A desperate hotel owner in San Francisco's infamous Tenderloin neighborhood has responded to scathing online reviews and asked the city council to take it off his hands.
Sam Patel invested $6 million in the Best Western Red Coach Inn, only to see bookings plummet and the city's reputation deteriorate due to the city's epidemic of drug use and homelessness.
Guests speak of 'wading through pee and poop', 'homeless people and drugs in all the streets around the hotel' and 'shots fired'.
“These days everyone reads the reviews before they have the urge to book anything,” Patel told the newspaper SF Chronicle.
“And a lot of them say, 'Why do we want to book here?'
Owner Sam Patel invested $6 million in the Best Western Red Coach Inn, but has begged city authorities to take it off his hands
Guests must make their way through streets full of unconscious and semi-conscious people on the streets outside the hotel in the city's Tenderloin district
Drugs are openly traded on the streets of the area plagued by homelessness
Two of the city's biggest hotels announced their closure this summer amid a slew of store closures and Patel fears he will be forced to join them.
But his suggestion that the city buy or lease his hotel as a shelter for the thousands of homeless people outside has been rejected by city officials who told him that even they want to avoid the drug-ridden neighborhood.
“We are seeking to identify properties outside of the Tenderloin to help diversify the locations of our housing portfolio,” a spokeswoman for the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing said.
According to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, drug deaths in the city have reached a record high, with 620 in the first nine months of the year – compared to 540 in the same period in 2020.
Earlier this year, a homeless woman was pictured giving birth on a Tenderloin sidewalk as pedestrians walked by.
The baby lay crying on the sidewalk, covered in the mess of his birth, until his mother reached out to pick him up with a piece of cloth.
Large parts of the city were cleared last month for the arrival of Chinese President Xi Jinping, but residents told Dailymail.com that the problem has returned with a vengeance since security barriers were removed.
Last year there were almost 8,000 people on the streets or in shelters in the city
The city's drug crisis has seen 620 overdose deaths reported in the first nine months of the year
A map shows the major companies that have left or are planning to leave San Francisco in recent months
“It's really bad, worse than I've ever seen it,” said Howard Ul, 60, manager of the Golden State Donut Shop in Tenderloin.
“Every corner around here is like trash now. They're all back.'
The number of car thefts has increased by 5.6 percent this year and the number of robberies by 14.5 percent to 2,693.
But the city's police and public health departments will see the heaviest cuts after Mayor London Breed admitted last week to an $800 million budget shortfall.
And the city stands to lose $200 million a year from the exodus of major companies, in what economists have warned risks becoming a “doom loop” for the city left behind.
Starbucks closed seven stores in the city of Golden Gate and Microsoft left its 50,000-square-foot office.
In June, the 550,000-square-foot Westfield shopping center defaulted on its $558 million mortgage after anchor tenant Nordstrom decided to close along with Old Navy and Banana Republic due to high crime rates.
H&M, Uniqlo, Gap and Whole Foods have also left the city center.
But businesses that tried to push back against the city government were met with resistance from the Democratic administration, including District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston, who earlier this month blamed “capitalism” for the city's problems.
“I think what you see in the Tenderloin is absolutely the result of capitalism and what happens in capitalism to the people on the bottom rungs,” Preston told UnHerd.
Patel has already converted a hotel in the Financial District to house homeless veterans, but was ordered by building inspectors to remove sprinklers he had installed to wash feces from the street outside.
In 2019, the street was featured in a glowing Dailymail.com review of San Francisco's landmarks as the “gateway to its galleries and shops.”
Now, Patel's staff leads his remaining guests down Polk Street toward Market Street instead of further into the Tenderloin.
Best Western's revenue has fallen by 12 percent in the past year and its occupancy rate has fallen to 50 percent.
Reviewers emphasize the contrast between the quality of the hotels and the misery immediately outside.
“Heart of homeless people, life on the streets, illegal drug activity, feces on the sidewalk you walk,” wrote one. “There's noise 24/7, so you can't sleep.”
“It's just AMAZINGly clean and well decorated,” wrote another.
'I don't know how this hotel does it. The neighborhood is so bad!
A DailyMail.com analysis of the cuts facing key departments in San Francisco shows police need to find savings of $18.5 million and public health budgets could lose $26 million
“Feces on the streets (I've stepped in a few), homeless people everywhere, trash, smelly, loud; you name it.'
Patel now says he wishes he had never put the money in.
“It's just going to be terrible,” he said.
“If we had known it would get this bad, we would never have bought the property.”