Urban blues

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sfnext-poll-crime-sfpd-174393…
A sweeping poll commissioned by The Chronicle drew sobering results: Nearly half of respondents said they were victims of theft in the last five years, while roughly a quarter were physically attacked or threatened. The majority had negative impressions of law enforcement.

How fed up are San Franciscans with the city’s problems? New S.F. Chronicle poll finds pervasive gloom
www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sfnext-poll-sentiment-1743579…
Roughly one-third of the respondents said they were likely to leave within the next three years. A large majority, 65%, said that life in the city is worse than when they first moved here. Less than one-quarter of respondents said they expected life in San Francisco to improve in two years. More than one-third said it would worsen.

San Franciscans were largely in agreement about the city’s biggest problems: Homelessness took first place, followed by public safety and housing affordability.

DB2

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https://www.city-journal.org/san-franciscos-slide
This past spring, activity in downtown San Francisco reached just 31 percent of its 2019 level, as measured by comparing visits to points of interests such as restaurants, retail shops, and grocery stores between the two years. No other North American city of the 62 reviewed in a University of California, Berkeley analysis fell that far. Is “the City,” as its residents like to call it, destined to hollow out and become synonymous with urban decay? Or can it reverse its decline?

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At least three street takeovers occurred overnight in the Compton area…Williams said he had never seen a flash-mob-type break-in “to that level.”

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DB2

So all of this is known. There are no surprises here. Yet SF property values are ultra high.

And they have been dropping. For the Bay Area, the sale price of single family homes was down 24% YoY in May.

Good if you’re buying; not so good if you’re selling.

DB2

I’ve read that a few hot airbnb places (I think I saw an article about Cape Cod) have been dropping dramatically. Possibly because the “go somewhere during covid” and “go somewhere after covid” effects have worn off?

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Looking at existing home sales:

       YoY Chg
West       -26%
Northeast  -25%
Midwest    -21%
South      -16%

DB2

Economic impacts of people moving out of the city (the ‘new normal’?). From Portland, Oregon:

Multnomah County residents who moved away took more than $1 billion in income with them during the first year of the pandemic, as remote work allowed people to keep jobs in cities but live anywhere.

That’s according to The Oregonian/OregonLive’s analysis of data released by the Internal Revenue Service. Numbers gleaned from annual income tax returns provide the most detailed information available on where Americans are moving — and taking their money.

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Conditions have gone downhill outside the Speaker Nancy Pelosi Federal Building.

Crime is so bad near S.F. Federal building employees are told to work from home, officials said

https://archive.is/20230814024648/https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/drugs-crime-nancy-pelosi-federal-building-18292237.php
The imposing, 18-story tower on the corner of Seventh and Mission streets houses various federal agencies, including HHS, the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. Department of Transportation and the office of Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi. The area is also home to one of the city’s most brazen open-air drug markets, where dozens of dealers and users congregate on a daily basis.

HHS Assistant Secretary for Administration Cheryl R. Campbell issued the stay-home recommendation in an Aug. 4 memo to regional leaders.
“In light of the conditions at the (Federal Building) we recommend employees … maximize the use of telework for the foreseeable future,” Campbell wrote in the memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Chronicle.

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During WWII, Hawaii was under martial law. The Army Provost, who also controlled the civilian police departments, issued a decree:

-hookers were not allowed to trade on the street

-hookers were allowed to trade indoors, in certain areas, the best known being Hotel St, in Honolulu.

-rates were set by the Provost at $3 for 3 minutes, to keep rates “affordable” for enlisted men.

This was the typical scene, when the fleet was in port.

From the article about the Pelosi Building:

"Pelosi recently secured more federal law enforcement assistance in cracking down on the city’s fentanyl crisis in the Tenderloin and SoMa areas. San Francisco is one of the cities included in a federal program called Operation Overdrive, which targets drug traffickers in areas with the highest levels of drug-related violence and overdoses. "

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You missed the point: restrict activities to a certain district. If people want it, they know where they can get it, and neither they, nor the merchants, will be rousted. Meanwhile, anyone trading outside of the district is aggressively prosecuted.

In the 70s, Boston had the “combat zone”. but seems the city did not manage the zone like the Provost managed Hotel Street during the war.

Steve

Not an ounce of fat on those farm boys.

Funny thing very little was happening in only three minutes. Different age.

Hotels in Portland’s central city sold 1.2 million rooms in the first seven months of 2023, according to hotel industry data firm STR. That’s down 20% from 2019. A rebound in hotel room bookings that appeared to be underway in the first part of the year stalled out over the summer, leaving room sales roughly flat from 2022.

“By the numbers, other cities are recovering from the economic effects of the pandemic much faster than Portland,” Miller told the City Council. He said Seattle rooms sold are up slightly from 2019 while other cities have notched considerably improvement — Denver is up 25%.

DB2

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