San Francisco Tourists too “Terrified” to Leave Hotel

Ah, San Francisco. The shining example of what lies ahead for societies that embrace the full liberal ideology of ‘just do what you feel’.

After 20 years of envelope-pushing changes to grow government and ease law enforcement, the once-shining City by the Bay has turned into a place where:

• Property crime runs amok
• An online map is needed to track human feces on city streets
• Discarded syringes are common sightings
• Public urination is so widespread it has damaged subway elevators and escalators, building walls and power poles

One Austrian couple probably didn’t know that there was a special website just to track feces in the city, or that they would likely be accosted by aggressive, drug-addicted vagrants that roam the city like the walking dead. They only needed to step outside their hotel rooms to realize that they made a mistake visiting the ‘beacon of free love and drugs’.

“Is this normal or am I in a ‘bad part of town?’ Just walked past numerous homeless off their faces, screaming and running all over the sidewalk near Twitter HQ and then a murder scene. Wife is scared to leave hotel now,” reads a Wednesday posting by Reddit user /u/nashtendo.

When another Redditor said “put on your big boy pants… scared to leave the hotel?”…

The Aussie replied:

It was my wife that was scared and it was partly the mass of concentrated, drug affected homeless mixed with a guy being rolled into an ambulance dead. –/u/nashtendo

“We did La and Nyc on this trip too. Both felt safer,” he said later in the thread, adding “Syringes were visible, people were staggering, others had wide aggressive eyes. ‘Off their faces’ might be an Australian thing (sorry) but I meant just visibly drug affected.”

Another Reddit user replied:

It’s pretty normal. I’m honestly hoping tourists will realize how shitty this city has become and stop coming. Maybe the loss of income will finally push the city to stop allowing the rampant drug dealing and homeless people treating the entire city like their toilet. You would think a city that deoends so heavily on tourism and conventions for the bulk of their income would put more effort into maintaining a certain standard, but there is rampant drug dealing out in the open in some of the most heavily tourist areas. The city know about it, they just don’t care. –/u/SgtPeanutbutter

“You see things on the streets that are just not humane,” Kevin Carroll, executive director of the Hotel Council of San Francisco told The Chronicle‘s Heather Knight in April. “People come into hotels saying, ‘What is going on out there?’ They’re just shocked. … People say, ‘I love your city, I love your restaurants, but I’ll never come back.'”

In a completely seperate thread, another Reddit user posted in the San Francisco subreddit “Why is this city so terrifying?”

“The streets are filthy. There’s trash everywhere. It’s disgusting,” Joe D’Alessandro, president of S.F. Travel told the Chronicle’s Heather Knight in April. “I’ve never seen any other city like this — the homelessness, dirty streets, drug use on the streets, smash-and-grabs.”

The city, which hands out up to 4.8 million syringes each year, has struggled to figure out how to keep streets clean and safe for residents, while accommodating a growing homeless population and longstanding HIV and Hepatitis C epidemics. There are roughly 16,000 residents in San Francisco with HIV, and 13,000 with Hep C.

City Health Director Barbara Garcia estimated in 2016 that there were 22,000 intravenous drug users in San Francisco – around one for every 38.9 residents, while the city hands out roughly 400,000 needles per month.

Of the 400,000 needles distributed monthly, San Francisco receives around 246,000 back – meaning that there are roughly 150,000 discarded needles floating around each month – or nearly 2 million per year, according to Curbed.

Depending which list you read, San Francisco has the dubious honor of being at or near the top of numerous national surveys tracking homelessness, the cost of housing and other issues. One distinction is not disputed: it has the most property crime in the nation, according to the FBI. The city also has crafted defiant sanctuary city policies and is preparing to battle the incoming Trump administration on the issue.

And in the media, San Francisco’s brand has taken hits, with headlines such as “Why San Francisco is the Worst Place Ever,” “34 percent of Bay Area Residents are Ready to Leave,” and “Complaints of Syringes and Feces Rise Dramatically in SF.”

Sources: Fox News, Zero Hedge