POLL: 80% DECRY BIG BAY AREA DOWNTOWNS
Perceptions of crime and cleanliness keep visitors away
Anthony Estrada hasn't been to downtown San Francisco since he grabbed a beer after the St. Patrick's Day parade and “a guy walks up and drops his pants” and, well, we don't need to tell you what happened next. “It's really not worth going there anymore.”
Elle Dunn used to enjoy Oakland's great restaurants and entertainment, but now considers its downtown “one of the scariest places on earth.”
And San Jose? It's not necessarily crime or homelessness keeping people away. It's a different kind of demoralizing.
“Honestly, I personally don't know what downtown San Jose is about, even as a business owner,” said Liana Ryan, who owns a restaurant there. “We're not a foodie place. We're not a shopping place. We're not a whatever. And after COVID, we're desolate.”
All these perceptions point to one disturbing truth: the Bay Area's three big urban centers are in crisis. People are still working from home. Businesses are closing. And, according to a sweeping new poll sponsored by the Bay Area News Group and Joint Venture Silicon Valley, residents are giving up on our downtowns.
It's a problem that's imperiling the Bay Area's economic future and battering our self image as a vibrant, cultural and business mecca that has long been the envy of the world.
“The mood is dark,” said Russell Hancock, CEO of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a regional think tank. “It's heartbreaking to see this happen to three really great cities. This is frustrating because there's no clear answer.”
With the Bay Area's big cities at such a critical juncture, the poll provides the first regional look at how residents feel about our downtowns now and how concerned they are about the future.
Eighty-three percent of
the poll's respondents said they rarely or never visited downtown Oakland in the past year, 79% said the same of downtown San Jose, and 70% of San Francisco.
A startling 80% considered the state of the region's three big downtowns an extremely or very serious problem — ahead of perennial hot-button issues, including crime (75%), traffic congestion (64%) and the increasing frequency of wildfires (63%).
The findings are part of a survey of 1,802 registered voters in Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties who also expressed largely dismal perceptions of the region's housing costs, homelessness, and cost of living.
The poll found a growing sense of gloom that goes beyond even those concerns, with 71% saying they believe the Bay Area is on the wrong track. That's up from 62% last year and 52% during the depths of the COVID pandemic in 2021.
Despite those reservations, the number of those who say they are likely to move out of the Bay Area in the next few years is down slightly for the second consecutive year, from 56% in 2021 to 49% this year, perhaps in line with the region's big employers tugging their employees back to the office.
Perceptions are often harsher than reality, Bay Area boosters say. They point out that violent crime is down in San Francisco, and homelessness and open drug use are largely confined to the city's notorious Tenderloin district. In San Jose, people have packed 400 cultural events this year, from the Jazz Fest to a Google-hosted “block party.”
But the poll's findings make clear the challenges ahead, especially in Oakland and San Francisco, said Karen Chapple, UC Berkeley professor emeritus of regional planning. “If people don't feel safe on the streets … it's going to be an uphill battle.”
Oakland
Many Bay Area voters made it quite clear why they avoid downtown Oakland:
“I was held at gunpoint in broad daylight,” one poll respondent shared.
“Who in their right mind goes to Oakland?” asked another.
Derreck Johnson, who founded Home of Chicken and Waffles in Jack London Square 20 years ago, says those attitudes are not hyperbole.
“I was born and raised here, and I've never seen it like this,” said Johnson, a former City Council candidate. “Yes, we had bad crime in the `90s, but it was targeted in the drug world. It wasn't just random acts of somebody coming up to you and just stealing the stuff and breaking into your cars.”
Violent crime overall is up 21% from last year, according to Oakland Police data, including a 22% spike in carjackings. Burglaries were up nearly 87% this year compared to 2021, a year already notorious for an explosion in pandemicera violent crime.
The fear shows up among the poll's respondents who say they infrequently venture to downtown Oakland: 66% said they didn't have a reason to visit, 57% said they don't feel safe, and 36% complained about “too many unhoused people.”
It hasn't helped that the Oakland A's rejected the city's waterfront ballpark plan and announced they're joining the Raiders in Las Vegas.
Oakland even manages to flub the easy stuff. Just last month, city leaders were forced to acknowledge that while San Francisco and San Jose were receiving millions in federal crime-fighting dollars, Oakland bureaucrats missed the deadline to apply.
It's all part of what Carl Chan, president of Oakland's Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, calls a “spiraling downturn” in the city. Last week, he organized a rally for fed-up business owners outside Le Cheval, a popular Vietnamese restaurant closing after 38 years over safety concerns.
“It's just getting to the point that people start losing faith and trust in our leadership,” he said.
San Francisco
When it comes to views about downtown San Francisco, Bay Area residents didn't hold back either:
“Filthy, overpriced, crime-infested cesspool of nastiness,” one woman from Santa Clara County responded to the poll.
“Either your car will be broken into or stolen or you will be accosted by homeless people,” said another.
But while that might sound like fodder from Fox News, the survey found similar-sounding gripes among 7 out of 10 Bay Area voters who said they kept their distance from downtown San Francisco this past year: 57% of that group said they avoid downtown because there are too many unhoused people; 56% believed it is unsafe (the same number say it's too hard to park) and 51% say the city is too dirty.
And perhaps most discouraging of all — 74% believe San Francisco is heading in the wrong direction and it will be a long time, if ever, before it comes back.
The news has been loaded with reasons to be pessimistic: The downtown Nordstrom store and surrounding shopping center announced its closure this year, and more than 25% of ground-floor retail in the greater Union Square area remains vacant.
One-third of San Francisco's office space, 30 million square feet, stands empty.
“When people talk about car break-ins, that's horrible, we have to do better,” said Aaron Peskin, president of San Francisco's board of supervisors. “Ground floor retail vacancies? That's a serious new phenomenon and the reality is, when you get less eyes on the street, things go bad.”
The city is already responding with clean-up crews, more homeless shelters and mobile police command centers, he said.
In November, San Francisco will be welcoming 21 international heads of state and media from around the world to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference.
When a reporter recently asked whether Peskin worried about the impression the city will leave on visitors, he had a ready reply:
“If they want to seek out human misery, they'll find it,” he said, “and if they want to see what's wonderful in San Francisco, they can find that too.”
San Jose
In 1937, Gertrude Stein wrote of her hometown of Oakland that “there's no there there.”
Judging from the results of the Bay Area News Group poll, that perception seems to have shifted to San Jose. The number one reason — by a landslide — for those who rarely set foot in the city's downtown: no reason to visit. A whopping 76% checked that box.
“It's kinda boring,” said one respondent from Alameda County.
“Downtown San Jose sucks,” said another from Santa Clara County.
Google was supposed to change all that. In a massive construction project that would make San Jose worthy of its moniker “Capital of Silicon Valley,” the search giant announced plans to build “Downtown West,” a massive office, housing and entertainment complex on 80 acres near the SAP Center.
After the pandemic hit, Google put its plans on hold — a decision that worries many Bay Area residents. Forty-three percent said the project is somewhat or very important to the future of downtown San Jose and among those in Santa Clara County alone, 56% said the same.
But San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan is confident that one day, the project will be built. “That's the kind of thing that has real impact 15, 20, 30 years from now, not today,” he said. “And that's why I'm so focused on the street-level experience today, getting those small businesses and bringing back the public art and performances.”
Now, though, even among respondents from Santa Clara County, 53% said they rarely if ever visit downtown San Jose.
The mayor said one of the city's main challenges is “it hasn't figured out how to tell its story. That's solvable.”
For Ryan, the chef and restaurant owner, change can't come soon enough.
Four years ago, she invested in remodeling her Devine Cheese and Wine with iridescent subway tile and filled the menu with international cheeses and pairings like lemon curd and hazelnut rosemary brittle. But on a recent Saturday night at 7:15, only one table was full.
Still, like those in Oakland and San Francisco, she said she hasn't lost all hope: “There could be an amazing, vibrant life down here.”
“Filthy, overpriced, crime-infested cesspool of nastiness.”
“Either your car will be broken into or stolen or you will be accosted by homeless people.”
— Bay Area residents on visiting San Francisco