US President Donald Trump speaks to the press after disembarking from Air Drive One upon arrival at Palm Seaside Worldwide Airport in West Palm Seaside, Florida, Oct. 17, 2025, as he travels to Mar-a-Lago for the weekend.
Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Pictures
President Donald Trump is stepping up his calls to deploy the Nationwide Guard to San Francisco on the very second that the town is present process a post-pandemic resurgence, propelled by synthetic intelligence.
Crime charges are down 30% from 2024, murder ranges hit their lowest ranges in 70 years and automotive break-ins have not been this low in 22 years. In the meantime, occasion bookings and tourism are on the rise, residential actual property is changing into extra scarce and the workplace market is heating up.
Enterprise momentum within the metropolis is basically constructed on the AI increase.
New knowledge from CBRE present enterprise capital funding in 2025 is predicted to surpass the file excessive of $276 billion hit in 2021. The majority of that funding has been in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, the place 80% of AI enterprise funding by way of the third quarter has been focused to the tune of $115 billion.
By the top of the September, the San Francisco Bay Space was already 35% above its earlier annual funding peak, in accordance with CBRE’s VC Funding evaluation.
“San Franciscans are feeling constructive concerning the route of our metropolis as soon as once more,” Daniel Lurie, the town’s Democratic mayor stated in a assertion final week launched by Governor Gavin Newsom’s workplace. “And we’re going to proceed working each single day to construct on this progress and maintain our metropolis secure three hundred and sixty five days a 12 months.”
The assertion was meant to tout the profitable efforts of native regulation enforcement forward of Salesforce’s annual Dreamforce convention final week. The difficulty grew to become significantly controversial after Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff informed the New York Occasions that he’d help Trump’s name for federal troops to be despatched to San Francisco. His sentiments had been publicly supported by Elon Musk and David Sacks, high-profile techies with shut ties to the Trump Administration.
On Friday, going through mounting criticism, Benioff backtracked, posting on X that, “Having listened carefully to my fellow San Franciscans and our native officers, and after the most important and most secure Dreamforce in our historical past, I don’t consider the Nationwide Guard is required to deal with security in San Francisco.”
The Trump administration lately deployed the Nationwide Guard to Chicago and Portland, Oregon, sparking protests and lawsuits. Over the weekend, President Trump repeated his plans to ship troops to San Francisco, telling Fox Information’ Maria Bartiromo that, “the distinction is I believe they need us in San Francisco.”
The White Home did not instantly reply to CNBC’s request for touch upon the President’s plans.
In a press release late Monday, Lurie stated San Francisco regulation enforcement has partnerships with federal companies to take care of drug crimes and extra troops aren’t essential.
“I’m deeply grateful to the members of our navy for his or her service to our nation, however the Nationwide Guard doesn’t have the authority to arrest drug sellers — and sending them to San Francisco will do nothing to get fentanyl off the streets or make our metropolis safer,” Lurie stated.
Lurie beforehand cheered the security of occasions that passed off within the final week together with Dreamforce and No Kings Protests over the weekend. In distinction to Newsom, Lurie has taken a far much less combative method to Trump since taking workplace in January.
“San Francisco is on the rise,” Lurie wrote in a publish on X on Oct. 12, a pair days earlier than Dreamforce was set to start.
The information help that view.
Tourism spending is predicted to extend modestly this 12 months to $9.35 billion, up from $9.26 billion, in accordance with the San Francisco Journey Affiliation. Conferences, sporting occasions similar to NBA All-Star weekend, and music festivals like Exterior Lands have contributed to the expansion.
The business actual property market can be recovering as Covid-era work at home insurance policies get slowly unwound.
Tech firms elevated their share of leasing exercise by sq. footage to 53% in 2025, the very best since 2019, CBRE stated. Condo rental costs are surging as effectively. Multifamily leases elevated 6% in August, way more than the three.75% leap in Chicago, the town with the second-steepest climb, in accordance with CoStar.
Ted Egan, chief economist for San Francisco, informed CNBC in an interview that “housing might be as low-cost as it will get for some time.”
There stays loads of room for enchancment. The town has misplaced key tenants in its downtown procuring district in recent times, together with its flagship Nordstrom retailer. The Nordstrom location was a part of San Francisco Metropolis Centre, which was the town’s largest mall however is now successfully empty.
Workplace vacancies remained excessive at 33.6% within the third quarter, in accordance with Cushman and Wakefield. Homelessness and open drug use are longstanding points, closely concentrated in sure elements of the town.
However Egan stated that, along with the information, he is observed a big change within the metropolis’s well being.
“It appears cleaner and safer now than it is ever been in any of the time that I have been right here,” stated Egan, who’s labored in San Francisco for greater than 20 years. “I nonetheless assume it is an incredible place to maneuver to as a result of it is obtained tons of financial alternative. It is obtained tons of long-term financial strengths for folks beginning out of their profession.”
WATCH: Salesforce CEO faces pushback over help for potential Nationwide Guard deployment
