The problem isn't necessarily that SF is losing people, but WHO they are
losing. When productive citizens leave due to the cost of living and
employment situation while bums flock from all over because the city doesn't
have the spine to enforce the will of the voters and cut off the $400 drug
and booze allowance, that's when you have real problems.


"abdul rahim" <garth.1.rahim@spamgourmet.com> wrote in message
news:c7c4f07f.0307110555.c48dd81@posting.google.co m...
> High-tech bust drains Bay Area population
> By Haya El Nasser, USA TODAY
> San Francisco is losing population faster than any other big U.S.
> city, evidence that the dot-com bust is pushing people away from some
> of the nation's most attractive regions.
> Perennial population losers such as Buffalo, Cleveland and Gary, Ind.,
> saw declines at lower rates than San Francisco and other Bay Area
> cities from July 1, 2001, to July 1, 2002, according to estimates the
> Census Bureau is releasing today.
>
> San Francisco's population fell 1.5% to 764,049. Sunnyvale and Daly
> City, also in the Bay Area, were among the Top 10 losers. San Jose
> declined 0.6% to 900,443.
>
> Experts attribute the population losses to sweeping layoffs in the
> high-tech sector. The Bay Area lost an estimated 313,000 jobs from
> December 2000 to December 2002.
>
> "This confirms the sinking feeling we've had," says Sunne Wright
> McPeak, president of the Bay Area Council, which represents the 275
> largest employers in the region.
>
> "There was a time when all you had to say was 'Bay Area' and everyone
> wanted to be here. Clearly, now we need to work for it just like
> everyone else," McPeak says.
>
> Austin, another high-tech center, slipped 0.2% to 671,873.
>
> The nation's fastest population growth continues to be concentrated in
> the Sun Belt. Seven of the 10 fastest growing cities were in Arizona,
> California and Nevada. No. 1: Gilbert, Ariz., outside Phoenix, was up
> 10.3% to 135,005.
>
> Many cities that are growing are doing so more slowly than in earlier
> years.
>
> Seventy-six of the 242 cities that have populations above 100,000 lost
> ground from 2001 to 2002, compared with 41 in the 1990s.
>
> The Bay Area's losses are small compared with those that many
> industrial cities have experienced for decades. In the 1990s, Buffalo
> lost almost 11% of its population and Gary almost 12%. During that
> time, San Francisco grew by 7.3%.
>
> The population figures "show that the new economy can have a negative
> impact on cities in the same way as the old economy did," says William
> Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in
> Washington, D.C.
>