A New York Times feature article about what the newspaper calls the "dirtiest block" in the city of San Francisco observes, "For many who live here it's difficult to reconcile San Francisco's liberal politics with the misery that surrounds them."
That line made me smile. For many who don't live there — and even for some who do — it's precisely San Francisco's liberal politics that created the misery that the Times so vividly describes. Rent control and environmental regulations suppress housing supply, while generous welfare programs act as a magnet attracting people. That's not "difficult to reconcile." It's totally and entirely predictable.
I'm having trouble finding it, but I recall a post-2008 Times article, or article in another national newspaper, that found similar pathologies — homelessness, drug addiction, crime, hopelessness — in Nevada, and attributed them to the state's libertarian, deregulation, low-tax ethic. If that's where you are coming from, the idea that the same pathologies exist in liberal San Francisco is going to surprise you, I guess.