San Francisco during the Apec summit

THE week of the mid-November Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) meeting in San Francisco, California, was one for the books.

From journalists being robbed at gunpoint and continuous protests, to the massive relocation of thousands of homeless people, the gathering of leaders marked an eventful period, culminating in American holiday shopping to cap off the summit’s excitement.

Malaysian journalists covering Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim arrived in the Bay Area as early as November 11, three days before the summit’s start.

It was evident to the group that San Francisco was making no secret of its effort to revitalise its tourism.

The city had anticipated the Apec meeting to generate about 55,000 hotel bookings and bring in around US$50 million (RM233.3 miillion), a modest sum for an economy with a gross domestic product exceeding US$500 billion in 2019.

The atmosphere was celebratory in Chinatown, about 1km away from the Moscone Centre where the summit was held. Dragon dances, parties, and fireworks welcomed Apec attendees, creating a festive mood in the city.

It was a jovial mood – far from the negativity local news had painted of lootings, the fentanyl crisis and the city’s homelessness problems months before the summit.

But the crisis was nothing new for San Francisco. US news reports suggested the Bay Area was going through another “doom-loop”.

San Francisco emerged in the late 1800s amid the gold rush, and an earthquake in 1906 devastated 80% of the city, claiming around 7,000 lives.

Despite concerns, the city flourished, becoming a hub of counterculture by the mid-1900s. In the 1960s and 1970s, Beatniks and later hippies flocked to the Bay Area, leading eventually to the establishment of the world’s first gay district, the Castro area.

The 1980s then saw the introduction of the Macintosh, which triggered the Silicon Valley boom, attracting over 1,000 tech companies like eBay, Yahoo, Intel, Dell, Microsoft, Facebook and X (then Twitter) to establish their bases in San Francisco.

By 2019, San Francisco’s GDP has reached US$534.56 billion, ranking it the eighth-largest economy globally, just before the onset of Covid-19.

That is eight times larger than Malaysia’s average annual GDP.

Skyrocketing costs, stagnant wages

Rising property prices and stagnant minimum wages forced many in San Francisco to take on multiple jobs or leave the city. The influx of tech workers drawn in by the Silicon Valley boom further exacerbated the problem.

Gentrification, driven partly by not-in-my-backyard (nimby) groups lobbying against high-density construction, froze urban development, contributing to soaring property values and rising poverty.

“The cost of living tripled as minimum wage stagnated over the last decade. Keeping a one-room apartment now requires holding down three jobs just to survive in the city. It’s an impossible situation,” a concerned resident said.

“As someone born and raised here, I find it increasingly challenging to continue living in San Francisco. This situation has pushed numerous residents to relocate to more affordable towns like Texas, Atlanta or (Las) Vegas.”

The poverty line in San Francisco rose so high that families making US$177,000 (824,731.50) a year are considered low-income households.

The Covid-19 pandemic also caused the shift to the work-from-home model in 2020, causing tech companies to vacate offices, and mass layoffs occurred on the heels of the artificial intelligence rollout in 2022.

These factors led San Francisco’s economy to suffer, with 150,000 tech workers having been laid off globally since 2022 alone.

Homelessness and crime rates spiked, while luxury apartments and office buildings built during the tech boom were left vacant.

Why offences were recategorised

San Francisco’s Gubbio Project Lydia Bransten told a news channel companies used to own four buildings, but now only occupy one floor.

She said 70% of the people on the city’s Mission Street were previously employed and housed. They worked in office buildings while thousands worked downtown before homelessness spiked, she said.

“All the infrastructure that was built for these high-paid individuals is sort of collapsing. To say the reason San Francisco isn’t doing well is because poor people are living on the streets, doing drugs, is not real. It’s a red herring,” she said.

Certain crimes were also on the rise. Robberies, for instance, were up by between 12% and 15%, the San Francisco Police Officers Association said.

But a law called Proposition 47 has recategorised some non-violent offences, leaving crimes such as shoplifting, grand theft, receiving stolen properties, forgery, fraud, writing bad cheques, and use of illegal drugs to a certain threshold that render them non-violations amounting to incarceration.

Instead, police officers only write a ticket or citation.

“Before, stealing anything over US$400 was a felony charge. But now if you steal US$999, you just get a ticket if you’re caught,” one police officer said.

“It’s akin to if you run a stop sign and I give you a traffic citation.”

Dignitaries’ security and city’s image

Just weeks before the Apec summit, stores near Union Square such as Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Fendi and Gucci were looted, leading the city to tighten security for the leaders’ gathering.

Street closures, 10-foot (3m) black metal fences were erected, airport-level security – with multiple checkpoints near the Moscone Centre venue – and various traffic diversions were enforced, putting a strain on locals commuting or walking to town to visit local stores.

Apec attendees and journalists also underwent bag checks at security checkpoints. A photographer from national news agency Bernama had her vape pen confiscated, making Apec a real turn-off despite anticipation for the star-studded “cast”, which included US President Joe Biden and China President Xi Jinping.

The Bernama photographer attempted to recover her item, but the Secret Service told her it was thrown away.

Nine San Francisco enforcement agencies, including the California Highway Patrol and the Secret Service, which made up over 1,000 officers, were deployed for the summit.

San Francisco’s homeless were relocated to Willow Street half an hour away in the mainland across the Bay Area, while numerous encampments were cleared weeks before Apec attendees arrived.

The usual encampments, such as along Mission Street, were cleared so only a handful of the vagrants could be spotted near downtown.

Locals said they made their way back to the Bay Area on foot.

“But we are expecting them (the homeless) to return after Apec,” said Tony Gonzales, who runs a souvenir shop near Union Square.

One could not help but notice the stains of defecation and urine on the sidewalk where homeless folk were camped out, or maybe they were dog excrement that owners had refused to clean.

Downtown San Francisco became lively as local retail stores launched Black Friday sales after the national Thanksgiving holiday, with rock-bottom discounts on branded goods soon after the Apec summit ended.

Gonzales said shopping would not end until Christmas and New Year, bringing a spark of hope to San Francisco again despite the “doomed” economy. – The Vibes, December 11, 2023.