Benjamin Wachs and Joe Eskenazi: The Worst-Run Big City in the U.S.
Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009Despite its good intentions, San Francisco is not leading the country in gay marriage. Despite its good intentions, it is not stopping wars. Despite its spending more money per capita on homelessness than any comparable city, its homeless problem is worse than any comparable city’s. Despite its spending more money per capita, period, than almost any city in the nation, San Francisco has poorly managed, budget-busting capital projects, overlapping social programs no one is certain are working, and a transportation system where the only thing running ahead of schedule is the size of its deficit. It’s time to face facts: San Francisco is spectacularly mismanaged and arguably the worst-run big city in America. This year’s city budget is an astonishing $6.6 billion — more than twice the budget for the entire state of Idaho — for roughly 800,000 residents. Yet despite that stratospheric amount, San Francisco can’t point to progress on many of the social issues it spends liberally to tackle — and no one is made to answer when the city comes up short. [...]
This city is a mecca for people in search of a government handout that they can hand out. According to a 2009 analysis, San Francisco spends around 41 percent of its discretionary budget — about half a billion dollars — on nonprofits, mostly to provide social services for the poor, homeless, elderly, and others. Many cities contract with nonprofits because it’s cheaper than using city workers. Government is now paying the tab for services that used to be undertaken by families, churches — or, frankly, no one. But a 2009 University of San Francisco study notes that this city is to nonprofits what New York is to big musicals: “Per capita expenditures by operating nonprofits in San Francisco are almost double that of the rest of the Bay Area, and more than twice that found in Los Angeles or [the whole of] California.”
We want the services. We’re willing to pay for them, if they lead to good results. Yet whether our gargantuan investment is paying off is a question no one has an answer to. Hardly anyone even bothers to check. As far as much of the city is concerned, ignorance is bliss. In 2007, the Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) held a seminar for the nonprofits vying for a piece of $78 million in funding. Grant seekers were told that in the next funding cycle, they would be required — for the first time — to provide quantifiable proof their programs were accomplishing something. The room exploded with outrage. This wasn’t fair. “What if we can bring in a family we’ve helped?” one nonprofit asked. Another offered: “We can tell you stories about the good work we do!” Not every organization is capable of demonstrating results, a nonprofit CEO complained. He suggested the city’s funding process should actually penalize nonprofits able to measure results, so as to put everyone on an even footing. Heads nodded: This was a popular idea. [...]
Research by professor Bill Watkins of California Lutheran University over the past decade reveals that San Francisco is shedding its middle-class population at double the state rate. The city, however, is not losing low-income people at nearly the state’s pace — and is gaining wealthy residents at far more than California’s overall rate. In short, we are replacing our middle class with a rich elite and a burgeoning underclass. Watkins’ research also reveals that San Francisco is going gray. The number of city residents between ages 45 and 64 has climbed, while the count of those aged 20 to 44 has dropped. The city, it seems, has become a target destination for the wealthy and retirees. These are not the people who want to make sacrifices now to shore up the city’s future. “Wealthier people are consuming,” Watkins says. “They don’t want to build a future. They don’t have a reason to invest in the community.” For that matter, neither do young people — because their futures likely involve moving out of San Francisco. According to Joel Kotkin, “San Francisco is Disneyland for adults, or a place people go until they grow up.” The stage is set for San Francisco to run on inertia. The city’s poor are unable to effect a sea change; the young, nomadic population is uninterested; and the wealthy and older are unwilling.
Article continues. I’ve worked in homeless shelters, and I know by experience that it is both possible and beneficial to measure the success of services offered. If things aren’t working, stop and do something else. Make sure you have a way of knowing if things aren’t working before you even start. I’d gladly pay a much higher tax if I knew that my taxes were being used for things that I enjoy or benefit from. Lacking that knowledge, I try to keep my taxes low. Wasting money in social services is worse than not offering services at all. And if money is to be extorted by taxes and siphoned into the pockets of the clever, I’d rather that be done openly than under the mask of being a good guy performing a social good.