Former Mayor blames mismanagement for San Francisco’s decline.
Former Mayor Laments Mismanagement of San Francisco
As the 88-year-old former mayor sits in an armchair reminiscing about San Francisco’s once-beautiful landscape and diverse culture, he becomes increasingly disheartened.
“It was always called the can-do city, the city that knows how,” Frank Jordan said in a recent episode of EpochTV’s “California Insider.” “When I would travel as Mayor of San Francisco to different parts of the world, you would be treated like you were the president of a country because San Francisco was a magic name. … Now all of a sudden, I’m looking at books that are coming out called the ‘Left Coast City’ and ‘San Fransicko.’”
Mr. Jordan, who served as the city’s mayor from 1992 to 1996, said the root causes behind the city’s issues today—homelessness, crime, and economic challenges—stem from mismanagement of the city’s budget and ineffective policies of its elected leaders.
Related Stories
- San Francisco Records More Than a Dozen Suspected Overdose Deaths in One Day (9/1/2023)
- 165-Year-Old San Francisco Retailer May Close Due to Homelessness, Office Vacancies (9/1/2023)
“There’s too much money coming into San Francisco that is not being spent in the right way,” he said.
In July, Mayor London Breed signed a $14.6 billion city and county budget after weeks of negotiation with the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, for each of the next two fiscal years amid a two-year deficit of $780 million, according to her office. San Francisco functions as a consolidated city and county government, with the Board of Supervisors serving a role akin to that of a city council.
The record-high budget includes $3.2 billion for public health, over $780 million for police, nearly $700 million for homelessness, and nearly $600 million for city administration, according to the mayor’s office.
“For a city that’s only 49 square miles in size, [we have] 39,000 employees in the city. That to me is outrageous. The City Hall has become a hiring hall,” Mr. Jordan said.
Additionally, he said, the city’s spending is like a “bottomless pit,” especially in terms of homelessness and related issues.
According to the most recent point-in-time count, which occurred in 2022, there are an estimated 7,754 homeless people living in San Francisco, many in the downtown area. That translates to tens of thousands spent per homeless person in the city each year, Mr. Jordan said.
However, he said those funds are not given directly to the homeless.
“We have 59 different nonprofits that are working with our housing and homeless organizations in the city,” he said. “And they’re [using] 70 different hotels … to give [free] rent to homeless people in the streets of San Francisco.”
Mr. Jordan criticized the city’s approach saying that with over 70 percent of the city’s homeless suffering from mental health, alcohol, or drug-related problems, such is unsafe for them and the hotels.
“They’re fighting with people in the hallways, lighting fires, [and] disrupting. … We have approximately 30 [hotels] that are suing the city because of all the damage that has been done in the hotels,” he said.
The estimated amount that the city is set to pay to the damaged hotels could add up to $26 million, according to a 2022–23 fiscal year budget status report, released in February.
Additionally, he said, the city and county need to be more accountable regarding such expenditures.
“When you’re talking about all this money, where are the long-term positive measurable outcomes with the money we’re spending?” he said. “Any business would tell you that when you start putting large amounts of money into a program, you want to take a look at where you’re going … and make course corrections along the way. It’s like a bottomless pit. We are just perpetuating the homeless problem. We’re not solving it.”
To really solve such problems, Mr. Jordan said, the city needs to reestablish more mental health wards in hospitals and implement group housing with around-the-clock monitoring instead of using individual hotels with no clear regulations.
Additionally, those who need detoxification or have alcohol addiction problems can “work in the great outdoors,” such as on farms, “and in a better environment that’s healthier to them, but also not to have them on the streets and doorways of San Francisco,” he said.
Medical examiner statistics of the city and county indicate that approximately 2,500 individuals have died due to overdoses in San Francisco since 2020, with data extending through July 2023. Recently, 13 drug overdose deaths were recorded on a single day.
“That’s out of control. That’s more deaths than we were having in the whole Coronavirus epidemic,” he said.
Since 2020, the city has reported 1,237 deaths due to COVID.
Besides homelessness, Mr. Jordan—who joined the police department in 1957 and later served as its chief of police—said that the current mayor’s approach in working with the law enforcement has also harmed the city.
He cited the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement across the nation, saying that Ms. Breed’s decision to defund the police hurt the city’s public safety.
At the onset of the movement, Ms. Breed announced the decision to cut $120 million from the budgets of both the San Francisco Police Department and the Sheriff’s Department.
However, a year later, she reversed course citing increased crime—including drug dealing, retail theft, and car break-ins.
Still, suffering a lack of morale, the police department’s numbers dropped.
“[Officers] feel that they were first defunded, they were demeaned, and then they’re demoralized,” he said. “What happens is, in the last three years, [hundreds of] police officers left the police department, and [many] of them are outright resignations. Police officers now say that ‘instead of being innocent until proven guilty, we’re guilty until we prove our innocence.’”
According to the city’s police department data, the agency’s staffing is at a record low, with 500 vacancies, with applicants down as well.
A better way to deal with police misconduct, he said, is to look at individual cases separately.
“You don’t condemn a whole department or a whole nation of police because of what the actions of 1 or 2 or 10 people,” he said.
The police shortage is also contributing to a sharp rise in crime in the city, Mr. Jordan said, with some businesses leaving due to an unsafe environment and a loss of revenue.
A number of large retailers have decided to call it quits in the city over the last couple of years, including Nordstrom, Saks Off 5th, Anthropologie, Office Depot, H&M, and over a dozen others.
And in June, Westfield announced it will no longer operate its downtown San Francisco mall following Nordstrom’s decision to close there.
Additionally, Whole Foods Mark
" Conservative News Daily does not always share or support the views and opinions expressed here; they are just those of the writer."
*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases
Now loading...