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America's worst-run city is revealed: and it's not New York or Chicago...
San Francisco has ranked as America's worst-run city, thanks to its looming $1.4 billion budget deficit and social problems from homelessness to crime and cash-strapped public schools.
Researchers at WalletHub found that San Francisco was the worst-managed of all the 148 major cities assessed in its report, in a damning indictment of the administration of Mayor London Breed.
The personal finance website ranked other big-name cities among the lowest-performing ten.
They included Oakland, New York, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit, Flint, and Los Angeles.
Paul Helmke, an Indiana University professor who was involved in the research, said costly housing and large numbers of homeless people were among the issues hurting San Francisco and other laggards.
Homeless and intoxicated people sprawling across streets for hundreds of yards tell a potent story about how badly San Francisco is run
'Public safety, transportation, economic development, and environmental issues also continue to rank high,' added Helmke, also the director of the Civic Leaders Center.
San Francisco has in recent months been battling a glut of negative headlines about the social ills plaguing a city that was until recently noted as a picturesque cultural hub on the Pacific coast.
The desolate reality of San Francisco's hollowed out city center was laid bare earlier this month by footage showing every store in an entire retail block shuttered and empty.
The prime real estate was once home to outlets including Uniqlo, H&M, Rasputin Records, and Lush, but all have disappeared in a city center plagued by crime, drugs, and homelessness.
The empty downtown area means less business paying property taxes, leading to a crippling roughly $790 million budget deficit in this cycle which looks set to keep growing, experts warn.
Meanwhile, the Bay Area's descent into lawlessness has been on display in a series of terrifying night sideshows in Oakland and the waterfront.
The illegal gatherings of locals performing car stunts, playing loud music after midnight and even setting vehicles ablaze are seen by many residents as a major nuisance — especially when cops refuse to intervene.
'We are on our own here,' tweeted one resident after a night of dangerous, freewheeling stunts earlier this month.
'Why do we pay taxes again?'
San Francisco Mayor London Breed hailed figures showing a recent cut in street sleeping
A map reveals the major businesses which have left, or have announced they are leaving, San Francisco in recent months. Retailers like Whole Foods, Anthropologie, Old Navy, AmazonGo, Saks Off Fifth and now American Eagle are among those taking part in the mass exodus
Homelessness, drug use and mental health issues showcase the social ills in Denver, Colorado
With low debt and rising house prices, the Boise suburb of Nampa ranks as America's best-run city
Others of the low-ranking cities have also had their share of negative publicity.
New York Mayor Eric Adams has complained that his city has been overrun by more than 180,000 asylum-seekers who have passed through the city's intake system since Spring 2022.
The influx, driven by arrivals at the southern border, has stretched the city's shelter and schooling systems to their limits.
Rutgers University academic Cleopatra Charles
Researchers noted that such big cities as New York, Chicago, and San Francisco were tougher and 'more complex' to manage for mayors.
Still, Rutgers University academic Cleopatra Charles said vagrancy, poor public safety, aging infrastructure and environmental threats were among the seemingly insurmountable problems draining city coffers.
'Many cities are in financial trouble due to lingering inflation, underfunded pension liabilities, and high costs of providing retiree health benefits,' said Charles.
'We are on an unsustainable path.'
Lesser-known, smaller cities were showing the well-known mayors how to manage budget, researchers said.
They scored Nampa, a city of about 100,000 people to the west of Boise, Idaho — as the best run hub in the US.
The city scored high thanks to low crime rates, strong economic growth, steadily growing property values, and 'extremely low' public debt of $564 per person, many times lower than elsewhere.
Lexington, Kentucky, Boise, Idaho, Nashua, New Hampshire, and Oklahoma City rounded out the top five.
They 'use their budgets most effectively to provide high-quality financial security, education, health, safety and transportation to their residents,' said WalletHub analyst Cassandra Happe.
Researchers used Moody's city credit ratings, house prices, and rates of graduations, life expectancy, crime, unemployment, poverty, homelessness, traffic congestion and other measures.