XPost: alt.society.liberalism, ba.politics, sac.politics
XPost: talk.politics.misc
A reporter based in San Francisco, California, told CNN that the city he
loves has transformed into a den of "homelessness, mentally ill" and
fentanyl.
Phil Matier, a journalist with ABC7 News that CNN described as "a fixture"
of San Francisco, said those problems were threatening the city's future despite it being a tech innovation hub.
He told CNN reporter Sara Sidner that San Francisco is "no longer at the
top of the class."
"You see empty offices, and you see tents. Added into this mix, however,
is something that we’re seeing across the country that is just like an
acid corrosive, and that’s fentanyl," Matier said.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, directed the National Guard in
April to combat San Francisco's fentanyl crisis. In 2021, Mayor London
Breed issued a state of emergency for the neighborhood in an effort to
address drug overdose deaths. The city saw a 40% jump in overdose deaths
from January through March.
"You put homelessness, mentally ill, and fentanyl together, and it’s worse
than the Third World. Because it’s right under the shadow of the rich and
the powerful, and it is not only tolerated," Matier said. "Until recently
it was almost ignored in San Francisco," he explained.
Sidner rattled off a number of headlines that she said she’s seen about
San Francisco. "Decaying. Crime-ridden hellhole. No one or no place is
safe in San Francisco. Lastly, a failed city." She asked Matier, "Is San Francisco a failed city?"
He said that the city still has time to turn around, though added that "it could become a failed city." He continued, "It could become a city that
made too many wrong turns."
The latest downturn in San Francisco has been the remote work boom, which Matier compared to the gold boom and bust nearly two centuries earlier.
"[T]he crash in tech, the Covid, the working remotely has changed the
entire character of the city," Matier said, adding that San Francisco is
now full of "offices, huge, massive office complexes that are empty."
"They’re, in effect, the empty gold mine shafts because the miners have
moved away. And what do you do with an empty shaft?" he asked.
The San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial board warned in April that remote
work in the city "could send San Francisco into a 'doom loop' that would
gut its tax base, decimate fare-reliant regional transit systems like BART
and trap it in an economic death spiral."
https://www.foxnews.com/media/reporter-calls-san-francisco-worse-third- world-due-drugs-homeless-problems
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