Besieged by homeless, San Francisco businesses want their tax dollars back
Conn Carroll
Video Embed
San Francisco‘s La Cocina Marketplace, the city’s first women-led food hall, spends $300,000 a year on private security to protect the women owners, operators, and employees who work in the old post office’s food stalls.
But even that investment isn’t enough. By 3 p.m., needles, trash, and drug users are back. Employees have been assaulted, and customers don’t come after lunch.
LOS ANGELES MANSION TAX SPOOKS WEALTHY
“There is a real and palpable fear that the neighborhood is now on the verge of collapse,” a petition written by the Tenderloin Business Coalition says. Food stall owners from La Cocina are just some of the business owners who have signed the petition, which, among other things, calls for the city of San Francisco to refund all of their taxes for 2022.
“The city has abandoned its commitment to provide a baseline of safety in the neighborhood, thus significant effort and investments made by the business owners and property owners to keep their blocks safe and clean have come to nothing,” the petition continues. “As such, the business owners and property owners are requesting a full and complete refund of all sales tax and property taxes paid to the City of San Francisco in the fiscal year 2022.”
Tenderloin businesses are not the only ones demanding the city do its job. In August, businesses in the city’s Castro neighborhood said they would stop paying city taxes unless the city got tough on crime. “We’re just seeing constant vandalism, constant drug use in public, people passed out on the sidewalk, people having psychotic breakdowns, and it’s just not something a small-business owner should have to deal with,” Castro Merchants Association co-President Dave Karraker told SFGate.
Both groups have called for the immediate arrest of all drug dealers in their neighborhood, and both have received pushback from neighborhood residents who say law enforcement is not the solution. “The reality is that you just can’t deploy a bunch of police officers and arrest everyone on the street,” said Tenderloin Lower Polk Merchants and Property Owners Association Executive Director Rene Colorado.
But arresting everyone is exactly what needs to happen. As long as people are allowed to live in homeless encampments, there will be crime on the streets. Homeless people need care. But they also need a carrot-and-stick approach that will get them into treatment. Until San Franciscans are ready to force homeless people to make that choice, jail or care, homelessness and crime in San Francisco will not get better.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER