In recent years, the once-beautiful city of San Francisco has been plagued with a wide variety of serious issues, such as rampant homelessness and crime, leading to conditions many have described as similar to those of a third-world country.
The apparent dysfunction in San Francisco has caused residents and businesses to flee the city for greener pastures, often moving to red states with conservative governance. This has had a disastrous impact on San Francisco’s real estate market, where some buildings that would’ve been highly appraised have seen their valuations plummet. Subsequently, financial organizations are tapping the brakes on lending activity in the city.
A small business owner in San Francisco recently shared his experience where his business will have to be auctioned off as banks refused to refinance his mortgage due to the crumbling conditions of the city. Mark Sackett, owner of BoxSF, explained how nearly 30 lenders have refused to refinance his $2.5 million mortgage, forcing him to sell the building he owns, presumably at a significant loss. Sackett was informed by several lending organizations that they “are not making commercial real estate loans in San Francisco due to the state of the city.”
The small business owner slammed the city for allocating its resources in all the wrong areas, particularly for promoting “safe injection sites” for drug usage. Sackett claims San Francisco has completely neglected the business community.
“[San Francisco city officials] don’t even return my calls,” Sackett said, according to a report from the Washington Examiner. “They care about bike lanes, nonprofits, safe injection sites. … They have just ignored small business . . . I’m just done with San Francisco and the bullsh** here. It’s out of control.” He added, “I can put a tent in front of someone’s front door and sleep … but the city comes after me for ADA compliance.”
“Mark and I share a lot of the same priorities, and I truly wish we could be making more progress sooner to turn things around in SoMa,” Supervisor Matt Dorsey, a district representative, said. “I’m optimistic that the neighborhood is beginning to see some progress. But for too many businesses, like Mark’s, we’re just not recovering fast enough.”
The American Tribune has extensively reported the ensuing urban decay in San Francisco. John Chachas, owner of the iconic department store Gump’s, illustrated the crisis endured by the city’s small businesses and commercial real estate.
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“It’s it’s every small, medium size. Every large office in the city of San Francisco is doing the same thing,” Chachas said. “We have 25 million square feet of empty office space. Government buildings are the worst. So federal office buildings and state office buildings are at 30% occupancy because for some strange reason, even though the pandemic ended months and months ago, they’re still being directed to work at home.”
“And then the the bad side of it, which is San Francisco has focused on what I call a minority of people who are making it an almost livable and unworkable environment with human waste and debris. That’s not a sustainable thing. Our door counts are down. I don’t know probably 30% from 2019, but we have a good loyal customer and we want to we want to find a way to fix the problem and stay in San Francisco if we can,” he added.