Not Just From Enemies But From Friends, Too

It's no secret that Fox News has been emphasizing San Francisco's homelessness, crime, and open-air drug use problems. One response by the City's defenders is that the reports are distorted by political enemies who only want to show the negatives and hide the improvements that have been made.

Jamie Dimon (Chron photo)

However, there have been too many similar accounts from people who are not conservative Republicans. This week JPMorgan Chase CEO and Democratic Party supporter Jamie Dimon, who is here for a health-care conference, spoke about the City's failures: [bold added]

“San Francisco is in far worse shape than New York,” Dimon said in an interview Thursday on Fox Business.

“I think every city, like every country, should be thinking about what is it that makes an attractive city, you know, its parks, its art, but it’s definitely safety. It’s jobs, it’s job creation, it’s the ability to have affordable housing,” Dimon said. “Any city who doesn’t do a good job, it will lose its population — just tax more and more, it doesn’t work.”

Keith Lee (Chron photo)

On that same day TikTok food influencer Keith Lee told his 15.6 million (!) followers that he was terminating his Bay Area tour:

the Bay Area is not “a place for tourists right now. … The people in the Bay are just focused on surviving. The amount of tents and burnt-up cars that we saw people living in was shocking to say the least. As an outsider, I wish the city would step in.”

If not corrected, San Francisco's problems will destroy the Progressive dream and prevent its former Mayor Gavin Newsom from winning the Presidency. The exodus of many of its best and brightest people endangers San Francisco's status as one of America's leading cities.

It's easy to dismiss criticism as coming from people who hate San Francisco, but as Jamie Dimon and Keith Lee have shown, calls for change are coming from people who love San Francisco, too.