San Francisco's homelessness laid bare: Images show city streets crowded with tents as figures show 8,000 are homeless - but woke politicians do nothing as business owners threatening to withhold taxes
- The shocking images brought into stark focus the homelessness problems facing the progressive city
- Rows of tents were pictured lined up outside businesses with people's belongings strewn across the sidewalk
- Homelessness in SF is higher now than at any other time bar 2019, according to an official count in February
- Comes as Castro Merchants Association threatened to stop paying city taxes due to loss of trade
- Group said it is sick of homeless living outside their entrances, threatening customers and vandalizing stores
- California Governor Gavin Newsom meanwhile recently vetoed a bill that would have allowed cities to open supervised drug-injection sites which help addicts to access regulated substances and attend rehabilitation
A flood of new images from the streets of San Francisco have brought into stark focus the extent of the city's ongoing homelessness problem, which has driven some businesses to threaten to withhold tax payments.
Rows of tents were pictured lined up outside businesses with people's belongings strewn across the sidewalk.
Homeless individuals, some of whom were struggling with clear physical ailments as well as drug and alcohol addiction, sat in the street right outside entrances to residential properties and small businesses struggling to bounce back after highly restrictive COVID laws forced them to close, destroying revenues.
Some images depicted addicts openly smoking illegal drugs on the sidewalk and passing out on the asphalt in the middle of the day.
The number of homeless people in San Francisco was tallied in February at almost 8,000, the second highest number of any year since 2005 according to the official government count which takes place every three years.
Overall crime in the city has also increased nearly 8 percent compared to the same time last year as city leaders have removed their support over a legal, open-air drug market and pushed for more police budget to crack down on crime and vagrancy.
Danielle Shannon Robles, a homeless woman who sleeps in a tent, is seen near the City Hall of San Francisco in California, United States on August 29, 2022
Homeless people are seen near the City Hall of San Francisco in California, United States on August 29, 2022
Rows of homeless tents are seen near the City Hall of San Francisco outside residential properties and small business premises
The number of homeless people in San Francisco was counted in February at almost 8,000, the second highest number of any year since 2005 according to the count which takes place every three years
Rows of tents were pictured lined up outside businesses with people's belongings strewn across the sidewalk
Homeless tents are seen near the City Hall of San Francisco in California, United States on August 29, 2022
The Castro Merchants Association said their 'community is struggling to recover from lost business revenue, from burglaries and never-ending vandalism/graffiti (often committed by unhoused persons) and we implore you to take action.' Homeless people continue to use illegal narcotics on the streets surrounding the Tenderloin 'linkage center'
Business owners in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood have threatened to stop paying taxes if woke politicians don't start cleaning up streets of litter and stopping people from openly taking drugs.
In a letter to city officials earlier this month, The Castro Merchants Association said some of the homeless people in the streets outside their stores had been harassing customers and needed help.
'They need shelter and/or services and they need them immediately,' the Merchants Association said.
'Our community is struggling to recover from lost business revenue, from burglaries and never-ending vandalism/graffiti (often committed by unhoused persons) and we implore you to take action.'
They hope other business associations in different parts of the city will join them to force city officials to finally take action after years of lax policies.
'If the city can't provide the basic services for them to become a successful business, then what are we paying for,' the business association's co-president Dave Karraker told The San Francisco Chronicle.
California has the highest income tax rate in the nation at 13.3 percent, with San Francisco among the most expensive cities to live in.
Yet despite the high taxes, the city has been slow in combating vagrancy and helping businesses owners in its downtown area, with about 50 percent of small businesses in San Francisco remaining closed, Forbes reports.
'You can't have a vibrant, successful business corridor when you have people passed out high on drugs, littering your sidewalk. These people need to get help,' Karraker said.
In a letter to city officials earlier this month, The Castro Merchants Association said some of the homeless people in the streets outside their stores had been harassing customers and needed help. Above, homeless tents in San Francisco earlier this summer
A city worker washes a street in the neighborhood which has become besieged by homeless people
Castro Community Benefit District cleaning ambassador Derron Jones cleans a large amount of belongings left behind by a homeless person at a bus stop along 18th Street near Castro Street in San Francisco in 2019
A police officer watches a man clear up his belongings in the Castro district
Pictured: Homeless people setting up their few belonging near San Francisco City hall on Monday
The outrage comes as California governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would have allowed certain cities to open supervised drug-injection sites in a policy geared towards providing addicts with controlled substances in a supervised environment, connecting them with rehabilitation centers.
The hope was to stem the rising tide of fatal overdoses in the state. But in a veto letter, the governor wrote that he had concerns about the 'unintended consequences' of the bill.
'I have long supported the cutting edge of harm reduction strategies,' Newsom wrote in the letter to legislators.
'However, I am acutely concerned about operations of safe injection sites without strong, engaged local leadership and well-documented, vetted and thoughtful operational and sustainability plans.'
Among the cities that saw the consequences of the open-air drug market was San Francisco, where leaders greenlit its first facility last year that spurred vagrants in homeless encampments across the city to use illegal substances out in broad daylight.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed, who championed the site as a place for addicts to get help, has since made a screeching U-turn as she announced the facility will be closed by the end of the year.
Breed, who sliced $120million from the budgets of its police and sheriff's departments, has also asked the city's Board of Supervisors for more money to be given to the officers to stamp out drug dealing, car break-ins, and theft.
According to the latest available FBI Unified Crime Report, San Francisco had the highest overall crime rate of the 20 largest cities in the United States, recording 6,917 crimes per 100,000 population in 2019.
That was more than double the crime rates in New York and Los Angeles, and well above the rates in the next largest US cities: Chicago, Houston, and Phoenix.
After initial calls to protect San Francisco's open-air drug use facility, Mayor London Breed (pictured) has made a screeching U-turn and announced it would be shutdown by the end of the year
San Francisco has the highest overall crime rate of the 20 largest cities in the United States, easily exceeding the crime rates of the five largest cities (seen above)
Chesa Boudin (left) was ousted from his position as District Attorney in June, after critics accused him of not doing enough to keep residents and business owners safe amid a crime wave. Brooke Jenkins (right) has since taken over and fired 15 members of Boudin's team
Crime remains stubbornly high in the Golden Gate City, with overall crime up 7.8 percent
Crime remains stubbornly high in the Golden Gate City, with overall crime up 7.8 percent as of August 28 compared to the same time last year.
Assaults are up 11.4 percent, and robberies have increased by 2.8 percent. Larceny thefts also saw a spike by 17.8 percent compared to last year, and rapes have also shot up by 6 percent.
In June, citizens fed up with the state of their city voted to oust woke District Attorney Chesa Boudin, whose anti-incarceration policies have been widely panned as causing the ongoing crisis.
He was originally elected on a platform of criminal justice reform, but his notoriously progressive laws have been widely blamed for rising crime and homelessness in the Bay Area since the start of the pandemic.
During Boudin's time in office, 'smash-and-grab' robberies became commonplace, with thieves brazenly raiding store shelves in broad daylight, only to avoid charges thanks to Boudin's lax policies.
He has since been replaced by Brooke Jenkins, 40, who cleaned house after taking her old boss' job as both she and Breed vowed to crack down on soaring crime and increasingly prevalent open-air drug markets in the city.
San Francisco's downtown area was found to be only 31 percent active over the spring of 2022 after the city finally agreed to shut down its controversial open-air drug market by the end of the year
Since the open-air drug market opened up, vagrancy throughout the streets of San Francisco has ramped up. Pictured, a homeless person pushing along a cart filled with bags of their belongings
Danielle Shannon Robles, a homeless woman, is seen setting up a tent near City Hall where other camps have gone up
City officials said they are working to crack down on vagrancy and crime in the troubled city
Officials hope the changes will aid the city's recover after a recent study by the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California Berkeley found San Francisco's downtown area was only 31 percent active over the spring of 2022 when compared to pre-pandemic levels.
Scott Wiener, the California lawmaker who wrote the bill supporting legal open-air drug markets, described Newsom's veto as a missed opportunity to address one of the most pressing problems in California.
He said in a statement to the New York Times that the proposal was 'not a radical bill by any stretch of the imagination.
'We don't need additional studies or working groups to determine whether safe consumption sites are effective,' Wiener asserted.
'We know from decades of experience and numerous peer-reviewed scientific studies that they work.'
Wiener went on to call the veto 'a major setback,' but vowed he and other legislators would continue to press for the state to 'focus on drug use and addiction as the health issues that they are.'
San Francisco business owner have threatened to stop paying taxes if woke politicians don't clean up litter and open-air drug taking. Pictured a city employee power washing a street
The Castro group said they hope other business associations in different parts of the city will join them to force city officials to finally take action after years of relaxed policies
Homeless people are seen in San Francisco, California on July 19, 2022
San Francisco business owners threaten to stop paying taxes if woke politicians don't clean up litter and open-air drug taking No Lodging Zone sign to stop homeless tent camps in the Castro neighborhood
'These people need to get help,' the business association's co-president Dave Karraker told The San Francisco Chronicle.
Meanwhile, city workers were filmed cleaning the streets with a power washer last week after the Merchants Association's letter to California lawmakers went viral.
The city of San Francisco has been under fire for the last two years thanks to a wake of sweeping bail reforms introduced by ousted DA Chesa Boudin.
In response to the Merchants Association's requests, city officials said they would work to address the concerns.
'We greatly appreciate hearing from community members about what they are seeing on the streets and will continue to work with the Castro community to improve conditions for all in the Castro.'
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