With the world watching San Francisco this week as it hosts the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit, the California city has been making use of an opportunity to rehabilitate its reputation as a struggling metropolis in decline.
Apec – San Francisco’s largest international gathering since 1945 when dignitaries gathered to sign the charter creating the United Nations – is expected to draw 20,000 people to the city. The summit will bring together leaders from 21 member countries to promote trade and economic development in the Pacific region.
Joe Biden and the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, will meet at the summit on Wednesday, the leaders’ first face-to-face interaction in a year.
In recent days, the city has undergone a major cleanup – pressure-washing sidewalks, cleaning streets and removing graffiti. It has also moved unhoused people to indoor lodgings.
Meanwhile, the city’s mayor, London Breed, has been promoting pop-up shops, new destinations and restaurants in San Francisco’s beleaguered downtown, which has struggled to recover after the pandemic decimated tourism and brought about a major rise in remote work. Major retailers closed downtown outlets last summer and businesses have complained of vandalism, shoplifting, break-ins and unresponsive police.
San Francisco has also struggled with a homelessness emergency, open-air drug use in some neighborhoods and high-profile retail thefts. A count conducted over one day in 2022 found that 7,754 people were unhoused in San Francisco, about half of whom were staying in a shelter.
Still, Breed has argued the city has unfairly been used as a punching bag and that the world’s tech capital is fighting to improve.
The mayor has said she hopes rather than the crime and homelessness seen in reports on San Francisco, summit visitors will come away with memories of a city that is safe and vibrant.
“Not to suggest that we don’t have challenges like any other major city, but we think that because we’re expecting thousands of press from around the world, that will give them a chance to experience San Francisco,” she told the Associated Press.
The event is not without controversy in the Bay Area city. Thousands of demonstrators, including pro-Palestinian activists and anti-capitalist groups, protested against the summit on Sunday, arguing that gatherings such as Apec’s have resulted in trade deals that harm workers.
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Advocates for unhoused people have argued that the summit will negatively affect those living on the street.
Jennifer Friedenbach, the executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, said she feared a repeat of 2016 when San Francisco hosted the Super Bowl. People were booted out of shelter lines to make way for those who were normally residing in downtown and had to be moved.
“It’s rough out there,” she said. “Folks want to get off the streets, but there’s not capacity for everybody.”
The city will not open special homeless shelters specifically for the summit. However, a group shelter was set to open last week and roughly 300 new beds will be available this month and next, said Emily Cohen with the city’s department of homelessness and supportive housing.