The San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial board issued a warning this week that office workers staying home to work rather than commuting to the city will spark a “doom loop” that will erode its tax base.
“Experts say post-pandemic woes stemming from office workers staying home instead of commuting into the city could send San Francisco into a ‘doom loop’ that would gut its tax base, decimate fare-reliant regional transit systems like BART and trap it in an economic death spiral,” the paper’s editorial board wrote, specifically referring to downtown San Francisco.
“Despite our housing crisis, it was years into the COVID pandemic before our leaders meaningfully questioned the logic of reserving some of the most prized real estate on Earth for fickle suburbanites and their cars,” the editorial also said. “And so we wasted generous federal COVID emergency funds trying to bludgeon, cajole, and pray for office workers to return downtown instead of planning for change. We’re now staring down the consequences for that lack of vision.”…