Being soft on crime drives San Francisco into bankruptcy

San Francisco is facing a terrible security crisis and now the city will also have to deal with a severe budget deficit.

Mayor London Breed, admitted that the county is facing "significant" challenges and called on city departments to focus on finding significant savings to address debts.

The Democrat called for a 5% reduction in costs for the next fiscal year and 8% for the following year to deal with the $728 million deficit projected over the next two fiscal years.

"We know the challenges facing San Francisco are significant, and we have a lot of work ahead of us to maintain the city's recovery efforts," he said.

According to Breed, the city's revenues have gone down due to plummeting office rates and property taxes.

According to local media, San Francisco has one of the lowest office occupancy rates nationwide due to the increase in remote work, which reduces companies' interest in renewing their office leases.

Crime increase

In addition, a large number of residents opted to move to the suburbs, many of them driven by rising crime.

"There is a sense that, on everything from housing to schools, San Francisco has lost the plot—that progressive leaders here have been LARPing left-wing values instead of working to create a livable city. And many San Franciscans have had enough," stated journalist Nellie Bowles in one of her articles for The Atlantic a few months ago.

Robbery has become one of the most common crimes in the city. In fact, insecurity and crime in San Francisco have become so high that last year the New York Post compared crime in the city to that of Venezuela's capital.

"Stores often put the likes of toothpaste and shampoo behind security locks, as if they are high-end goods or the outlets are operating in Caracas, Venezuela,” wrote Rich Lowry in his article, highlighting that the problem is that the authorities have decided that it is more important to avoid "arresting and jailing criminals than to protect businesses from getting robbed.”