Tuesday’s front page of the San Francisco Chronicle had the rather mild photo below with a story headlined Clean up S.F.’s streets, tourist industry pleads.
Tucker Carlson has reported the degradation of San Francisco with far worse photos.
Carlson similarly believes that liberalism is at fault for the chaos in the streets.
San Francisco is uniquely challenged by limited geography for housing (water on three sides), a recent influx of well heeled tech workers pushing up housing prices, and a remarkably corrupt government that allows illegal aliens and homeless people to run wild. Plus California’s high population of illegal aliens also adds to the number of homeless.
As a result of liberal policies allowing anarchy to bloom, the city’s tourist vital industry may well shrivel up and disappear. A travel-booster website noted In 2015 that visitors directly spent $8.5 billion in the city. So why is the city so stubbornly blind to a problem that is destroying a major sector of its economy? It has spent big money in addressing homelessness ($275 million in a recent fiscal year), but has been unwilling to mount serious enforcement against homeless encampments that might do the trick.
Clean up San Francisco’s streets, tourist industry pleads, San Francisco Chronicle, April 17, 2018As president of S.F. Travel, the city’s visitors bureau, Joe D’Alessandro’s job is to promote San Francisco. You’d think he’d be hyping the city’s gorgeous vistas, top-notch restaurants and glorious museums.
Instead, he’s getting honest.
Sure, San Francisco has great facets worthy of postcards and travel books, but it also has a worsening underbelly that D’Alessandro says he can no longer gloss over.
People injecting themselves with drugs in broad daylight, their dirty needles and other garbage strewn on the sidewalks. Tent camps. Human feces. The threatening behavior of some people who appear either mentally ill or high. Petty theft.
“The streets are filthy. There’s trash everywhere. It’s disgusting,” D’Alessandro said, adding he’s traveled the world, and San Francisco stands out for the wrong reasons. “I’ve never seen any other city like this — the homelessness, dirty streets, drug use on the streets, smash-and-grabs.
“How can it be?” he continued. “How can it have gotten to this point?”
Remember, this is the man whose job is to glorify San Francisco, which tells you something about how far the city has sunk.
“We can’t be quiet anymore,” D’Alessandro said. “We’ve got such a glorious history, such a beautiful setting, and the fact is, we’re letting it all slip away into this quality of life now that is not good for anybody. We’ve become complacent, and I think we’ve taken this as a kind of new normal, and it’s not. It’s wrong, and we have to do something about it.”
He said so many visitors are sending complaints to him about their experiences in San Francisco, he’s got to speak up. He joins a growing chorus of people whose jobs make them dubious about telling a columnist their real opinions of San Francisco, but who say they have to because working behind the scenes isn’t moving the needle. Well, so to speak.
