Saving San Francisco

Floor Speech

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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 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.

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

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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 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

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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

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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.

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