by Sebastian on November 18, 2024 (BeyondChron.org)
Van Ness Avenue Displays SF’s Dysfunctional City Government
Election of New Mayor Offers Hope
A picture is worth a thousand words. The image of Van Ness Avenue shows planters, graffiti, and empty storefronts that captures SF’s ongoing problems and voters’ frustrations with the City government.
Van Ness Avenue improved slightly before the Election, but there is still much work to be done.
Burger King On Van Ness Avenue With Broken Windows
The City’s inability to solve the homeless and drug problems has left the neighbors grappling to save their neighborhood on their own.
Many businesses along Van Ness Avenue have closed due to crime. The property owners at 725 Van Ness Avenue who sued the City to clear out the encampments around their building sold their building due to the tent, the crime, and the open-air drug dealing which were too much for them to handle.
Other property owners who are stuck with their properties have installed planters to deter homeless encampments and protect their properties from fires and vandalism.
Graffiti is out of control and costs property owners thousands of dollars to clean it up.
Instead of helping solve the problems, the City issued citations to the neighbors for their planters and graffiti.
San Francisco Swung To The Right
When I was talking to planter owners throughout the City for my planter stories, I noticed that the political wind had shifted to the right in liberal San Francisco. And I wrote about It: “Will It Take A Conservative To Fix SF?”
Shortly after that, SF moderates took control of the Democratic Party leadership from progressives. That was the first sign. Then, Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris in the presidential race and Republicans won the House and Senate.
The San Francisco Mayoral Race
Fed up with the status quo, the Van Ness Avenue neighbors were ready for change.
When the City invented new rules for planters by not allowing fake plants and maintaining graffiti-free planters which outraged the neighbors, Daniel Lurie then a San Francisco mayoral candidate tweeted (X):
“Yet another example of City Hall’s messed up priorities. This time it’s whether planters have real or fake plants. Are you kidding me? This doesn’t solve anything. The real question is: why are the planters there in the first place?”
As for graffiti, after I wrote, “Do SF Mayoral Candidates Have Strategies To Tackle The City’s Rampant Graffiti,” he tweeted (X): “Graffiti is a city-wide problem. Small businesses are tagged, then fined for not cleaning it up fast enough. We need to hold vandals accountable, fully staff our graffiti abatement unit, and not punish the victims.”
The neighbors told me that Lurie’s positions on the planters and graffiti issues won brownie points with them. They felt that his views resonated with them.
San Francisco Under New Management
Having had enough of the dysfunctional City government, the neighbors wanted someone new and preferably outside the City Hall like Matt Mahan, the Mayor of San Jose be their new mayor putting aside concerns about governmental experience.
“Life is too short to drink cheap wine,” they said.
So they gave the self-financed with a lack of governmental experience mayoral candidate, Daniel Lurie a shot. They didn’t care where his campaign money came from. “Whoever said Money can’t buy happiness isn’t spending it right.”
Lurie won the mayoral race.
Can Daniel Lurie fulfill The Late Dianne Feinstein’s Dreams Of Turning Van Ness Avenue Into Champs-Élysées?
I ask the neighbors how Lurie can make Feinstein’s vision of Van Ness Avenue come true. They suggest:
Restoring Public Safety
Shut down open-air drug markets. The root of the problems is the drug dealers. Go after them loud and hard. We can’t keep seeing the same drug dealers in the same neighborhood after they are repeatedly arrested. Then scoop up the users; especially, those shooting up in public. Get them into treatment or send them home.
Stop handing out money, start handing out bus tickets.
Take all the money away from the useless programs and start spending it on programs with measurable results that work.
The laws must be enforced to keep areas around schools free from drug addicts and dealers.
Children should not have to walk through this mess. We should give more money to keeping kids in school rather than to the homeless. Help them before they become addicted to drugs.
Ambassadors should be up and down Van Ness Avenue.
Beautifying Van Ness Avenue
MUNI stops on Van Ness Avenue should be cleaned daily from trash and graffiti.
The neighbors have invested in planters along Van Ness Avenue but can’t keep live plants in them as the homeless keep vandalizing them.
The Civic Joy Fund which was founded by Manny Yekutiel and Daniel Lurie should help them with live plants for their planters to beautify the sidewalks.
The project is to paint murals on 11 utility boxes along Van Ness Avenue to deter graffiti.
Brandon J. Baker Painting A Mural On A Utility Box On Van Ness Avenue
Revitalizing Van Ness Avenue
Bring businesses back after Van Mess is Instagrammable for influencers. And voilà!
From “Emily In Paris”- Netflix
Lessons Learned
Stay a liberal San Francisco but bring back sanity!
‘Be Rooted In Reality’-Former President Barrack Obama
