Can a new mayor fix San Francisco’s housing and homelessness problems?

THE cliché of luxury penthouses and Gucci stores cheek-by-jowl with filth and poverty is usually reserved for poor-world entrepôts. But the contrasts in San Francisco—the richest city in America by median household income—could in places rival those in Mumbai. Fresh human excrement and discarded needles lie scattered on the streets of the Tenderloin district just a few blocks from the five-star hotels of Union Square in the city’s downtown. Complaints about shit in the street more than tripled, to 21,000, in the eight years to 2017; for needles the number shot up from 290 in 2009 to nearly 6,400 in 2017. The city’s sanitation department spends half its $60m street-cleaning budget on the stuff. Meanwhile, a typical one-bedroom flat now rents for $3,440 per month, according to Zumper, a rental website—the highest figure in the country. The median house price has nearly doubled in the past five years, to $1.6m.

On June 5th San Franciscans will elect a new mayor. The special election, called after the previous mayor died suddenly of a heart attack, has been defined by the twin topics of housing and homelessness. There are three leading candidates, all liberal: London Breed, Jane Kim and Mark Leno. Each would represent a first as mayor of the city. Ms Breed would be the first black woman, Ms Kim the first Asian woman and Mr Leno the first openly gay man. On housing, though, they take different stances. Whereas Ms Breed has pledged to liberalise the city’s housing regulations to rein in the city’s runaway rents, Ms Kim and Mr Leno have taken a cooler approach.