USA Today reports:
African-Americans are abandoning this famously progressive city at a rate that has alarmed San Francisco officials, who vow to stop the exodus and develop a strategy to win blacks back to the city. In June, Mayor Gavin Newsom appointed a task force to study how to reverse decades of policies — and neglect — that black leaders say have fueled the flight. ...The problem, as far as I can tell, is not that San Francisco's policies are anti-black. Rather it is that they are anti-poor and and anti-lower-middle-class. San Francisco's minimum wage, $9.14/hour, is the highest in the nation. Its apartments are subject to rent control. As a consequence, few jobs are available for low-skilled labor and living space is hard to find. These liberal policies, which nominally are intended to help the poor, always seem to have "unintended" consequences.According to Census estimates, the number of blacks here shrank from 13.4% of the population in 1970 to just 6.5% in 2005 — the biggest percentage decline in any major American city.
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