Law-abiding residents of San Francisco have found themselves on the unfortunate end of a snowball effect in recent years.
Local leaders implement bad policies, causing businesses to leave town, and then the politicians add insult to injury by implementing even worse policies.
Now a radical new San Francisco proposal would mean food scarcity for residents.
San Francisco has been in rough shape for some time, and the problem has only worsened in recent years.
Democrats’ soft-on-crime policies have given criminals little to fear from theft and other brazen criminal activity here.
While these crimes would be met with stiffer penalties in other communities, lawbreakers are given what essentially amounts to free rein in San Francisco.
Because of policies instituted by far-left politicians, police cannot arrest anyone for shoplifting under a felony charge if the goods stolen are under $950.
So there’s been a whole lot of shoplifting going on in San Francisco.
As a direct result of this, businesses are leaving town.
A study from The San Francisco Standard shows that from 2019 to May 2023, San Francisco witnessed a mass exodus of retail stores.
In Union Square alone, the number of operating stores decreased from 207 to a mere 107, and now has a shocking 47% vacancy rate.
Reform group chairman: “Businesses and residents are fleeing San Francisco due to the crime wave and a spike in homelessness”
Carl DeMaio, Chairman of Reform California, says, “The overwhelming facts prove businesses and residents are fleeing San Francisco due to the crime wave and a spike in homelessness. And you can blame the liberal politicians in San Francisco for enacting fatally flawed laws that enable crime and promote homelessness.”
But it isn’t just restaurants, convenience stores, and office buildings that are closing.
Grocery stores needed for fresh food for area residents are closing as well.
But rather than addressing the root of the problem, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors is considering a radical policy that, if enacted, would make things even worse.
A bad prescription for a pressing problem
Supervisors Dean Preston and Aaron Peskin have introduced an ordinance that would require grocery stores to provide six months’ written notice to the city before closing.
Incredibly, the supervisors’ ordinance would also demand that store owners make “good faith” efforts to continue to stock groceries at a shuttered location.
The ordinance would mandate that the operators of a closed store make groceries available through a successor store, co-op, or some other means.
Businesses already pay sky-high taxes to operate in the city and must deal with rampant theft because of the criminal coddling laws on the books.
In the end, this new policy, if enacted, would only serve to hurt the people it is ostensibly designed to help.
That would be poor people with limited means of transportation.
Once grocery store owners finally shake free of the planned consequences of leaving the city, there’s no incentive for new stores to take their place.
Opening a shop in a city that requires six months’ notice plus the extra burden of getting a replacement or organizing a food co-op for the ‘privilege’ of closure if there’s no profitability is just bad business.
Unless or until there is political will to reverse the problems that have caused such a decline in the standard of living, it’s hard to see conditions improving for everyday, hardworking residents of San Francisco.
Stay tuned to Blue State Blues for any updates to this ongoing story.
