Small Businesses Revolt Over Liberal City’s Open-Air Drug Markets

A group of San Francisco merchants is petitioning for the city to refund the year’s taxes, citing open-air drug markets that the group says have scared away customers, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

A group of small businesses in the Tenderloin, a San Francisco neighborhood known for rampant homelessness and drug use, banded together to form the Tenderloin Business Coalition, according to the Chronicle. The neighborhood is controlled by drug dealers rather than law enforcement and is “on the verge of collapse,” the group said in its petition to the city.

“The result is a catastrophic loss of revenue for the small businesses that are vital to the health and safety of the neighborhood,” the petition reads, according to the outlet. “Due to this untenable situation, businesses are closing and there is a real and palpable fear that the neighborhood is now on the verge of collapse.”

The group is demanding a full refund of city sales and property taxes for 2022 along with the immediate removal of drug dealers from the Tenderloin’s streets and a meeting with Democratic Mayor London Breed.

A business group in the city’s Castro district threatened to withhold taxes in August and demanded the city take action over rampant homelessness and the associated drug trade and psychotic episodes playing out in the neighborhood, according to the Chronicle.

Breed did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

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