Tourists Warned Not to Rent Cars in San Francisco due to Epidemic of Auto Break-Ins

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The Cautious Optimism Correspondent for Economic Affairs and Other Egghead Stuff will soon be posting the third installment of “How the Hell Can You Stand to Live in San Francisco?” to discuss, among other things, skyrocketing rents and the effects of San Francisco city government-imposed rent control.

However two more developments have recently been reported in San Francisco's local news that relate directly to the first two columns: regarding car breakins and nosebleed home prices.

As previously reported under District Attorney Chesa Boudin San Francisco thieves have embraced breaking into cars with impunity, most commonly around tourist areas like Fisherman's Wharf. Well local CBS affiliate KPIX just reported this week that San Francisco hotels are now advising guests not to rent a car at all (see video):

You can see the tourist from Tampa at 1:53 thinking very long and hard searching for a diplomatic way to say “because San Francisco voters are left-wing idiots.”

There’s also footage of blatant car thievery in broad daylight.

In related news San Francisco petitioners have successfully submitted enough signatures to place Boudin up for a recall election in June. For San Francisco’s sake can we please move it up to January?

And as previously reported San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors has successfully killed nearly all efforts to construct housing in the city for decades while simultaneously complaining about high housing prices. 

The late Ed Lee was San Francisco’s first mayor in decades to make a strong push for new housing construction to relieve the artificial supply constraint and his successor, current mayor London Breed, has promised to continue his policies—which has put her at odds with the always-more-left-wing Board of Supervisors.

Well just two weeks ago the Board of Supervisors voted 8-3 to kill construction of a 500-unit housing development in the SoMa District that is currently a mostly-unused valet parking lot for a nearby Nordstrom Rack's wealthier shoppers. 

And a few weeks before that the Board of Supervisors killed a 300-unit proposed building in the Tenderloin... all while opining that "something has to be done" about the City's housing crisis. Story at:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article/S-F-supervisors-complain-about-our-housing-16576412.php

The San Francisco Chronicle’s edgy tone does get the story right:

“24% of units would be affordable…”

“…Eight supervisors came up with new reasons to vote against it: gentrification, shadows over a plaza and seismic safety, among others."

"Like local leaders up and down California have done for years, the supervisors sought to soften their message: We’re not against building housing, they said, just this housing. Some supervisors said they preferred a 100% affordable project instead — which, in an ideal world, would be great. But we don’t live in utopia. We live in very imperfect San Francisco…”

“…The supervisors repeatedly called the project, with market-rate rents tagged at $1,500 to $4,000 a month, luxury housing. Never mind that pretty much all market-rate housing in this city has exorbitant price tags partly because the supervisors, including those who own multimillion-dollar single-family homes, keep rejecting housing…”

“…Supervisor Matt Haney, whose district includes the project, is steamed. Though supervisors almost always defer to a supervisor backing a project in his or her district, only Catherine Stefani and Ahsha Safaí voted with him.”

“’This is the kind of project we’ve been asking for, which is a lot of units built for families right by transit,” Haney said. “For God’s sake, it’s a Nordstrom valet lot.’”