“Nothing will ever be the same.” It’s easy to say, difficult to prove, and at the one-year anniversary of San Francisco’s shelter-in-place shutdown, it’s best rephrased as a question: Will anything ever be the same?
Certainly it will not for the families and friends who’ve lost loved ones, or for the COVID survivors beset by “long-haul” symptoms. In many other aspects of our civic life, though, there’s a range of answers.
This month, the world is reflecting back to mark the worst year most of us have ever lived through. At the same time, it’s important to look ahead and try to answer a few questions about San Francisco’s future.
Will we gather again in large crowds? This is a no-brainer. Once New Zealand successfully sealed itself off from the virus, this happened. Closer to home, people have come together even when they’re not supposed to. It’ll take some getting used to, but let’s not doubt our need to gather to listen to music, dance, watch sports, attend the theater, run races, drink and be foolish … you get the picture.
Can public transportation rebound? The fear of crowds will subside. The real barrier for SF transport isn’t health, it’s jobs. A return of tourists (which is likely with the numbers creeping up even last year) and conventioneers (which is questionable, as companies rethink business travel) can only do so much for ridership. If downtown workers don’t return en masse, much of our transport system will have lost its raison d’etre.
There’s no answer to this yet. But the federal stimulus about to arrive will buy our transit agencies some time to assess and plan. That’s crucial, because permanent service cuts should only happen when absolutely necessary to avoid what’s known as the transportation death spiral.
OK, so what about downtown? This is the biggest factor in a potential rearrangement of San Francisco. So far, most indicators point toward a very quiet downtown for a long time. Counterexamples are few and far between, and the mass conversion of empty towers into dense, vibrant residential centers is, at best, a pipe dream.
That said, certain areas will have an advantage. While conventions are in trouble, Yerba Buena still has a museum cluster, and nearby businesses could benefit from the foot traffic.
Michelle Delaney, co-owner of the shuttered 111 Minna Gallery, figures the corporate parties and conventioneers won’t come back soon, but she wants to reopen with food, drinks, tables, and heat lamps in the Minna Street alley. Conditions need to improve; someone apparently trying to keep warm in the alley set fire to part of the building. Repairs will take a couple months.
The homeless need to be housed, for humanitarian reasons of course, and also for the greater good. “If we don’t clean up the area, why would people want to go downtown?” Delaney asks. To capture some visitor business and lure San Franciscans out of the neighborhoods, “we’ll have to be more of a destination, because downtown will be weird.”
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Will more people have roofs over their heads? The housing and homelessness crisis was in full force before COVID struck. The pandemic has put a likely ephemeral dent in our housing shortage. Rental prices dropped sharply but recently flattened, and home prices keep chugging along. There’s little to suggest anything but this: San Francisco will remain outrageously expensive.
As we recently reported, small legislative wins have made affordable housing easier and faster to build. But opponents of more housing keep fighting, sometimes with ugly tactics.
That said, SF keeps voting to spend money on affordable housing through taxes (and more taxes) and bonds (and more bonds). We’ll need more to support the mayor’s current strategy of more shelters and supportive housing for those ready to get off the streets. COVID added a twist, however, making group shelters dangerous and forcing the city to rent more socially distanced hotel rooms. If life returns to normal, at least two big questions loom: Will those hotels, as pushed by many supervisors, also join the mix of permanent housing? And when emergency federal cash runs out, how will we pay to keep people off the streets — for their good, and as Delaney notes, for everyone’s good?
Can our small businesses survive? Shopping online and ordering food delivery were already ingrained habits before the pandemic, making SF brick-and-mortar retail a risky business. When the pandemic eases, will our collective relief and craving for interaction open our hearts (and wallets) to the local boutique, hardware store, or pho joint, instead of Amazon or DoorDash?
That’s up to us. It’s also up to our city officials (and those of us who elect them) to ensure our neighborhoods are welcoming and warm, our merchants aren’t perpetual smash-and-grab targets, our bureaucracy isn’t stifling, and our sidewalks are for gathering and strolling. The outlook is mixed depending on where you are in the city. The real need for police reform has to be balanced with the real need of our businesses and residents that are begging for help.
Last summer, a range of folks acknowledged the need to make life easier, find shelter, and do business in the city. Voters agreed in November, passing Prop H for small business reform.
The emergency Shared Spaces program that has permitted more than 1,700 street changes, including outdoor dining parklets, could become permanent and make a great start to our post-pandemic city.
The Frisc was founded to cover San Francisco and its rapid changes. COVID-19 is changing the city faster than anyone ever expected. Click here for all our coronavirus coverage.
Will schools go full-time again? Look at the grim data, national and local. Kids need to be in school, and parents need their kids in school for so many reasons: mental health, economics, nutrition, social growth.
SF public schools will reopen full time, but how many kids will be left? Some families can afford private school; others will leave the city in search of districts that actually prioritized school reopenings. If there’s no guarantee soon of a full return this fall, the enrollment numbers might be shocking. And the fewer the students, the lower the state funding. The district had budget woes before the pandemic, and a loss of more funds could be vicious.
Before the pandemic, SF began emphasizing antiracism and equity in schools, for good reason. During COVID, however, the focus metastasized into what it was supposed to fight: the perpetuation of systemic inequality. As kids head back to class, one pandemic lesson that some parents hope will remain top of mind is that learning online only made inequality worse, and SF school officials were slow to acknowledge it.
It’s your turn: Share with us your post-pandemic hopes for San Francisco. Which changes have been most traumatic? Which will be most consequential? Have there been any COVID silver linings for the city? Let us know in the comments, at thefrisc at gmail, or on Facebook and Twitter.
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