Homeless No More in San Francisco

Meanwhile, the summer of love proceeds apace in San Francisco. Apparently, the woke burghers who run that place decided to solve their homeless problem by moving homeless people into empty hotels.

How’s that working out? (via Legal Insurrection)

Thousands of homeless people have been housed in San Francisco’s empty hotels in an effort to slow the spread of coronavirus.

However, City Journal contributor Erica Sandberg told “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Wednesday the policy has been an “absolute disaster,”

“It’s solving exactly nothing and as a matter of fact, it’s making all the problems worse,” said Sandberg, who described the scene inside the hotels as “about as bad as you can imagine, only exponentially worse.”

“You are talking drug-fueled parties, overdoses, deaths, people are being assaulted. You have sexual assaults going on, it is pandemonium,” she said. “It is extremely bad and it needs to stop.”

City officials reportedly secured close to 5,000 rooms at several city hotels that signed up to house homeless and other members of at-risk populations who need to quarantine.

But, hotel life is not forever. The city by the bay, home to Nancy Pelosi, is now going to move the homeless into permanent housing. What will that do to housing values? No one knows. No one cares. At the least, nothing good.

San Francisco will move 200 homeless residents out of the hotels where they’ve been temporarily sheltering during the pandemic, and into housing, Mayor London Breed said Thursday.

The announcement marks the city’s first step toward answering a question that has plagued activists and experts for months: What will happen to homeless community members once the coronavirus crisis is over, and temporary shelter programs end?

Of course, housing prices in San Francisco are collapsing. Now that tech workers have discovered that they do not need to show up at the office, many of them are debarking from San Francisco to more hospitable climes. 

Zero Hedge has the story. It compares with the stories about the New York housing market:

San Francisco is now flooded with homes for sale. “Active listings” surged to 1,344 homes in the week ended July 5, up 65% from the same week last year, and the highest number since the housing bust, amid a 145% year-over-year surge in “new listings.”

There normally is a seasonal surge in active listings after Labor Day that peaks in late October. But this month, the surge of active listings (1,344) has already blown by those peaks in October, including the multi-year peak of 1,296 in October 2019. This is “pent-up supply” coming on the market at the wrong time of the year when supply normally declines (chart via Redfin):

It looks like an ongoing exodus from blue American cities.