A nonprofit aligned with Mayor Daniel Lurie is rolling out a $25 million fund aimed at luring businesses into the ghost town formerly known as downtown San Francisco. The money is earmarked to help businesses build out and open shop in vacant spaces around Union Square and the Moscone Center — two areas that have become poster children for the city's post-pandemic commercial collapse.

Let's start with the positive: $25 million in private philanthropic dollars flowing into downtown revitalization is genuinely good news. It's not taxpayer money being lit on fire by a city agency with a bloated overhead budget. If this fund can actually reduce the friction of opening a new storefront — covering buildout costs, easing the financial risk of signing a lease in a district with double-digit vacancy rates — that's a real incentive with real potential.

But here's the uncomfortable question nobody at City Hall wants to answer: why do businesses need a $25 million subsidy to move into what should be some of the most desirable commercial real estate on the West Coast?

The answer isn't a mystery. It's permits that take months. It's a regulatory maze that punishes anyone brave enough to open a brick-and-mortar business. It's street conditions that make customers think twice about visiting. You can hand a business owner a fat check, but if they still need 14 months and a small army of consultants to get a conditional use permit approved, you haven't solved the problem. You've just made it slightly more affordable to endure.

The real revitalization plan for downtown doesn't cost $25 million. It costs political will. Streamline permitting. Crack down on retail theft. Make the sidewalks walkable again. Create an environment where businesses want to come — not one where they need to be bribed.

We hope this fund succeeds. We genuinely do. But philanthropy shouldn't have to do the job that functional governance was supposed to handle all along. If downtown San Francisco needs a rescue fund, maybe it's the policies — not the storefronts — that are truly vacant.