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Comment by ciguy | Hacker News Reader

The city seems to be at it's most lively since covid, but the offices are still empty. Before covid SF actively did it's best to antagonize the companies who's tax revenue it relied on. Now that they've taken their ball to play elsewhere, I don't see what the city is going to do for revenue.

I work in the financial district and the number of empty spaces that used to house cafes and restaurants is shocking. Unless they manage to pivot that office space to housing (Very difficult for multiple structural reasons), the downtown of SF is going to continue to look like Zombieland.

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> Before covid SF actively did it's best to antagonize the companies who's tax revenue it relied on.

I think that's a misleading characterization. The city notoriously gave tax breaks to large tech companies, accompanied by some weak rhetoric about supporting local communities, but with weak or no oversight confirming any real local benefits.

I also think it's important to distinguish between _office space_ and _retail space_. Retail and restaurant spaces will also struggle to get filled if neighborhood office workers are getting catered in-office lunch, getting delivery from ghost kitchens, and buying goods from amazon etc. I.e. the way we live and work increasingly supports the Zombieland street-level experience.

> The city notoriously gave tax breaks to large tech companies

The city notoriously set up large and complex taxes on tech companies in SF and then randomly and unpredictably granted breaks to the ones that had the best lobbying.

> accompanied by some weak rhetoric about supporting local communities

And billions of dollars sent into homeless slush funds for activists and nonprofits with no accountability for how the money was spent.

> no oversight confirming any real local benefits

Accurate

> And billions of dollars sent into homeless slush funds for activists and nonprofits with no accountability for how the money was spent.

I'm not claiming that the city spends responsibly, but next month SF will at least vote on a ballot measure which would create an oversight commission for HSH spending and programs, and require audits of services provided. We have an opportunity to improve things.

No, the city is a notoriously high tax, hostile and bureaucratic hellscape when it comes to running any kind of business. Just because they are corrupt and hand out a few token tax breaks to their richest cronies doesn't make them business friendly.

I don't know, on balance, which way it tilts, but 2018 Prop-C is an example of such antagonizing. At least one company moved HQ out of the city for that reason.

https://ballotpedia.org/San_Francisco,_California,_Propositi....

Did it at least work? I assume that homelessness in SF is now a thing of unhappy memory...

What if I told you the manhattanization of downtown was never the dream of local San Franciscans and only a fleeting goal of elite-funded politicians who used job growth during their tenures as pols here to argue that they should be elected or appointed to state-level leadership? What if San Francisco got that Zombieland back, because to many San Franciscans, even a bustling business sector full of people wearing tech fleeces WAS a Zombieland?

Ok NIMBY.

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