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For years, San Francisco’s golden goose seemed impossible to kill, no matter how expensive or over-regulated the city got. Until covid-19 arrived.
A rational person might expect leaders and voters to respond to a recent exodus by making the city a more affordable and attractive place to live and work. But this is San Francisco, where reason and practicality have never been in great supply. If anything, recent blunders suggest the city is oblivious to the crisis on its hands, determined to accelerate its own decline — or some combination of both.
Between the economic downturn and the option to work remotely, the city is starting to resemble a ghost town. There are twice as many homes for sale in San Francisco at present compared to a year ago. Asking prices for rental units have fallen 23 percent. In the past three months, San Francisco’s office building vacancy rate jumped from 9.9 percent to 14.1 percent.
None of this has stopped the city from advancing social-engineering fantasies that may send progressives into fits of excitement but could send everyone else to — well, Texas.
While voters embraced laws to kill jobs and make San Francisco more expensive, authorities have been busy imposing regulations to sap the joy out of city living.
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