Fox Business Network’s John Stossel investigated what exactly is wrong with San Francisco and why it’s gotten such a bad reputation in an opinion piece written for Fox News.
According to Stossel, one urban planner told him, “I just returned from the Tenderloin (a section of San Francisco). It’s worse than slums of India, Haiti, Africa!”
Stossel said that while he had never seen slums in Africa, he had seen them in Haiti and India and that San Francisco looked similar to him.
“As one local resident put it, ‘There’s shit everywhere. It’s just a mess out here.’”
“There’s also lots of mental illness,” Strossell said. “One man told us, ‘Vampires are real. I’m paranoid as hell.’ San Francisco authorities mostly leave the mentally ill to fend for themselves on the street.”
“People are rarely arrested for vagrancy, aggressive panhandling or going to the bathroom in front of people’s homes. In 2015, there were 60,491 complaints to police, but only 125 people were arrested.
“Public drug use is generally ignored. One woman told us, ‘It’s nasty seeing people shoot up — right in front of you. Police don’t do anything about it! They’ll get somebody for drinking a beer but walk right past people using needles.’”
“Each day in San Francisco, an average of 85 cars are broken into.
“’Inside Edition’ ran a test to see how long stereo equipment would last in a parked car. Their test car was quickly broken into. Then the camera crew discovered that their own car had been busted into as well.
Stossel found during his investigation that many residents want the city to get tougher on the homeless street people.
“Get them to the point where they have to make a decision between jail and rehab,” one resident told the Fox host. “Other cities do it, but for some reason, San Francisco doesn’t have the political will.”
Stossel also told the story of John Dennis, who has been trying to create more housing in the underserved area by converting an old meatpacking plant into an apartment building, but it took him four years to get the permission to build.
“And all that time, we’re paying property taxes and paying for maintenance,” says Dennis. “I will do no more projects in San Francisco.”
Stossell ended his article saying: “People in San Francisco often claim to be concerned about helping the poor. But their many laws make life much tougher for the poor.”
