San Francisco: The Worst-Run Big City in the U.S.

http://www.sfweekly.com/2009-12-16/news/the-worst-run-big-city-in-the-u-s/1

by miked • 17 years ago

105 115 17 years ago

sfweekly.com

Apreche• 17 years ago

Uh, Detroit?

daniel-cussen2• 17 years ago

Perhaps it's better run considering they have much less resources in the first place.

roc3• 17 years ago

I don't know much about how SF is doing, but I find that highly doubtful.

San Francisco seems to be complaining about waste and bureaucracy. Those aren't healthy things.

But Detroit has been suffering massive crime, drug violence, depopulation, failing city services, depression-level unemployment, steadily falling revenue, skyrocketing illiteracy, public safety problems presented by the rotting infrastructure, plummeting graduation and has been flirting with bankruptcy for years.

Most of those problems were recognized problems decades ago, and have only worsened.

antidaily• 17 years ago

Under Kwame, I'd agree. The new guy seems like he's doing ok considering the hand he was dealt.

roc3• 17 years ago

The problem doesn't exist solely in the mayor's office, so unfortunately Detroit is still horribly run. Bing's making a hell of an effort -- but so did Archer.

But that's neither here nor there. There are plenty of worse-run cities in America than San Francisco. Cities where more serious problems result from the mismanagement, corruption and dysfunction (crime, decay, ineffective city services, etc).

joshu• 17 years ago

Detroit's been great since OCP took over. Didn't you see that documentary?

asolove• 17 years ago

Miami?

igorgue• 17 years ago

I sadly agree

jcapote• 17 years ago

Came in here just to post this, so I'm glad someone else already has. Miami might as well be another country. (I am from Miami and completely agree with that congressman who said this place was a 3rd world country)

pelle4• 17 years ago

I moved from SF to Miami and the government is surely corrupt here as well, but not in the same way and scale as SF.

robk• 17 years ago

Miami has strong opposition inside the town's political factions (new Cubans, old Cubans, retirees, etc). As far as I can tell, SF has only "radical" and "more radical" groups.

yardie• 17 years ago

Former Miamian. sadly have to agree. it is, unfortunately. I can't ever remember a time when it wasn't. Maybe back in the moonshine and Al capone days. But this city just goes from one corrupt trend to another.

schwit• 17 years ago

US federal government? DC government?

gibsonf1• 17 years ago

It seems a culture has developed where "good" intentions justify anything. There is also a complete causal disconnect between those intentions and the results, and this appears to be happening world-wide. If you say the right words, you can sell any program, regardless of what those same words may have led to in the past in terms of other failed programs. History is evaded and forgotten, it's only intentions that count, not results. sigh.

elblanco2• 17 years ago

The DC government, while still terrible, has vastly improved in the last decade, so much so that it's not even recognizable. This is reflected in the city as well, which in very large swaths are not even recognizable compared to 10 years ago (in a good way).

kingkongreveng_3• 17 years ago

I don't think the actual government improved. The city turned around, but that's just because loads of crack heads finally died off, many gangsters are permanently incarcerated, and then yuppies moved in and pushed up property values.

iron_ball• 17 years ago

NYC has good city government and one of the worst state governments in the nation. Guess it could be worse.

kingkongreveng_3• 17 years ago

NYC government is high cost and plagued by unionization.

elblanco2• 17 years ago

All of which may be true, but considering the scale of the city (population, buildings, economy, public infrastructure like the subway), it runs like clockwork.

SF isn't even a borough of NYC in comparison.

baguasquirrel• 17 years ago

Why are people modding this guy down? I know people who are employees in the NYC system, and despite being the underlings, they complain about the unionization.

The MTA, for example, apparently has more management/support than they have actual engineers working to fix things. If you went to a public school, you would have definitely heard a good number of top teachers and administrators complaining about both the BoE and the teachers union.

NYC's system is much worse than you'd think, but they've had two business and efficiency mayors in charge, back-to-back, trying to fix these things.

ad2• 17 years ago

"In Houston, the exact opposite of San Francisco, I assume you'd get shot"

switch that to 'small town texas' and I would agree. Houston proper tends to vote to the left, not to mention we have our own budget problems now.

jdrock2• 17 years ago

Houston "proper" is a fraction of the City of Houston. (I assume you mean inside the loop.)

ct4ul4u• 17 years ago

I would assume he meant the legal boundaries of the City of Houston, which is what the term "proper" usually means in that case.

look_lookatme• 17 years ago

Useless hyperbole from both you and the the Joel Kotkin. Just because people are conservative doesn't mean they believe violence is the answer to all problems.

ad2• 17 years ago

You're right; let my comment be stricken from the record...

viggity2• 17 years ago

I know this is schadenfreude, but I love this. As I see it, a city of people with backwards values is getting its just deserts.

Unfortunately for me, when the city eventually goes bankrupt, I'll probably end up footing the bill via my federal taxes.

spamizbad• 17 years ago

Kindly elaborate why San Francisco has "backwards values". I bet you think it's an accident it's a tech innovation hub.

evgen5• 17 years ago

> I bet you think it's an accident it's a tech innovation hub.

Actually this is an accident; San Francisco's reputation as a tech hub is due to its accidental proximity to San Jose and silicon valley.

viggity2• 17 years ago

The backwards values are solely in regards to how they view the proper role of government. Not their beliefs regarding things like gay marriage or other social values.

dubcomesaveme• 17 years ago

The only backward value apparent from this article is an extreme defecit in holding people accountable. One could argue that every other value must be phenomenal since it is still a thriving city despite this impairment.

tlrobinson• 17 years ago

I live in SF, where do I get my deserts?

pelle4• 17 years ago

The biggest problem in San Francisco is not the city government nor the government workers but its the voters.

SF is a city of really well meaning people who will sign any petition when they leave Safeways and vote yes to every single idiotic ballot issue.

What this means is that every single interest group gets people to vote them funding.

Of course the people voted in are all of the same political flavor so rather than having devils advocates amongst the commissioners you get each of them pushing for spending on their particular special interest groups.

Unless the voters start voting no to these idiots and ballot measures I don't see anything changing in SF in the foreseeable future.

dkarl• 17 years ago

San Franciscans have the same problem Mike Huckabee has: they're naive. They want to believe that anyone espousing the same moral values as them must be honest and trustworthy. They want to believe that acting with good intentions produces good outcomes.

This thinking is worthy of an eight-year-old. This is why we love children. The innocence, the wonder. This is why growing up is painful. You do something with good intentions and end up breaking something or hurting someone. You meet someone who seems nice and believes all the same things you do, and they lie to you and steal from you.

Nobody connected with any deep religious or artistic tradition should need to be so naive. Believing in evil is compatible with mercy. Believing in betrayal is compatible with trust. Believing in waste, inefficiency, and rent-seeking is compatible with a determination to apply the resources of government to improve people's lives.

kingkawn• 17 years ago

I dunno, i think this is too reductive, putting all the blame on a unique aspect of San Franciscan character. It sounds like the ballot system there allows for this kind of chaos, and so of course it ensues. It would happen anywhere. It might not always have the same generally lefty bent that San Fran's does, but otherwise I think its bad governance structure, not bad people.

billybob• 17 years ago

Fascinating article. Perhaps it's a lesson in what happens when you lack political balance? It's been fashionable in the last few years to talk about cooperation between the major parties, but to me, it's the scuffle between Right and Left that produces a government that isn't too crazy in either direction.

If a sizable number of Libertarian Nutjobs were there to fight with the Socialist Nutjobs, they'd probably be better off.

jhancock• 17 years ago

There are plenty of poorly run and corrupt city govs. A few I've had close exposure to: Atlanta, D.C., Miami (most of south FL), Jacksonville FL (they've had a highway construction project running for over 20 years!!), Savannah GA. SF can simply get in line for the crown.

sophacles• 17 years ago

Oh man, thats funny. I know very little about SF, other than it has lots of "causers". Seems to me they keep voting for this terrible managment, so there are plenty of causes to rally for/against. Seriously half of those examples solve one problem (sending the causers home with a "we fought the good fight" feeling) only to create 2 more cause-able problems (e.g. the old-folks-home/mental hostpital overflow -- cause A: save the old people from criminals, cause B: mentally ill are people too, they need homes).

zephjc• 17 years ago

I know very little about SF

Pluses: It's a gorgeous city, the people are generally nice, the weather in the whole Bay Area tends to stay pretty close to perfect year round, lots of cultural variety, lots to do and see.

Minuses: the parking sucks, the traffic sucks, the myriad one-way streets suck.

In short, its a great tourist destination, but you probably wouldn't want to live there.

hugh_3• 17 years ago

That's a rather generous description of the downsides of San Francisco. Parking and traffic suck in a lot of places, and the one-way streets aren't so bad once you get used to them.

The two worst problems of San Francisco are still the filth (both the rubbish-in-the-streets form of filth and the human form of filth) and the ridiculously high cost of living. The first means that you can't walk down the street for more than a couple of minutes without some weirdo either pestering you for money or trying to sell you drugs. The second means that having a reasonably nice place to live (say, a three or four bedroom detached house with a backyard -- the kind of modest middle-class dwelling that most modest middle-class families inhabit) is completely out of reach for all but the super-rich.

San Francisco is a great place to be at a certain stage in your life, but unless you do become super-rich it's an awful place to stay.

rantfoil• 17 years ago

Having a car in SF does suck. But you wouldn't think of having a car in NYC would you?

Fix: Ride a bike / use public transit / live near work.

jwecker• 17 years ago

"The intrusion of politics into government ..." Yeah, I know they're not exactly the same thing, but that statement still made me laugh.

pchristensen• 17 years ago

I think that could be better said as "intrusion of politics into governance"

jsm386• 17 years ago

Don't worry - San Francisco has a solution to all their problems, DC's limitless pot of stimulus gold:

Standing among racks of freshly dry-cleaned clothes in the Bayview, Mayor Gavin Newsom today touted San Francisco's early grab at federal stimulus dollars which have put 1,200 unemployed city residents to work - including sprucing up dirty clothes at Laundry Locker.

But there are, um, a couple of wrinkles that Newsom wants to iron out. The program, part of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, provides $5 billion nationally to fully subsidize the hiring of unemployed workers. But they must have at least one child under age 18, leaving out many jobless and childless San Franciscans. And the money is due to run out in September 2010, meaning the newly hired could soon be back in the unemployment line.

Newsom said he's headed to Washington, D.C. next week to lobby House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for an extension of the money and to include people without children. He said he wants to see 2,500 or even more San Franciscans hired, and that the majority of California's $1.8 billion pot is still sitting waiting to be grabbed by cities since so few are participating.

"This is limitless. It's just a matter of who draws down the money fastest," Newsom said. "We discovered a pot of gold in the stimulus money."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/cityinsider/detail?entry...

mml• 17 years ago

Having made an attempt to live there, and having then left, here is my summary: San Francisco is a city populated entirely by 2 kinds of people: adult children, and public servants/long-term welfare cases.

that's about it. people who are, or become grownups move away in disgust that such a wildly beautiful and rich place is such a sewer at the same time. sad really.

geebee3• 17 years ago

I'd agree if you didn't use the word "entirely." I grew up in the south/west half of San Francisco, which is still, remarkably enough, populated largely by families who struggle, with eyes wide open, in the same way that most middle-class families do (their incomes would appear to be high, but the cost of living means that they're not all that different from someone making a third of that salary in a less expensive city).

I have two young children here, and I've started to watch the beginning of the exodus (there are many families with small children in SF, even the trendy parts... they generally start to leave when the first, and especially the second, hit school age. Space, schools, all that stuff).

Many of the people who stay in SF have extended family here. There are also the people who love it, but my wife and I have a new theory - the people who express unqualified love for SF will probably leave. Its the ones who mix it a grim recognition that, for whatever reason, they'll never get to check out of this place - those are the ones who will still be here in 30 years. Hell, my parents have been complaining about it since I was born.

You know, welcome to the hotel san francisco, if not hotel california.

yters2• 17 years ago

Ah, I see why SF attracts so many homosexuals, cost of living is much lower when you don't have to provide for children. So, homosexuals both get a nice living area, and all the heterosexuals who form families and might look down on their choices are filtered out. Best of both worlds for them.

geebee3• 17 years ago

one more point - at times, the people who become grownups and move away in disgust were, at one point, part of the political group that created the things that now disgust them.

People have started to call this the "Chris Daly" phenomenon. This is in response to the recent actions of sup Daly, who has been a very lefish and fierce advocate for the homeless, rent control and tenants rights, etc...

Well, recently he purchased two houses in Vallejo, one which was a forclosure. He moved his family, including his Children, to vallejo. He maintains a residence in SF, and does indeed live in it (with roomates). But evidently, he doesn't want to be a landlord in the city where he fights for tenants, preferring to purchase property elsewhere in places that are more landlord-friendly. Nor does he want his kids living around the people whose interests he defends so aggressively.

This is a pattern - people move to SF when they are young and idealistic, and then leave when they are older and have children.

They don't even have to be all that idealistic. I have a buddy who lived in SF while he was a young and well off budding lawyer. He's definitely a moderate/liberal by US standards, but you have to understand that this puts you to the moderate right in SF. Anyway, when he lived here, he was livid about regulations on where he was allowed to run his dog off leash. He cared in theory about schools, playgrounds, kids, and so forth, but these issues didn't affect him personally. He cared about kids, but he became an activist about his dog.

Now he lives in Marin with his two kids and dog, where kid issues impact him personally. I'm sure he'll still love his dog, but no doubt his priorities will change.

anigbrowl5• 17 years ago

Some good points, but a whole lot of outright bullshit as well.

San Francisco can't point to progress on many of the social issues it spends liberally to tackle

Oh really? Maybe you should take a look at the healthy San Francisco program, which basically arranges medical insurance for the indigent. That works. I like to grumble about Muni, the public transit system, but the fact is that it covers the entire city, is (mostly) available around the clock, and every vehicle is GPS tracked so you can find out when the next one is coming. I've called in problems on a bus by phone before and had an inspector board the bus a few stops later to resolve the issue.

Although many of the criticisms in the article are individually valid, many of them are divorced from context, eg not considering the facts of state politics. There are a bunch of things that need reforming in San Francisco, but this article is hit piece rather than serious journalism.

There are two free weekly newspapers in San Francisco. For years the Bay Guardian has been the standard bearer for grumpy hippy activism (and by 'grumpy' I mean an interest in basic fiscal rectitude). The SF Weekly, by contrast, has done much better out of promoting entertainment and lifestyle with some human-interest stories sprinkled in as news; indeed, for several years they've had a policies of not even offering endorsements at election time or putting any resources into election coverage. Now both papers have seen a calamitous drop in advertising, both classified and display, and have shrunk from tabloid to magazine size. And the SF weekly is desperately churning out what it regards as hard-hitting journalism in a bid to stay relevant, after years of coverage that amounted to little more than 'LOL politics'.

defen4• 17 years ago

> Maybe you should take a look at the healthy San Francisco program, which basically arranges medical insurance for the indigent.

Maybe that increases the number of indigent? Why, in one of the richest, most beautiful cities in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, are there large numbers of feral humans roaming around? Why are entire neighborhoods off-limits to law-abiding citizens?

gnosis3• 17 years ago

"Why, in one of the richest, most beautiful cities in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, are there large numbers of feral humans roaming around?"

Maybe because in other cities in the country those "feral humans" would simply be allowed to die off (or even helped on their way to extinction).

I've read that this is how NYC has "taken care of their homeless problem": they simply let the homeless die, which is quite easy to do in NYC during the winter by forcing the homeless to sleep outdoors, where the weather is much more deadly than it ever gets in San Francisco.

Also, it's pretty clear that many (if not most) of the homeless people in San Francisco are mentally ill. During the Reagan era the mental institutions were emptied, and the mentally ill were basically thrown out on the street. It's possible that San Francisco just has more mentally ill people than your typical American city (maybe because of the prevalence of drugs in the city, I don't know).

That's a lot of guess work on my part, but I've yet to hear a better explanation for why there are hordes of homeless in SF.

Saying that these people are "just lazy" because of their dependence on handouts and would just "get over it" if the help was taken away is just the sound of resentment without an ounce of compassion or understanding of the people who are really suffering.

bkudria2• 17 years ago

Feral humans are people too.

Can you explain to me why only rich people ought to live in cities?

anigbrowl5• 17 years ago

Interesting line on non-sequiteurs you have there. I like how you seque from suggesting that providing health care to those without insurance makes poorer, to discussions of feral humans and crimes, as if these were all somehow caused by extending medical coverage to people.

earl2• 17 years ago

Muni is a piece of shit. The buses come at irregular intervals and are regularly clumped together in order to maximize the time between service. nextmuni is unreliable more than about 5 minutes in advance. A trip which takes 18 minutes in a car requires me to leave 50 minutes beforehand in order to reliably arrive at work on time. The drivers let any drugged out piece of shit on board, so you aren't particularly safe (I've been involved in two fights on muni, neither of which I started, both of which I was involved in simply for being on the bus). The public transport is so poorly laid out that you not only have to plan your entire life around the schedule, but there are relatively close pieces of the city -- eg 20 minute walks -- that require 60+ minutes to reach via public transport. Tthe lazy morons that run muni can't even get displays on market -- down which run many bus lines -- announcing the next buses.

This city -- and I never thought anything could do this -- is going to drive me to buy a car. Or to move back to NYC.

Edit: I missed this in my first read. Muni available around the clock? hah.

Ps -- the healthy SF program? Stops at the borders. Hope you never leave sf or require medical care outside the city. Particularly including emergency care.

grandalf2• 17 years ago

A few comments:

- SF's massive spending on the needy would seem to attract more needy people, so the point of comparison to the rest of the bay area could be misleading. SF also has a more consistent climate than the rest of the bay area, useful if you're homeless and sleeping on the street.

- Whole sections of the city are overrun with homeless people (tenderloin, golden gate park near Stanyan) such that passers by may be attacked, etc. I am aware of 3 people who have been attacked by homeless people.

- The MUNI system is decent, but there is little enforcement of fare violations. Not sure if this is really a problem.

- The mom and pop restaurants in SF are the best I've tried in any city, including New York.

- The level of tolerance in SF is fairly remarkable. You can dress however you want, men can wear nail polish, etc., and nobody bats and eyelash. One should not underestimate the importance of this sort of tolerance.

- I agree that rent control is a big problem. It's just bad policy and unfortunately it plagues lots of big cities.

- I don't know why there is a housing project in Hayes Valley. It's hard not to feel poor in SF if you earn over $100K Per year, and so one can imagine how it must feel to actually be poor.

dnsworks4• 17 years ago

This last item hits me rather personally. Last year I was paying $1,500/month for a room in a tiny apartment to live across on Laguna and Hayes, right across from the housing project. It was like somebody drew a big line and put all of the yuppies on the Octavia side of the street, and all of the drug addicted permanently unemployable old women on the other side of the street .. Quite a dichotomy.

dangrover• 17 years ago

Webster and Page here. Yeah, it's crazy. Cars on Webster St get consistently broken into, but cars on Filmore are safe.

hugh_3• 17 years ago

You can dress however you want, men can wear nail polish, etc., and nobody bats and eyelash. One should not underestimate the importance of this sort of tolerance.

Ah, but try wearing a "Bush/Cheney 04" t-shirt and see what kind of reaction you get. One should not underestimate the importance of this kind of intolerance. Who cares about wearing nailpolish when you'll be ostracized for having political opinions which anywhere else would be perfectly mainstream?

grandalf2• 17 years ago

You are absolutely right about that.

I think the homeless and gay populations reveal that SF has an above average amount of tolerance for differences (in general, but with heated disapproval by vocal minorities) but that certainly doesn't mean that if you choose a SF resident out of a hat and show him a GWB t-shirt, that he won't reveal himself to have utterly un-nuanced (even boneheaded) views on topics such as the differences between the parties, relevant details of the Bush administration's policies, even things that he ostensibly supports like gay rights, clean environment, and nationalized healthcare.

I think the bottom line is that there are some very dumb people who thoughtlessly parrot what they perceive as "enlightened" views, who couldn't explain why if asked... essentially "dittoheads" of the left.

Note: I'm a libertarian (small L) so I find fault with a lot of ways that people reason (or more often bleat) about political issues.

defen4• 17 years ago

This is because results don't matter under liberalism, only intentions.

edit: Well there are lots of reasons, actually, but I think that's one of them. I think the article makes a really profound point in passing: "Government is now paying the tab for services that used to be undertaken by families, churches — or, frankly, no one."

Now, I'm sure some of this can be attributed to the fact that San Francisco attracts a lot of out-of-towners, because of its beauty, history, jobs, etc. But I think part of it is also due to the ruling liberal ethos of radical individualism, where everyone must be free to do as he wishes without constraint (as long as he doesn't infringe on anyone else's right to do the same). Such radical autonomy must invariably involve the rejection of social obligations. After all, no one chooses into which family to be born, and most people don't choose the church they will grow up with, either. Follow this logic to its conclusion and all you're left with is democratically elected government, expressing the "will of the people".

rmason• 17 years ago

Much as I hate to diss my poor suffering state all you need to look at is the five terms of Detroit mayor Coleman Young if you want to see poor leadership.

Time magazine said he is 'singularly responsible for the demise of Detroit'. San Francisco's leadership could be better, a lot better but it has a ways to go before they reach the level of Detroit's mayors and city council.

Here's a sample from a council meeting less than a year ago http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqOSNI7l0bQ

How many of the San Francisco's mayors or council have been imprisoned for selling influence?

teuobk• 17 years ago

So, what's an example of a big city in the US that's run exceptionally well?

geebee3• 17 years ago

I read in the economist a few years ago that Atlanta is run well. Though they were comparing it to New Orleans.

kingkongreveng_3• 17 years ago

Atlanta is a reasonably well run city. It gets cited a lot as a black city run by blacks that's a good place to do business.

gnosis3• 17 years ago

"It's time to face facts: San Francisco is spectacularly mismanaged and arguably the worst-run big city in America. This year's city budget is an astonishing $6.6 billion — more than twice the budget for the entire state of Idaho — for roughly 800,000 residents."

That comparison is so disingenuous. They're comparing a city with one of the highest costs of living in the country to the second poorest Western state? The cost of living in SF is about double that of Idaho. The median value of a home in SF is $656,700, while in Idaho it's $138,190. So why the "astonishment" at SF's budget being only twice that of Idaho?

Then there's the population issue. The whole of Idaho has 1.5 million people, while SF alone has 0.8 million. That's a huge concentration of people in one city. Compare SF to Boise, the largest city in Idaho: SF has 4 times the population. That kind of concentration of people brings lots of problems just by itself.

I'm not saying SF doesn't have problems. It clearly does. But this particular comparison isn't exactly the fairest they could have come up with. How about a direct comparison between the budget of SF and, say, NYC?

arebop• 17 years ago

It is a poor comparison, because the services provided by the state of Idaho and the city of San Francisco are so different. The author should have compared the sum of budgets of all cities in Idaho, or better yet found cities that are individually similar to San Francisco in ways other than spending (such as San Jose or Jersey City).

I think you're wrong about population and density though. I'd expect that the huge concentration of people would lower per-capita infrastructure costs and enable other economies of scale. Comparing San Francisco to New York City, we find that NYC, with 8.3 million residents [1] in 305 sq. mi [2] has budgeted $43.4 billion for FY2010 [3]. San Francisco has 47 sq. mi [4], so it's much less dense and yet spends over 50% more per capita.

[1] http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/census/popcur.shtml [2] http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/landusefacts/landusefactsho... [3] http://www.nyc.gov/html/omb/downloads/pdf/sum1_09.pdf [4] http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:pRkHCezT76IJ:www.ci.sf.c...

ahi• 17 years ago

Density lowers per capita infrastructure cost, but it also decreases tax revenues per capita. High density cities have to support the infrastructure used by commuters but can only capture a little of their tax value. During the day DC's population nearly doubles so they have to provide infrastructure for 1,000,000 people with a tax base of 600,000.

peregrine• 17 years ago

I don't know if the Author has ever been to Milwaukee...

patrickgzill• 17 years ago

"The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution."

Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XIX, 1782. ME 2:230

(yes I will probably get down-voted on this one)

San Francisco: The Worst-Run Big City in the U.S.

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