Er, what? Anyone who has walked through SoMa or the Tenderloin or the financial district or... quite a few other neighborhoods knows that no one here is "insulated from human misery".

Also what "gleaming towers"? We have, like... 5 of those in the entire city? Most residential stock is low-rise or SFH, and the rich certainly mostly live in the latter (see: Pacific Heights and parts of the Sunset).

I'll be the first to not only admit, but scream, that SF has a ton of problems, but you have not characterized them correctly at all.