Estimated $64M loss as SF street conditions and costs drive out Oracle OpenWorld

Unlike what the headline suggests, and how I'm sure this will be spun, the main reason for this was cost. San Francisco has some of the most expensive hotel inventory in the country.

Perhaps this is related to the very low number of hotel rooms in San Francisco -- 1/3 the number that exist in Atlanta, and 1/2 of the number in Phoenix. San Francisco makes it as hard as possible to add new inventory to this market.

> "The doctors group told the San Francisco delegation that while they loved the city, postconvention surveys showed their members were afraid to walk amid the open drug use, threatening behavior and mental illness that are common on the streets," the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

> "Last year, a UC Berkeley researcher found that some parts of San Francisco were "more unsanitary than many of the dwellings in impoverished, developing countries." A survey of 158 city blocks encountered more than 300 piles of feces and 100-plus improperly discarded needles.

It isn't some right wing conspiracy to make SF look bad, its SF doing it to itself. San Francisco is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, but the choices it has been making has led to its current reality.

If any city can take the loss of the revenue that is going away it is SF, but the reality is that this is an ongoing problem that is getting worse, rather than better, and heads sticking into sand doesn't help anything. Doing more of what hasn't worked isn't a viable solution and helps no one- not the homeless, not the residents, not the tourists. SF needs to live up to its values rather than snipe at imagined enemies- it has resources galore and full power of the law to propose and dispose policy- excuses are not viable.

The far-right is already seizing on this story as proof that San Francisco is just like Venezuela.

Wow the poop on the sidewalk trick worked.

This smacks of poverty porn and blaming the most vulnerable victims of decades of the elites of both flavors, neoliberals and neoconservatives, stripping social services and underfunding proper mental healthcare that JFK left unfinished and was obliterated by subsequent figures, especially Reagan. The knee-jerk reaction hasn't been housing or humanity, but arrests, tossing property away randomly, disdain, ostensible sympathy and occasional hate. That's the reality and there's no quick fix, but to me, single-point-of-contact, unified delivery, involved social workers who care + housing + mental healthcare + drug treatment + investing in those who can work is a lot better than letting people waste away in squalor. It's embarrassing!