests' to verify their decisions are actually helping as opposed to harming. San Fran is 100% going to end up like Detroit. To prevent this decline is basically impossible. Looking at California, their next election is in 2026, Gavin Newsom is out but he will be replaced by someone who will never in a million years make the decisions which must be made. They are ideologically opposed to them and therefore the collapse is certain. Nor does anyone of that ideology want to ever hear what the fixes are, so how do you enact positive improvement? you don't. You watch the city collapse and maybe decades later someone will be able to solve the problems. What a terrible situation to watch the collapse happen and the humanity consequences. These homeless are your fellow human beings but you just step over them.
- aworks 3y ago
  "San Fran is 100% going to end up like Detroit." While Michigan and California both have had historicals booms and busts, I'm not sure the economic comparison is apt. Detroit lost much of its manufacturing base, particularly automotive. The Bay Area is still doing reasonably well with software and biotech among other industries. It's also a gateway to Asia. Maybe if Google, Apple, the Chinese economy etc. all collapse, SF will collapse as well, and who is the mayor probably won't matter.
  - incomingpain 3y ago
    >Detroit lost much of its manufacturing base, particularly automotive. Detroit the city lost it's manufacturing base to the suburbs. People blame the interstate system here. But when you consider metro detroit, there was never a decline like you imagine. >The Bay Area is still doing reasonably well with software and biotech among other industries. Remote work and people fleeing the bay area is identical to the 'white flight' to the suburbs of detroit. The bay area is basically in 1964 detroit post 'i have a dream' speech. Now, I don't think there will be race riots in San Fran, I still haven't figured out who it will be. I have an expectation the autistic/LGBT riots will be. But you never know BLM type stuff might spark a race riot. >It's also a gateway to Asia. Maybe if Google, Apple, the Chinese economy etc. all collapse, SF will collapse as well, and who is the mayor probably won't matter. What you're looking for here is the capital flight restrictions by China. The move out of China by companies especially Apple. https://www.forbes.com/sites/douglasbulloch/2016/11/29/why-is-china-restricting-capital-outflows/?sh=47cd602649d0 https://www.forbes.com/sites/douglasbulloch/2016/11/29/why-i... I ought to provide a better link but this was happening BEFORE covid, trump's embargos like against SMIC, biden's embargos. China's ongoing collapse. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-06/china-s-epic-battle-with-capital-flows-is-more-intense-than-ever https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-06/china-s-e... Mind you, San Fran will always exist. Just as Detroit still exists.
noneoftheabove 3y ago
It’s a scary place unlike Mumbai and Lima. SF is in the US a developed country Unlike Mumbai and other cities mentioned. For another, I was peeing my pants when I Witnessed the brutality of some homeless junkies In the streets. I recommend everyone to visit SF, trip advisor Does not have sections about what really happens in Restaurants. Imagine going to eat breakfast at a place Highly recommended by trip advisor. Entering Sitting and ordering breakfast, then realising The place is filled with homeless people Who occupy seats. This is fine had it not been For the stench of urine smell and the fear that Someone might have a gun and simply spray his Bullets

129 points by kumarski 3y ago

There is also fairly steady migration out of the city [0]. Looks to be related to COVID policy although there is a longer term trend. If 10% of the population has left, there is a bias towards office workers leaving because they'd probably tend to have more money, WFH policies and people were building based on population increases ... 35% vacancy rate sounds pretty reasonable. [0] https://sf.gov/data/san-francisco-population-and-migration https://sf.gov/data/san-francisco-population-and-migration

rapsey 3y ago
Well crime and homelessness also probably has a lot to do with it...
- slowhadoken 3y ago
  That's exactly what it is. That coupled with high rent. You can pay an arm and a leg just subletting a single room in the Sunset district.
mrjh 3y ago
"Looks to be related to COVID policy" COVID policy? Isn't that history now?
- roenxi 3y ago
  It is historic data. We might expect to see history reflected in it.

usrme 3y ago

News like this remind me of the song "Why" by Chat Pile[1], which is almost always gives me a frisson. It's a damn shame how slow the bureaucratic cogs turn, all the while real people are suffering. --- [1]: https://genius.com/Chat-pile-why-lyrics https://genius.com/Chat-pile-why-lyrics

malermeister 3y ago

And this right here is why you keep hearing RTO pushes from C-Levels and corporate boards. Those folks all have investments in commercial real estate that they would like to not become worthless. What's wasting your employee's life time on a commute compared to that?

bravetraveler 3y ago
If not investment, I know for certain there are "deals" on number of asses in seats They get cheap rent because the business "guarantees" foot traffic by having people come in No foot traffic, no discount
hd4 3y ago
We've (workers, non-CRE owners) collectively known this all along. What I don't understand is how the green/net-zero lobby is relatively quiet about fewer people using transport to go to work. It makes far more sense for WFH to have been the default long before the covid lockdowns, frankly I'm sad that that's what it took to get us here. It shows how much hypocrisy there is about all the climate efforts if those same people aren't clamoring for WFH
- rwmj 3y ago
  The calculation is not entirely straightforward because of the efficiency of heating or cooling private homes during the day vs doing the same for offices.
- Symbiote 3y ago
  Is WFH automatically greener than an office? It means heating/cooling many buildings rather than a few, many individuals cooking alone etc. It seems it is better in the USA [1] and the UK [2] though there is considerable variance when comparing several European countries [3]. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/working-remotely-can-more-than-halve-an-office-employees-carbon-footprint/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/working-remotely-... [2] https://circularecology.com/news/the-carbon-emissions-of-homeworking-and-office-working https://circularecology.com/news/the-carbon-emissions-of-hom... [3] https://www.vodafone-institut.de/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CT_Homeworking-report-June-2021.pdf https://www.vodafone-institut.de/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/...

Animats 3y ago

San Francisco overbuilt in high-rise office buildings. There's no good reason to concentrate workers that much. Work from home works in tech. AI, reasonably enough, doesn't need that many people. That's kind of the point. Are residential prices, both buy and rent, dropping yet?

vineyardmike 3y ago
Eh. The world will partially go back to office. Offices in SF will be filled again one day. What will fill offices is a string of big bankruptcies that allow new owners to lower their cost basis and offer cheaper rent.
- solumunus 3y ago
  Preferably offices get mass converted into housing, property prices fall and cities can become thriving, beautiful social hubs with better infrastructure and lower pollution.
  - kmlx 3y ago
    > Preferably offices get mass converted into housing in some places it’s cheaper to tear down the building than convert. that’s how unrealistic/expensive that idea is.
    - harambae 3y ago
      People say this but it so rarely happens (tearing down skyscrapers) that I really question the veracity of it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_voluntarily_demolished_buildings https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_voluntarily_...
    - solumunus 3y ago
      Then that.
ActionHank 3y ago
> Work from home works in tech. Could you please let big tech know, they seem to be ignorant or intellectually dishonest on this point.

tjmc 3y ago

Sounds like a good opportunity to rezone and modify some buildings to residential.

ssss11 3y ago
Precisely, but instead city councils will provide incentives to businesses to push their staff back to the office sigh
- Solvency 3y ago
  But... why? Why not incentivize foot traffic via new interesting small businesses and vibrant culture? Why must it be offices always.
  - rtpg 3y ago
    Rossmann had some rant recently about NYC, talking about how the loans developers get when building out buildings tend to demand a certain minimum rent (or, if you don't meet that, you gotta basically show up with more capital). This leads to the whole "empty spaces but rent not dropping much" thing. I get there are costs with having people in the building but at one point it would be nice for society to just be like "let's not leave stuff entirely empty"
  - Moldoteck 3y ago
    Bc us society is relying on dependency: ppl will depend on cars to move/buy groceries, ppl will depend on jobs bc they neeed health insurance, ppl will depend on office working bc they should depend on cars and businesses will depend on office bc govt will get money.
- jillesvangurp 3y ago
  They'll try and fail. Probably repeatedly. This is much bigger then them. There's a new reality where successful companies no longer cling to the past of overpriced office real estate that is populated by overpriced staff that commutes to town for hours every day. That was stupid before covid and there are now plenty of companies that grew past that and no longer need that. The next logical step here is that investors get the hint that their investments spending most of their money on SFO real estate (housing and offices) is not great from an ROI point of view. That too was true before covid but now much more obviously so as there are now a lot of companies with a lot less expenses on that front and a lot more runway. Paying people extra just to show up in an office isn't going to be the smart move here.

slowhadoken 3y ago

I love SF but it's as bad as PDX these days. Both cities are falling apart in weird ways. You'll be in a restaurant and a deranged homeless fentanyl addict will walk in and start screaming at a waiter for food. Most of the customers pretend like it's not happening and some act like they're proud of it or snicker. The staff has to bribe junkies with food to get them to leave. Weirdos snatch stuff off of shelves in the grocery stores. The alarms go off and no one does anything. People in self checkout look scared. It's surreal.

peepeepoopoo51 3y ago
[flagged]
simonbarker87 3y ago
I’ve been fortunate enough to travel all over the world and hands down the most dangerous feeling city I’ve been in is SF. I have no idea why people want to visit there, let alone live there. In fact the only cities I’ve been to where I felt like I needed to really have my guard up and head on a swivel were US cities. Not that I don’t keep my awareness up in other places but something about the US sets off my spidey senses. NY felt fine but SF, Miami, Buffalo all felt iffy. *clarification: I’m not saying that SF is the most dangerous city in the world, but of the cities I have been to around the world, it has felt the least safe.
- soneca 3y ago
  Definitely do not come to Brazilian big cities then. It is another order of magnitude more dangerous.
  - slowhadoken 3y ago
    Especially for women, yeah. I grew up in rough neighborhoods but you need to know the area or have a guide and a good rep doesn't hurt.
  - wheels 3y ago
    Yeah, was looking to see if this comment existed. Sao Paolo feels like one of the richest cities in the world surrounded by one of the poorest cities in the world. I've been to more than 50 countries and hundreds of big cities, and Sao Paolo feels like it has the craziest gradient between rich and poor. I'm not even sure San Francisco would make the top 10. (High up would be: Sao Paolo, Rio, Bangalore, Mexico City, Johannesburg, Riyadh, ...)

lysecret 3y ago

A friend is constantly bugging me about moving to SF. I understand it is tech central but the PR of the city is just really not great currently.

Melting_Harps 3y ago
> A friend is constantly bugging me about moving to SF. I understand it is tech central but the PR of the city is just really not great currently. Currently? The place is unrecognizable to us Californians since the late 90s; it's been a cesspool created by a long series of events, which at it's core has to do with wealth inequality, and overt NIMBY-ism and gentrification coupled with mental health issues and ends with substance abuse and crime: and it's been like this for some time, but it's only now that the monied interests are having to deal with the very real prospect of having land/building depreciate they call foul and are using the media to leverage the undoing of WFH. This is big tech's blight, and I want nothing more for them to finally own up to this and do something about it, instead of enabling the squalor that they have created: even as a person in tech it's hard not to give credence to the techno-feudalism arguments many of it's detractors point out as the inevitable outcome from constant wealth and power consolidation given this reality.
- DeathArrow 3y ago
  >which at it's core has to do with wealth inequality, and overt NIMBY-ism and gentrification Doesn't SF have the highest concentration of leftists and progresives in the whole US?
  - Melting_Harps 3y ago
    Do you mean progressives? But even so, those are loosely held ideals as the last few decades have shown that such trivial things will not get in the way of protecting their wealth. Idealism is set aside when it comes to ensuring inexplicable perpetual growth in one's most valuable asset.
    - DeathArrow 3y ago

jkelleyrtp 3y ago

I'm on the hunt for office space in the city, scoping out deals and such. The real numbers, according to folks I've spoken with on the ground, are much higher. Many units simply aren't listed or are in a "limbo" state. In a number of buildings vacancy rate is 70%+. I've been asking shop and restaurant owners how their business is doing during lunch - down 70%-80%. Buildings that were originally built at 70/sqft are now selling at 40 or less. For real estate investors, this can be realized to a loss of 30-40%. From what I can tell, many companies that remain in SF aren't renting in FiDi but are choosing to rent out entire buildings in Hayes and the Mission. It's bleak, and FWIW, having just gone through YC, there aren't going to be too many AI companies to "save the day." On the flip side, the city does seem cleaner and occasionally more vibrant. Market street is cleaner now than it was during the summer (might just be the rainy weather). The open air drug market has seemingly moved onto a side street and the "we robbed a walgreens" shops near the bart stations in the mission have also been cleaned out, for the most part.

kdwikzncba 3y ago
FiDi?
- m0llusk 3y ago
  "Financial District" Much of the most profitable activity in San Francisco has historically happened in a small part of downtown.
- crotchfire 3y ago
  Financial District
- mathgeek 3y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_District,_San_Francisco https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_District,_San_Fran...
SheinhardtWigCo 3y ago
The improvements you describe in your last paragraph can be attributed to APEC, which was a few weeks ago. There is no reason to believe that they will persist.

SheinhardtWigCo 3y ago

Remote work is only part of the story. Having lived there for close to a decade, my take is that there is an accountability vacuum and rampant corruption among city leadership. For example, the 10-B program has turned the SFPD into a legalized quasi-mafia. The only way to protect your business in SF is to hire off-duty cops at their overtime wage plus a 15% admin fee. The city has no hope of recovery while things like this continue to be tolerated.

Devasta 3y ago

Rookie numbers; we need those rates higher.

tomohawk 3y ago

Poop coverage is good, though. https://www.openthebooks.com/daily-mail-online-interactive-map-reveals-the-staggering-number-of-human-waste-on-san-franciscos-streets/ https://www.openthebooks.com/daily-mail-online-interactive-m...

austin-cheney 3y ago

Reading these comments is absolutely wild. I am living the exact opposite experience in Fort Worth, the fastest growing big city in the US. More than 60% of our net increase per year is from California. My son tells me more than half of some of his classes are people recently relocated from CA. Office space remains well filled even with remote work and they cannot seem to improve the roads or build new schools fast enough. About every 3-4 years it seems like they are constructing a new enormous high school here. Residential real estate was soaring here until they started building the dozens and dozens of giant apartment complexes.

keiferski 3y ago
I encourage anyone with the means to visit San Francisco. It has some nice parts, for sure, but unfortunately the social problems are just as bad as you read about. It is a little shocking, honestly.

incomingpain 3y ago

It has been years since I looked at their data. The blame is not entirely San Frans. It is in majority the California government's policies which are crushing the city. though don't think san fran municipal politicians are angels, they have some serious things to resolve as well. I look at the politics and California fell into a Coleman Young trap. You as a politician see a problem like homelessness and you want to help but you don't see the big picture of the consequences of certain policies. Which often are counter intuitive, but politicians never actually build 'tests' to verify their decisions are actually helping as opposed to harming. San Fran is 100% going to end up like Detroit. To prevent this decline is basically impossible. Looking at California, their next election is in 2026, Gavin Newsom is out but he will be replaced by someone who will never in a million years make the decisions which must be made. They are ideologically opposed to them and therefore the collapse is certain. Nor does anyone of that ideology want to ever hear what the fixes are, so how do you enact positive improvement? you don't. You watch the city collapse and maybe decades later someone will be able to solve the problems. What a terrible situation to watch the collapse happen and the humanity consequences. These homeless are your fellow human beings but you just step over them.

aworks 3y ago
"San Fran is 100% going to end up like Detroit." While Michigan and California both have had historicals booms and busts, I'm not sure the economic comparison is apt. Detroit lost much of its manufacturing base, particularly automotive. The Bay Area is still doing reasonably well with software and biotech among other industries. It's also a gateway to Asia. Maybe if Google, Apple, the Chinese economy etc. all collapse, SF will collapse as well, and who is the mayor probably won't matter.
- incomingpain 3y ago
  >Detroit lost much of its manufacturing base, particularly automotive. Detroit the city lost it's manufacturing base to the suburbs. People blame the interstate system here. But when you consider metro detroit, there was never a decline like you imagine. >The Bay Area is still doing reasonably well with software and biotech among other industries. Remote work and people fleeing the bay area is identical to the 'white flight' to the suburbs of detroit. The bay area is basically in 1964 detroit post 'i have a dream' speech. Now, I don't think there will be race riots in San Fran, I still haven't figured out who it will be. I have an expectation the autistic/LGBT riots will be. But you never know BLM type stuff might spark a race riot. >It's also a gateway to Asia. Maybe if Google, Apple, the Chinese economy etc. all collapse, SF will collapse as well, and who is the mayor probably won't matter. What you're looking for here is the capital flight restrictions by China. The move out of China by companies especially Apple. https://www.forbes.com/sites/douglasbulloch/2016/11/29/why-is-china-restricting-capital-outflows/?sh=47cd602649d0 https://www.forbes.com/sites/douglasbulloch/2016/11/29/why-i... I ought to provide a better link but this was happening BEFORE covid, trump's embargos like against SMIC, biden's embargos. China's ongoing collapse. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-06/china-s-epic-battle-with-capital-flows-is-more-intense-than-ever https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-06/china-s-e... Mind you, San Fran will always exist. Just as Detroit still exists.

noneoftheabove 3y ago

It’s a scary place unlike Mumbai and Lima. SF is in the US a developed country Unlike Mumbai and other cities mentioned. For another, I was peeing my pants when I Witnessed the brutality of some homeless junkies In the streets. I recommend everyone to visit SF, trip advisor Does not have sections about what really happens in Restaurants. Imagine going to eat breakfast at a place Highly recommended by trip advisor. Entering Sitting and ordering breakfast, then realising The place is filled with homeless people Who occupy seats. This is fine had it not been For the stench of urine smell and the fear that Someone might have a gun and simply spray his Bullets