San Francisco: a Utopian Domain

SF's Stonestown Mall is slowly coming back to life.
Wait'll some tenants find they don't have to pay back rent.

Adding to the uncertainty in the real-estate industry the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has excused businesses from paying rent during the shutdown. [bold added]

The legislation is based on a state law excusing a party from a contract because fulfilling it becomes impossible. The ordinance creates a presumption, that could be challenged in court, that the law applies to rent for small San Francisco businesses during the time they were completely shut down during the pandemic.

The government ordered the lockdown, businesses say they can't pay rent because it is "impossible" (though many survived through curbside pick-up, working from home, etc.), and the Supervisors took the tenants' side. At least with residential real estate there was a public-health argument where evictions would supposedly make delinquent tenants homeless and exposed to COVID-19.

By the way, the Supervisors made sure their law doesn't apply to San Francisco, the landlord.

The ordinance doesn’t apply to properties leased from the city or most office spaces.

When tinpot dictatorships take control of private property because the economy collapses due to their own mismanagement, they wonder why other businesses don't invest in their utopian domains.