It’s actually not a minor issue if you’re the city. I was reading an article, a couple of years ago, about how COVID-19 made commercial real estate values crash in San Francisco. If you think about what the city “is” – it’s basically an institution surrounding a piece of land and how to use it. Like, San Francisco is that high-density set of office buildings and suchlike. If that falls apart, then San Francisco the city takes a walloping.

American cities tend to look something like a core of high-density office buildings surrounded by a large, low-density network of residences, often outside city limits, with people commuting between the two mostly via car. If people suddenly decide that they don’t need to commute into that high-density core – which is kind of a lot of what the city provides – that kind of clobbers the city’s business model.

Amazon and similar have already kinda done a number on the department store, which was another reason you’d want to go into a city:

A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store, each area (“department”) specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store made a dramatic appearance in the middle of the 19th century, and permanently reshaped shopping habits, and the definition of service and luxury. Similar developments were under way in London (with Whiteleys), in Paris (Le Bon Marché) and in New York City (Stewart’s).[1]

Since the 1980s, they have come under heavy pressure from discounters, and have come under even heavier pressure from e-commerce sites since the 2000s.

Starting in 2010 many analysts referred to a retail apocalypse in the United States and some other markets, referring to the closing of brick-and-mortar retail stores, especially those of large chains.[38][39] In 2017, over 12,000 U.S. stores closed due to over-expansion of malls, rising rents, bankruptcies, leveraged buyouts, low quarterly profits other than during holiday peak periods, delayed effects of the Great Recession of 2008-9,[39] shifts in spending to experiences rather than material goods, relaxed dress codes in workplaces, and the shift to e-commerce[40] in which Amazon.com and Walmart dominated versus the online offerings of traditional retailers.

COVID-19 increased the number of permanent store closings in two ways: first through mandatory temporary closing of stores, especially in March and April 2020, with customers largely staying away from stores for non-essential purchases for many more months after that; and secondly, by causing a shift to working from home, which stimulated e-commerce further and reduced demand for business apparel.[citation needed]

I’m not sure that this is a good way to deal with it, but you’d expect the city to be concerned about the prospect of how businesses work shifting away from that high-density model, since San Francisco is kind of invested in the model. Like, if there’s no reason to go to high-density brick-and-mortar retail stores and no reason to go into office buildings in the city, a lot of San Francisco’s value, that high-density infrastructure, also goes away.

https://sfstandard.com/2023/02/20/san-francisco-is-losing-billions-a-year-in-local-spending-to-remote-working/

It’s no secret that Downtown San Francisco has struggled in recent years: 25 million square feet of commercial space sits vacant, tech companies have shuttered their brick-and-mortar offices and the news of layoffs is relentless.

Now, a report shows that San Francisco’s famously flexible work-from-home policies may have cost the city billions. Workers in San Francisco are spending roughly $3,567 less per year apiece on things like entertainment, dining and shopping near their places of work.

The cause? A 34.7% reduction in its in-person workforce, according to new data from the WFH Research Group.

Building owners could charge companies a lot of money for office space. But if there’s a glut of office space that companies don’t want, that goes away, as does the city’s tax base.