Tech entrepreneur Bob Lee, 43, was stabbed to death early Wednesday morning. Credit: CASH App VIA PR NEWSWIRE
San Francisco residents are used to a basic level of crime and squalor in their city.
Motorists leave car windows open and doors unlocked to prevent break-ins at night; pedestrians subconsciously swerve onto the sidewalk to avoid getting caught by zombie drug addicts; the city center is almost empty in the afternoon.
But the death of Bob Lee, a technology entrepreneur and former head of payments company Square, shocked the city.
Lee, 43, was stabbed to death early Wednesday morning in a relatively quiet area of Rincon Hill, a stone's throw from Instagram and the city's Google offices. CCTV footage shows him holding his side and falling to the ground after 2:30 a.m. when the car left. As of Thursday, San Francisco police have not identified the suspect and said no arrests have been made.
For the city's tech elite, which has made San Francisco one of the world's most expensive cities, the death of a respected executive could be a watershed moment that will force them to face the region's problems or hasten an already escalating exodus.
After Lee was called a victim, tributes poured in from all over Silicon Valley. But they were interspersed with questions and accusations about the state of the city.
“Violent crime in San Francisco is horrendous and even if attackers are caught, they are often released immediately,” Elon Musk tweeted, asking the city’s top attorney what action is being taken against violent repeat offenders.
«I'm afraid. for the safety of friends/colleagues in San Francisco,” said Vivek Sodera, co-founder of the Superhuman email app. “SF didn't come back. San Francisco is still dangerous.»
San Francisco is homeless. Photo: Robert Alexander/Getty Images.
Statistically, San Francisco is no exception. The San Francisco Chronicle noted Wednesday that the city's violent crime rate was 14th out of 23 major U.S. cities, the homicide rate was even lower, and both rates were close to historic lows.
The Police Union countered: accusing the newspaper of seeking to «shame those who are concerned about the rise in crime», noting that the number of offenses has increased dramatically over the past three years.
The statistics don't say how often the city feels. Homelessness and drug use have become a nationwide problem in the US, but in San Francisco they are concentrated in the center and the victims are disproportionately homeless, meaning they are on the street and thus conspicuous.
The beauty and history of the city — the birthplace of the Gold Rush, beatniks and hippies — make its problems even more striking.
While violent crime may be comparable to other urban centers, crimes against property, such as theft and burglary, are significantly higher than in most cities. Shop windows on the city's main thoroughfare, Market Street, remain boarded up three years after they were first fortified due to nationwide protests.
«There is a brutality here that I don't think I've ever seen , and I have done explanatory work on all continents,” a UN rapporteur once remarked when visiting the city of Oakland on the shores of the San Francisco Bay.
Tourists who come to see the famous Golden Gate Bridge, the cable cars and Alcatraz are almost always shocked by the tents, discarded needles and human waste on the street. For residents, it becomes something to weed out.
Facing hardship is an everyday fact of life in the city. In the three years that I lived in San Francisco, from 2018 to 2021, I had friends who were threatened with a knife, who hid behind cars and took children away from executions, all in broad daylight.
Flowers sit in a tree in front of the building where Bob Lee was mortally wounded outside of San Francisco. Photo: AP Photo/Jeff Chiu. spat between venture capitalists. It's shocking, but still completely normal.
Sometimes it seems like much of the tech industry is distancing itself from the city's problems while living above them.< /p>
It's no coincidence that Uber first appeared in San Francisco: It offered locals the ability to move quickly while spending as little time as possible on the streets.
One day, when I noticed that I was about to walk a few blocks from my morning meeting to my office, the person I was having coffee with practically begged me to order an Uber, warning me of «unfortunates» outside.
Companies based in and around San Francisco, used technology and influence to largely avoid the city's problems rather than solve them.
Food delivery apps DoorDash and Instacart were also born in the city, offering on-demand convenience without people having to leave their homes.
city's homelessness and drug problems come under scrutiny Credit & Copyright: Typhoon Joskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Meta, Google and Apple are offering air-conditioned buses to get employees from the city to their offices. Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg is now urging people to never leave their homes by promoting the idea of living and working in a virtual reality metaverse.
Salesforce, the city's largest private employer, sponsored a park atop the San Francisco Transportation Hub. While this is an example of civic investment, even this contradicts the reality of the city: it sits 70 feet above the streets where the homeless live.
The tech industry may object to this characterization, but that's part of the problem.
< p>Dozens of factors explain the epidemic of drug use and homelessness in the city, but the cost of housing is one of the main factors. A huge influx of wealth, combined with strict regulation of new buildings, would be a recipe for a housing crisis in most cities: it is especially acute in a city surrounded by water on three sides.
Although the city is often referred to as a Mecca for drug addicts across the country, 70 percent of its homeless population hails from San Francisco itself. They have been forced out of their homes in part due to skyrocketing real estate values driven by high tech workers.
Few people believe in taxation the valley for the extra money would solve San Francisco's problems. Credit: REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton/File Photo
In 2011, startups including Twitter and Uber were given tax breaks to build in San Francisco's rugged mid-market district in the hope that they would revitalize the local economy. Instead, they built office canteens.
Tech companies have also protested the imposition of a corporate tax to help fight homelessness.
Few experts believe that squeezing more money out of Silicon Valley will solve San Francisco's problems. The city's sclerotic and Byzantine government has repeatedly failed to come up with a plan to increase housing in the city, while the permissive drug culture has failed to take into account the horrors of the fentanyl crisis, which has killed more people in 2020 than Covid.
In recent years, technical service managers have become more active. David Sacks, an outspoken Musk ally, largely funded a successful bid to vote for Cheza Boudin, the city's left-wing district attorney, last June. Michael Moritz, a Welsh billionaire investor, is funding TogetherSF, a group demanding improvement from the local government.
Lee's murder may encourage other tech professionals to try to solve the city's problems rather than hover over them.< br />< br />It is also likely that they will leave. Musk moved with Tesla from California to Texas in 2021 and has been a vocal critic of his former home since the move. San Francisco's population has already fallen to its lowest level in a decade. Lee's death could spark new departures.
Unfortunately, Lee himself recently moved from San Francisco to Miami, fearing that the city was «falling into decline.» He planned to return to Miami on Tuesday, but extended his visit by a day.
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