The center of San Francisco has become a territory of the homeless, drug dealers and thieves: businesses and residents are fleeing from there en masse

The once thriving downtown area of ​​San Francisco is turning into a derelict area. Offices and retail sites are closed, the streets have been taken over by the homeless and drug addicts, reports Dailymail.

Photo: IStock

Today, the once bustling Union Square and downtown San Francisco are a shadow of their former selves: rows of empty shops, rare people even on peak weekends, and nearby hotels, including the huge Hilton, unable to cover their mortgage payments.

The historic Flood Building, which survived the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, stands almost empty: Gap has gone, along with almost every other business in the building, with the exception of the decrepit Dr. Martens and Urban Outfitters offering 70% off.

On the other side of Market Street is the soon-to-be-sold Westfield San Francisco Center - its doors stink of urine and every store has lone security guards. Westfield has announced its planned exit and several mall stores have already said they will follow.

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A few days later, AT&T announced the closure of its iconic flagship store around the corner at 1 Powell Street, one of the largest in the country.

The local branch of Walgreens is boarded up, though still open, and was recently the scene of a fatal confrontation between a homeless transgender woman and a security guard.

Ross Dress For Less and Saks Off 5th use a one-in-one-out system to deter thieves, while Nordstrom Rack closes completely in September — along with Nordstrom and dozens of other stores like T-Mobile and Payless Shoes.

“Many shops and hotels are closing. Homelessness doesn't exactly attract people to stay. They defecate and urinate in the street. They use drugs on the street. The mayor is doing nothing and has been like this for a long time,” said Edward Liu, 49, a local resident and hospital worker.

Hotels close, office buildings empty

Commercial realtor Mark Ritchie said San Francisco has been particularly hard hit by the spread of telecommuting, which has reduced visitor numbers in the financial district and Union Square.

“The San Francisco office market is devastated. Covid and remote work have generated the most backlash due to how tech-driven the Bay Area economy is. San Francisco is one of the hardest cities to travel to downtown, so people are choosing to work from home,” he said.

Last week, Park Hotels & Resorts announced it was halting mortgage payments at two properties, the 1921-room Hilton San Francisco and the 55-room Park 1024, saying: “Now more than ever, we believe San Francisco's path to recovery is remains hazy and long.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the owner of the Huntington hotel has sold the property as he faces foreclosure. Yotel was sold in a foreclosure auction and Club Quarters is moving towards a divestment, while 20 others have loans due within the next two years.

Conference organizers are shunning San Francisco for the homeless, causing even more trouble for hotels in the city, where tourist numbers are down 16% from pre-pandemic levels. It had 2019 million visitors in 26,2, up from 21,9 million last year.

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In April 2023, hotel revenues were 23 percent lower than pre-pandemic levels and appear to have stagnated, according to hospitality data company STR.

Big companies are also leaving in droves, bringing office vacancy to a record high of 31 percent in May, enough for 92 employees. In April, Salesforce said it would be leaving its eponymous 000-story Salesforce East building downtown, which had about 30 employees before the pandemic.

This situation will result in a budget deficit of $1,3 billion over five years. According to the city's chief accountant's worst-case scenario, the reduction in property tax revenue alone could cost nearly $200 million a year.

A security guard at another Walgreens branch on Powell Street, where San Francisco's famous cable cars are located, had a different explanation for the devastation downtown.

“Theft is constant. For my company, this is the busiest store in San Francisco. We used to have two guards, but now we have one, so most of the time I'll be dealing with one thief and someone else will be robbing. I can’t keep track of everyone,” he said.

As if to confirm this point of view, a bearded homeless man, who had been caught stealing a few hours earlier, tried to break into the store again. He yelled, “Sorry! I have every right to be here,” before stealing a cake and an apple from a nearby stall and running.

It was one of four attempted or successful thefts that took place in the store within 15 minutes, resulting in everything from candy bars to a $4,99 bottle of cheap Moscato wine either locked in the window or tagged with a security system.

The exasperated security guard added, “This guy, we see him a lot. He used to draw a knife, so I remember his face. At Target down the street, we saw people smoking fentanyl. Apparently half the time they don't even realize they're stealing."

Homeless camps and drugs

But San Francisco's troubles don't end with petty thefts, which were down 2022 percent overall in the last six months of 10 but were still more than 2023 in the first half of 14 across the city.

The city is suffering from a downturn in the tech industry and a number of workers who are unwilling to trade their telecommuting jobs for returning to the office after the pandemic.

The number of pedestrians in the struggling city center is only about 32 percent of what it was before the pandemic, and the number of passengers on the BART public transport network has decreased by 65 percent.

The number of homeless people has also skyrocketed, drawn to the city by partly generous aid programs worth up to $687 a month.

At the latest official count in 2022, more than 7000 people lived in tent cities that have sprung up in the city center and in the neighboring Tenderloin area.

Even Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, acknowledged the homelessness crisis in San Francisco and other parts of the state and called the situation a "disgrace." He said California "hasn't made any progress in the last two decades," but said $15,3 billion had been allocated to address the problem.

“I don’t like what’s happening to the camps, I don’t like what’s happening to the streets and sidewalks. I don’t like the bashing of my old city of San Francisco,” Newsom said.

Along with the homeless population came another plague: drug dealers. Many of them openly ply their trade and supply consumers with fentanyl, which they then smoke in front of tourists boarding the cable cars at Powell and Market Streets.

As a result, city data shows that over 2023 drug overdose deaths have already occurred in the first six months of 268 alone, up 41 percent from last year. Even upscale neighborhoods such as Russian Hill, which is part of the cable car route along Hyde Street, and popular tourist hotspots such as the Golden Gate Bridge, have been affected.

Both now have signs warning people to remove their belongings from cars to avoid being broken into, while at the end of the cable car route, at Fisherman's Wharf, homeless people begin to camp on benches near the station.
But the former shopping paradise of Union Square and the Tenderloin are at the epicenter of the storm: near Union Square, homeless people doze in porches, openly smoke drugs, steal from stores, shout obscene language at passers-by.

Dylan Anderson, 30, of neighboring Alameda, believes progressive politics are to blame. “It's 100 percent socialism and liberal views that are destroying downtown San Francisco. Giving people money to live on the streets and use drugs is not a policy that works,” he said.

Others, like Marie, an 80-year-old animal rights activist who came to the city from Sonoma, would like street dwellers to be helped to rehab and then given homes.

“I feel safe here. There are many more homeless people than there were, but they are not doing anything wrong. I would like them to be taken to a rehab center and then helped with food and housing,” she said.

For visitors, the squalid camps in the city center can come as a shock. Izzy Gein, 23, from Essex, England, visited the city and the US for the first time to attend a corporate event for architects.

She said she was overwhelmed by the extent of the drug problem.

“I think it's more of a drug problem than a homeless problem. This is shocking. I'm from the village, and this is not what I'm used to seeing. On the first day, I left the hotel at 9 am and saw only janitors and homeless people. I thought, where are all the normal people? At 9am you would expect to see a lot of people going to work,” she said.

Even city guides in downtown San Francisco are fed up. “You see the foil, it's fentanyl. You see people hunched over, it's fentanyl. They say they want the tourists to come back, so do something about the homeless, do something about the fentanyl,” one said.

Surprisingly, even the homeless themselves believe that the drug problem is out of control.

Mark, 62, is originally from Oregon but said he came to San Francisco 30 years ago. He planned to throw himself off the Golden Gate Bridge, but then changed his mind.

Sitting in a wheelchair with a stack of canes he carved to sell to tourists, he said, “I started making canes to protect myself and I had to use them. I see something they don't see in their hotel - danger."

“As far as drugs go, I hate to say it, but I don’t see the police doing anything,” he said.

Trying to make a difference

There are signs that the authorities are beginning to listen. In April, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that he was sending the California Highway Patrol and the National Guard to the city to help solve the problem.

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Last November, prosecutor Cheza Boudin was fired by angry voters and she was replaced by the more pragmatic Brooke Jenkins, who has made it her mission to solve the drug problem.

Detailing the city's new budget in a late-May address, Mayor London Breed vowed to crack down on drug dealers and also announced three "wellness centers" that aim to get the homeless off the street and will include safe consumption areas for drug addicts. .

And last week, San Francisco Sheriff Paul Miyamoto announced that a new emergency response unit, staffed by 130 deputies, would be deployed to work alongside the SFPD in Tenderloin, focusing on arresting drug dealers as well as drug users to remove them from streets.

He said the new rollout was made possible by the hiring of new deputies and said his staff would be "active" with the dealers.

“From a public safety point of view, this is very difficult. We have an area of ​​our city where there are many people with problematic behavior, which has affected the entire community,” Miyamoto said.

“There are really good people, but some are involved in crime. They're not neighborhood residents, they're homeless people living on the street, people hurting themselves on the street,” he said. “We have a lot of people who come here for help or because we are an open, caring city, and some are doing some kind of sabotage right now.” We have the resources and a strong health care system, but people must take action to get that help. One of the reasons we and the police department are very active right now is to create a safer community by getting people the help they need.”

“Our number one priority is to ensure that everyone, not just residents but our visitors, feel safe here,” he added.

There is also good news

But Cassandra Costello of the San Francisco Travelers Association has challenged the idea that the city is in decline. She reported that the number of visitors increased by 29% in 2022 compared to the previous year, and foreign visitors by 211%.

“The demand for international travel in San Francisco has led to the opening of new air routes to San Francisco International Airport,” she said. — From 1 July, Norse Atlantic Airways will operate three direct flights per week between SFO and London Gatwick. Norse joins other airlines that have recently added direct flights to SFO, including LEVEL Airlines, which flies direct from Barcelona, ​​and ZIPAIR, which flies direct from Tokyo.”

Realtor Richie says that while things are bad in San Francisco right now, he expects the city to bounce back - helped by the AI ​​boom.

“San Francisco will come back. We will surprise everyone. “I think we’ll see a boom in AI employment in the Bay Area,” he said. - Drugs are a big problem. It's not all over the city and in a few obvious places, but unfortunately obvious places like the Tenderloin are right under the feet of business tourists and congressmen. But when you go to the wealthier areas of San Francisco or the more outlying middle class areas of San Francisco, everything is fine and the street retail system is thriving. There is a lot of good news."

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