> His argument is that
feeling safe is as important, if not more important from a policymaking perspective
I’ll set aside his smear that opponents of crime come from suburbs and his strawman that those who oppose crime only want “more cops, stiffer sentences and a return to the Gov. Reagan-era incarceration of the mentally ill”.
His main argument is that by “objective” measures, San Francisco is safe and any increase in danger is only subjective “feelings”, but that “feelings” still affect tourism and politics. The first part (which is the same party line we have seen in the SF Chronicle) is the gaslighting. I want to distinguish between psychological feelings, and risk which can be real but not fully measurable. I hypothesize that for many residents, actual risk of injury, not just feelings, has increased over the past 5 years. There are many mechanisms by which risk may not show up in the citywide violence statistics. Crimes may shift from one neighborhood to another (e.g. to touristy places) or from one demographic to another (e.g. against Asians) while staying steady citywide. Armed robbers may primarily target wealthier people who give them what they want, but victims who have less to lose and resist are more likely to be attacked. Underage thieves may injure you through reckless driving instead of attacks. With fewer pedestrians commuting after COVID-19, a street that is more dangerous may get fewer violent incidents. Or victims may underreport crimes. The point is, when there are so many changes in behavior among commuters, thieves, and addicts, I don’t believe a couple citywide metrics give the whole picture.
> you have issues with him based on unrelated reporting on an issue you seem to care deeply about
That’s just the most egregious example. I learned to read Eskenazi’s articles skeptically because I often read him pushing one lazy narrative but not getting the details right or not getting the other side of the argument. Another example is this article on Proposition 22 https://missionlocal.org/2020/09/prop-22-chronicle-uber-lyft.... In it, he claims that “Airbnb and its ilk skirted paying hotel taxes for years… And they kept their money”, which is not true; Airbnb settled with the city to pay all the 15% hotel back taxes which exceeded their own 6% revenue during that time. And notice how overtly one-sided that article is; it makes no attempt to get the other side of the delivery issue and whether paying drivers who are are waiting at home with their app open makes any business sense for Uber or for taxi dispatch companies for that matter. Another example I recall is the reporting on HubHaus https://missionlocal.org/2019/08/san-francisco-rental-platfo... which claimed without evidence that the room share company was “exacerbating the already onerous cost of housing” and showed very little interest in what it would take to actually follow the definition of family, and whether the definition of family itself is what is exacerbating the housing crisis. He is good at ferreting out a certain kind of bureaucratic corruption (e.g. DBI), but he turns a blind eye to other kinds of corrupt rules that benefit incumbents that politicians like Arron Peskin (coincidentally one of his favorite sources) specialize in. In other words, he’s biased, and you often get only one side from his articles.