Not enough affordable housing, for one.
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San Francisco, a real place, is the cultural and commercial heart of Silicon Valley, a made-up place. The former is a mess, even as the latter churns out unprecedented profits and scares the world with its concentration of power. Their ills are inextricably linked: Vast tech wealth has collided with political dysfunction to produce a horrifying state of affairs on the streets of a great American city.
I spent the last couple months stepping outside my lane as a business and technology journalist to investigate how things got so bad and what might be done about it. My article, “Can San Francisco be saved?” appears in the current issue of Fortune, alongside other looks at cities around the world.
It’s tough to summarize what’s wrong, but a few things are obvious. San Francisco hasn’t built enough homes to house the people who’ve come to fill all the jobs it has created. Because there isn’t enough housing, prices have skyrocketed, which is fine for most tech-industry workers and not so good for everyone else. Because it’s tough for working people to find a place to live, it’s really difficult for the working poor, the non-working poor, and those afflicted with mental health and other ailments.
There are solutions to these problems, such as building more housing and spending even more money on the least fortunate among us. But these solutions need political leadership and compromise, two things historically in short supply in San Francisco. Political factions squabble in this city dominated by what elsewhere in the country would be called left-wing liberals as much as Democrats and Republicans do on the national stage.
Since I finished this article, the mayor of San Francisco, London Breed, said she took a gift from the powerful former head of public works, a longtime bureaucrat who has been charged with corruption by the U.S. Attorney in San Francisco. (He paid more than $5,000 for the repair of her 18-year-old car.) Breed is a pro-business centrist by San Francisco standards, and her left-of-the-left, anti-development opponents already have pounced.
Also since my story went to press, I picked up, with serendipitous timing, a new book, “Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America,” by the New York Times economics reporter Conor Dougherty. I interviewed several of the people he writes about in this outstanding book. It is highly readable (a true feat for a book about housing policy). I’m a slow reader, and I read this book in a few days. I recommend it to anyone who wants to go deeper on this important topic.
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This week also marks the release of Fortune’s 2020 Best Companies to Work For list. You’ll find many tech companies made the cut, including Ultimate Software, Cisco Systems, Workday, and Salesforce in the top 10.
Adam Lashinsky
Twitter: @adamlashinsky
Email: adam.lashinsky@fortune.com
This edition of Data Sheet was curated by Aaron Pressman.
