In February 2022, I wrote this in my article “What If San Francisco Doesn’t Recover:”
“If you go downtown during the day, you can see the difference. The office buildings are empty. Vehicle and pedestrian traffic aren’t half of what they used to be. But what other effect does that have on the city?
“Well, there are a lot of small businesses on the ground floors of those large buildings. These businesses have survived by servicing all the workers commuting to those buildings. As they start to realize the workers aren’t coming back, they’re forced to accept the new reality and close. The closing of those businesses will be the start of the economic death spiral….