As the 88-year-old former mayor sits in an armchair reminiscing about San Francisco’s once-beautiful landscape and diverse culture, he becomes increasingly disheartened.
“When I would travel as mayor of San Francisco to different parts of the world, you would be treated like you were the president of a country because San Francisco was a magic name. ... Now, all of a sudden, I’m looking at books that are coming out called the ‘Left Coast City’ and ‘San Fransicko.’”
Mr. Jordan, who served as mayor from 1992 to 1996, said the root causes behind the city’s issues today—homelessness, crime, and economic challenges—stem from mismanagement of the city’s budget and ineffective policies of its elected leaders.
“There’s too much money coming into San Francisco that is not being spent in the right way,” he said.
In July, Mayor London Breed signed a $14.6 billion city and county budget, after weeks of negotiation with the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, for each of the next two fiscal years amid a two-year deficit of $780 million, according to her office. San Francisco functions as a consolidated city and county government, with its Board of Supervisors serving a role akin to that of a City Council.
The record-high budget includes $3.2 billion for public health, more than $780 million for police, nearly $700 million for homelessness, and nearly $600 million for city administration, according to the mayor’s office.
“For a city that’s only 49 square miles in size, [we have] 39,000 employees in the city. That to me is outrageous. The City Hall has become a hiring hall,” Mr. Jordan said.
Additionally, he said, the city’s spending is like a “bottomless pit,” especially in terms of homelessness and related issues.
According to the most recent point-in-time count, which occurred in 2022, there are an estimated 7,754 homeless people living in San Francisco, many in the downtown area. That translates to tens of thousands spent per homeless person in the city each year, Mr. Jordan said.
However, those funds aren’t given directly to the homeless, he said.
“We have 59 different nonprofits that are working with our housing and homeless organizations in the city,” he said. “And they’re [using] 70 different hotels ... to give [free] rent to homeless people in the streets of San Francisco.”
Mr. Jordan criticized the city’s approach, saying that with more than 70 percent of the city’s homeless suffering from mental health, alcohol, or drug-related problems, such is unsafe for them and the hotels.
“They’re fighting with people in the hallways, lighting fires, [and] disrupting. ... We have approximately 30 [hotels] that are suing the city because of all the damage that has been done in the hotels,” he said.
Additionally, he said, the city and county need to be more accountable regarding such expenditures.
“When you’re talking about all this money, where are the long-term positive measurable outcomes with the money we’re spending?” he said. “Any business would tell you that when you start putting large amounts of money into a program, you want to take a look at where you’re going ... and make course corrections along the way. It’s like a bottomless pit. We are just perpetuating the homeless problem. We’re not solving it.”
To really solve such problems, Mr. Jordan said, the city needs to reestablish more mental health wards in hospitals and implement group housing with around-the-clock monitoring instead of using individual hotels with no clear regulations.
Additionally, those who need detoxification or have alcohol addiction problems can “work in the great outdoors,” such as on farms, “and in a better environment that’s healthier to them, but also not to have them on the streets and doorways of San Francisco,” he said.
Medical examiner statistics for the city and county indicate that about 2,500 individuals have died due to overdoses in San Francisco since 2020, with data extending through July 2023. Recently, 13 drug overdose deaths were recorded on a single day.
“That’s out of control. That’s more deaths than we were having in the whole coronavirus epidemic,” he said.
Since 2020, the city has reported 1,237 deaths due to COVID-19.
Besides homelessness, Mr. Jordan—who joined the police department in 1957 and later served as its chief—said that the current mayor’s approach in working with law enforcement has also harmed the city.
He cited the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement across the nation, saying that Ms. Breed’s decision to defund the police hurt the city’s public safety.
At the onset of the movement, Ms. Breed announced the decision to cut $120 million from the budgets of both the San Francisco Police Department and the Sheriff’s Department.
However, a year later, she reversed course, citing increased crime—including drug dealing, retail theft, and car break-ins.
Still, suffering a lack of morale, the police department’s numbers dropped.
“[Officers] feel that they were first defunded, they were demeaned, and then they’re demoralized,” he said. “What happens is, in the last three years, [hundreds of] police officers left the police department, and [many] of them are outright resignations. Police officers now say that ‘instead of being innocent until proven guilty, we’re guilty until we prove our innocence.’”
According to the city’s police department data, the agency’s staffing is at a record low, with 500 vacancies, with applicants down as well.
A better way to deal with police misconduct, he said, is to look at individual cases separately.
“You don’t condemn a whole department or a whole nation of police because of the actions of one or two or 10 people,” he said.
The police shortage is also contributing to a sharp rise in crime in the city, Mr. Jordan said, with some businesses leaving due to an unsafe environment and a loss of revenue.
A number of large retailers have decided to call it quits in the city over the last couple of years, including Nordstrom, Saks Off 5th, Anthropologie, Office Depot, H&M, and more than a dozen others.
In June, Westfield announced that it would no longer operate its downtown San Francisco mall, following Nordstrom’s decision to close there.
Additionally, Whole Foods Market closed its store at Eighth and Market streets due to safety concerns, only a year after opening.
“We’re driving the business community out of San Francisco because they see not only the coronavirus pandemic that occurred where everything was shut down. But then they see ... free drugs everywhere in the city [and] retail theft,” he said.
As a former official, Mr. Jordan emphasized the importance of a politician’s role as a public servant.
“[As an official], you have to hold yourself to a higher standard than just a victory at the polls. You’re raising your right hand to swear that you’re going to serve the public, you’re going to look at the job ... as a very serious responsibility and deal with it accordingly,” he said.
Mr. Jordan also noted that society’s lack of traditional American values is also contributing to phenomena such as homelessness, drug usage, theft, and robbery.
“Where is the work ethic? Where is the education incentive? Where’s the family values, and all the things that we feel that make you proud to be an American? ... We’re missing some of that right now,” he said.
Although saddened by the city’s current condition, Mr. Jordan said that he remains hopeful that people will ultimately do the right thing for the city.
“I’m very proud of San Francisco. We are free thinkers, we have great people from all over the world that come here to our city, we have great universities in the area, [and] we have natural beauty. We have everything. It’s a paradise. But we have to take care of it in the right way,” he said.
