San Francisco Mayor London Breed on the City's Troubles--and Hopes

By WIRED Staff

Welcome to the premiere of WIRED's new podcast, Have a Nice Future. In this first episode, Gideon Lichfield and Lauren Goode talk to the mayor of San Francisco, London Breed, about how she plans to address the city's problems, from homelessness to crime to abandoned downtowns, and how the changes she's proposing could shape not just San Francisco but the cities of the future.

Read more about the city WIRED calls home. Our coverage of San Francisco includes stories about self-driving cars, infrastructure, the tech industry, health care, and homelessness.

Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Gideon Lichfield is @glichfield. Bling the main hotline at @WIRED.

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Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.

Lauren: Energy up.

Gideon: Hi, I'm--oops. Too much energy. Yes.

Lauren: Energy down.

Gideon: Hi, I'm Gideon Lichfield. I'm the editor in chief of WIRED.

Lauren: And I'm Lauren Goode. I'm a senior writer here at WIRED.

Gideon: It's 30 years ago that WIRED magazine was founded in San Francisco, and that anniversary has made Lauren and me feel quite reflective.

Lauren: As one gets when they turn 30. We went into the conference rooms, threw a bunch of pillows and blankets on the floor, turned on some Enya. Really got our '90s vibe on, and we just reminisced.

Gideon: Ah, Enya. It's funny to think about what the world of tech looked like 30 years ago. In fact, just a few weeks before the first issue of WIRED was released in January 1993, this guy named Tim Berners-Lee created the very first hypertext pages of a little something he called the World Wide Web.

Justin Pot

Max G. Levy

Paresh Dave

WIRED Staff

Archival: It spans the globe like a superhighway. It is called the internet.

Lauren: People were really excited about the transformative potential of the web. The editors at WIRED certainly were; I found this letter to the editor in an old issue criticizing WIRED for being a little too "orgasmic" about the internet.

Gideon: Orgasmic.

Lauren: Yeah. And I don't even think they were talking about specific websites.

Gideon: Hmm.

Archival: For years they've been saying these things would change. The world would mature from adding machines and typewriters to tools of the human spirit, personal desktop computers, a network of people with unique experiences and expertise connected all over the globe.

Lauren: What could go wrong?

Gideon: So much went wrong in really unexpected ways. I mean, who would've predicted QAnon or ISIS recruiting videos, or the ice bucket challenge? Frankly, the future is unpredictable, and that's what can be really disconcerting

Lauren: And the pace of innovation has just accelerated so much. Cryptocurrencies, generative AI, the metaverse, so many exciting changes--

Gideon: But also freaky changes-

Lauren: Changes we can't seem to pump the brakes on and will have to face one way or another.

Gideon: So we decided to make a show about it. Have a Nice Future.

Lauren: It's a podcast about how fast things are changing, in good ways and in ways that make us deeply uncomfortable.

Gideon: Each week we're going to talk to somebody with a big, audacious idea about the future and ask, is this really the future we want?

Lauren: We want to ask people what keeps them up at night, and also what keeps them feeling optimistic.

Gideon: And then after we share the interview with you, Lauren and I will discuss how we feel about the future. They're describing what we think is good about their vision, what we think is troubling, and what we and you can do about it in our own lives.

Lauren: We'd also like to hear what you think. So send us any questions you have about the future or what's concerning you.

Gideon: Or even what makes you optimistic.

Lauren: Yes, that too.

Gideon: So we decided to kick off this weekly conversation with someone who's pretty directly shaping mine and Lauren's future. And ultimately probably yours too.

Lauren: On today's episode, we talk to London Breed, the mayor of San Francisco, whose job, as cliched as it sounds, really is to build a better future for this city. And we have to determine, is this the future we want?

Gideon: We wanted to interview Mayor Breed because WIRED was founded in San Francisco, of course, and the digital revolution that WIRED was created to cover began in the Bay Area. But tech infiltrates and warps all aspects of life. It changes our social fabric and our urban fabric, and Have a Nice Future is about all of those changes too, not just the bits that are directly brought about by a new piece of code or hardware.

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Max G. Levy

Paresh Dave

WIRED Staff

Lauren: San Francisco is a place of contradictions where you have incredible wealth alongside terrible deprivation, and progressive left-wing values juxtaposed with extreme libertarianism. Like a lot of cities around the US right now, San Francisco is facing severe problems with empty downtowns, but also a high cost of living, drug abuse, crime, and homelessness.

Gideon: Right. And just last week, a prominent member of the city's tech community, Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App, was stabbed early in the morning outside an apartment building in San Francisco and died at the hospital.

Lauren: We taped this conversation with Mayor Breed before that happened. She has since issued a statement calling the fatal stabbing a horrible tragedy, but it's certainly another thing that gets added to the portrait of San Francisco as a place that you know is scary and a dangerous place to live.

Gideon: But as you'll see, the safety of the city's streets is one of the things she talked about the most.

Lauren: And we'll get to all of that with Mayor Breed after the break.

[Break]

Gideon: Mayor Breed, thank you very, very much for joining us on Have a Nice Future.

Mayor Breed: Thank you.

Gideon: How is your future going so far?

Mayor Breed: My future is here right now. In my present. It's going OK.

Gideon: That's true for all of us. That is what this show is about; it's about the fact that our future is here, and we're all trying to figure it out as we go.

Mayor Breed: Yeah

Gideon: You grew up here. You were raised in public housing by your grandmother. You've seen the city change a lot. Some of that change has probably been good, some of it's been bad. What's the biggest change that you've seen growing up here?

Mayor Breed: I think the biggest cultural change probably is the decline of the African American community. Even though the community was always considered a smaller part of San Francisco, at its height it was somewhere between 12 and 14 percent. There used to be just more African Americans, more African American businesses, more African American cultural activities and events. And that's changed. Many of the people who were born and raised here don't live here anymore. And that's the thing that I miss the most.

Lauren: What has caused this decline?

Mayor Breed: There are a number of factors, and I can really speak from personal experience. You know, I grew up in public housing, and sadly there was a lot of violence and hopelessness and frustration. And I think some people moved away for better opportunities, as well as to protect their families from the violence. But also, the projects I grew up in were demolished and people were moved, and they were not necessarily moved back. So I think a number of issues played into that decline, including policies and decisions made by this city.

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Max G. Levy

Paresh Dave

WIRED Staff

Lauren: A lot of people looked at tech as the accelerator of changes like that, and your predecessor, Mayor Ed Lee, was known for being pretty friendly to the tech industry. There was even something known as the Twitter tax, where he was giving tax breaks to tech companies that have their offices here, that would bring young talent here driving the economy in the city. Which of his policies do you think were good for the city? Which policies are you actively looking to change in terms of the relationship to tech? How do you reestablish a kind of equilibrium between San Francisco and the tech industry?

Mayor Breed: Well, I want to make it clear that before tech was a major part of San Francisco, the damage had already been done to the African American community. I think that when the tech industry and some of the policies that Mayor Lee put forward, including a number of tax breaks and incentives, it was at a point where, you know, job opportunities were very challenging for the people of San Francisco.

I think that, moving forward, it was the right thing to do to provide incentives to attract these various industries to revitalize mid-market and to create these extraordinary job opportunities. I think the disconnect was, you know, what we didn't do as it relates to housing and connecting the existing population of San Francisco to those opportunities.

I think it was a five-year period, for every eight jobs we created, we created one new unit of housing, so the housing market was not supporting the increase in the number of jobs. I also think that there was a real issue around making sure that tech had an obligation to, you know, hire locally in various capacities.

And that we were creating these academies, which we did eventually, to prepare people for the jobs that exist, not just in coding and engineering and some of the things that were being done, but HR, security, receptionists, property managers. All of the layers of things that are needed, and making sure that there was some level of connection to the people who needed these opportunities the most and the ones that were being created.

Lauren: It is in fact a very different city from pre-pandemic. And I say this, I mean, this is my city. I live here. I love San Francisco, and it's very often that people come to visit here and they say, wow, this is a really beautiful city. They've just been hearing about it on the news, and they think it's like a war zone. And they come here and they realize it really is an incredibly beautiful city, but it does have its real problems.

And from the pandemic, our population is down, our transit revenues are down, our homeless population has gone up. There are a lot of office buildings downtown that are totally empty. I hear your optimism for San Francisco, but it is a very changed city. And I do think it's a little bit harder to convince people this is the place they should absolutely come if they want to work in tech or build the next big tech company. What does it really look like going forward for you?

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Max G. Levy

Paresh Dave

WIRED Staff

Mayor Breed: Well, I don't agree that it's been hard to convince people to come here, because they, for whatever reason, are still coming here. I think they're just doing things differently. They don't want as much office space. They're allowing their employees to work remotely, and that is definitely going to change San Francisco in, in so many ways, because you don't have that same, you know, active population of people in the downtown area moving around and getting on public transportation and going to restaurants and all of that.

But that's why part of my downtown recovery plan includes more creative options to make the downtown area not a 9 to 5 place. But to look at the evening and the weekends, as you know, possibilities of activities that could happen in the downtown area. The downtown area has been so restrictive in terms of what can be done there. And we have all these crazy codes that have been developed for years that make me insane. I mean, for example, the ability to take some of the office space and convert it into housing shouldn't be a difficult thing to do, but it is. It is because of the requirements of a yard and open space and all of these things that go with, you know, you have to get conditional use and these kinds of approvals to take an existing building and eliminate those requirements. And my goal in a lot of the legislation I'm proposing is to say, you know what? For these kinds of buildings, let's just remove it out of the way so that we don't even have to talk about it in the process of someone wanting to convert.

Gideon: I actually would love it if you could give us a high-level overview of the pillars of your recovery plan. How are you balancing the things you're doing to attract business back and attract residents back, and the things that you're also doing to deal with the issues that people, you know, complain about in San Francisco. Like crime and homelessness.

Mayor Breed: Definitely. So I'll start with the crime and the homelessness component, because it's not just about homelessness, it's about substance use disorder and mental illness and people struggling. Because you know, what we find when we're out there with our street medicine teams and our street crisis response team and all of these resources that we're putting into making sure that we have an alternative response to the challenges of our streets other than our police officers. And so we are putting a lot more resources into that to make sure that we're able to be more aggressive about getting people off the streets and not allow the open-air drug using and some of the things that people are experiencing.

Lauren: How do you do that? How do you actually get people off the streets and get them the support they need for substance abuse?

Justin Pot

Max G. Levy

Paresh Dave

WIRED Staff

Mayor Breed: Well, just so you know, San Francisco was one of the only cities in the region that was able to see a reduction in unsheltered homelessness. Fifteen percent reduction in unsheltered homelessness, and you know, 3 percent ...

Gideon: Over what period? Sorry.

Mayor Breed: So since 2019 until the last point in time count that we did last year, we saw a decent reduction, but that had everything. It was so much work. Of course, it was purchasing hotel buildings. It was providing wraparound supportive services to make sure that people were getting the support and the treatment that they need. It was changing our entire shelter system that was more of a congregate living system and making it more individualized with trailers and cabins, and so just really increasing our capacity significantly to get people off the streets. So we built out our behavioral health beds for those who suffer from mental illness. We've built out our shelter system, and then we have these various teams who are out there every day trying to get to the bottom of the challenges that people are facing and get them into housing.

The problem that we have, and where we will need changes to our state law. And I know they're trying to push for some change to the conservatorship law so that we can deal with those suffering from mental illness, but we need a lot more drastic change so we can be able to force people. Because the only way, in some cases, if people tell us no, which they do, um, if they tell us--

Gideon: Telling you, no, we don't want to come off the street ...

Mayor Breed: No, we don't want your help. No, we don't want your service. No, we're not going to get up. No, we're not going to leave. The only way we can deal with a problem like that is, you know, for example, some of our various basic laws to say, you know, you can't sit and lie on the sidewalk, so you're gonna have to move. Right? I mean, that's not a solution, but that's one of the only resources we have. Or if someone crosses the line and breaks the law, we can make an arrest. And our jails, unfortunately, this is not the place that people want to be used to help people who need treatment, uh, for addiction or substance use disorder or mental illness. And we need changes to state law in order to do a little bit more aggressive force to get people off the streets differently. Um,

Gideon: You said in an interview last year with The Atlantic, you said that changes that you were proposing as mayor were gonna make a lot of people uncomfortable. And you said, uh, that it was time to be less tolerant of all the bullshit that's destroyed our city. What did you mean by that?

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Max G. Levy

Paresh Dave

WIRED Staff

Mayor Breed: Well, when I say less tolerant, it's ... I know people have compassion for people who use drugs. You know, I personally have lost a sister to a drug overdose, and I have family members who suffer from addiction. But to say that, well, wait a minute, you know, they have an addiction and we need to, you know, provide them with support and services. I agree with that. But we also cannot let them publicly be out on the streets shooting up or using fentanyl or doing all these things where it has created a lot of chaos, and problematic situations happened in various communities.

When I was growing up, during the crack epidemic, you know, we knew people were on drugs, but the other thing is, in my mind, respect for the community where, when they saw kids or older people walking, like they hid that to a certain extent. It was a thing that wasn't spoken. And we know people are gonna always have challenges with addiction. I pray it's not me or I don't continue to see it happen to the people I care about or anyone else in this city. But the reality is it happens, and we should not just, because we're empathetic, allow it to just happen on our streets, because we're saying, well, this person is suffering from addiction and should not, you know, be in prison. I agree, but this is a behavior we can't tolerate.

And the other thing is the open air-drug dealing. Being able to publicly, you know, out in the open, deal drugs, sell it to anyone at any given time, and say, well, you know, people are being trafficked and forced to do this, but you know what? They're still breaking the law. We have to make arrests. We have to hold people accountable. We can't continue to just say, well, we don't want to go back to the failed war on drugs. And it's like, yeah, we don't. But did any of you who are saying that ever even live in it and understand what it felt and looked like?

This is far worse. And so what we have to do is be a lot more aggressive in how we do things. Yes, if you want help, we get you help. But if the alternative, if you break the law, then community drug court is not gonna be an option for you. So I think we've gotten away from accountability, and that's what I meant. That was what I was frustrated about, about the kids and the families that I'm meeting that are in tears and that are frustrated in the living condition about people I grew up with who have had encounters with the police growing up, who live in the Tenderloin, who have gotten clean and sober and are saying, London, what is going on around here? Like this is worse than what I've ever seen it, and we need you to help us. So we have to continue to do whatever we can, as aggressively as we can, to make sure that people don't feel comfortable doing what they're doing in the Tenderloin right now.

Justin Pot

Max G. Levy

Paresh Dave

WIRED Staff

Lauren: What other cities do you look to for ideas or inspiration around what San Francisco could you better? I think of a place like Houston, Texas, which has done a tremendous job with homelessness over the past decade or so. Austin, Texas. Which has done a really great job building up its tech community. I'm not saying that those are the best cities to be in. Once again, I'm still partial to San Francisco, but what do you look to, where do you look to?

Mayor Breed: So let's just talk about that, because like Houston and Austin, you know what, they have space policies that are not, you know, problematic to the development of those housing units and I think it just makes it a lot easier. But I do look to places like, for example, Amsterdam, right? I love how people in Amsterdam are able to move around on bikes, buses, and different modes of transportation the way that they are. And just with how the bike infrastructure exists there. And I want to see San Francisco become more user-friendly for people to move around using different modes of transportation and less reliant upon cars.

Lauren: But what's actually preventing us from doing that? I mean, put this in the context of we have a huge budget. San Francisco has a huge budget. I had the opportunity to hear your comptroller, Ben Rosenfeld, speak recently at Manny's, a wonderful local community center, and hear a little bit about the breakdown of the city budget. And I think other people look at us and say, wow, $14 billion. That's a budget that's bigger than a lot of states and some entire countries. Uh, yet we have the problems that we have. Yet you are here, Mayor Breed, telling us that you have these ideas and ideals for what a city can be. Why can't we do that? What is stopping us?

Mayor Breed: So I can spend this whole podcast talking just about the breakdown of the budget, because you have to keep in mind, San Francisco's a city and a county, We have our own airport. That's a part of the budget--

Lauren: Our discretionary budget is much smaller.

Mayor Breed: Very, yeah. It's on a whole other level. But like, you know, the airport dollars stay with the airport, the public utilities commission with the sewer and the treatment plant, and the water and electricity--like all of those things are a part of this larger budget. So yes, the discretionary part is a lot more difficult.

Then there are all these different carve-outs in the budget where this amount goes to children and families. This amount goes to this, this amount goes to that. It's not an excuse for why we can't. Because we were able to, you know, since I've become mayor, add over 22 miles of protected bike lanes. We did so aggressively. But it's not as easy as saying, OK, here's the money. You can't just--all of a sudden someone has access to their garage and then the next day they wake up and they no longer have access to their garage. So doing things like this requires outreach. It requires a lot of work.

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Max G. Levy

Paresh Dave

WIRED Staff

But I think in comparison to how we used to be when I grew up, you know, you didn't ride a bike to get around the city. You just did not. You got on the bus or you walked, and if you were lucky enough to have access to a vehicle, you were in a vehicle. But, you know, now the culture of San Francisco has shifted, and I think we're gonna get there.

Lauren: What keeps you up at night?

Mayor Breed: You know, I actually sleep really good at night.

Gideon: What's your secret?

Mayor Breed: I don't know what it is, but as soon as I hit the pillow, it's like I'm done. Because I gotta get my rest. If not, I'm gonna be grouchier than I already am.

Lauren: Metaphorically speaking, what keeps you up at night?

Mayor Breed: I think the thing that I think about most, uh, is really the challenges around the drug use and the drug dealing. You know, my goal is I want to see it improve. I want to see it turn around, and I want people to feel good about our city.

Gideon: And what, to take the opposite line, in what way does San Francisco reflect what the city of the future could be? What do you see as the hopeful side of that?

Mayor Breed: Well, I'm very hopeful because, you know, there have been political changes that have led to better results, uh, that we can produce for the city. I think, you know, the future of the city ...

Gideon: When you say "political changes" ...

Mayor Breed: Well, we have a new district attorney who's actually prosecuting people for crime. We have new members of the Board of Supervisors who are supporting reasonable policies that make sense. I think the people of this city want us to get back to basics. They want reliable transportation. They want clean and safe streets. They want to be able to make a decent living, hopefully purchase a home and raise their families and send them to school. To me that's the basics. AndI'm hopeful because I feel like the city is finally getting back to that. And the fact is, if we can get back to the basics and deliver for the people of the San Francisco, we can make this city so much better. And I am hopeful about that. I'm hopeful about the future. I'm hopeful about the city we are right now, but the, the city that we can definitely become by improving upon what we're already doing.

Lauren: But how do you build San Francisco back in a way that we're not perpetuating inequities? And, by the way, we think about this a lot at WIRED--even right now, there's a lot of conversation happening about generative AI and how amazing it is. But you talk to researchers and economists and they say, is this only going to further the technological divide? Deepen the gaps, right? It's going to make the top 1 percent wealthier, and the bottom 90 percent are not going to be able to meet, you know, any kind of wealth goals. Like, how do we ensure that San Francisco, if it is built back up, we're doing it in such a way that it's not just, you know, the very, very wealthy who have a comfortable place to live and everyone else struggles to live.

Justin Pot

Max G. Levy

Paresh Dave

WIRED Staff

Mayor Breed: Yeah. And that's gonna continue to be a struggle because people go into business because they want to make money and they want to be wealthy, and so you're not gonna be able to get away from folks who choose to do that. But what I will say is that companies are becoming more intentional about supporting the surrounding community and not just flying in the next new talent or what have you. The talent is right here, and so that's part of it. But also, when we look at a lot of the disparities around homelessness, around violence, and around a number of other issues, and especially one of the populations that's declined most significantly, where are we going wrong?

We know what the problems are, so how do we make those investments? We've given down-payment assistance for people to buy homes, which has been extraordinary. I met these families and you know, in tears about the ability, never thinking they could buy a home in San Francisco in their lives. Thirty-four new brick-and-mortar businesses that are started that we helped with the down payment for, uh, the rent and uh, the build-out, so that they can get started, because they're not necessarily getting a lot of the capital, uh, to get those businesses started.

And so I'm really proud of the investments the city's making, and also being intentional about getting more companies to be more open to supporting the community in a way that's gonna help bring people along. Rather than doing something to the city, it's doing something for the city. And I think we're gonna get there.

Gideon: You talked about how you're excited for what the city could become. So what does that look like 20, 30 years from now? What's your ideal of how San Francisco looks different from what it is now?

Mayor Breed: Well, it will look different because we'll have more housing in a lot of underutilized properties on the west side of town where you're not seeing a lot of places being built. We'll have a great public transportation system where it's reliable and people decide they want to use it. We'll have more protected bike lanes. We'll have, like, no homeless ever. Like, it's just, as soon as you're on the street, we're picking you up and taking you into shelter, into a situation, and we're able to, you know, clear out our streets, keep them clean, you know, keep people safe and sober. And make sure that if people want an opportunity to take care of themselves, they get one. But more importantly, the city changes for the better, where people just walk down the street and say, Hmm, there's something different about San Francisco and I'm loving it.

Lauren: And where are you in that timeline?

Mayor Breed: I hope I'm still mayor in that timeline. I want to see it happen yesterday, but that's what I fight for every single day. Because as we said earlier, I grew up born and raised in poverty, and when I think about just my own family and the challenges we experienced--having a sister who died from a drug overdose, having a brother who's still incarcerated--that could have easily been me, and I'm mayor of San Francisco. And so for me, I feel really honored and that this is really a privilege that I can't take lightly every day I show up to work. It has to be about making sure that people don't grow up in the same kinds of conditions and challenges, and knowing what's possible when San Francisco gets it right.

Justin Pot

Max G. Levy

Paresh Dave

WIRED Staff

Gideon: Well, Mayor Breed, thank you so, so much.

Lauren: Thank you so much.

Mayor Breed: Thank you.

[Break]

Gideon: So Lauren, as a resident of San Francisco, how do you feel about the city after we talked to the mayor?

Lauren: Well, it was hard to feel pessimistic after the interview, because when we walked out of the mayor's office that day, we walked into this incredible atrium at City Hall and there was a wedding happening right then and there. Like there was one wedding happening when I first walked into the building that morning, and then we saw someone walking down the aisle as we came out of the office, and it's really hard not to feel optimistic when you're witnessing that sort of event. How did you feel about it?

Gideon: You know, the thing that struck me was how animated she got when she talked about San Francisco, comparing it with Amsterdam--as you know, a very European city with bike lanes and buses and people in the streets in the evenings. And for just a moment, I had this glimpse of a city in which all of the problems of homelessness and drug abuse and poor housing have been cleared up. It is rather unique among American cities and could really be kind of a paradise.

Lauren: San Francisco has gotten a lot better about having car-free spaces in bike lanes, which Mayor Breed talked about.But yeah, I thought it was really interesting how when we asked her what other cities she looks to for inspirations that she actually mentioned a European city instead of another US city.

Gideon: Yeah, that was striking. What was also interesting was that she kind of skirted the questions that we were asking her about the tech industry and how to bring it back. She talked about, you know, making things easier for businesses, getting rid of some of the restrictions on permitting, for instance, but a lot of the things we were asking her about tech, she was bringing it back to the social issues, to the homelessness and the drugs, which she seems really impassioned about

Lauren: Right? Yeah. She seemed to really thread the needle on the tech sector's direct impact on the city, both good and bad. She's absolutely correct that the African American population has been in decline since the 1970s. It's the Black community that sees the most consistent declines in the population in every census, and there are certainly discriminatory policies that have led to this. But you know, longtime San Franciscans will often say that it's tech that has driven the city's prices up and created a monoculture in recent years. Like it's, you know, in more recent times it's hard not to look at issues like the rising cost of housing and at least ask the question of whether there's a correlation between that and the rise of the tech sector.

Justin Pot

Max G. Levy

Paresh Dave

WIRED Staff

Gideon: Yes. That's when I think she was being at her most political. As you say, she was threading the needle. She wanted to send a signal that the tech industry was welcome and wasn't being blamed for the social problems the city has. But at the same time, it didn't seem to be uppermost in her mind as the thing that she wanted to work on.

Lauren: I would also like to have asked her more about safe consumption sites, which are places where people who have an addiction can get a hold of drugs or bring their own and use them with safety personnel around, which is part of a broader effort in harm reduction, right? The idea being that this would prevent overdoses. It's clear that drug abuse is a topic she feels strongly about. It is such a complicated issue though. Mayor Breed has said before she supports safe consumption sites, but there have been legal restrictions around them in San Francisco, and more recently she has said she would support a nonprofit model that might allow safe consumption, which is actually an idea borrowed from New York City. But overall, that's just one solution to what is clearly a much bigger problem.

Gideon: I think the fact that she talks about this stuff so much reflects not just her own concern with it but also an awareness that around the country and around the world, this is a thing that people look at San Francisco and see ... If you go to tech conferences or look at tech Twitter, people are talking about how the city has been overtaken by the homeless and there is drug use on the streets and there are cars being broken into all the time. It feels almost like there are these two completely different San Franciscos that exist in people's heads. One is this beautiful city, and one is almost the land of the walking dead. Right?

Lauren: People who refer to these folks in the streets as zombies, I think, are sometimes forgetting that they're human beings too, and that it's going to take a huge collective effort to solve some of these problems. I'm not sure I left that conversation feeling like Mayor Breed knew exactly how to fix these things--because in fairness, what if the systems at play are bigger than anything she can do at the city level? What if we need a much broader conversation around money and taxes and housing and the role of government in providing safety nets and just what it means to be safe in a community and also care for your neighbors. I don't know, Gideon, did you walk away from the conversation feeling as though Mayor Breed had proposed some solutions you felt good about?

Gideon: You know, it was striking to me that she's proposing pretty hard-line solutions. In some ways, she's talking about using the law and all sorts of other measures to essentially force people off the streets. And yet she doesn't come at this with a lack of empathy. You know, she talks about having lost her sister to a drug overdose, having a brother who's incarcerated. But all in all, yes, I feel like she's making quite a hard push.

Justin Pot

Max G. Levy

Paresh Dave

WIRED Staff

Lauren: Yeah, she is taking a firm approach, and the thing is, San Francisco isn't unique in dealing with a lot of these issues. Homelessness is spiking all across the country. Drug abuse is too, and few people have really come up with a good solution. So a lot of other cities will be watching and learning from Breed's successes and mistakes.

Gideon: And not just on drugs and homelessness. Right?

Lauren: Right. She mentioned the empty downtowns and the restrictive zoning laws that she wants to change to deal with the rising cost of living. And that's yet again, a problem that we're dealing with all over. So if she finds that she can turn some of these empty office buildings into apartments, that would be huge, right? So, Gideon, are you going to stake out an empty floor of the Salesforce Tower for yourself?

Gideon: Sure, if I can get one with south-facing windows. I have to say, I found Mayor Breed's vision of the city pretty compelling.

Lauren: You know what else is pretty compelling? Some of the other guests we're gonna be having on this podcast.

Gideon: Yes. We're gonna be talking to some exciting people in the next few weeks. We've got Max Levchin over at Affirm on the future of paying for things, but also biohacking and socialism, and so much more.

Lauren: We've got a conversation with a futurist about how you should prepare your kids for climate change by basically scaring the bejesus out of them.

Gideon: And we'll hear from the CEO of Slack about how to disconnect from your job when the future of work is increasingly always-on, thanks in part to things like Slack.

Lauren: And we want to hear who you'd like to hear from. You can email us at nicefuture@WIRED.com. Tell us what you're worried about, what excites you, any question at all you have about the future, and we'll ask our guests.

Gideon: Have a Nice Future is hosted by me, Gideon Lichfield.

Lauren: And me, Lauren Goode.

Gideon: If you like the show, please leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts and follow us to hear more episodes.

Lauren: Have a Nice Future is a production of Conde Nast Entertainment. Danielle Hewitt and Lena Richards from Prologue Projects Produce the show.

Gideon: See you back here next Wednesday, and until then, have a nice future.