I agree somewhat with your conclusion but I question your premise.

From an outsider perspective San Francisco strikes me as a culture that is, and has been for decades, a creation of the affluent class.

Hippies and tech founders alike have all talked a good game about an equal society, but both groups are primarily seeded from the children of the rich and well educated and have worked to preserve the status quo.

New York City, for all its superficial associations with finance and Wall Street culture, has always seemed to be a much more genuinely diverse and empathetic place in actual day to day policy and practice.

as a Oakland resident with family in NYC I couldn't agree with this more.

San Francisco is perhaps the most materialistic community on earth, full of people who don't care how bad things are for others if they themselves made it (and you can too!), full of people who want rights for gay people but don't care if gay people who aren't obscenely rich can live in their city. I would expect San Francisco to be the last place to deliberately help poor people.

I suggest reviewing the lyrics to 1980's:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_%C3%9Cber_Alles

for appropriate relevancy nearly 40 years later.