[Crawford]

SF is indeed much grittier and messier than NYC these days (which probably surprises most people) but I don't think it's necessarily "liberalism" at issue. This sounds like a correlation-causation fail.

West Coast cities have good year-round climate, encouraging street living. And it just happens that all the subsidized housing and street people are right downtown, where the tourists congregate.

San Diego, a pretty conservative place by big city standards, is almost as bad. Downtown SD is overrun by aggressive homeless and trash.