San Francisco

San Francisco Loses Another 39,000 Taxpayers

Joel Kotkin — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 14:45:51 -0400

Since the days of the Gold Rush, California has been a magnet for those seeking wealth. A backwater barely a century ago, with just over 3 million residents compared to nearly 40 million today, the Golden State established dominance over everything from agriculture and film to space travel and the internet.

But new data suggests that the tide may be turning, and a rich hegira is afoot.

Researchers found that 39,000 San Franciscans who had filed federal tax returns for 2018 had moved out of the city before filing 2019 returns, taking away a net of $7 billion in income in one year. A soon-to-be released report from the San Francisco Business Times, sources tell me, will see a similar phenomenon in Silicon Valley.

Once able to hold onto its rich, the Golden State seems to be following the course of high-tax places like New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Connecticut. For years, these cities and states have been oozing billions in tax revenues as wealthy residents fled to the likes of Texas, Florida, Arizona, the Carolinas and Tennessee. While California still lags behind New York State in the money-losing sweepstakes, it is catching up: in 2020 the state lost $17.8 billion in tax revenue, with the loss spreading into the Bay Area, whose tech-rich economy historically kept the state solvent.

Read the rest of this piece at UnHerd.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and Executive Director for Urban Reform Institute. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

California Steps Back from the Brink

Joel Kotkin — Wed, 08 Jun 2022 14:16:26 -0400

In yesterday’s primary elections, California took a small step away from the brink. San Franciscans recalled one of the most notorious “progressive prosecutors”—ultra-lenient DA Chesa Boudin—while in Los Angeles, voters made billionaire and former Republican Rick Caruso the front-runner for the November mayor’s race.

These are encouraging developments for anyone who wants a return to sanity in the Golden State, though they fall far short of what conservatives hoped would be a red wave. Nothing better illustrates the lack of a conservative or even centrist counterpoint in California than its not particularly popular governor, Gavin Newsom, winning 56 percent of the vote in an open primary with extraordinarily light turnout. Michael Shellenberger, a skeptical and reality-based progressive, generated lots of positive coverage for his stinging critiques—but alas, few votes, as he polled below 4 percent. The leading Republican, the barely known Brian Dahle, could not break 17 percent.

Why wasn’t voter reaction stronger in a state that most here think is past its prime, becoming ever more unequal and crushed by high taxes and regulation? It’s called political monopolization. Democrats control every statewide office and seem assured of a veto-proof majority in both houses. They dominate local media. They are, in effect, the only party with power and reach statewide, and, notes analyst Dan Walters, they now operate in increasingly stealthy fashion, with few worries about Republican or media scrutiny.

Read the rest of this piece at City Journal.

The Start of a Counter-revolution in San Francisco

Joel Kotkin — Thu, 17 Feb 2022 15:55:54 -0500

This week’s massive vote against three of San Francisco’s most woke school board members represents a triumphant outbreak of reason in one of the most insanely progressive places on the planet. But it is also, far more consequently, a rejection — in this case by over 70% of voters — of radical Left politics that is building up across the country.

To be fair, the recalled board members were defeated not just for extreme politics, but for their reluctance to open schools during the pandemic. Instead of re-opening schools during the pandemic, they advanced a plan to rename 44 public schools named after figures such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Dianne Feinstein and Abraham Lincoln, with one board member even claiming that “black lives didn’t matter” to the president who freed America’s slaves.

Read the rest of this piece at UnHerd.

Downtown San Francisco: Vacancies Could Accommodate up to 133,000 Employees

Wendell Cox — Fri, 23 Jul 2021 19:24:51 -0400

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the office vacancy rate has reached 20% in downtown San Francisco. Socket Site reports that this is the equivalent of 12.7 Salesforce Towers. Salesforce Tower is the tallest building in San Francisco and is the centerpiece of the new Transbay Terminal, which has been named the Salesforce Transit Terminal. Socket Site estimates that this is enough space to house between 98,000 and 133,000 employees. This is between one-third and one-fourth the pre-pandemic employment level of downtown San Francisco, the fourth largest central business district in the nation.

40% of San Franciscans Look to Leave the City

Wendell Cox — Mon, 05 Jul 2021 12:48:23 -0400

The Washington Examiner reports on a poll by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce indicating that “Almost half of San Francisco residents are planning on moving out of the city due to rising crime and a deteriorating quality of life.” The poll, is an annual update in the Chamber of Commerce “Citybeat” series and is summarized in a press release “New Polling Shows That 8 Out of 10 Residents Believe Crime Has Gotten Worse in San Francisco; Vast Majority Support Increasing Police Officers and Expanding Police Work.”

According to the Chamber, “San Franciscans are overwhelmingly supportive of solutions to these issues that were proposed in Mayor London Breed’s recent proposed budget. 60% of San Franciscans believe that it should be a high priority for the city to maintain funding for police academy classes, so that we can recruit younger, diverse, progressive members to replace those who have retired or left the SF Police Department. 76% of San Franciscans believe that it should be a high priority for the city to increase the number of police officers in high-crime neighborhoods.”

Results of the poll were presented at the 171st annual City Beat breakfast on June 23. The Chamber also hosts an “Economic Recovery Dashboard” on its website, with statistics on issues such as “percent of small businesses opened,” a measure on which the city trails New York City, homeless tent complaints, broken storefront windows, overflowing trash cans, animal and human waste, etc.

The city of San Francisco has been particularly hard hit by the pandemic and related events. According to The New York Times, the city of San Francisco has trailed only New York in the percentage of job losses among major municipalities (as opposed to metropolitan areas)

For more information see: 40% of San Francisco residents plan to leave due to quality of life: Poll and the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce press release.

Feudal Future Podcast — Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All with Mike Shellenberger

Charlie Stephens — Wed, 05 Aug 2020 18:52:55 -0400

In this episode of the Feudal Future podcast, hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky interview Mike Shellenberger, author of Apocalypse Never. Many of Mike’s views overlap with those of Joel and Marshall, and his role as an influential writer of social critique make him an insightful contributor to this conversation about issues in California, the media, and beyond.

The first topic of the conversation is Mike’s work, which will soon include a book dealing with the homeless crisis in San Francisco. This segues into broader conversation about problems in the social and political fabric of California, and Mike comments on the need to understand values and a vision for California, ways in which such things as environmentalism and housing are mishandled, the objectionable morality of how mental illness and drug addiction are managed in the state, and his vision of the sort of governor and political revolution necessary to effect the change California requires.

Next, the group turns to the subject of the mainstream media, which attempts to control popular thought and at times operates dishonestly. Mike explains his experiences with censorship, which testify to regulation of speech and information in ways that uphold political agendas at the expense of truth. Being censored is a trying experience, but Mike has noticed that his persistence in truth-telling has actually bolstered his following. Mike and his hosts consider dealing with bullies, the project of “de-civilization,” and Maoist ideology in the US.

The ideology behind the ruling social and political trends in the US is pushed by the oligarchs of the day. The group considers the rationale behind this phenomenon, the reality of an “apocalyptic mindset,” the need for love to combat hate, and the value of an ad absurdum suggestion to force people to face reality. Finally, Joel and Marshall ask Mike about what he imagines the beginning of a Biden presidential administration to look like. His answer, put simply? Chaos. But a chaos presenting hope and opportunity.

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San Francisco's Abundant Developable Land Supply

Wendell Cox — Fri, 20 Oct 2017 13:39:42 -0400

The San Francisco Bay Area (home of the San Francisco and San Jose metropolitan areas), which has often been cited as a place where natural barriers have left little land for development. This is an impression easily obtained observing the fairly narrow strips of urbanization on both sides of San Francisco Bay, hemmed in by hills.

However the Bay Area’s urbanization long ago leapt over the most important water bodies and then the Berkeley Hills to the east. Not only is the San Francisco Bay Area CSA high density, but it is also spatially small. In 2016, the San Francisco built-up urban area was only the 23rd largest in land area in the world. New York, the world's largest built-up urban area in geographical expanse is more than four times as large.

There is plenty of developable land in the San Francisco Bay Area. Data in a 1997 state analysis indicated that another 1,500 to 4,300 square miles (3,900 to 11,000 square kilometers) could be developed in the Bay Area CSA. The lower bound assumed no farmland conversion and stringent environmental regulation. The report also found that in recent years, residential development had become marginally denser, yet not incompatible with the detached housing remains the preference in California (Figure). The state has more than enough developable land for future housing needs.

Updating the data to account for the development that occurred through 2010, the developable land supply could support an urbanization of between 18 million and 37 million population, well above the 2010 urban population (Note on Method). At the most, there is capacity to accommodate the population of Tokyo – Yokohama, the world’s largest urban area. At a minimum, use of the available land would catapult the Bay Area CSA ahead of the Los Angeles-Riverside CSA, more than double its present population.

Of course, the Bay Area is simply not growing fast enough to reach even the lower population figure any time soon. Even with its slower growth, however, the competitive market for land no longer works, in large measure because of land use regulation. The San Jose metropolitan area has the fifth worst housing affordability in the Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey with a median multiple of 9.6 (median house price divided by median household income) and the San Francisco metropolitan area is 7th worst, with a median multiple of 9.2. Before the evolution toward urban containment policies began, the median multiples in these metropolitan areas (and virtually all in the United States) were around 3.0 or less.

The decades old Bay Area housing affordability crisis, and that of other urban containment metropolitan areas that are now seriously unaffordable (median multiples over 5.0) seeking to force higher densities, is more the result of policy than nature.

Note on Method: Some of the CSA urban population is not in the continuous urbanization of San Francisco-San Jose built-up urban area, such as in the Santa Rosa, Stockton and Santa Cruz urban areas. This analysis is based on data from the California Department of Housing and Community Development and the U.S. Census Bureau. It is based on an estimate of additional development occurring from 1996 to 2010 and the land remaining after deduction of recently developed land. The population capacity assumes the “marginally higher” densities used by the California Department of Housing and Community Development, which it notes would not require substantial changes in the “current form of housing development” (1997).

Childish Things: So Many San Franciscans Don't Wanna Grow Up. But Who Can Afford To?

Joe Eskenazi — Fri, 14 Nov 2014 15:55:16 -0500

Earlier this year, an extremely clever married couple named Catherine Herdlick and Gabe Smedresman celebrated the latter's 30th birthday by throwing a citywide Logan's Run-themed chase game. What a perfect motif for a night out in San Francisco: A pastime for beautiful young adults in this city of beautiful young adults re-creating a movie about beautiful young adults enjoying a lavish, indulgent — and extremely temporary — existence.

In that film, the beautiful young adults of a dystopian future earth lived it up before aging out in the most extreme manner possible: They were vaporized to make way for more beautiful young adults.

Here in San Francisco, that would violate the city charter.

Read the entire piece at SF Weekly.

Joe Eskenazi is a staff writer and columnist for SF Weekly.

Bay Area Growth Slowing

Wendell Cox — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 10:38:30 -0500

New 2010 Census data indicates that the two major metropolitan areas in the San Francisco Bay Area, San Francisco and San Jose, have settled into a pattern of slow growth.

San Francisco: The San Francisco metropolitan area grew 5.1 percent between 2000 and 2010, a more than one-half drop from the 1990 to 2000 rate of 11.9 percent, from 4,124,000 to 4,335,000, for a gain of 211,000. Only in one decade (1970 to 1980) have the five counties of the metropolitan area gained at such a slow percentage rate.

The historical core municipalities of San Francisco and Oakland gained 20,000 residents, from 1,176,000 to 1,196,000. San Francisco reached a population of 805,000, up from 777,000 in 2000. As in the case of both the city of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County, the State Department of Finance estimate (857,000) was well above the Census Bureau population count (We had previously questioned the aggressive population projections released by the State Department of Finance in an Orange County Register op-ed, 60 Million Californians: Don't Bet on It). Even with this increase, however, the city of San Francisco remains below its population peak of 827,000, recorded in a 1945 special census, according to the Census Bureau.

The city of Oakland declined in population from 399,000 to 391,000. The historical core municipalities grew 1.7 percent, compared to the 6.5 percent growth rate of the suburbs. The historical core municipalities captured nine percent of the metropolitan area growth, with 91 percent of the growth going to the suburbs. The State Department of Finance estimate, at 430,000, was more than 10 percent above the actual Census Bureau count. The city of Oakland also reached its population peak of 401,000 in a 1945 special census.

While San Francisco remains the second largest metropolitan area in the state (after Los Angeles), this distinction could soon be lost. Riverside-San Bernardino registered a population of 4,225,000 and at growth rates of the last decade, would pass San Francisco by 2012.

San Jose: The San Jose metropolitan area grew 5.8 percent between 2000 and 2010, from 1,736,000 to 1,837,000. The historical core municipality of San Jose rose 5.0 percent, from 901,000 in 2000 to 946,000 in 2010. San Jose captured 44 percent of the metropolitan area growth, the highest figure among the reporting metropolitan areas except for the largely suburban historic municipality of Oklahoma City (47 percent). The State Department of Finance had estimated the city of San Jose population at 1,023,000 in 2010, indicating that its growth estimate for the decade was more than 2.5 times the increase indicated in the census count.

The suburbs of the San Jose metropolitan area grew 6.7 percent and accounted for 56 percent of the population growth.

More Cap and Trade Delays in California

Kirsten Moore — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 12:17:19 -0500

The California Air Resources Board had good intentions when it developed a cap-and-trade plan to meet greenhouse gas standards, but according to a San Francisco Superior Court Judge, the Board made a few mistakes that will delay their efforts. The Air Resources Board is acting in response to AB32, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, which calls for the reduction of carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

They are being sued by a team of environmental groups, represented by the San Francisco’s Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, who disapprove of the Board’s inadequate analysis of alternatives to cap and trade. Not only that, but Judge Ernest Goldsmith found that the Board’s “analysis provides no evidence to support its chosen approach.” These issues are becoming commonplace in California these days, as they echo the criticisms of California’s High Speed Rail Authority’s quick decisions in building new rail lines.

The California Air Resources Board will not be able to move forward until it complies with the California Environmental Quality Act of 1970, which Governor Reagan enacted to make sure agencies in California both determined and prevented the environmental consequences of their projects. The environmental groups who raised this lawsuit, who would be disappointed if AB32 were to be delayed or abolished, want to assure that any environmental legislation would not hurt disadvantage communities in the state. Therefore, they are willing to wait for the Air Resources Board to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act and explore the possibilities beyond cap-and-trade.

Acting too quickly without fully exploring all options has become a theme in California politics, mainly because the state is in such a rush to meet deadlines outlined in the legislation or that dictate the disbursement of federal funds. This haste to develop may ultimately hinder new projects since the public will be extra vigilant in making sure agencies find solutions that support their well-being.