A major supermarket is quitting downtown San Francisco after just a year of trading—with bosses saying they were unable to “ensure the safety” of staff in the city.
Whole Foods Market opened a new “flagship” branch Downtown, at Eighth and Market near the Trinity Place development, with much fanfare in March 2022. But just 13 months on, the supermarket chain has decided to close the store, which was shuttered at the end of business on Monday.
The move comes as the city remains gripped by crime, homelessness and rampant drug use.
Law and order has become an increasingly hot-button issue between Republican and Democrats as both parties prepare for a presidential campaign in 2024. Former San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin was recalled from office in 2022 amid accusations of being soft on crime. In Chicago, Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot failed in her attempt for re-election amid rising crime, a result that also played into the GOP narrative that President Joe Biden’s administration is soft on the issue.
The opioid epidemic in San Francisco, which began in the 1990s, has also worsened in recent years with the emergence of fentanyl, an extremely addictive painkiller that has seen public drug use in the streets and caused an uptick in fatal overdoses. According to the San Francisco Medical Examiner, in 2021, 650 people died from drug overdoses in the city, while 712 died of the same cause in 2020.
A report by San Francisco officials in August 2022 estimated that up to 20,000 people would experience homelessness at some point in the city in 2022, with four out of five of them remaining unhoused by city programs. The data was revealed in a “point in time” count, which are carried out regularly to qualify for federal funding.
A spokesperson for Whole Foods Market, which was one of the largest supermarkets in the downtown San Francisco area, told Newsweek: “To ensure the safety of our Team Members, we have made the difficult decision to close the Trinity store for the time being. All Team Members will be transferred to one of our nearby locations.”
The supermarket chain is at pains to suggest that the closure may be temporary, with a representative telling The San Francisco Standard: “We are closing our Trinity location only for the time being. If we feel we can ensure the safety of our team members in the store, we will evaluate a reopening of our Trinity location.” But an unnamed City Hall source reportedly told the paper that the store’s officials cited the level of crime and open drug use in the area as being a key reason for closing it down.
The store had already slashed its opening hours in October 2022 as it struggled to deal with high levels of theft from its shelves and trouble makers, an anonymous manager told The Standard. The following month, bosses were forced to implement stricter rules around access to its restrooms after staff found syringes and pipes left behind by drug users.
The police department aims to have 2,100 officers on the force, but its current staffing level stands at just 1,537 according to the The Standard.
Several people replied to Dorsey’s tweet saying his plan for minimum police staffing levels and budgetary provisions to ensure this did not go far enough. One resident told him: “5 years is not good enough, move faster. I used to work in this area and did not feel safe whenever I stepped foot outside my office. Now I went there because my income depended on it. No one would choose to visit a grocery store in that area if there are alternatives.”
As drug use has soared, the Bay area has been rocked by a crime wave that has seen mobs storming businesses to steal their goods, including a shocking incident at a small independent clothing store in November 2021 that was caught on video.
Several San Francisco-area stores were forced to board up their doors and windows amid the wave of smash-and-grab looting in the city and across California.
The Bay Area housing market—which includes San Francisco as well as other cities like San Jose and Oakland—has become one of the most overpriced and unaffordable in the country in recent years because of high demand caused by the booming local job market and low inventory of housing stock. However, house prices started to fall in March as mortgage rates spiked.
