Were California officials genuinely serious about transforming San Francisco into a vibrant, clean, and safe city? For a short time ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit last month, where some 20,000 people descended on the city, including Chinese President Xi Jinping, they were. It was a miraculous clean-up effort, indeed. Nasty sidewalks were cleaned, homeless people were moved out, and open drug use was nowhere to be seen in some of the high-traffic areas surrounding the conference center. While residents were thrilled with the efforts, which also included painting, landscaping, and transforming a previously dilapidated plaza into a hip skateboard park and café, they wondered why it couldn’t have been done sooner since not a dime outside of existing budgets was used.
Fortunately, Gov. Gavin Newsom was quick to explain who the clean-up was really done for:
“I know folks say, 'Oh, they're just cleaning up this place because all these fancy leaders are coming into town.' That's true because it's true."
So no one should be surprised that a month later, things are looking back to normal.
"It's recognizable. San Francisco, same as before. Anyone they pushed out of important zones has just slowly crept right back in," Crossfit Golden Gate Gym owner Danielle Rabkin told Fox Business’ "Varney & Co" on Tuesday. “Business as usual.”
When asked how the problems affect her business, Rabkin said it makes operations very difficult.
"I have vagrants lying in front of the business all the time," she said. "It's unpleasant. People don't want to live here. I think that's the No. 1 thing that potential customers and customers from the past have left. People don't want to live in a city that's this expensive with such a high cost of living, in such a low quality of life. Nobody wants to be subjected to dodging human feces and needles on sidewalks and exposing their children to open-air intravenous drug use. It's really unpleasant."
Other reports confirm the cleanup effort for APEC ‘eroded quickly’ as tents went back up in no time.
"There doesn't seem to be any serious plan for getting folks the help they need and getting folks off the streets, and it continues to be a source of great frustration for people in the neighborhood," Supervisor Dean Preston told NBC Bay Area.
Now that it’s been roughly three weeks since San Francisco hosted APEC, some residents in the Tenderloin say the massive cleanup for the summit is eroding quickly. https://t.co/SRrJctFLjx
— NBC Bay Area (@nbcbayarea) December 12, 2023