You can’t blame the capitalism boogeyman for San Francisco’s woes
Zachary Faria
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San Francisco’s problems stem from unchallenged progressive governance that encourages drug abuse, crime, and homelessness. Naturally, some San Francisco progressives want to blame the boogeyman of capitalism.
San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston, a Democrat who is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, blames capitalism for all of San Francisco’s woes. “I think what you’re seeing in the Tenderloin is absolutely the result of capitalism and what happens in capitalism to the people at the bottom rungs,” Preston said. According to him, homelessness in the city is just the result of greedy landlords forcing people out of their homes and into the streets.
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And yet, the homelessness and drug addiction problems in San Francisco are worse than just about any other city in the country. That would require you to believe that San Francisco, the home of West Coast hippy liberalism (along with Portland, Oregon), is a bastion of capitalism compared to every other city in the country.
Yes, the city that opened a drug center that encouraged addicts to shoot up whenever they like, leading addicts to flock to the area and lounge around outside of businesses while defecating on the sidewalks and threatening residents, is supposedly a bastion of capitalism.
Much like the drug overdoses and the rampant crime, the homelessness is the result of Democratic governance, not capitalism. San Francisco is one of the most restrictive cities in the country when it comes to land use. Strict zoning laws severely limit the building of new housing. That is why what housing exists is so expensive in the city, which leads to the evictions Preston is lamenting.
That isn’t capitalism. For comparison, Houston has no zoning laws and has permitted an average of more than 3,000 new units per month since 2000. San Francisco has permitted an average of just around 950 per month in that same time frame.
San Francisco has shot itself in the foot repeatedly with terrible policies. If anything, the city’s decline has been mitigated by capitalism. People moved to the city to work for prospering businesses, and the benefits of working in industries in San Francisco were able to counterbalance the expenses and dirty streets. The lockdown-fueled decline changed that calculation, with people and businesses deciding to leave.
Capitalism kept San Francisco afloat, but San Francisco ruined even that by embracing policies such as those supported by Preston. It was Democratic policies that sank San Francisco, and those policies will continue to be the anchor that drags the city down so long as leaders like Preston refuse to reevaluate their failing worldview.