How bad are things in San Francisco? That depends who you ask.

Is San Francisco in a doom loop or are the negatives being overhyped? This is an ongoing argument happening in the media, on social media sites and of course in real life. If you’re a regular reader, you’ve probably seen a lot of stories about the problems San Francisco and other west coast cities are facing. But there is also a determined, mostly liberal, contingent of people who continually argue that things aren’t really that bad and maybe some of the problems aren’t what they seem.

So, for instance, yesterday I wrote about Target’s decision to close nine stores in places like Oakland, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle. The company specifically cited retail theft as a significant factor in the decision to close the stores next month. There was a follow-up story on the Oakland Target today which pointed out the store had made 105 calls to 911 so far this year.

And yet, if you look around on X today, you can find people who are convinced Target is lying. On the contrary, these people claim the stores being closed were probably failing for reasons having nothing to do with crime and much more to do with over-expansion by the chains, poor parking, etc. Target is just jumping on the crime bandwagon for some reason.

To be fair, not all of the store closures in SF or around the country are related to retail theft. Karen wrote about CVS’ plan to close 900 stores by next year. The company has not blamed those closures on retail theft and has offered other vague reasons such as “local market dynamics.” I’m not at all sure what that means. Maybe it just means there’s less foot traffic since the pandemic?

The point is that it’s possible to overstate the impact of theft and petty crime on store closures but I think it’s also possible to understate it as well. If a company like Target says it is closing stores because of retail theft, we shouldn’t discount that simply because not every store is closing because of retail theft.

But the debate over how good or bad things are in SF isn’t limited to the randos on X. One of my favorite columnists at the SF Chronicle was Heather Knight. Back in March of this year she wrote a story about a couple who’d just returned to the city.

“We couldn’t wait to leave Florida,” Gerken said. “But coming back, it was this abrupt holy s—. This is bad. We kind of forgot what it was like.”

The streets seem dirtier, they said, and open-air drug dealing seems more prevalent with cops just passing by. They see bodies sprawled on the street and wonder if they should stop to make sure the person is OK. Usually, Gerken said, she keeps walking, but feels awful about it.

The story ends with the couple deciding to move out of the city. It’s a fairly downbeat conclusion. Monday, the NY Times published a story that reads like the polar opposite take. It’s titled “‘Are You OK?’ San Francisco Residents Say They Most Certainly Are” and the gist is that things in the city really aren’t so bad.

…as remote work has upended the thrum of daily life, the city has become a poster child for petty crime, public drug use and tent encampments, even though the quality of life in most San Francisco neighborhoods hasn’t significantly changed. In a deeply polarized country, conservatives have found a ripe target in the woes of liberal San Francisco.

The narrative threatens the city’s recovery of lost convention and tourism traffic. And it has become enough of a problem that the city recently enlisted a public relations firm to try to convince the world that the city isn’t doomed…

Like any city, San Francisco is a complicated place with many story lines. It has a property-crime epidemic, but low rates of violent crime. It has a homelessness crisis and is pleading with a federal court for more leeway to clear tent encampments, but according to the most recent homeless count, there was a 15 percent drop in the homeless population living on its sidewalks between 2019 and 2022. Its downtown recovery has been glacial, but its unemployment rate is low at 3.6 percent.

The city has a record-high 31 percent office vacancy rate, and some prominent retail departures have drawn attention. But optimists say they hope these trends will open up space in the city for artists, nonprofit groups and possibly colleges.

The story ends with the perspective of some recent transplants including a woman who, like the couple in the story above, just moved to the city from Florida. Only unlike that couple she’s very upbeat about the city.

“So many of my friends told me I was crazy for moving to San Francisco — it’s unsafe, it’s filthy, it’s going down the tubes,” she said. “My experience has been the opposite. The beautiful neighborhoods, vibrancy and positivity — that message isn’t getting out there.”

What’s really striking is that the NY Times article was also written by Heather Knight. The Times recently hired her away from the Chronicle and this is her first week in her new job as the Times‘ SF Bureau Chief. It feels as if she’s suddenly gone from writing about the problems driving people out of the city to a sunny gloss suggesting things aren’t really so bad. Make of that what you will but I hope her willingness to take a hard look at the city’s problems didn’t vanish with her change of employer.

In any case, lots of her readers (including many SF residents) aren’t buying it.

Oh, please. I lived in the Castro for 20 years before I finally left last year. You might have added that the drug encampments and chop shops block the sidewalks not only in the Tenderloin but also in the Castro, the Haight, the Mission, Duboce… basically, everywhere on the SF east side except where Nancy Pelosi and Dianne Feinstein live. A house two blocks from my apartment caught fire twice within the space of a couple of years from “campers”, as they’re euphemistically called here. Last month a group of kids carjacked someone right next to busy Dolores Park and then proceeded to hurl the car off the Sanchez Street stairs, coming within 20 seconds of flattening three pedestrians. The merchant’s association in my neighborhood actually threatened to boycott SF business taxes if city leaders didn’t do something about the constant crime. A bit farther afield, a local TV announcer was cycling by the Palace of Fine Arts just a few days ago when he was assaulted by a group of teens trying to steal his road bike. I’m sorry, the chaos in San Francisco is not just in our heads: it comes from a complete lack of leadership at all levels of city government.

Another one:

Sorry but this is just whistling past the graveyard. I live close to SF. I used to go to the city every week for shopping, restaurants or just to get my shot of urban experience. Now I almost never go. It breaks my heart to see this beautiful city reduced to a zombie land. Saying that some parts are still OK is like saying that a cancer patient is fine because not all of their organs have been affected. Urban decay is like cancer. Once it sets in, drastic measures are needed to stop or reverse it. These measures include getting rid of every homeless encampment, every open air drug market, every gang of shoplifters, and every ranting and raving maniac in the downtown. They include ratcheting up penalties for property crimes and actually prosecuting car thieves. They include encouraging business on walkable, safe, and pleasant streets and making sure that public transportation is not infested by junkies and mentally ill.

And another:

As a long time San Francisco resident, let me get this straight. For an article espousing that San Francisco has not experienced a downward spiral in quality of life, the NYT interviewed (among others) an attractive young woman who just moved to the city from Miami, a city that has no issues with crime. She likes that she knows her neighborhood barista and does not understand the concern that the media has over the city’s state of affairs. For those of us, including my wife who was born and raised in the city, the downward turn of this beautiful city affects us daily. It affects us when we have to activate our burglar alarms at night, when we refrain from walking the streets at night, and when we see drug users shooting up in our formerly quaint residential neighborhood. I woke up to a text the other morning from my neighbor warning me that a homeless person was sleeping against my garage door. We travel widely and were just in London. Everywhere we go, when we say that we are form the city, the question inevitably is “is it as bad as the news accounts report?” To which we respond that it is probably worse. Contrary to this pollyannish article, the San Franciscans whom we know are disgusted with the condition of their city and are ready to purge the current slate of politicians, especially anyone who defends the right of drug users to kill themselves in public. In short, this city is in deep trouble and is at a breaking point. I hope that it can recover.

But of course there are some people who think the city is great and will be fine.

We’re OK because we’re strong. Along with a number of other liberal cities we’re taking care of a lot of the mentally ill, addicted, LGBT, and other folks who get beaten up or chased out of town by the cops in the rest of America. We have crime, but we know how to hate the sin but love the sinner, which makes us different from those other places that call themselves Christian but won’t walk the walk.

We’re OK, and we’ll stay that way.

Long term, I’m sure San Francisco will be fine. It really is a beautiful place with great weather that has been spoiled by some serious social problems. These are problems that should, in theory, be manageable. Still, I tend to think the recovery that fans of the city are waiting on won’t happen until they decide to vote a little bit more pragmatically. That doesn’t mean the city needs to vote in a slate of conservative Republicans (clearly, that won’t happen) but they are going to have to choose some more practical centrists over the daydreaming leftists who seem to have taken over there lately.