It is hard to find a city in America whose residents say they care about black lives more than San Francisco. Two weeks after Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors affirmed in a resolution that “Black Lives Matter.” In response to a police officer killing George Floyd in 2020, more than 1,000 San Franciscans marched under the banner of “Black Lives Matter.” And, later that same year, San Francisco Mayor London Breed promised to defund the police and spend the money saved on black lives.

And yet, for a city that says it cares so much about black lives, it’s hard to find a city that does a poorer job of caring for them. Two weeks ago I checked in on a black man in his early thirties named Korey Gibson who I had discovered living in a nest of garbage in the South of Market neighborhood. Korey suffers debilitating pain and smokes fentanyl and meth during much of the day. When I arrived, I discovered a young, naked, and psychotic black woman wrapped in a dirty blanket lying just a few feet away from him.

I don’t doubt that progressives feel sympathy toward Korey, the young mentally ill woman, and other black people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco. Research suggests that politically liberal and progressive people express, in general, greater compassion toward the misfortunate than do more politically conservative individuals. San Francisco spends an astonishing $1 billion per year on around 10,000 homeless individuals who are disproportionately black.

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