The writer is a partner at Sequoia Capital
It’s a weird city that bans plastic straws but allows plastic needles. Yet this is San Francisco today. Between 2020 and 2022, 1,985 people here died from drug overdoses compared to 1,143 from Covid-19.
Tomorrow, San Francisco Mayor London Breed will deliver her annual State of the City address. It’s sure to contain references to the city’s virtues but should also confront the issues that plague all San Franciscans: a deserted downtown; the flight of medium and large companies and major congresses; the highest commercial office vacancy rates of any major city in the United States; planning policies that resemble a virtual border wall encircling the city; housing costs that make it prohibitive for all but the rich or the poorest; a public school system with dwindling enrollment and only 55% English proficiency and 46% math proficiency (with a 9% math proficiency rate for black students); and a police department short of 645 officers.
But without tackling San Francisco’s open-air drug markets and homeless encampments, efforts to address these issues will be in vain. Fentanyl, the synthetic drug that is 50 times more potent and a fraction of the price of heroin, has turned many city blocks into zombie zones. Beyond the shocking waste of potential, drug use and homeless tents eat up a huge chunk of San Francisco’s $13.95 billion annual budget. The city’s direct spending on homelessness has grown from about $200 million in fiscal year 2016 to $680 million this year.
Even this figure does not approximate the true costs as it does not take into account the burden that drugs and homelessness place on police, fire and public works departments, local hospitals and the judiciary.
None of this happened overnight – it’s a situation that has built up over decades and to which state and federal policies have contributed. But much of it is the result of shrewd politics. San Francisco has an elected mayor, but also a board of supervisors, representing 11 different parts of the city, each with the power to thwart any move by the mayor. Fewer than 9,000 votes may be enough for a supervisor to win — a tiny fraction of the 501,930 registered voters in San Francisco. Thanks to the malleable nature of city term limits, supervisors can hold a seat for two-thirds of their working life.
To complicate matters further, the local proposals that appear on every ballot and which, although presented as a way for citizens to control elected officials, are largely controlled by San Francisco’s 11 “district mayors”. Last November’s election form contained 14 measures – the language of which, for the most part, was intended to mask the underlying problems.
One of the results of years of such measures is the existence of 130 external commissions overseeing dozens of municipal services. Even more corrosive is a fractured, tribal body politic prone to manipulation by a handful of people who dominate public hearings, sue and play ballot measurement pinball.
The drug and homelessness crisis in San Francisco can be solved, but it would mean changes in the machinery of government and coordinated political will. Several European cities, including ultra-progressive Amsterdam, have led the way. This requires the coordinated and persistent pursuit of harm reduction programs, a sufficient number of public shelters, a commitment to treating those who pose a danger to themselves and others, visible police, a justice system that enforces the law and , above all, a change in the framework of government. This is how the mayor should propose to build a better San Francisco for everyone.
