We urgently need to discuss Westfield: Emails on safety problems at downtown SF
sfchronicle.com
sfchronicle.com
Businesses: Our workers are being harassed daily, several have been held at knifepoint. Please help.
Progs: That's just an isolated incident. Crime is down.
Businesses: People don't feel safe and there doesn't seem to be anything we can do about it so we're shutting down.
Progs: Wow I guess you're just not really committed to this city SMH.
If the city cannot provide basic safety for its citizens, then corporations WILL leave, and salaried residents will follow them.
Cities always sucked. I always suspected a large amount of people crowing about how great cities are were simply gaslighting because they felt trapped in them. And what do you know? As soon as COVID and remote work gave people a real choice the mass exodus began.
Actions speak far louder than words indeed.
People left cities during the pandemic because it was a pandemic. This isn't complicated to unpack, there's no secret motivations here. When there's a highly contagious disease around for a long time, all of the benefits of cities temporarily either closed or became a health risk: public transit, cultural institutions, restaurants, proximity to workplaces, etc. And meanwhile all the drawbacks to cities were amplified: smaller living quarters, higher population density, less access to private outdoor space, harder to have your own car.
In many major US cities, people moved back in droves over the past couple years. Rents soared and rental vacancy rates plummeted. That doesn't line up with your statements at all.
SF may well be in a death spiral, but nothing about this situation can be applied to all cities in general!
Cities are down or flat - and flat is down since the population in general is still growing. Also not all cities are the same - no way would I classify Phoenix anywhere the same as LA, SF, NYC, Chicago, etc. - totally different structure.
Dense cities suck and people continue to vote with their feet.
If people are fleeing these cities, why are there countless situations in which a single rental unit gets 100+ applications, a bidding war breaks out and ultimately it goes far over asking rent?
You don't like cities, that's fine, but it doesn't mean cities "suck". Different people have different preferences, do you understand this?
I think that not jailing criminals is related to bail bond system reform or something. Not an expert but I am guessing that they need a more realistic policy that does not automatically free habitual offenders. They probably need more jails and a much more efficient legal system. And a new mental health policy and massive increase in funding for institutions. As well as a much more effective benefits system to prevent homelessness. And probably much less tolerance for drug sales etc. Also the general economic decline needs to be righted.
I guess considering the severity of all of those problems and the concentration in that area, it's remarkable that businesses can operate at all.
A common belief is that prison is criminogenic, because people who spend more time in prison tend to reoffend more often but this largely gets the causality backwards. This causes them to ignore/deny the pareto distribution of crime that underlies most criminal justice systems so we have a fairly sizable population of serial violence reoffenders that are just caught and released on a weekly/monthly basis until someone dies.
I’m very doubtful this is the way forward. SF spends and squanders an absolutely eye-watering amount of money on its problems. The money appears to support committees and other layers of bureaucracy that will only grow more baroque if you give them more money.
Here's the graph of the first step, the deinstitutionalization of people from mental hospitals and the reinstutionalization of people in prisons: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FwVXgslXoAAny9T?format=png&name=...
That was pretty much complete by 2000. Now we're in the step of the deinstitutionalization of people from prisons.
During none of these steps were any actual problems solved.
The late 70's and the 80's were a great time for people who liked being on the streets though. I'm pretty sure the people who are living on the streets now will look back on this time with fondness in a decade or two.
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Seems like journalistic malpractice that all these recent pieces trumpeting the SF downtown location closing don't also mention that Westfield announced a year and 2 months ago they're selling their entire US mall portfolio by 2024 to focus on Europe.
https://smmirror.com/2022/04/french-based-owners-of-westfiel...
It's a functional foreclosure, which divests them of their interest much like selling an asset would - do you just mean it's "much different" because of the amount of money they make/lose?
Trying to understand the distinction you're making as it relates to this article and their preexisting plans to exit the market.
The general area has also seen a huge wave of closures including pretty much every anchor tennant with IKEA being the only major business to buck the trend so far.
This isn't a just a "business is going okay but we over leveraged" situation.
The fact that their lender probably wants to squeeze any return they can out of it and they stand to lose far more money leaving it with lights off than at least letting it limp along until they can get someone else on the hook for it, to start.
It could be that the lender also writes off the loss and just shutters the mall, but usually properties in foreclosure stay open because they want to claw back as much make-up ROI as possible on an already down position.
A lot of these buisnesses were largely supported by tourism traffic from asia & white collar work travel buisness and conventions all of which are no longer happening because of public safetey concerns.
It's going to take years before the city does anything.
It says "Westfield’s parent company said last year that it planned to sell all of its U.S. malls by 2024 to focus on its operations in Europe." It also links to a prior San Francisco Chronicle article about this.
There is a huge difference between the two.
Why is the difference meaningful to anyone who isn't the corporation already planning on exiting the market? Would be a helpful exposition to better understand what you're both trying to indicate with pointing out that 2 different things are different.
edit: I'm asking bc the article doesn't really explain that either and I'm not sure why this means anything beyond Westfield couldn't find a buyer at the price they wanted, or thought this was the simplest/fastest way to divest
foreclosure: "the current owner, the world's expert on making this location profitable, concluded it can't be done"
You can argue that it's reductive, obviously that's true but this is the "self-evident" optics people are responding to. (Not the GP but HTH.)
I guess this seemed like the obvious next step for them, to me. Considering recent store closures, operational costs have to be close to outpacing revenue at this point so waiting for a potential buyer wouldn't make sense while losing money daily. Especially not when you already planned to divest of the asset - you'd save yourself trouble and time and write off the loss.
So I got curious about what other ramifications I was missing - like maybe those replies were insinuating the foreclosure was an first trickle of a broader collapse in commercial real estate, or something else that wasn't just "SF downtown bad" again.
Thanks for clarifying!
> Why is the difference meaningful to anyone who isn't the corporation already planning on exiting the market?
> have replied this as if it has self-evident corollaries
They are sort of self evident for locals and folks who have dealt with any form of real estate in CA. But happy to explain.
It matters to cities. Foreclosed assets go for lower price than before and thus reduce property tax revenue (which is based on the value the property was purchased for).
It matters to consumers. As a consumer in the bay area, I know WestField SF will be neglected. Meanwhile WestField in San Jose, even after it changes hands, will continue to thrive.
I guess this one was too self-evident, as that feels like it was a truism even before the foreclosure considering the overall direction the entire area has already been headed for over a decade and the stores within the mall that have already closed. Do you see the foreclosure itself having had a unique impact on these feelings? To me, public sentiment has already been very negative.
> Foreclosed assets go for lower price than before
Makes total sense! Wasn't thinking what happens after the next sale re: property taxes, good point.
Thanks for explaining!
Unfortunately, these things are self-perpetuating.
> Thanks for explaining!
Mp!
1. House them in safe and private housing. 2. Give them a basic income so they can live like human beings. 3. Make sure they have quality medical and emotional care.
I get so tired of people acting as if people like living on the street.