Can We Fix San Fransicko? San Fransicko author Michael Shellenberger on homelessness, crime, addiction, and his differences with progressives and libertarians.

• Author: Weissmueller, Zach
• Position: San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities

IN DECEMBER, SAN Francisco Mayor London Breed declared a state of emergency in the city's Tenderloin district, which will lead to increased police presence in the epicenter of the city's homelessness crisis. It was a major turnaround for Breed, who after the police killing of George Floyd in 2020 called for "ending the use of police in responding to noncriminal activity." The move was criticized by groups like the Coalition on Homelessness, which called it an "expansion of strategies that have been tried and failed" that would contribute to the "instability and poor public health outcomes" of people living on the streets.

Michael Shellenberger, author of San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities, called Breed's new "tough love" approach a "big step in the right direction." The homelessness crisis, he argues, is actually an addiction and mental health crisis; to stop it, he believes, we need to end policies that permit open-air drug scenes on public property, prevent police from enforcing the law, and undermine the creation of a functional mental health care system. Shellenberger is certainly not a libertarian, though says he appreciates the "cultural libertarianism" of his home state.

In January, Reason's Zach Weissmueller interviewed Shellenberger, a Bay Area activist best known for his advocacy of nuclear power, about his foray into social policy, his critiques of both progressive and libertarian politics, and whether America's cities can clean up their streets without grossly violating civil liberties.

Reason: Your new book is San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities. First off, could we talk about the title for a second? It's a little aggressive, no? Aren't you worried about scaring off potentially persuadable people?

Shellenberger: I don't want to scare offanybody, but I believe in truth in advertising. San Francisco and other liberal cities are sick. They have people with untreated mental illness and untreated addiction camping in parks, on sidewalks, using drugs publicly, defecating publicly. It's a huge public health problem. I don't just mean homelessness--I also mean the broader urban decay, including rising crime.

I also argue that there's a sick way of thinking about these problems, which is to pathologize our system as fundamentally evil and wrong, and that that leads to terrible outcomes. The book is about San Francisco, but it's also really about what the subtitle says, which is why progressives ruin cities. Why is it that cities that ostensibly care the most about poor people, minorities, and people suffering mental illness and addiction treat them so terribly? What's going on? That's the reason for the book.

I have identified as a progressive. I now identify as a liberal and a moderate, and I see myself making the case for institutions--police and criminal justice and functioning electricity grids and homeless shelters.

The perspective that you bring to this as a former activist involved in progressive causes is oddly relatable to me, because progressive politics and libertarian politics overlap in many of these areas--drug legalization, criminal justice reform, the rights of those with mental illness. As a former Californian who has seen and documented a lot of the tragedy unfolding on the streets, I've had to personally think very deeply about how some of these policies have been implemented and their real-world effects. I still want to see major changes in laws and sentencing across the country that maximize personal liberty, but my general sense is that the way it's been implemented in practice has emphasized the personal liberty side of the equation while ignoring the personal responsibility part. For a libertarian, those things are bound together. What is your big-picture diagnosis of what's gone wrong in California cities?

I'm in California because I love the cultural libertarianism here, the fact that we really reject a lot of the traditional status hierarchy of the East Coast around where you went to school, working in big companies, stuff like that. I love the entrepreneurialism.

I also care a lot about people. I mean, I think the trip that libertarians lay on people is that they care about freedom more. And the trip that progressives lay on people is that they're more compassionate. The truth is that a lot of us love our freedom and a lot of us care about other people, and we're looking for some practical ways to solve these problems.

If you take the so-called homeless problem, I believe it's fundamentally a problem of untreated mental illness and drug addiction, a form of mental illness. It's often selfinflicted, and it sometimes comes from trauma or from undiagnosed depression, anxiety, or schizophrenia, but sometimes it just comes from partying too much.

We don't have a functioning psychiatric system. A lot of people that are addicted to hard drugs might have done fine with an antidepressant, some cognitive behavioral therapy, and exercise, which works for almost everybody. We don't have that, and...