San Francisco Mayor Makes U-Turn To Fund Police After Company Exodus Pressures City Finances

A few years back, San Francisco’s Mayor, London Breed, responded to demands from Black Lives Matter protesters by defunding the police. Fast forward to today, the crime-ridden city with out-of-control theft has experienced a business exodus and a shaky recovery. Breed’s decision to defund the police has backfired. In an about-face, she plans to boost police funding to attract businesses back to the downtown area. 

Mayor Breed’s new $6.85 billion budget highlights the challenges faced by San Francisco as the city grapples with sliding tax revenue, some of the lowest office occupancy rates in the country, and a growing number of business leaders and residents urging officials to clamp down on crime. Bloomberg said the mayor unveiled the two-year budget that increases funding for police and expands the police force by 200 officers. 

“We have been forced to make some really challenging changes to our budget,” Breed said while she announced her budget this week. She added: “How we get people and businesses back on their feet is exactly what this budget is proposing to do.”

Breed’s policy U-Turn is embarrassing — because defunding then refunding the police — is one of the biggest admittance of any metro area that progressive policies have flat-out failed to make cities safer. These disastrous policies have transformed San Francisco and many other metro areas into hellholes. We must add business leaders and residents must hold the mayor and other Democrats accountable for implementing failed policy — just as the people did when they voted out the Soros-backed progressive district attorney last year. 

As we’ve pointed out, “Downtown San Francisco Becomes A Ghost Town As Major Retailers Flee” and “A Record 30% Of San Francisco Office Space Is Vacant.” There’s also a growing list of businesses that have closed up shops in the downtown area because of soaring crime. 

Bloomberg pointed out, “Looming over San Francisco’s budget fight is the prospect that city finances could worsen in the coming years as a tech exodus and downtown’s sluggish recovery metastasize into deeper cuts to city services.” 

In addition to plans to refund the police, she is addressing the homelessness and addiction crisis by providing hundreds of new treatment beds. Maybe Democrats are figuring out that allowing these folks to roam the streets like a zombie movie is terrible for business. 

Bloomberg also said budget forecast in March revealed that the 2025 single-year deficit would grow to $724 million. Then by 2026, it’s expected to exceed $1 billion. 

“It’s really bad in San Francisco,” Mark Ritchie, a commercial real estate broker with decades of experience in the metro area. He said, “Nobody knows what the solution is.”

Reversing disastrous progressive policies that have transformed the city into a dump is a start. Companies may want to come back. But something tells us that with high living costs, many firms who’ve shifted operations to other areas and or states are never returning. 

Failed progressive policies have led to the implosion of San Francisco.