The desolate reality of San Francisco’s hollowed out city center has been laid bare by footage showing every store in an entire retail block shuttered and empty.
Lloyd Chapman of the American Small Business League visited the city’s once-thriving Union Square area at the heart of its retail district.
The prime real estate was once home to outlets including Uniqlo, H&M, Rasputin Records, and Lush, but all have disappeared in a city center plagued by crime, drugs and homelessness.
‘Unbelievable!’ he exclaims as his camera pans round the ghostly remains of former stores now defaced by graffiti.
‘This whole street is vacant, every store is empty.’
Nothing remains of San Francisco’s retail heart on one block where every store is emptyÂ
Lloyd Chapman of the American Small Business League said it was a marked contrast to the city’s glory days just a few years ago when it was a ‘Disneyland for adults’
The retail exodus is mirrored in nearby streets with 22 out of 33 stores now vacant in a three-block section of Powell Street from Market Street to Union Square, according to a survey by the SF Chronical.
And the entire Union Square district now has a record vacancy rate of 20.6 per cent, helping drive the city’s overall retail vacancy rate to a new high of 7.9 percent according to a survey last month by Cushman and Wakefield.
‘The decline in retail performance was primarily due to the worsening conditions in Union Square and the surrounding downtown areas,’ analyst Soany Gunawan wrote in the report.
Chapman’s eerie video has been seen by 500,000 people since he posted it to X
Assaults are up by 10 percent in Union Square’s police district so far this year and vehicle thefts are up by a third despite police setting up a new command center in the area.
Figures for most crimes have fallen across the city this year but Chapman claimed the damage has already been done after years of increases, pointing the finger of blame at California governor Gavin Newsom.
‘He has devastated California with his failed policies,’ the business leader tweeted.
‘San Francisco is a ghost town. Oakland looks like a refugee camp.’
California spent $24 billion tackling homelessness in the five years to 2023 but did not track if the money was helping the state’s growing number of unhoused people, a damning report revealed last month.
Homelessness jumped 6 percent to more than 180,000 people in California last year, 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 it prompted Newsom to propose painful spending cuts impacting immigrants, kindergarteners and low-income parents seeking child care in a state often lauded for having the world’s fifth-largest economy.
California Governor Gavin Newsom recently admitted that the state spent $24 billion tackling homelessness in the five years to 2023, but did not track if the money was helping
A map reveals the major businesses which have left, or have announced they are leaving, San Francisco in recent months. Retailers like Whole Foods, Anthropologie, Old Navy, AmazonGo, Saks Off Fifth and now American Eagle are among those taking part in the mass exodus
San Francisco Mayor London Breed hailed figures showing a recent cut in street sleeping
Retail stalwarts Old Navy, Nordstrom, Whole Foods, Anthropologie and Office Depot were among those announcing their exodus last year.
They were followed by North Face, Jeffrey’s Toys, Lacoste with Macy’s 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’s where families came to shop for 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 think of Macy’s not being part of our city anymore.’
Workers at the store told The San Francisco Standard they believe the decision was made because of daily rampant shoplifting, with thieves taking at least four blazers, 10 wallets and 20 packs of underwear a day on a regular basis.
American Eagle announced last month that it will leave the former Westfield San Francisco Centre over the summer, citing more 100 significant security incidents that allegedly occurred between May 2020 and May 2023.
Breed hailed new figures last month suggesting that trough sleeping in the city has hit a five-year low with 360 tents and structures counted on the streets in April, a 41 percent reduction on last summer.
A horrifying video filmed in November showed homeless and intoxicated people sprawling across streets for hundreds of yards in the Tenderloin district of the city
At one point a man with a hoodie seemingly burnt off his back steps in front of the TikToker as other ghostly figures loom up out of the darkness
Visitor numbers to Union Square are down nine percent so far this year according to Cushman & Wakefield, and the crisis is not confined to retailers with office vacancies now at a record level as businesses of all types desert 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 that ‘hardworking, law-abiding citizens’ were being sidelined and made to ‘suffer for the whims of a deeply unwell few.’
He vowed to ‘ban urban camping’ and create ‘tent cities’ on ‘inexpensive land’ for homeless people that will be staffed with doctors and social workers to help people address systemic problems.
More than two thirds of Americans say homelessness, which surged by 12 percent last year, is out of control
A recent DailyMail.com/TIPP Poll showed that more than two thirds of US adults said homelessness was out of control and that officials needed to move those sleeping rough into tented encampments outside towns and cities.
The survey revealed that 67 percent of Americans are fed up with the country’s fast-rising number of homeless people and want mayors to take drastic steps to tackle the scourge.
‘San Francisco was like Disneyland for adults,’ Chapman wrote.
‘Tons of cool stores and fabulous restaurants and night clubs. They’re all gone now. Maybe someday it will all come back.’
