POLL: 43% of San Franciscans say things in city are headed in 'right direction'
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce is celebrating 175 years on Wednesday.
To mark the occasion, they hosted a CityBeat Breakfast with more than 650 business leaders from across the city.
They also released annual polling results on the state of the city.
"It is my job as your mayor to ensure that we create conditions for success once again," said San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie.
The future is bright in San Francisco and not just according to Mayor Lurie, who just stepped into office less than two months ago.
"In the past, consecutively, it's been the wrong direction, until this year!" Rodney Fong, President and CEO of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce said.
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According to a new CityBeat poll released by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce at Wednesday's breakfast, 43% of San Franciscans say that things in the city are headed in the right direction.
That number is up 22% compared to 2024.
"Now what we have at levels I haven't seen before is a general sense of agreement that we have problems with public drug use that we have to solve, our police, sheriff, fire, 911 operators are understaffed, public safety is something that we have to take seriously," said San Francisco Supervisor Matt Dorsey.
As the Chamber celebrates their 175th anniversary at Wednesday morning's CityBeat Breakfast, many leaders say they're looking forward to seeing more foot traffic across the city, soon.
This, after Mayor Lurie issued a memo to all city staff members on Tuesday, requiring most to return to the office at least four days a week, beginning at the end of April.
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Right now, only 70% of city workers show up to the office five days a week, the remaining 30% is on a hybrid schedule, three days a week.
"It's not that we want to push you back to the office, but we want to make downtown San Francisco fun, we want to make it entertaining for you to come into San Francisco in a place where you can't catch that vibrancy anywhere else but San Francisco, and we certainly have that going for us," Fong said.
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And Supervisor Dorsey says, the future seems even brighter, after passing legislation only the day before which will make it easier to convert old office buildings into housing.
"Some of the office buildings that are there, underutilized or even vacant, they're not doing anything for the neighborhood. And right now in the 21st century, we have the ability to correct the mistakes of the 20th century that really saw downtown as a 9 to 5 neighborhood that was a ghost town at night, we need to reimagine that," Dorsey said.
According to the poll results revealed during Wednesday's event, 87% of voters support transforming underused malls and stores, and 83% of voters agree that investment downtown is a priority.
