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San Francisco, Cleveland and Portland’s downtowns most deserted in US: study

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Democratic cities San Francisco, Cleveland and Portland, Oregon, have the most deserted downtown areas in the US in the wake of the pandemic, which has driven away workers and tourists, according to a new study.

Researchers at the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California at Berkeley found that San Francisco’s downtown was only 31% active between March and May, compared to pre-pandemic levels.

That was followed by Cleveland, Ohio, with 36% of downtown recovery and Portland, Oregon, with 41%. Notably, all three cities are majority Democratic.

Researchers used GPS location data from 18 million smartphones to track how often their users visited various cities throughout the US and Canada, and they then compared that activity to 2019 levels.

Detroit and Chicago’s downtown areas did not fare much better in terms of activity, with just 42% and 43%, respectively, followed by Indianapolis and Minneapolis with 44% each. Raleigh, North Carolina with 45%, and New Orleans and Oakland, California scored 46%.

A new study found that San Francisco’s downtown area was the most deserted in the nation in the wake of the COVID pandemic.
Bloomberg via Getty Images
This chart from researchers at the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California at Berkeley shows the rankings of downtown areas based on recovery rates.
This chart from researchers at the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California at Berkeley shows the rankings of downtown areas based on recovery rates.
Institute of Governmental Studie

On the other end of the spectrum, the study found that downtown Salt Lake City, Utah, enjoyed the most robust post-COVID recovery, with activity level soaring 155% compared to 2019.

Downtown areas in Bakersfield, California, and Columbus, Ohio, also have been humming with activity, measured at 117% and 112%, respectively.

The list of the top 10 busiest downtowns also includes Fresno, California; Omaha, Nebraska; Baltimore; El Paso, Texas; San Diego; Tampa, Florida; and Honolulu, Hawaii.

New York City’s downtown recovery ranked 14 in the study at 78% compared to 2019. The pandemic sent many residents fleeing the Big Apple, scared away by soaring COVID rates, skyrocketing crime and rampant homelessness.

Downtown Cleveland was just 36% active in the spring of 2022, compared to 2019.
Downtown Cleveland was just 36% active in the spring of 2022, compared to 2019.
USA TODAY Sports
The downtown area of Portland, Oregon, was third most deserted in the US, based on GPS data from smartphones.
The downtown area of Portland, Oregon, was third most deserted in the US, based on GPS data from smartphones.
REUTERS

The study attributed the slow recovery rates in cities like San Francisco — the capital of the US tech industry — to remote work, business closures, loss of business travel and consumers’ growing preference for online shopping.

At the same time, San Francisco has been experiencing a crime epidemic, with assaults, thefts and rapes being on the rise.

Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the tech hub at the heart of the Bay Area has become synonymous with homeless encampments and harrowing images of unhoused people shooting up drugs in the street.

Other progressive cities on the list, including Portland and Chicago, likewise have seen rising crime rates, according to the latest data from their respective police departments.

Downtown Salt Lake City was the nation's busiest, boasting 155% activity recovery rate.
Downtown Salt Lake City was the nation’s busiest, boasting 155% activity recovery rate.
Bloomberg via Getty Images

But the academics at Berkley suggested that the lack of activity in the worst-performing downtown areas was most closely tied to economic factors, such as the lessening demand for downtown real estate due to remote work.

The authors of the study warned that “to survive in the new era of remote work, downtowns will need to diversify their economic activity and land uses.”

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The F.D.A. Now Says It Plainly: Morning-After Pills Are Not Abortion Pills

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The F.D.A. said it made the change now because it had completed a review of a 2018 application to alter the label that was submitted by Foundation Consumer Healthcare, a company that in 2017 bought the Plan B brand from Teva Pharmaceutical Industries. Agency officials said the pandemic delayed the review process and that the timing was not motivated by political considerations.

A spokeswoman for the company, Dani Hirsch, said in an interview that for its 2018 application, the company had not conducted any new studies but had submitted “what was already out there.”

In a statement, the company’s marketing director, Tara Evans, said “the misconception that Plan B works by interfering with implantation can present barriers to broader emergency contraception access. The Plan B labeling correction will help protect continued over-the-counter emergency contraception access and reduce confusion about how Plan B works and further clarify that Plan B does not affect implantation.”

Plan B One-Step and its generic versions — including brands like Take Action, My Way and Option 2 — contain levonorgestrel, one of a class of hormones called progestins that are also found at lower doses in birth control pills and intrauterine devices. The pills are most effective in preventing pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of sexual intercourse, although they can sometimes work if taken within five days.

Another type of morning-after pill, marketed as Ella and containing a compound called ulipristal acetate, is only available by prescription and is not affected by the F.D.A.’s label change. There has been less research on this type of pill, but studies suggest that it is highly unlikely to prevent implantation of a fertilized egg. In 2009, after months of scrutiny, Ella was approved for sale in overwhelmingly Catholic Italy, where laws would have barred it if it had been considered to induce abortions.

According to data published in 2021 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly one-quarter of women of reproductive age who have sex with men answered yes to the question: “Have you ever used emergency contraception, also known as ‘Plan B,’ ‘Preven,’ ‘Ella,’ ‘Next Choice,’ or ‘Morning after’ pills?” The agency did not break down the data by the type of pills taken.

As far back as the 1999 approval process, the maker of Plan B — Barr Pharmaceuticals, later acquired by Teva — asked the F.D.A. not to list an implantation effect on the label, The Times reported in 2012.

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Who are Caroline Ellison’s parents? Fraudster’s mom and dad are MIT economists

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This apple fell far from the tree.

Caroline Ellison — who pleaded guilty to fraud charges related to her role in the FTX cryptocurrency scandal, which led to the extradition of Sam Bankman-Fried this week — is the daughter of high-profile economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

According to his curriculum vitae, Ellison’s father, Glenn Ellison, was educated at Harvard, Cambridge and MIT before becoming the Gregory K. Palm (1970) Professor of Economics at the latter. 

In addition to coaching youth softball and his daughters’ middle school math teams, he writes “Hard Math,” a series of textbooks and workbooks about teaching arithmetic to younger students.

Glenn Ellison is also an Elected Fellow of the Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory and American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Caroline Ellison’s parents, Glenn and Sara Ellison, outside their Newton, Mass., home in early December.
Robert Miller

Ellison’s mother, Sara Ellison, is also an accomplished academic. Armed with an undergraduate degree from Purdue University and a mathematical statistics diploma from Cambridge University, her profile shows she completed a doctorate at MIT in 1993. 

Sara Ellison is currently a senior lecturer in the department alongside her husband.

“We were definitely exposed to a lot of economics [growing up],” Ellison, 28, once told Forbes.

Ellison, 28, plead guilty to fraud this week.
Ellison, 28, pleaded guilty to fraud this week.
Twitter / @AlamedaResearch
Caroline Ellison's sister, Anna, now lives in the West Village.
Caroline Ellison’s sister, Anna, now lives in the West Village.
BRIGITTE STELZER

Glenn and Sara Ellison were photographed by The Post outside their home in Newton, an affluent Boston suburb, earlier this month. Armed with several bags, they told reporters they were too “busy” to comment on the FTX scandal.

The eldest of three sisters — including Anna, 25, who now lives in Manhattan’s West Village — Ellison distinguished herself as a precocious math whiz at a young age. 

When she was just 8 years old, she reportedly presented her father with a paper analyzing stuffed animal prices at Toys ‘R’ Us.

Sam Bankman-Fried leaving Manhattan Federal Court on Thursday.
Sam Bankman-Fried leaving Manhattan federal court on Thursday.
Matthew McDermott
Both Glenn and Sara Ellison are economists at MIT.
Both Glenn and Sara Ellison are economists at MIT.
Robert Miller

She went on to compete in the Math Prize for Girls while at Newton North High School before studying mathematics at Stanford University, where former professor Ruth Stackman described her to Forbes as “bright, focused, [and] very mathy.”

Ellison and Bankman-Fried, 30, crossed paths at the Wall Street trading firm Jane Street. Bankman-Fried’s parents are also both university lecturers, at Stanford in California. They became good friends and she joined Alameda Research, the hedge fund arm of the FTX crypto exchange, in 2018. She then became CEO in 2021. However, the company remained owned 90% by Bankman-Fried and 10% by another member of his circle.

In addition to documenting her supposed foray into polyamory on Tumblr, Ellison once boasted about drug use on social media.

Sara Ellison completed a doctorate at MIT in 1993.
Sara Ellison completed a doctorate at MIT in 1993.
Robert Miller

“Nothing like regular amphetamine use to make you appreciate how dumb a lot of normal, non-medicated human experience is,” she tweeted in 2021.

Ellison reportedly admitted to Alameda employees that FTX had used client funds to bail out the fledgeling hedge fund during a video call in November. She was eventually terminated as CEO by insolvency professional and current FTX CEO John J. Ray III after FTX and Alameda filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

She pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges on Monday, and has subsequently been released on $250,000 bail.

Ellison was spotted getting coffee in New York City on Dec. 4.
Ellison was spotted getting coffee in New York City on Dec. 4.
Twitter / @AutismCapital

Although she could be sent to jail for up to 110 years for her part in the FTX-Alameda scandal — which has been said by federal prosecutors to have lost between $1 billion and $2 billion of customers’ cash — she is thought to have struck a deal with the feds for a much lighter sentence in return for her cooperation.

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Iran condemns Zelensky’s remarks to Congress as ‘baseless.’

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Iran has condemned President Volodymyr Zelensky’s remarks to the U.S. Congress, warning the Ukrainian leader against further accusing Tehran of supplying weapons to Russia for use in the war.

Mr. Zelensky told Congress on Wednesday that Iranian-made drones “sent to Russia in hundreds” had been threatening Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, a view shared by American and European officials. In Iran, he said, Russia had found an “ally in its genocidal policy.”

A spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, Nasser Kanaani, called Mr. Zelensky’s comments “rude” and “baseless.”

“Mr. Zelensky had better know that Iran’s strategic patience over such unfounded accusations is not endless,” Mr. Kanaani said in a statement on Thursday.

Although Iran has officially denied supplying Russia with the weapons since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, U.S. officials have said that the first shipment was delivered in August.

Mr. Zelensky has said that drones used in Monday’s wave of predawn attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities were from a batch recently delivered to Russia by Iran. The strikes came after Biden administration officials said that Russia and Iran were strengthening their military ties into a “full-fledged defense partnership.”

The European Union last week condemned Iran’s military partnership with Russia as a gross violation of international law and announced new sanctions against Iranian individuals and entities over their roles in supplying the drones that Moscow has used to attack Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure. That followed a round of sanctions on Iranians over the drone deliveries in October.

Mr. Kanaani “once again emphasizes” that Iran has not supplied military equipment for use in Ukraine, the statement issued on Thursday added, and urged Mr. Zelensky to learn “the fate of some other political leaders” who were happy with U.S. support. It was not clear which other leaders the statement was referring to.

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