Residents and businesses have been fleeing blue states in droves as crime, high taxes, and insane regulations choke out the desire to live in them. It isn’t just celebrities leaving, though many like Mark Wahlberg have expressed the desire to allow their kids to grow up in normal places.
Industry continues to leave California, in particular. It isn’t just major corporations being affected by the crime and decay; local mom-and-pop shops have also been affected, leaving many local business owners unsure where to turn for help.
For one San Francisco business owner, turning to the city is not an option. Mark Sackett owns multiple businesses, including a “South of Market building with a printmaker, antiques shop and events venue called the Box SF for almost two decades.”
However, Sackett is among the scores of the failing city’s business owners who have been affected by the inability of San Francisco’s leaders to keep the city safe and clean so businesses can thrive in the downtown area.
In fact, Sackett claims to have lost nearly a quarter of a million dollars in 2023 due to cancellations and a decrease in revenue due to the downtown area not being safe and desirable any longer. The conditions downtown have even forced financial institutions to reconsider their business practices in relation to city businesses.
Sackett claimed six of the 30 different lenders he approached when attempting to refinance flatly said they “are not making commercial real estate loans in San Francisco due to the state of the city.” The problems downtown are numerous, and city leaders seem unwilling to help.
For his part, Hackett claims “widespread drug use, violence, and filthy streets in the neighborhood for his inability to address his loan.” He also continued: “Since the pandemic, the area has fallen to the worst condition [he] has ever experienced.”
It doesn’t help that next door to Sackett’s building is a drug sobering center, which is mostly a place for addicts to smoke fentanyl by the loading dock, according to Hackett. The businessman has also reported numerous occasions where he reportedly pepper sprayed intruders and an alleged attack on his person with a knife.
As a result of the conditions, Hackett is planning to auction the building and is expecting a massive loss. City leaders aren’t helping, either. He said: “They don’t even return my calls. They care about bike lanes, nonprofits, safe injection sites…They have just ignored small business.”
Small business is the lifeblood of a city, and San Francisco is bleeding theirs dry. A member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors named Matt Dorsey represents Sackett’s district, claiming the problems have gotten worse since the pandemic. He said: “…[E]specially in terms of the number of shelter-in-place hotels here, and the myriad public safety challenges attributable to open-air drug markets and public drug use.”
It is clear in liberal cities and states that leadership isn’t concerned with the problems of small businesses and suffering residents. Governor Gavin Newsom recently cleaned up downtown San Francisco for the visit from the communist Chinese Leader but left American businesses and citizens to wallow in filth. It is a bad look for the left and not likely to change until enough residents and businesses get fed up.
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