New Study Finds San Francisco is America’s Worst Run City

According to a new WalletHub study, San Francisco was ranked as the United States’ worst-run city in the country, coming in 148th out of 148 cities, with Oakland a close third-to-last place.

The study used several recent datapoints, including quality of city services, total budget per capita, long-term debt outstanding per capita, and high school graduation rates for the overall list. On a national scope, Provo, Utah was the top ranked city, followed by Nampa, Idaho and Manchester, New Hampshire. On the inverse, the bottom 5 worst run cities were San Francisco, Detroit, Oakland, New York, and Philadelphia. Amongst Californian cities, the top ranked one was Huntington Beach, coming in 34th place largely because of it being ranked first in quality of city services.

Surprisingly, many Californian cities ranked high in city service quality, with Huntington Beach, Fremont, and San Diego all being in the top ten nationally. California cities also ranked surprisingly high in high school graduation rates, with Anaheim, Huntington Beach, and Santa Ana all coming in the top five, with San Francisco coming in dead last. The lone bright spot for San Francisco was the infant mortality rate, which San Francisco has the lowest rate of in the nation.

Overall, California cities were largely either near the top or bottom of various categories. They were marked as having the worst violent crime rate in the nation (Oakland), the fifth highest unemployment rate (Stockton), the highest median average household income (Fremont) the lowest percentage of people in poverty (Fremont), the worst quality of roads (Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Anaheim being tied), and the worst air pollution (Riverside).

However, with everything combined, San Francisco still came out at the bottom. Currently, the city is still grappling with multiple public safety issues, a nearly $900 million budget deficit, a still struggling downtown, a massive drug use and overdose problem, a homeless epidemic, a huge public school deficit, and multiple other issues. While most were not directly addressed in the study, they were certainly contributing factors to many of the metrics in the study.

San Francisco ranked as the worst run city in America

Experts noted that the study covered all of the important areas cities are facing today.

“When I ran for Mayor of Riverside 30 years ago, my platform was safe streets, good jobs, and great neighborhoods,” explained former Riverside Mayor and  current UC Riverside Professor Ronald Loveridge in the study. “Riverside is now a city of over 330,000 residents. Those three objectives remain important. However, I would in 2024 add others. Homelessness is the first issue now identified by residents and businesses. Homelessness is a compelling issue across the City, especially downtown. A related and even more fundamental problem is the high costs of housing, buying, or renting. Second, information is now more complex and difficult. Social media have replaced the local newspaper. Residents have many different sources of information. The absence of common information complicates/diminishes civic conversation and participation.

“Third, all politics is no longer local. The national agenda increasingly sets the local agenda. The issues that divide the nation increasingly divide the City, and especially so at the school board level. Symbolic issues too often become defining controversies. Fourth, core values for how cities should be governed now go beyond economy, efficiency, and effectiveness to include equity and engagement. Cities are searching for ways to operationalize these latter two values.

“Fifth, shared governance between the city manager and the elected is a dynamic challenge, as council members increase their time, involvement, and focus on policy/political choices. And sixth, the overriding imperatives of city political life continue to center on economic growth, governance, and region. Success increasingly depends on cooperation and partnerships with agencies, groups, and governments outside of city hall.”

As of Wednesday evening, San Francisco leadership did not yet respond to the findings of the study, even though leaders in Provo and other cities did respond to the findings. The study also marks the latest negative study for the city, following other recent studies that found that San Francisco still has a huge office vacancy problem and that is still currently leads the country in the number of people moving out.