If you’ve been following the saga of San Francisco over the past several years, you may recall that there was a time, pre-Covid, when San Francisco was regularly making news for filthy streets, rampant homelessness, open drug abuse and petty theft.
Arguably there was some effort made at improving the situation over the past 7-8 years, especially as it became clear many SF residents had had enough. Voters recalled DA Chesa Boudin and elected a mayor who promised to clean up the streets. But looking back over nearly a decade of promises and activity it’s not clear the city has made that much progress.
The city did hire a PR firm in 2023 to work on its image and that seemed to help for a while, but just 18 months later you still see the same old problems popping up in local news reports. And with SF facing a big budget crisis, some of those old problems seem to be on the verge of getting worse.
For instance, after years of efforts to clean the sidewalks to get rid of used needles and human feces it’s possible the public works budget is going to be cut.
With the city facing an $876 million deficit and potential layoffs, the department in charge of…
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