[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 121 (Thursday, July 25, 2024)]
[House]
[Pages H4944-H4946]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SAVING SAN FRANCISCO
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 9, 2023, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from California
(Mr. Kiley) for 30 minutes.
Mr. KILEY. Madam Speaker, I rise today with an update on the
condition of San Francisco, a city whose fate has been largely shaped
by several politicians of prominence here in Washington, D.C. Foremost
among them are Vice President Kamala Harris and Speaker Emerita Nancy
Pelosi.
I think it is important for all Americans to understand the tragedy
of San Francisco and what has happened to one of America's most
beautiful cities because the same radical failed policies that have
caused San Francisco's decline and collapse are gaining increasing
traction in Washington, D.C.
I want to go over just a few of the reasons why it is that as the San
Francisco Chronicle put it last year, this city is ``on the verge of
collapse.''
Indeed, in many ways, my entire State of California offers a preview
of where our country has been headed, but San Francisco offers an even
starker warning. It is the part of our State where failed policies,
radical politics, and public corruption are in their most advanced
stage and where residents are most rapidly fleeing.
In an article headlined ``San Francisco Falls Into the Abyss,'' UCLA
economics professor Lee Ohanian writes: ``No major American city has
failed at the same level as Detroit, whose population dropped from 1.85
million people in 1950 to about 630,000 today. Move over Detroit, here
comes San Francisco, which lost 6.3 percent of its population between
2019 and 2021, a rate of decline larger than any 2-year period in
Detroit's history and unprecedented among any major U.S. city.''
The city is declining faster than any major U.S. city in the history
of our country. The reasons they are not a misery, foremost among them
are crime, drug addiction, homelessness, waste, unaffordability, and
failing schools, all a result of failed governance.
Let's just start with the crime situation in San Francisco, which is
a city that has had a progression of self-described progressive
prosecutors starting with now-Vice President Harris who has used that
term to describe herself, progressive prosecutor, followed by others in
her mold, George Gascon and then Chesa Boudin, who was ultimately
recalled from office by voters.
On a State level, California law has essentially legalized many forms
of crime, making theft of merchandise below $950 a misdemeanor, as well
as the possession of even class A drugs.
In practice, this means offenders are rarely, if ever, prosecuted,
and, in many cases, businesses have stopped even reporting losses.
San Francisco's anti-law enforcement policies have compounded these
problems. For example, a few years ago in 2020, San Francisco defunded
the police shifting $120 million away from law enforcement. If you park
your car while in the city, the advice is just to leave the doors open
and make sure there are no valuables inside. That will at least spare
you the cost of replacing your windshield.
Last year, the Castro Merchants Association, representing 125
businesses wrote a scathing letter regarding the city's failure the
address the lawlessness around them. One said: We are just seeing
constant vandalism, constant drug use in public, people passed out on
the sidewalk, people having psychotic breakdowns, it is just not
something a small business owner should have to deal with.
On top of these general problems relating to crime, retail theft, and
car thefts is the issue of drug use. Walking through San Francisco you
will see open drug use and drug dealing with an open-air drug market
scene that is so rampant that even last year Governor Gavin Newsom sent
in the National Guard ostensibly to get it under control.
While California has among the highest rates of illegal drug use in
the country. San Francisco is well above the national average with 22
percent of the population in the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont area
using an illegal drug in the last year. Tragically, the number of
overdose deaths has skyrocketed from 222 to now 647 in a given year.
Things only got worse during the COVID shutdowns as far more people
in the city died from overdoses than from COVID. Facing one of the most
punishing lockdowns in the country, emergency room mental health visits
increased substantially, especially for young people.
It certainly doesn't help matters that the supply of drugs is
abundant thanks to the crisis at our border, largely overseen by this
administration's border czar, Vice President Kamala Harris.
It should be noted that San Francisco declared itself a sanctuary
city long before California became a sanctuary State.
On that note, the current Vice President also played a starring role
when she was district attorney abiding by the city's sanctuary
policies. Then when she was the State's attorney general, she actually
paved the way for California to become a sanctuary State by opposing a
Federal law meant to stop sanctuary jurisdictions.
A third issue that one will confront immediately in San Francisco is
the explosion of homelessness. This is very much connected to the
crisis of crime, drug use, and mental health.
Once again, while California leads the Nation in homelessness, San
Francisco is worst of all. Between 2005 and 2020, the number of
homeless increased from 5,404 to 8,124. During that same period,
homelessness declined significantly nationwide. Within a 3-year span,
complaints of homeless encampments to the city's 311 line increased
from 2 to 62 each and every day. Meanwhile, the share of the homeless
population that is unsheltered has also gone up in recent years.
Fourthly is the waste situation. Between 2014 and 2018 in San
Francisco, calls about human feces doubled to 20,933. $100 million was
spent on street cleaning in 2019 alone. In a 3-year span, the city
replaced 300 lampposts corroded by urine. The overall condition in many
areas is something that no American should ever have to experience,
especially kids walking to school.
Speaking of kids, the San Francisco Unified School District has the
second widest achievement gap of any school district in California with
over 5,000 students. A CalMatters investigation from 2017 found that
San Francisco had the worst Black student achievement rate of any
county in California. Just 19 percent of Black students in San
Francisco passed the State's reading test compared with 31 percent
Statewide. This was before COVID. While California was last in the
Nation in
[[Page H4945]]
getting students back to school, San Francisco was worst of all,
keeping schools closed not only in 2020 but through the end of the
2020-2021 school year.
While they refused to actually operate schools, the district instead
spent time on a commission to rename them, even proposing taking
Abraham Lincoln's name off of an elementary school. The district then
came up with a scheme to scam the State by pretending to open for the
last 2 weeks of the school year in order to get millions of dollars in
extra funding. Predictably, test scores have since plummeted even
further.
The citizens of San Francisco, by the way, responded by recalling
three of the school board members from office, each by over 70 percent
of the vote.
{time} 1330
A fifth issue is bureaucracy. It costs an estimated $100,000 to build
one tiny home for the homeless, 10 times more than even other places in
the bay area. Almost $1.2 million is the cost to build a single unit of
affordable housing.
This is the city where it takes 87 permits, a thousand days of
meetings, and $500,000 in fees to build residential housing projects.
San Franciscan politicians boast that they brought home the bacon when
they brought home a $1.7 million taxpayer-funded toilet.
As the San Francisco Chronicle puts it: ``San Francisco's bureaucracy
isn't just incompetent and comically inefficient. It is a corrupting
force in our city life.''
They say: ``Spiritually, yes. But also literally.'' They call it
``corruption born of needlessly complicated government bureaucracy.''
The public transportation system is a model of mismanagement, with
the Bay Area Rapid Transit facing a $1.1 billion deficit over 5 years
with trains that are dangerous to ride and that rarely show up on time.
No wonder ridership has plummeted and they are projecting a $728
million deficit for the city as a whole over a span of 2 fiscal years.
Finally, there is the cost of living. A survey from the Economist
Intelligence Unit found that San Francisco is 1 of the 10 most
expensive cities to live in, in the world. The average rent for a one-
bedroom apartment is over $3,500. According to data from the California
Association of Realtors, a San Franciscan needs to make nearly $400,000
to buy a median-income home. The cost of utilities, groceries, and
other goods is also well above the national average.
The city has simply become unaffordable for far too many people.
Now, this is the political situation. This is the reality on the
ground in San Francisco, and it is directly linked to the political
culture of radicalism that has developed in that city over the course
of the last, say, one and a half decades. What is truly alarming is
that many of the people who have had positions of leadership, like
Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, and Nancy Pelosi, have assumed greater
power over our State and over our country.
Indeed, California has seen its own population decline significantly.
In fact, we led the Nation in outbound U-Haul rentals over the course
of 4 years. Many of those problems I just discussed for San Francisco
started to become problems for the entire State and are indeed now
starting to become problems for the entire country.
I personally believe it is not too late to turn that particular city
around. For proof, look at the communities of my district. While
California as a whole is declining and 53 out of 58 of its counties are
declining, the vast majority of my district is growing. Placer County
and Folsom, for instance, are growing as much as anywhere in the State.
Our communities are rated among the best in California to live, raise a
family, and retire.
While California, as I said, leads the Nation in U-Haul departures,
Roseville is the second-place city in the entire country in U-Haul
arrivals. Many of the people leaving San Francisco, in fact, come to my
district for safer communities, a more affordable cost of living,
better schools, and an overall quality of life.
We still face headwinds of misguided policies enacted on the State
level, but we strive to use the tools of local governance and community
partnerships to do what is best for our citizens. This is the model
that our State should strive for, and it is the model that many other
States are following. It is the model for our country to reverse the
policies that have gotten us so off track in 3 years.
If we are going to get ourselves back on the right trajectory as a
country, then we should, indeed, look to San Francisco as a model, but
it is a model of precisely what not to do.
Addressing Homelessness
Mr. KILEY. Mr. Speaker, I share some news out of California just
today where Governor Gavin Newsom has issued an executive order for
State officials to begin dismantling thousands of homeless encampments
on State properties and also encouraging local jurisdictions to do the
same thing.
Mr. Speaker, this is in response to the Supreme Court's recent
decision in the Grants Pass case. I asked the Supreme Court to do what
it did in an amicus brief--that is to say, overturn a misguided Ninth
Circuit decision and give our communities back the power to deal with
homeless encampments and to have commonsense limits on the public
spaces where they can be.
It is important to note that Governor Newsom did not join me in those
efforts. He did file his own brief, but he explicitly opposed
overturning this lower court decision that has handcuffed our local
communities' ability to deal with homelessness.
I am glad to see now that the decision came out as it did and the
Court sided with my view as opposed to his, he is seeing the benefits
of the decision and is apparently ordering the State to deal with
homeless encampments in as much as it can within its jurisdiction and
encouraging local jurisdictions to do the same.
I know that, in my district, we already have had communities that
have done a very good job limiting homelessness within the constraints
that they have, but this decision is going to provide a new set of
tools to address the problem in a more comprehensive and compassionate
way.
There are other parts of California, such as San Francisco, where the
homeless situation has gotten totally out of control. At least to their
credit, some of the political leaders there have now realized that they
no longer have an excuse now that the Supreme Court has ruled.
Mayor London Breed of San Francisco has announced she will be
undertaking ``very aggressive'' sweeps of homeless encampments in that
city. We are also hearing of action coming soon potentially in Oakland
and in other cities across California.
I did an amicus brief in this case, calling on the Court to rule as
it did because I believed it could be a new day for California. The
issue of homeless encampments on our streets and sidewalks, in our
parks, and on the paths of families walking their children to school or
going to the grocery store has been one of the biggest problems facing
our State. It has been causing communities to deteriorate. It has been
associated with crime, sexual assault, waste, fires, disease, and many
other problems.
It has also manifested a complete lack of compassion for the homeless
individuals themselves who oftentimes don't go to shelters when
available because they are struggling with substance abuse issues and
mental health issues.
This Court decision is giving back to our communities the ability to
place commonsense restrictions on where homeless encampments can set up
in order to protect order, safety, and public health while also
allowing the tools to connect these individuals with the services they
need to turn their lives around, whether that is substance abuse
treatment, mental health treatment, other forms of counseling, family
reunification, job training, and the like.
It has been shown time and time again that that is the way to help
people turn their lives around and get back on their feet, whereas
allowing people to simply live, fester, and all too often tragically
die on our streets has proven to be a disastrous policy. Indeed, it has
gotten to the point where California, at this time, has about half the
unsheltered homeless in the entire country.
I do believe that this Court decision that has just come down,
combined with our efforts to restore consequences for criminal activity
with
[[Page H4946]]
what is now being called Prop 36, really can be a path back to sanity
and a new day for California.
I am glad to see that the Governor has at least recognized the
potential of this Court decision, and I encourage him to make good on
these promises to deal with the State's own issues when it comes to
State property and provide encouragement for local jurisdictions to do
the right thing while respecting their autonomy and flexibility to meet
the needs of their communities as they see best.
Honoring Lou Conter
Mr. KILEY. Mr. Speaker, a few months ago, we lost a true hero in my
district, Lou Conter, who passed away at the age of 103 and was the
last survivor of the attack on the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor.
I have just introduced legislation to honor the memory of Commander
Conter by naming the Department of Veterans Affairs community-based
outpatient clinic in Auburn, California, as the Lou A. Conter VA
Clinic.
I will share with folks in my district and across the country, since
this is a true American hero, the text of this resolution.
``Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled, Congress finds the
following:
``Louis `Lou' Anthony Conter was born on September 13, 1921, in
Ojibwa, Wisconsin.
``Lieutenant Commander Lou Conter, the last remaining survivor of the
attack on the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, was an American hero.
``On that fateful day, Petty Officer Conter helped evacuate shipmates
who were blinded, wounded, or burned, even restraining some of his
fellow shipmates from jumping overboard into the burning sea.
``In the days after the attack, he helped with recovering bodies and
putting out fires. Lou Conter's heroic actions saved the lives of many
of his shipmates on December 7, 1941.
``Following Pearl Harbor, Conter continued serving during World War
II in New Guinea and in Europe as an enlisted naval aviation pilot
assigned to VP-11, a `Black Cat' Squadron.
``Lou Conter would be awarded with the Distinguished Flying Cross for
actively taking part in the rescue of 219 Australians trapped by
Japanese troops in New Guinea.
``Later, in the Korean war, he served on the USS Bon Homme Richard as
both an intelligence officer and a Navy aviation pilot. Following his
service in the Korean war, he served as a military intelligence adviser
to three Presidents: Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon
B. Johnson.
``During the 1950s, Lou Conter played a prominent role in the
establishment and development of the Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance
and Escape training program.
``In addition to the Distinguished Flying Cross, he was awarded the
Navy Commendation Medal and became the first recipient of the USS
Arizona Medal of Freedom.
``Louis Conter retired from the Navy in 1967 after serving 28 years
as a lieutenant commander.
``Following his retirement, he generously gave his time to share his
personal experiences at veterans' ceremonies and by giving lectures to
students.
``Lieutenant Commander Conter's lectures were popular with
generations of local students who were equally fascinated and
enthralled by his first-person accounts.
``He is eminently deserving of recognition for his decades of service
to a grateful nation.
``Lieutenant Commander Conter passed away in Grass Valley,
California, on April 1, 2024.
``The Department of Veterans Affairs community-based outpatient
clinic in Auburn, California, shall after the date of the enactment of
this act be known and designated at the `Louis A. Conter VA Clinic.'
Any reference to such clinic in any law, regulation, map, document,
record, or other paper of the United States shall be considered to be a
reference to the Louis A. Conter VA Clinic.''
Commending Interns
Mr. KILEY. Mr. Speaker, on National Intern Day, I recognize my three
summer interns, who graciously came all the way from the great State of
California to our Nation's Capital to serve in my Washington, D.C.,
office.
Amelia Sanchez recently graduated from Long Island University and was
also a student athlete who shares a passion for public service. I
commend her for the hard work that she has done, and I wish her all the
best in her future endeavors.
The second intern I commend is Kevin Scanlan from Grass Valley,
California, who recently completed his freshman year at Harvard. He
previously distinguished himself as one of my top-performing interns
during my 2022 election campaign for the House. His outstanding
contributions were recognized statewide in California, culminating in
the 2023 Kinder Award for exceptional campaign internship experience.
Following his graduation from Forest Lake Christian High School,
Kevin pursued his studies in economics and government at Harvard
College. He is deeply passionate about local governance and remains
dedicated to fully representing and advocating for constituents to the
best of his abilities.
Finally, I commend one of my longest-serving interns, Raghava
Kodavatikanti. Raghava is a resident of Folsom, California, and
recently wrapped up his freshman year at UCLA.
Even throughout his academic success, Raghava interned with my office
while I was in the California Legislature and served in my district
office last summer.
I truly could not be prouder of these three young men and women who
have been outstanding public servants and have done such a tremendous
job for our office. They have tremendously positive attitudes. They are
smart. They are dedicated. They understand the importance of the work
they do, the responsibility that comes with working for a congressional
office, and the responsibility that runs between us and constituents.
I look forward to hearing all about their academic success and look
forward to following what is to come next in their respective futures.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________