I used to live near this store. It was not a pleasant experience to shop there unless you enjoy watching drug addicts threaten security for stopping them for stealing or having them cut in line in front of you.
Why do people in SF just put up with this? If it were anywhere else in the country I’d think mayor would be ousted by someone who’d clean up the city.
And I’m not talking about homelessness in general. New York has plenty but at least it’s somewhat under control. No companies are leaving or putting these sorts of barriers in place because of it.
That already happened in SF, although it took far too long. So far, things haven't improved much or, alternatively, have gotten even worse. It depends on who you ask and where they happen to stand on highly-politicized SF city governance issues.
That politicization is really the root cause of all this - and it goes back decades. Long enough to undermine or weaken so many underlying structural fundamentals it may not even be possible to fix anytime soon. Realizing this, I got out quite a while ago.
I live in an affulent area of one of the wealthiest counties in the country. The homeless rate and crime rate are significantly lower than the national average for the county as a whole and the numbers for my area of the county are significantly lower than the county as a whole. I went into a local grocery store on Monday and they had installed these gates at some point over the last week.
