Empty skyscrapers, bodies on the street, and a fentanyl crisis corrupting the city.
These descriptions have been repeated for years to push a narrative that San Francisco is beyond saving.
Analysts and authorities all over the country, most of whom have never been in San Francisco for more than a matter of days, have declared the city as, in the words of former NBA player Charles Barkley, the “armpit” of the nation.
The city is struggling with empty buildings, spiking unemployment, and a drug crisis. In that way, critics are right.
However, they are wrong in believing that this challenge is insurmountable.
San Francisco has always been a city of resilience. We have been a home for activist movements, technology, and art since our city’s foundations in the Gold Rush of the 1840s.
In 1906, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake and a massive fire devastated the city. It would’ve been easy to wave San Francisco off as a city lost to the ashes, never to recover again, and that’s likely what many across the country did. Instead, the city rebuilt, returning to prosperity with impressive speed, erecting 20,000 buildings by 1909, and completely rebuilding the city by 1915.
In 2008, the global financial crisis rattled San Francisco as unemployment soared to 10%. Once again, many believed the city’s best days were over. But the economy bounced back, technology thrived, and San Francisco regained its status as an economic powerhouse, sparking a new economic boom and driving unemployment to a historic low of 2.1% in the following decade.
Now, in 2025, we face a drug and homelessness issue rivaling any challenge in our city’s history. We trail behind the rest of the nation in post-pandemic job growth, which is down 7.3% in private sector jobs compared to 2019, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And yet, San Francisco is already beginning to rebound. Its status as a major AI epicenter has caused its population to increase for the first time since before the pandemic. Billions of dollars worth of investments into AI mean that the abandoned skyscrapers littered throughout the city might not be empty for much longer.
One simple look at our city’s history and you will realize that contrary to what many across the nation would like you to believe, our city is not dead — in fact, it’s nowhere close. We will bounce back from this time of struggle because if our city’s legacy shows you anything, it’s that resiliency is in our blood.
It’s easy to see every negative statistic, every underqualified analyst, and every critical news headline and believe that San Francisco’s obituary has already been written and that the fate of our city is sealed.
But if you spend time in San Francisco and if you understand our history, you’ll quickly realize that the city’s revival is not a lost cause, it’s a guarantee.
