San Francisco’s business hub is deserted with eerie footage showing boarded up shops, for lease signs and empty sidewalks after spiraling crime and homelessness drove businesses out

The desolate reality of San Francisco’s hollowed-out city center has been exposed by images showing every store on an entire shopping block closed and empty.

Lloyd Chapman of the American Small Business League visited the city’s once-thriving Union Square area, in the heart of the shopping district.

The prime real estate was once home to stores such as Uniqlo, H&M, Rasputin Records and Lush, but they have all disappeared in a city center plagued by crime, drugs and homelessness.

‘Unbelievable!’ he exclaims as his camera pans past the ghostly remains of former shops now covered in graffiti.

‘This whole street is empty, every shop is empty.’

Lloyd Chapman of the American Small Business League said it was a stark contrast to the city’s glory days just a few years ago, when it was a “Disneyland for adults.”

The retail exodus is reflected in nearby streets: 22 of 33 stores now sit empty in a three-block stretch of Powell Street, from Market Street to Union Square, according to a survey by the SF Chronical.

And the entire Union Square neighborhood now has a record vacancy rate of 20.6 percent, pushing the city’s overall retail vacancy rate to a new record 7.9 percent, a Cushman and Wakefield study found last month.

“The decline in retail performance was primarily due to deteriorating conditions in Union Square and the surrounding downtown area,” analyst Soany Gunawan wrote in the report.

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Assaults in the Union Square Police District are up 10 percent so far this year and car thefts are up by a third, despite police setting up a new command center in the area.

Rates for most crimes are down citywide this year, but Chapman argued the damage has already been done after years of increases, pointing the finger at California Governor Gavin Newsom.

“He has destroyed California with his failed policies,” the company executive tweeted.

‘San Francisco is a ghost town. “Oakland looks like a refugee camp.”

California spent $24 billion to tackle homelessness in the five years to 2023, but failed to track whether the money helped the state’s growing number of unhoused people, a damning report showed last month.

Homelessness rose 6 percent last year to more than 180,000 people in California, federal data show. And since 2013, the numbers have exploded by 53 percent, with the state accounting for a third of America’s entire homeless population.

It has contributed to California’s budget deficit of at least $45 billion, a shortfall so large that it has prompted Newsom to propose painful cuts that will impact immigrants, preschoolers and low-income parents seeking child care in a state which is often praised for having the fifth largest economy in the world. .

California Governor Gavin Newsom recently admitted that the state spent $24 billion to tackle homelessness in the five years to 2023, but did not track whether the money helped

A map shows the major companies that have left San Francisco or announced they will leave in recent months. Retailers like Whole Foods, Anthropologie, Old Navy, AmazonGo, Saks Off Fifth and now American Eagle are among those participating in the mass exodus

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Retail companies Old Navy, Nordstrom, Whole Foods, Anthropologie and Office Depot were among those who announced their exodus last year.

They were followed by North Face, Jeffrey’s Toys and Lacoste, while Macy’s is expected to close its flagship store next year.

“As someone who grew up in San Francisco, Macy’s has always meant a lot to the people of this city. It is where families came to shop during the holidays,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed said when the news was announced in February.

“It’s where many people from my community got their first jobs, or even held jobs for decades. It’s hard to imagine Macy no longer being a part of our city.”

Employees at the store told The San Francisco Standard they believe the decision was made because of daily shoplifting, with thieves taking at least four blazers, 10 wallets and 20 packs of underwear every day.

American Eagle announced last month that it will leave the former Westfield San Francisco Center this summer, citing more than 100 major safety incidents that allegedly occurred between May 2020 and May 2023.

Breed last month touted new figures showing that the city’s dormancy rate had reached a five-year low, with 360 tents and structures on the streets counted in April, a 41 percent drop from last summer.

A gruesome video shot in November showed homeless and drunk people spreading through the streets for hundreds of yards in the city’s Tenderloin neighborhood

At one point, a man wearing a hoodie apparently burned his back steps for the TikToker as other ghostly figures emerged from the darkness

According to Cushman & Wakefield, footfall to Union Square is down nine percent so far this year, and the crisis is not limited to retailers with office vacancies now at record levels as businesses of all kinds leave the city center.

Scenes of homeless drug addicts stumbling on sidewalks and fears of violence and petty crime have become a national political issue, with Donald Trump making it part of his campaign platform.

In a video on homelessness released by his campaign, Trump said “hard-working, law-abiding citizens” were sidelined and had to “suffer at the whims of a very sick few.”

He promised to “ban urban camping” and create “tent cities” on “cheap land” for the homeless, which will be staffed with doctors and social workers to help people address systemic problems.

More than two-thirds of Americans say homelessness, which rose 12 percent last year, is out of control

A recent DailyMail.com/TIPP poll found that more than two-thirds of American adults said homelessness had gotten out of control and officials should move those sleeping rough to tent camps outside cities.

The survey found that 67 percent of Americans are fed up with the country’s rapidly rising number of homeless people and want mayors to take drastic action to address the scourge.

“San Francisco was like Disneyland for adults,” Chapman wrote.

‘Lots of cool shops and fantastic restaurants and nightclubs. They’re all gone now. Maybe one day it will all come back.’