Billionaire investor slams San Francisco's drug and homeless crisis as big tech ... trends now
A billionaire partner at Sequoia Capital penned a fiery op-ed tearing into the state of San Francisco, where residents and businesses are fleeing in droves as drug use and homelessness overwhelm the city.
Michal Moritz, 68, wrote in the Financial Times how the city 'bans plastic straws but permits plastic needles,' and noted that the city saw more deaths from drug overdoses between 2020 and 2022 than it did from COVID-19.
Moritz's comments came on the eve of San Francisco's state of the city speech, in which he predicted Mayor London Breed was likely to go light on San Francisco's many ailments and instead focus on its woke virtues.
Sequoia Capital is headquartered in Menlo Park, just south of San Francisco's downtown which has been nearly deserted during the height of rush hour in recent weeks as scores of large and small businesses alike have fled the city.
Homelessness is at a nearly 20 year high in San Francisco currently, and local businesses have threatened to stop paying taxes unless the city cleans up the colonies of tents and tarps that have grown along neighborhood streets.
Michal Moritz, 68, wrote in the Financial Times how the city 'bans plastic straws but permits plastic needles,' Moritz is a partner at Sequoia Capital
One of the many homeless encampments spread across downtown San Francisco
Moritz listed the many problems facing San Francisco said Mayor Breed should mention in her speech.
'A deserted downtown; the flight of medium and large businesses and major conventions,' he wrote.
'The highest commercial office vacancy rates of any big city in the US; planning policies that amount to a virtual border wall encircling the city; housing costs that make it prohibitively expensive for all but the wealthy or poverty-stricken,' he continued.
He also noted the city's ailing school system, where he said there is only 55 percent English proficiency, 46 percent in mathematics, and just nine percent proficiency in mathematics for black students.
Moritz said that without handling the city's drug and homelessness problems, any effort to solve the rest of the city's problems 'will be fruitless.'
'Fentanyl, the synthetic drug that is 50 times more powerful than and a fraction of the cost of heroin, has turned many blocks of the city into zombie zones,' he wrote.
'Beyond the shocking waste of
