My sister used to live in the SF Bay Area, and would take BART into downtown SF for work. As of late spring of last year, though, she's no longer a SF Bay Area resident. She moved and left the state. She said that prior to the COVID lock downs, SF was no longer the beautiful city it used to be. You definitely needed your street smarts. Getting off BART at her stop for work often meant walking past and, in some cases, stepping over homeless people shooting up...some with needles still stuck in their arms while they've passed out from the heroin. We grew up in the SF Bay Area. When we were kids, our parents would occasionally take us up to SF for the day on a weekend...go shopping around Union Square.
These days? Union Square is pretty horrible. A couple of weeks before she moved, she went to Union Square w/a friend to go shopping. Some of the stores they went to were locked up during business hours. You had to knock and a store employee would unlock the door to let you in, and then lock it behind you.
Why?
Because of the homeless. The SF police no longer have the authority to arrest anyone. The homeless know this. A criminal can go into a store and steal what USED to be an amount of goods which would get you a felony conviction....now it's a misdemeanor. And the local courts basically dismiss all of the misdemeanor cases. So the criminals now just brazenly walk into stores with a bag, fill it up, then walk out and hand the bag over to somebody else who, in turn, gives them cash. Criminal drug addict then uses the cash to buy drugs. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Shop keepers call the police and the police won't do anything...won't arrest the person...won't tell the person to leave the store, etc. The criminals know this and take advantage of it.
My sister said that there is NO way she would feel safe now walking by herself in the evening in SF. No way. SF has now become a ghost town because all of the tech workers are telecommuting and, in addition to that, lots of people are flat out leaving the area forever because they're so sick of the filth, the stench of human waste, and the crime which the city does nothing about.
My sister has friends who live IN SF itself...their cars have been broken into multiple times. The police now tell citizens to not even bother locking your car. My sister knows people who have found homeless people getting high in their (the friends' car) car. If you call the cops? They won't come.
Home burglaries are also up, too. And don't forget the homeless pooping on your doorstep. Or leaving their used needles on your doorstep. The city has a multi-million dollar budget each year to just clean up human fecal matter throughout the city.
I'd love to take my kids to the Disney Family Museum that's in SF. But right now? Forget it. Not happening. I'd rather spend my vacation dollars somewhere else.
Seattle? Same problems. Portland? Same thing.
How is it even possible? Person after person after person on those videos recounted the horror they have lived through at the mercy of the addicts and mentally-ill. They certainly don't support this ideology. Who are the people that do?
