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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

In a way I'm glad that a large chunk of San Francisco's population is getting exactly what they have wanted for years – to get rid of big tech takeover of the city. Maybe they will actually fare better with a significantly reduced number of tech workers and jobs, or maybe they won't. At least we'll know for certain now, and can stop all the whining.

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I know people miss SF as it was before the boom, but can it actually readjust to substantially less tax revenue with the city government + responsibilities it has now?

From what I read about Detroit, once businesses started shrinking or leaving the tax base shrank.

The city was unable to cut down on services and spending, so it raised taxes on everyone remaining and the squeeze of more tax and worse QoL made people leave even faster.

I'd love to hear if anyone has examples of a city's tax revenue shrinking at least ~20% in a couple years where the city correctly adjusts their services and scope to match, without facing some runaway decline or lost decade.

Open to discussion on this.

EDIT:

Thinking aloud, maybe the people leaving Detroit due to loss of services/QoL were simply in the parts that Detroit was abandoning to make ends meet?

> but can it actually readjust to substantially less tax revenue with the city government + responsibilities it has now

That's the question isn't it? San Francisco has by far the highest per-capita city budget in the country. It spends more on homeless services in a year than most cities of similar size spend on everything. The city is simply addicted to spending money, and looking at the deterioration of street conditions, increase in homelessness and addiction, increase in property crime and more, they are clearly not getting its worth.

Theoretically could the city make do with a 30% budget cut year over year? It absolutely could. Columbus, Jacksonville, Indianapolis, Fort Worth, Memphis, and even San Jose and San Diego somehow survive on 1/5 - 1/10 the money despite supporting similar sized populations. It remains to be seen whether San Francisco can make the correct cuts and not drive away the remaining tax generating citizens and companies.

The lesson of "you get what you incentivize" seems to be lost on them.

The SF bureaucracy and homeless nonprofits have metastasized into a self licking ice cream cone of immense magnitude. There is no way to adjust downward without someone actually having to suffer a moment of accountability. That will be bitterly resisted indeed.

By my back of the envelope calculations the city bureaucracy absorbed in salaries and benefits at least 40% of the +110% increase in city budget between 2008 and 2021. That's even before considering the welfare-industrial complex.

It seems the faster people leave, the cheaper the housing gets which attracts more people.

Will the millions of people clamoring to move into SF or any dense US city turn into a negative number?

That's true - the hills, whales, architecture, and density that attracted bohemians before aren't going anywhere

The people on the sidelines will definitely provide a floor to the prices of the homes.

Home prices aside though the loss of the lucrative office workers buying lunch and renting offices will decrease tax revenue.

Unless someone has any examples of a city that has navigated a downsizing well I do believe the QoL in 5 years will be worse than today's (provided we don't see an epic return to office).

The question for people invested in the region is: "how much would demand from sideline people for these properties change if QoL was worse?"

EDIT: Reworded the heck out of this

EDIT: again

This is degentrification, and it's happening in Seattle too. We're reverting to the dirty, grimey cities of olde, where only the starving artists were indifferent enough to live there.

Worked well for Detroit

I was born in San Francisco (so was my Dad, my Mom was born in Oakland and so were her parents etc.) and my family has been through many ups and downs in the Bay Area over many generations. SF used to actually be a cheaper place to live than a lot of parts of Los Angeles. There is no way it will be Detroit though. It's just too desirable of a place to live.

Don't underestimate the possibility of a death spiral. It's already happened once. Read Gray Brechin's excellent book Imperial San Francisco. SF used to be the undisputed capital of the entire North American West Coast, and arguably even the entire Pacific. In the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake, it lost that position to LA.

I lived in SF for 19 years, moved to London (family reasons, elderly parents with health issues) and are planning to return to the US. My wife put an absolute veto on returning to SF itself because of how dire the law and order situation has become.

Sad to say, but the city really needs a 1990s vintage Rudy Giuliani to clean house. Otherwise what it will get is Bernie Goetz (yes, I know, I am showing my age with my references). It seems unthinkable today, but in the 1950s and 60s SF was actually a fairly right-wing city, all mayors from 1912 to 1964 were Republicans.

1912-1964 Republicans may not have been particularly right wing.

My understanding is that prior to the "Southern Strategy" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy) of the 1960s, the Democratic Party was largely right wing, and the Republican Party was largely left wing.

So San Francisco flipping from Republican to Democrat aligns pretty much squarely with the change in politics of the parties due to the Southern Strategy.

This implies that in fact, San Francisco has always been fairly left-wing.

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