Angry merchants in Nancy Pelosi’s home district of San Francisco are planning to take some drastic action. They’re as mad at Nancy as the Pooh Bear is and threatening “civil disobedience” if the city doesn’t do something about the homeless people chasing away their customers.
Merchants threaten tax strike
The Castro District in San Francisco used to be a place where tourists would flock to go shopping. Not anymore. Frustrated merchants can’t make a buck with homeless squatters chasing away the customers.
They gave city leaders an ultimatum, ABC reported Friday, August 19. They wrote all their concerns down in a letter and shipped it off to the officials. The ball is in their court, now.
City leaders simply must “provide more beds for the unhoused community.” If it doesn’t happen real quick, normally peaceful shopkeepers “are threatening civil disobedience.” Get the bums away from their storefronts, they warn, or they’ll stop paying taxes and license fees.
Castro merchants threaten civil disobedience over ongoing homeless problem in SF https://t.co/t9C0LnLACD pic.twitter.com/iEuu7lNWXG
— ABC7 News (@abc7newsbayarea) August 20, 2022
“It’s next to impossible to run a successful business in the Castro right now,” Dave Karraker, Co-President of the Castro Merchants Association relates. He owns the MX3 gym.
“You shouldn’t have to worry about is your window going to get smashed today by a mentally ill person who sees their face and reacts to it, I should be worried about whether I can sell more gym memberships,” he explains. Actually, this particular merchant is worried because he can’t sell gym memberships with mentally ill people wandering around terrifying his patrons. He put up more security cameras but it doesn’t help much.
As confirmed by San Francisco Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who represents the Castro District, “safe, clean streets are an entirely reasonable demand, and the city could make a real difference in the Castro with targeted resources including places to take people who are publicly intoxicated or experiencing psychosis, and an increased community policing presence.”
Severity of the crisis
What Karraker did get out of his security cameras, in place of security, is evidence that the city does nothing to enforce the laws. He’s collected footage similar to other videos making the rounds which show the “severity of San Francisco’s drug crisis as children try to navigate past users.”
That’s why every merchant in the neighborhood is “demanding that the city set aside 35 beds, specifically for the Castro, to deal with these people that we know are perennial problems.”
The letter the association sent to city leaders notes the distressed merchant coalition would “also like to see a comprehensive plan on how to address people who repeatedly decline services.”
They demand to see hard numbers. “clear monthly metrics on how many people in the Castro have been offered shelter or services.” If not, “they’re prepared for civil disobedience.”
Karraker spells out exactly what the merchant group means by that phrase. “Which means not paying taxes, which means not paying your business license fees, that’s where we might end up.” They are supposed to be paying the city for benefits they don’t get.
“If we’re not getting what we’re paying for, I don’t think that’s a bad idea,” Martin Mendoza, owner of Louie’s Barbershop agrees. “One day we had that guy that was just blocking the door, yelling at the customers and yelling at me, and then I had to shut the door and call the police, but they were like ok yeah well is that an emergency or not, I mean there was not a response at all.“
