Liberal San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston blames capitalism for city’s sprawling homeless problem and says it’s ‘counterproductive’ to arrest people openly doing illegal drugs in public
A liberal San Francisco supervisor has blamed capitalism for the city's massive homelessness problem, saying it is “counterproductive” to arrest people for openly using drugs in public.
Dean Preston, the supervisor who represents District 5, has also been very open about his support for the “defund the police” movement.
“I think we have a very bloated police budget. All kinds of garbage at the police station. I mean, I could cut $100 million from the police department,” he said in a recent clip from the UnHerd documentary shared online.
His district is part of the Tenderloin District, an area known for its open-air drug market and the city's homeless population.
San Francisco has experienced an exodus of businesses as the downtown struggles with drugs and homelessness sweeping the city.
Dean Preston, the District 5 Supervisor for San Francisco, has blamed the homeless epidemic on capitalism and said there is a “bloated police budget.”
Exclusive photos from DailyMail.com show homeless people filling the streets in San Francisco's Tenderloin District, where vagrants regularly relieve themselves on the sidewalk
Preston then blamed the country's economic structure as one of the main reasons why District 5 is severely affected by homelessness.
“I think what you see in the Tenderloin is absolutely the result of capitalism and what happens in capitalism to the people on the bottom rungs,” Preston said in the interview.
He disagreed with the city's “inconsistent” approach to getting rid of homeless encampments and arresting drug users. Preston said the technology “has not made our city safer. It has actually made it less safe. It increases the risk of overdoses.'
His comments came as the homeless population swarmed back to the streets of San Francisco after Governor Gavin Newsom decided to temporarily clean up the city for Chinese President Xi's visit last month.
Newsom quickly cleared out the growing homeless encampments and drug activity on the streets in preparation for the APEC summit when President Joe Biden flew in to meet with his Chinese counterpart.
The city worked around the clock to clear encampments, increase shelter placement and deploy “night ambassadors” to keep vagrants away from the area.
After the six-day event, which attracted more than 20,000 visitors, concluded on November 17, the special attention for the Tenderloin District came to an end.
“The following Monday the gates were gone, and so was the entire police force,” architect Rick Garcia, 48, told DailyMail.com.
“There was still some residual cleanliness left, but soon the mentally disturbed people, the witch zombies, began to make their way back into the neighborhood. And because they are tolerated, they were able to come here unhindered,” Garcia added.
Governor Gavin Newsom recently cleaned up the city in preparation for Chinese President Xi's visit last month, and after the conference, the streets in the Tenderloin District returned to normal.
X owner Elon Musk and other San Franciscans said Preston's progressive policies contributed to the city's downfall, rife with open drug use, ram raids and violent crime.
“Dean Preston should also be fired. He may be the person most responsible for the destruction of San Francisco,” Musk said in a recent post.
In another post to X, Musk said, “Dean Preston should be in jail for what he did to San Francisco.”
In response to the CEO's comments, Preston replied: “It's a reality check that it's not a safe or productive place to share my thoughts.”
“Twitter has been overwhelmed by trolls and misinformation since Musk took over. When the site owner called for me to be jailed, it became clearer that it was time to move to a new platform.”
Shopping carts and trash litter the sidewalk in San Francisco's Tenderloin District
California Governor Gavin Newsom greeted Chinese President Xi Jinping in San Francisco last month
A DailyMail.com analysis of the cuts facing key departments in San Francisco shows police need to find savings of $18.5 million and public health budgets could lose $26 million
Preston was elected District 5 Supervisor in 2019 and, according to the Board of Supervisors website, “he advocates for fundamental change at the local, state and national levels.”
Preston has previously hit back at Musk's criticism. In a statement on his website last month, Preston called Musk a “billionaire fascist.”
The Tenderloin district is located in the heart of San Francisco, near the Asian Art Museum. It is just a few blocks from City Hall. The area also includes part of the Compton Transgender Cultural District.
The homeless population and crime rates have skyrocketed, causing many local residents, along with major retailers, to flee the city.
Robberies are up 14 percent so far this year in the Golden Gate City, where Mayor London Breed last month demanded 18 percent cuts to next year's police budget.
According to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, the number of reported drug overdose deaths in the first nine months of the year was 620, compared to 540 during the same period in 2020.
The city stands to lose $200 million a year in revenue due to the exodus of businesses, which has driven major hotels and retailers to flee the city center.
Stout retailer Old Navy announced last month that it would close its flagship store in the area, becoming the latest chain to leave town.
Nordstrom also announced it would close all of its locations in the city.
In April, Whole Foods announced it would close all of their locations, with Anthropologie and Office Depot also making the same decisions, leading some analysts to predict the city has entered a “doom loop” of permanent decline.