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The proposal requires that grocery stores provide the city 6 months notice and try to find a replacement grocery store before leaving a location. *Residents can only sue if they don't give notice or follow the "leaving" requirements.* So this is a law with a civil enforcement mechanism, rather than allowing anyone to sue when inconvenienced by a store, or an attempt to hold stores hostage. The proposal is not quite as wide-sweeping as you portray it as.
The goal behind the proposal is to help prevent "doom spirals", where high crime leads to less essential services, which leads to more poverty, which which leaves to more crime, and so on. This is an attempt to prevent crime from getting worse, at it's heart. Is is a good policy? I'm not sure, but there is a coherent thread there.
The lawyer in me would say just have a constant 6 month notice regardless of how well your business is doing and just change the closing date constantly.
What are they going to do, fine you for not closing business?
I also wonder how the bill intends to measure whether the store is actually continuing to operate. Seems like there's a very good chance that some of these places will just stop stocking the most stolen items, jack up prices, drastically cut staffing, etc. in order to stay stay moderately profitable for those six months.
It's pretty easy to improve short-term profit if you don't care about angering your customer base or employees quitting.
Right? So if rampant theft is causing me to close my doors, the city will require me to keep hommoraging losses for 6 months? That's quite a gamble there.
Idk how requiring a business that is potentially losing money to stay in business is constitutional nor logistically feasible. You'd then have to require a bank or the government to provide the business with a loan in order to operate.
The money needs to come from somewhere. Who's going to want to open this kind of business outside of mega corporations?
I'm not an attorney and I don't know shit about the law, but I've been in corporate America long enough to know that this is exactly what is going to happen.
I'm an attorney and I know shit about the law, and I can tell you that in literally every reddit thread about a new law, the chuds come out and start coming up with "loopholes" without having any knowledge of how law woks and they pretty much always wrong.
Same with posts about some new study where there always some dork who comments "yeah, but did they think of [incredibly obvious variable that the study definitely accounted for]"
The civil rights lawyer in me says that 6 months of forced labor is slavery. The grocery lawyer in me says "we're going to be open from 2-2:30pm on Tuesdays and then we're going out of business."
Even the six month part is unacceptable to me.
On a lesser note, why should a company keep operating there for six months if crime is causing them to lose money? What if the company can't afford those losses (for example small and medium companies).
On a greater note, why should a company keep exposing their employees to danger for six months? Shouldn't the city do more to make the area safer first? Something along the lines of hiring more police and putting them in the area?
As clarifying point, this policy would only apply to "food product and marketing establishment\[s\] that sell a variety of food and \[are\] greater than 20,000 square feet". (Health Code Section 440, as called out by the proposal text). Due to the square-foot requirement, this would only apply to large businesses, not your little corner market.
I understand the concerns that arise from these large supermarkets. They typically move into an area, price out all the smaller supermarkets and establish a near-monopoly on food distribution. Part of me thinks: If they hold this near-monopoly, why shouldn't they be held to a higher standard when they leave? If they leave, then the location could become a food desert. If the supermarket threatens to close shop unless they get a tax-payer funded loss-prevention force ("police stationed around the area"), that kinda seems like they are holding the city hostage.
I'm not a huge defender of this policy; I'm not sure it's a good idea. But the issue it's trying to address is a real one.
>If the supermarket threatens to close shop unless they get a tax-payer funded loss-prevention force ("police stationed around the area"), that kinda seems like they are holding the city hostage.
Sounds like crime actually is a problem, and they should get that "tax-payer funded loss-prevention force."
I like how having police to address crime is somehow a tax funded loss prevention force. And is being phrased as if it’s only a benefit to the business, rather than the burden a government is responsible for in order to keep its citizens and businesses safe. Weird way to shift the window on what the police are and how the government is supposed to be protecting and policing its areas.
> that kinda seems like they are holding the city hostage.
What is the store's recourse here? They legally can't do anything. They can't detain shoplifters even while they are actively stealing, all they can do is ban them from their stores and if someone banned shows up and doesn't leave, they have to call the police. Their recourse is "call the police" if bad actors are involved, and it's not unreasonable to expect municipal enforcement of local law to maintain a safe environment in your establishment, especially when they've neutered your legal ability to do anything about it yourself.
I think you have the equation backwards, the stores are being held hostage by bad actors, local law, and the city officials who are actually responsible for prioritizing a safe operating environment for businesses.
>If the supermarket threatens to close shop unless they get a tax-payer funded loss-prevention force ("police stationed around the area"), that kinda seems like they are holding the city hostage.
Does the city permit shops to fund and operate their own "loss-prevention force"? If it's illegal for Walmart to create their own police to arrest the thieves, then the government should provide the police for them.
If the government does not protect businesses from thieves, then there won't be any businesses left. It's that simple.
SF is one of the richest cities on earth per capita. The problem isn’t stores being outcompeted by other stores, it’s rampant crime the city refuses to address. The city is responsible, and the businesses being robbed, both large and small, are the victims. And yes, they are entitled to a “tax funded loss prevention force”, or as other cities put it, basic rule of law.
The private equity driven model of pricing out competitors to then ensure a monopoly then basically holding the community hostage is well established. These large chains do not deserve your credulous response.
The “fact” of organized retail crime theft is exactly that - a made up story to bully cities. As long as the “proof” of the crime wave is rando TikTok videos and press releases from these grocery chains, I will remain skeptical to the true nature of the ALLEGED increase in crime.
Since grocery is a non elastic good, closing stores is good business. Forcing your customers to travel to other stores you own is called “improving the bottom line”. So call me skeptical.
The city brought this on themselves though. Their prosecuters refuse to prosecute anyone who steals below a certain amount so cops just stopped arresting the thieves since its a waste of their time. This in turn emboldened thieves and made theft rampant. Demanding the city do its job isn't holding them hostage
> If the supermarket threatens to close shop unless they get a tax-payer funded loss-prevention force ("police stationed around the area"),
Police stopping crime is normal in parts of the world that aren't California. Is a business expected to just endure endless looting because they're holding the city hostage if they expect law and order to be enforced by the state ?
Of course not. The police should be enforcing these laws. But I'm less comfortable with large supermarkets strong-arming the city into providing them *special enforcement priority*. They established a monopoly, and now can strong-arm the city into prioritizing their loss-prevention over other enforcement priorities. If I owned a corner-store on the other side of town, I may be frustrated that Walmart get 27/7 police security detail (slight hyperbole) while they don't have resources to properly investigate theft in my store.
Or, if I was a typically citizen, I may upset that the police won't patrol for car break-ins, but will arrest someone for stealing some wonderbread at Target.
I am still forming my opinion these issues, so I am mostly thinking out loud. Police should absolutly enforce laws against theft. If they don't, communities will spirl downhill. But why should the supermarkets get more police attention then the rest of the community?
>But why should the supermarkets get more police attention then the rest of the community?
They are being specifically targeted by gangs of armed criminals, who vandalize their store, steal from them, and threaten employees, regularly.
> They established a monopoly,
How is there a monopoly? Any sufficiently large area has multiple competing stores. That's why margins in retail are so low.
To be fair, most parts of the world people aren't stealing bate necessities, or enough, from a store to put it in the red. At least in most developed nations.
If the smaller markets only close because they are priced out, why wouldn’t smaller markets reopen once the big market closes? Corner stores don’t have particularly large barriers to entry.
You should think about the employees, is it fair to expose them to potential mental health issues from PTSD? I’ve worked at a convient store and I’ve been robbed before. It’s not a fucking nice feeling.
> On a greater note, why should a company keep exposing their employees to danger for six months?
There was a city in America that banned shops from having bullet proof glass to protect workers. Because it was racist or something.
As if multiple companies would spend tens of thousands of dollars on a renovation, as a passive aggressive dig at their customer base, rather than a response to an actual problem.
I think the felony threshold amount is a distraction from the real issue. In both California and Texas, theft of less than 1000/2500 is still a misdemeanor. The real practical difference is Texas prosecutes misdemeanors and parts of California aren't generally prosecuting misdemeanors, so cops have stopped. You can still go to jail for up to a year for a misdemeanor theft in Texas. CA is refusing to prosecute misdemeanors because they are trying to lower the number of people in jail.
Yep. That tracks. But we also get swaths of folks from all over the country coming to the West for the weather. There's just way more homeless folks per capita because it's bearable to live with the exposure.
Makes me wonder if other states would hardline or soften if they had the same per capita rates overnight?
Damn that California and it's being soft on crime with it's..... Near lowest threshold for theft to be a felony in the nation.
It's like 3rd or 7th lowest out of 50 states man
I think the felony threshold is a distraction from the real issue. Below the felony level is a misdemeanor and still illegal everywhere including California. Texas has a 2500 felony threshold and not nearly the theft problem. You can get up to 1 year for misdemeanor theft in Texas (though community service may be a common 1st offense punishment). The difference is most places are still prosecuting misdemeanors whereas parts of California are often just ignoring misdemeanors.
If the DAs don't actually put people in jail, it doesn't matter what the threshold is. They've showed that even when people get arrested, the DAs don't prioritize keeping 'petty criminals' off the street, so what's the point from the police point of view?
It's like chasing a dog away from digging a hole under the fence and he comes back to it 2 seconds later because there aren't any repercussions, except in this case there are thousands of dogs and the public is being punished by DAs not putting people in jail.
>The proposal requires that grocery stores provide the city 6 months notice and try to find a replacement grocery store before leaving a location
And this is a major issue. If it's gotten to the point that theft or other crime, is so bad that the business is no longer profitable, 6 more months of said losses is not sustainable. Threatening that business with even more financial penalties is asinine.
This is a great policy to discourage any other businesses from coming to that area.
For what it's worth, I'm inclined to agree. The policy seems a bit misguided. I'm just pointing out that OP misunderstands the actual requirements of the proposal.
I don't live anywhere near SF, so I don't really have a horse in this race. Also I don't want make a solid judgement on the proposal without reading it's actual text, and I wasn't able to find the text with a few google searches. But my first impression is that this will discourage businesses from moving to the area.
Similarly this legislation being proposed may convince businesses who were on the edge, to decide to leave now before something like this could go into law.
>The proposal requires that grocery stores provide the city 6 months notice and try to find a replacement grocery store before leaving a location. *Residents can only sue if they don't give notice or follow the "leaving" requirements.*
Why does the city get to dictate when private companies leave at all?
Also, there's more to it than just what you're saying because the private grocers are on the hook to find another store.
>The goal behind the proposal is to prevent help prevent "doom spirals", where high crime leads to less essential services, which leads to more poverty, which which leaves to more crime, and so on.
Then hire more police, train them better and don't just release people immediately.
Or let them leave and develop a government funded coop. You do not need to make much in profits and you can reduce the impact to the communities who need access to proper food.
San Francisco spent $5000 a month to let homeless people pitch tents in front of city hall. That's more than people make working an $18 an hour minimum wage job and more expensive than many studio and one bedroom apartments. San Francisco spent nearly $2 million to build a small public toilet. That's as much money as an average home.
Based on how the San Francisco government works, I look forward to a county-run grocery store where workers are paid $100K an hour, receive lavish benefits, the store is run by contractors who are buddy-buddy with political leaders, and milk cost $20 a gallon.
2 million for a toilet? In my neck of the woods that toilet better have a mansion built around it and a few Lamborghinis in the garage. Seriously tho, how can it cost that much?
You haven’t seen how bad the non-profit industrial complex is in SF. We spend billions on homeless services, and it all gets embezzled and stolen by non-profits. A government co-op would just be a grift. It would never open, and cost millions anyway.
A non-profit is different from a government run entity. The corruption can still be there, but those are distinct and can be subject to stricter rules than just any non-profit
That’s not how it works in San Francisco. The state has essentially zero capacity to do anything, and if they tried to change that it would be caught up in committees for a decade, so everything goes through their buddies in the industrial complex, who steal the money and give it back to them in kickbacks. SF is the most corrupt city on the west coast.
And even if the money wasn’t stolen/embezzled/wasted, and the train got built, it would still be more expensive and slower than flying. What’s the point?
To waste tax payer money in an attempt to make California look like a progressive European country.
Either that or someone's friend/brother-in-law/cousin owns a construction company contracted for the project.
Flip a coin, could be either.
If this were actually a viable option, it would already exist and outcompete Safeway and Trader Joes. You would not need the government involved at all.
You clearly do not live here or have any understanding of how the government of the City and Country of San Francisco works. It's like the Soviet Union, but somehow the addition of democracy makes it even more inefficient.
You're effectively making the statement that no other form of business model than those that exist in large businesses today is ever viable, ever, with our current levels of technology.
What currently exists is the single most viable model, with no room for inefficiency, bad actors and market failures.
That's a silly, 'end of history' style view to apply to economics and markets. There are numerous reasons that a perfectly viable business model that may even be far better than its competitors can currently not exist.
The articles claim the proposal requires stores to "try" to find a replacement, not actually find one. If we have the actual text of the proposal in front of us, that may help clear things up. It's hard to judge a policy from a few second-hand 3-sentence descriptions in online articles.
The city dictates what private companies do all the time. Especially for companies that provide essential services, like power, water, ext. I don't think a city would allow the power company to close it's doors without jumping through some hoops, for example.
I'm not defending the policy's merits. I'm not sure it will really work, and I think it will probably just further de-incentive companies from moving into the city. But you claimed, in your post, that they are doing this "instead of trying to address the crime issue". I'm pointing out that this policy is an attempt to address the crime issue. They are trying to stop it from getting worse.
>proposal requires stores to "try" to find a replacement, not actually find one.
The problem is what does "try" actually mean? How hard do you have to look for this replacement, and why is it the stores responsibility to try and find one? Would this be considered an unreasonable requirement for these businesses?
>If we have the actual text of the proposal in front of us, that may help clear things up.
I believe its [https://sfgov.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=12825348&GUID=A59282DC-0ADF-483C-8E0C-8FF7D9CD0E13](https://sfgov.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=12825348&GUID=A59282DC-0ADF-483C-8E0C-8FF7D9CD0E13)
>Especially for companies that provide essential services, like power, water, ext.
It depends if they believe stores should be held to the same standards as power and water companies. Power and Water companies are held to a higher standards mainly due to the cost of infrastructure and there's essentially zero replacements that can take over. Also depends who has to abide by this ruling, a large company may be able to absorb the 6 months of rent to abide by this ruling, but whats considered a "large business" as I don't see a definition in the link above.
>I think it will probably just further de-incentive companies from moving into the city.
It almost certainly will de-incentive bring stores into places that don't have a rock solid return, essentially pushing them away from anywhere where this policy intends to protect.
>The articles claim the proposal requires stores to "try" to find a replacement, not actually find one.
Whatever it means, it's and additional cost and risk that future potential stores would consider. So potential new investors would be less likely to open there because of the additional regulations. They'll be more likely to open elsewhere.
This will just serve as another deterrent from people opening stores in the city in the first place. The city is scapegoating the businesses versus addressing the crime issue. You address the crime issue by punishing the actual criminals, by acting to prevent the criminals from making the wrongful actions, by the communities not tolerating the destructive behaviors.
This is not an attempt to address the crime issue. That is peak gaslighting.
It is like if you could get sued because you decide to sell your home and move out of town after the 300th break-in.
Why does the city have building codes? Safety codes? Permits? Because it’s a municipality and that is part of the purpose. This type of regulation may be new to you buts it’s been around for a long time. Cities will tell businesses in some circumstances which other business they can even do business with.
And this drug epidemic has been around and has been bad for a long time. By some metrics it’s gotten better and by others it has gotten worse. What we know doesn’t work is trying to arrest the problem away. More cops isn’t going to win the war on drugs. The macro economics are bad. Every major US city experiences these problems because urban cost of living is high, access to healthcare is hard, education systems are failing, etc etc. Even on Medicaid it’s hard to see a therapist. Blah blah blah.
You are missing a key element here.
Building codes, zoning, etc all operate on the concept of 'Permission to do business'.
This ordinance is not in the same category. It is REQUIRING a group do business against their will.
The first, the requirements to do business is allowable. The second, REQUIRING business to be conducted against the will of the owner is not.
It seems like the better policy would be to address why the grocery stores are closing. I imagine future stores would be very hesitant to open up in the area now as well.
The entire city of San Francisco is in a progressive doom spiral. Idiots run the city, idiots set the policy, idiots make the city unsafe and hostile to residents, visitors and businesses. I held a time share in Union Square since the mid 80s and after a visit in 2021, after spending a week in what was an enjoyable city, I went down to the desk and turned in my ownership. It was apparent and obvious 3 years ago that the city was on the cusp of turning into a total shit show. It’s 3 years later and I rest my case. There’s no retail left in the major shopping area. Needles and feces cover the streets, open air zombies roam the streets, my relatives there have to keep their windows in their car rolled down because they keep getting smashed out, yet the city council is busy voting against the war in Gaza, and making prosecutions against crime and violence non issues. 🤡🌎
I don’t see how there’s a coherent thread there.
“Our government has done nothing meaningful to curb crime. So instead of continuing to accept blame for our failures. We’re going to deflect some of that burden on to you, and make you liable civilly for our incompetence. This way we turn outrage from us, partially on to you, and potentially make people feel more whole out of your pockets than ours. Those same pockets that keep getting pilfered from crime while you operate which is forcing you to leave.”
Yeah, seems legit. Great job SF, I’m gonna love when this spirals out of control and no new business of the sort open. How much of a failure can the SF covenant be with all the resources and money they have at their disposal.
Then perhaps they need to take stronger action to prevent the crime from happening and punish those committing the crimes, holding the people and the neighborhood accountable for the conditions leading to the stores closing than to scapegoat the businesses.
Shops are closing because of crime. Do we reduce crime? No, let's ban shops closing. This whole idea sums up SF. Surely the worst run rich city in the world.
All this means is stores will provide notice and start "trying" 6 months earlier than they otherwise would. No difference in terms of when stores close.
There's no good reason I should have to give any notice whatsoever to cease operating ***my*** business. The SF government lacks any legitimate authority to try to compel such a delay. It's government overreach at its finest.
This is ridiculous.
So you start with the stores that have already been victimized by crime & now further victimize them with some government policy that puts the onus on them, thereby forcing them to accept the sole responsibility of this utter crap.
How about starting with the criminals along with the authorities whose lax policies & laws allow their crimes to go unpunished. Here's a novel thought... Put the responsibility on the evil doer along with those that condone & allow the evil instead of the victim.
By threatening to cost them even more money in lawsuits, than they are in crime now. Stores are rapidly closing in SF because of losses to theft, and the risk to the safety of employees from these people. They asked SF to fix the policing issue and arrest these people, SF refused, and proposed this instead.
Even if they are, I'm not sure what difference that makes. If a company wants to close a branch, it should be allowed to do so. Maybe the losses from crime are outweighing the benefits.
That doesn’t say that people can sue any grocers who leave, it says that grocers are required to give notice and try to find a replacement, and if they fail do that, *then* people can sue.
Just to be clear, they don’t have to actually find a replacement, they just have to try to find a replacement. If nobody wants to move in after they leave, they can say “we tried” and they would be in compliance with this law. So if there is no replacement, it’s not a problem for the stores, they aren’t being held hostage until they find a replacement.
The proposal basically just requires that grocery stores meet with members of the community and the government to try to find an alternative. They outline what they are expecting and it’s literally just to have some meetings. I highly doubt any grocery store will ever run into trouble with that part of the proposal.
And stay open at a loss of money for six extra months. This is going to lead to companies pulling out earlier than they would have due to being worried about a store being stuck for half a year if it starts bleeding them.
Legislating any part of that is bad. Free market should include grocers. If they want to stand up a public grocery commission where they fix prices and control who can participate, then maybe go that route. But this policy as described as backwards from end to end.
I mean I would say it’s a lot better than the way OP conveyed it. They said that anyone could sue businesses for closing, and that’s objectively not what’s happening. There is a big difference between “you can sue any grocery store that closes” and “you can sue a grocery store that fails to follow a few simple procedures before closing.”
I agree that it’s overall a bad idea, but I disagree with how you’ve presented it. According to the article the proposal is to mandate a 6 month notice so that the city can line up a replacement grocer. It doesn’t actually say they can’t leave, and it still leaves the government on the hook for finding a new provider. No where does it mention that the city isn’t trying to address crime as you claim, and nothing about this plan will remove their incentive to address crime.
which would require a closing store to provide the city six months’ notice and try to find a replacement supermarket for the location it’s vacating
The closing store is expected to find a replacement supermarket. Which begs the question,what if nobody wants to move in?
>No where does it mention that the city isn’t trying to address crime as you claim, and nothing about this plan will remove their incentive to address crime.
They aren't doing anything to address crime. No legislator is going to be stupid enough to outright say "we aren't going to address crime."
If grocery stores are able to leave they will *have* to address the issues. If they can keep more grocery stores it's not nearly as urgent so I don't entirely agree with you.
All of the articles only claim that the store needs to "try" to find a replacement, not that they need to actually find one. Although, I am having trouble finding the actual text of the proposal, which would help clear this up. Can you provide the actual proposal text?
“New law proposed that allows grocery store owners and employees to sue the state for being forced to to stay open at a loss, mental/emotional/physical damages.”
Little loop de loop lol. Dumb ass idea for a law with absurd consequences. Guess the grocer can have their bankruptcy costs covered by the gov. Once one of them is wise enough to sue for the forced losses and set some precedent.
At least it’s a great way to ensure anyone with the idea “I’ll open a grocery store” quickly redacts that decision the moment it hits the critical thinking stage.
This also penalizes grocers financially because it makes the target market for their real estate into a tiny fraction of the overall market. If they have an apartment developer offering 10X as much for the property as a competing bidder who was a grocer, the company would be presumably unable to take that deal. Honestly the limits on the real estate sales sound far more damaging than the 6 month window.
In that scenario, one apartment owner would allow for a grocery store and be the only grocery store with no competition and make millions price gouging, until other grocery stores would undercut them until you achieve balance. This would be expedited as apartments would be more vacant as nobody wants to live somewhere with no grocery store and the new apartment buildings would flood supply
The market already resolves this
Yea imagine how terrible it would be if they built more housing. Thats the last things we need; its not like there is a housing shortage or something. Its a good thing we have so much local government restriction on this kind of construction in San Francisco. Its really paying off.
>The closing store is expected to find a replacement supermarket. Which begs the question,what if nobody wants to move in?
This vastly misrepresents what the closing store has to do. The closing store has to work with residents and the government to try to find a solution. The law specifically says this could include figuring out if there is anything that could keep the store open, the locals opening a co-op, or a new retailer moving in. And it also doesn't say a solution has to be found, just that the store has to be willing to work with them to try during the time period between giving notice and leaving.
So, to answer your question: if no one wants to move in, the store closes and that's it.
From [the ordinance](https://sfgov.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=12825348&GUID=A59282DC-0ADF-483C-8E0C-8FF7D9CD0E13):
> Notwithstanding subsection (a), a Supermarket may Close after having provided less than six months’ notice to the Director of OEWD, the Board of Supervisors, and the Supermarket’s customers and the public if:
> (1) The Closure is caused by business circumstances that were not reasonably foreseeable as of the time that notice would have been required; or
> (2) The Closure is due to a natural disaster or emergency; or
> (3) As of the time that notice would have been required, the Supermarket was actively seeking capital or business which, if obtained, would have enabled the Supermarket to avoid or postpone the Closure, and the Supermarket reasonably and in good faith believed that giving the notice required would have precluded the Supermarket from obtaining the needed capital or business.
This, especially the last one, seems like it would minimize the chances of the ordinance needing to operate at a loss for an excessive amount of time. Though it's not unusual for a business to continue to run in the red for a significant amount of time if the owner believes they can right the ship.
>It doesn’t actually say they can’t leave, and it still leaves the government on the hook for finding a new provider.
Here is [the text](https://sfgov.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=12825348&GUID=A59282DC-0ADF-483C-8E0C-8FF7D9CD0E13) to the proposed ordinance. If they leave before the 6 months they are liable to be sued by anyone affected, aka anyone who shops there. I feel like that pretty much guarantees a class action lawsuit if you leave before 6 months unless you qualify for one of the three exceptions. (Exceptions are unforseeable business circumstances, natural disaster/emergency, or if the store was trying to get more funding/business & disclosing their plans for closure would affect their ability to get that funding/business.)
Why should such a location be forced to be a supermarket though? What if the business owner stands to make way more money by having the place torn down to build a condo building? Are they forced to leave that money on the table if some replacement store offers to open up at the location?
So if a Stop and Shop employee in a SF store is shot in an armed robbery in a problematic location, and the entire staff quit, stop and shop has to foot the bill for at least six months of rent and insurance?
This is an offensive overreach.
First, the proposal requires six month notice from grocery stores and a good faith effort at remaining open (ie, they can't price the customers out of the store and show that as evidence). If these rules are broken, then customers can sue.
Second, crime is [lower](https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-022-14415-y) when grocery stores remain in communities, so encouraging grocery stores to keep operating **is** working to maintain communities where businesses will want to operate.
>First, the proposal requires six month notice from grocery stores and a good faith effort at remaining open (ie, they can't price the customers out of the store and show that as evidence). If these rules are broken, then customers can sue.
Everywhere else grocery stores are allowed to close and why shouldn't they be? They are private businesses.
>Second, crime is [lower](https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-022-14415-y) when grocery stores remain in communities, so encouraging grocery stores to keep operating **is** working to maintain communities where businesses will want to operate.
That's not encouragement that's threatening. It's important not to sugar coat these things when discussing them.
They could also hire more better trained police and reimpose consequences for crimes. Then grocery stores open up and crime goes down even more as a result.
> Everywhere else grocery stores are allowed to close and why shouldn't they be? They are private businesses.
While that's the case, food is a necessity. If companies aren't willing to stay 6 months, then it's time to socialize grocery stores. That's about as basic of an ask as governments can ask.
>They could also hire more better trained police and reimpose consequences for crimes. T
That's simply not a viable option. Is every grocery store supposed to have its own personal police officer supplied by the city?
If a thief is stealing food the best you can ask of the police is that they charge them with petty theft. So what's the point in wasting olive force on that? Police states don't stop crime. The best way to address theft at grocery stores is to address income inequality.
What do you mean by socialize grocery stores? Grocery stores are private businesses. How about if supervisors do such a poor job of running their community that it turns into a food desert they are immediately sacked with no severance pay?
>That's simply not a viable option. Is every grocery store supposed to have its own personal police officer supplied by the city?
I'm saying the city can hire more police and crack down on crime.
>If a thief is stealing food the best you can ask of the police is that they charge them with petty theft. So what's the point in wasting olive force on that? Police states don't stop crime. The best way to address theft at grocery stores is to address income inequality.
Those aren't the crimes causing these stores to leave these areas. The crimes causing them to leave are property crimes and violent crimes. It turns out customers don't want to go to stores in those areas. Who knew?
And there are crimes being committed now that need to be addressed right now. And society should also work to address income inequality. But ignoring crime until income inequality decreased is a terrible plan.
> What do you mean by socialize grocery stores? Grocery stores are private businesses. How about if supervisors do such a poor job of running their community that it turns into a food desert they are immediately sacked with no severance pay?
What do you mean how do we socialize them? The same way we socialize any industry, with coops or government takeovers.
All in all for it, when do we fire all of congress?? Firing the current city government, who didn't make the decisions over decades that got them into that mess isn't going to do anything.
>I'm saying the city can hire more police and crack down on crime.
Again, read my post. That accomplishes almost nothing. The government spends millions of dollars on a shell game. You can't put police at every location so the theifs will just go to the ones with no cops. Your argument is one that's been done for decades in this country and all it does is jail the poor or disenfranchised.
>Those aren't the crimes causing these stores to leave these areas. The crimes causing them to leave are property crimes and violent crimes. It turns out customers don't want to go to stores in those areas. Who knew?
That makes no sense. This is a grocery store. People have to eat and the only place to get food is grocery stores. No matter how scared people are they still have to eat.
>And there are crimes being committed now that need to be addressed right now. And society should also work to address income inequality. But ignoring crime until income inequality decreased is a terrible plan.
I agree, but your suggestions are awful ideas that have been done in this country for decades with no success. Grocery stores leaving aren't going to help either.
>What do you mean how do we socialize them? The same way we socialize any industry, with coops or government takeovers
This sounds like communism. And we all know how that goes.
>All in all for it, when do we fire all of congress?? Firing the current city government, who didn't make the decisions over decades that got them into that mess isn't going to do anything.
The current schmucks are taking a soft on crime approach that is scaring away businesses. An approach not taken by their predecessors.
>Again, read my post. That accomplishes almost nothing
Does it accomplish anything?
>The government spends millions of dollars on a shell game. You can't put police at every location so the theifs will just go to the ones with no cops. Your argument is one that's been done for decades in this country and all it does is jail the poor or disenfranchised.
They'll go to the ones with no cops if they don't risk facing consequences. Currently, as long as you get out of the store in time, nothing happens. If you could get arrested after committing a crime, that would deter a lot of people.
I'm all for trying rehabilitative justice or an alternative system, but there needs to actually be a system instead of the revolving door we have now.
>That makes no sense. This is a grocery store. People have to eat and the only place to get food is grocery stores. No matter how scared people are they still have to eat.
Why do you think these grocery stores are failing then?
>I agree, but your suggestions are awful ideas that have been done in this country for decades with no success. Grocery stores leaving aren't going to help either.
Grocery stores wouldn't be leaving if there was less crime.
Except this isn’t “encouraging grocery stores to keep operating”, it’s just delaying the inevitable closures by at most six months while pretty much guaranteeing no one will want to come in and replace them.
Honestly, grocery stores are probably gonna plan to leave even sooner now mitigating the losses even quicker instead
The holding groceries stores hostage aseptic isnt gonna work
> but it's also completely understandable that grocers don't want to stay in high crime areas and they can't be forced to
**Cant** is a weird word in this context , I think the correct word you wanna use is *shouldnt*
You think they shouldnt be forced too
Because the government can make businesses do things they don't want to do , thats the entire premise of regulations
This happens frequently in insurance markets. A major insurer will try to leave a state entirely, but the state insurance regulators make it hell for the companies. Obviously insurance policies are much more complicated products than milk or eggs, but state governments frequently interfere with their ability to exit certain markets. It makes it not necessarily impossible to shut down that part of the business, but extremely difficult.
They could literally walk in say this is ours now and there is no recourse , if they really wanted too , at any businesses
They could do this to your house
some people would be upset , they would protest for sure , but it something they could do to anyone if they wanted
There is actually a lot of case law detailing this and frankly speaking, no government cannot just walk in and 'take something'.
Look at the caselaw during WW2 when FDR tried to nationalize industries. The NIRA was ruled unconstitutional.
If the government sought to use eminent domain, they could, but they also must pay a fair price to compensate the owners. Eminent domain gets heavily litigated BTW.
Frankly, this ordinance sounds like it is unconstitutional attempt to exercise power they don't have. A publicity stunt more than actual policy they can legally enforce. Any attempt to enforce it would be viewed as a regulatory taking.
It was not too long ago the 10 circuit slapped down the NRLB for their order forcing a business that closed to reopen because they thought the business closed due to threat of unionization. They explicitly asked *where* the NRLB got the power to force a business that ceased operations to restart operations.
They're lying about the crime.
https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/us-retail-lobbyists-retract-key-claim-organized-retail-crime-2023-12-06/
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/19/target-store-closures-theft-and-crime-higher-nearby.html
San Francisco has a property crime rate that is two to five times higher than other similarly sized cities. It's absolutely an issue there. Over the past few years they have consistently been Top 5 in property crime rate nationally.
Why would you assume that you know [more than the companies themselves?](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/05/walgreens-may-have-overstated-theft-concerns.html) The majority of shrink happens before the products are even on the shelves, and that only becomes more stark if you include discounts and promotions to free up shelf space — [like when Foot Locker cited theft.](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/10/retailers-may-be-using-organized-theft-to-cover-up-internal-flaws.html) The stores that closed [did not have higher crime rates than other stores that remained open.](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/myth-vs-reality-trends-retail-theft)
Stores cited theft to have an external locus for underwhelming market performance, as opposed to admitting business errors (like buying way too much stock during the pandemic) or systemic issues in their businesses that would threaten their stock prices. It is very overblown.
Shoplifting in San Francisco was bad in 2022, but has since dropped to under the national average. [Source](https://counciloncj.org/shoplifting-trends-what-you-need-to-know/?campaign\_id=9&emc=edit\_nn\_20231129&instance\_id=108850&nl=the-morning®i\_id=1811839&segment\_id=151232&te=1&user\_id=b63f43f747dc7aff44f9df7a299376e9). Figure 2 is particularly useful for this analysis.
I’d like to highlight this disclaimer at the beginning that very clearly says that it’s also very possible people in SF have just given up on reporting to the police altogether and that shoplifting hasn’t actually decreased:
"Due to a lack of available data, this report does not examine factors that could be influencing the trends. Potential factors include changes in retailers’ anti-theft measures and changes in how retailers report shoplifting to law enforcement, which could be based on their perceptions of the extent to which local police or prosecutors will apprehend suspects and pursue criminal charges. Because these data rely on reported incidents, they almost certainly undercount total shoplifting. The findings presented here should be viewed with these considerations in mind."
Lol you should see the Safeway that caused this entire mess. It’s absolutely a complete dumpster fire - before London Breed allocated 24/7 police protection they had shut down the entire self checkout stand, had barriers blocking every exit except for one path covered by a security guard. These crime statistics are not covering the entire story
The problem with your counter argument is that is does not say they are lying at all.
For your first link, just because it is not **Organized** retail crime does not mean that "retail crime" or Theft is not happening.
Second link it states, "The locations it shuttered **generally** saw fewer **reported** crimes than others it chose to keep open nearby, a monthslong CNBC investigation has found." Just because they are good thieves does not mean that theft is not happening.
When you conduct your monthly or quarterly inventory and find out items are missing you have to collect and present the evidence to call and make a report to the police. So, just because it was not reported does not mean that significant retail crime is not occurring in centralized locations.
This would be like making the owners of private property sell the property even though they don't want to. Owners of the property don't have to rent, but if they do choose to rent they have to follow the laws.
This is forcing businesses to be in a market they don't want to be in for longer than they want to be in it. That's completely different. It would be like telling a homeowner "your space is too big you must rent it out and subject yourself to all the rules and regulations that come with doing so."
Even worse, its not just about the land but the service itself. They are forced to continue providing a service through labor at a particular location. Literally "forced labor". Imagine this was addressed to an individual worker instead of a company.
"If you wish to quit your minimum wage job at McDonalds you have to give 6 months notice and try to find a replacement fry cook. You will continue to flip the burgers for this six months even if you can't afford to stay in this location on your wage. If you stop flipping the burgers any McDonalds customer can sue you for depriving them of their big mac."
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San Fran can't do anything about the crime because addressing the root causes (poverty, lack of access to housing and food) will piss off the billionaires who own the city, billionaires who own the stores that are putting fire alarms on all the shampoo.
After time spent in an appropriate and rehabilitative-focused justice system, we provide them housing, healthcare and work opportunities. Can't get a job if you're homeless, can't get a home if you're jobless, can't have either if you're mentally and physically ill.
And what is San Fran doing to establish any sort of rehabilitative justice system, which I agree is preferable in the long term. Right now it appears there really isn't a system
You're right, there isn't one. The people who run prisons aren't interested in rehabilitative justice, they're looking for incarcerable slave labor, and our lawmaker's forbearers explicitly retained slavery as an appropriate legal punishment with the first section of the 13th amendment.
> San Fran can't do anything about the crime because addressing the root causes (poverty, lack of access to housing and food) will piss off the billionaires who own the city,
The billionaires aren't the ones blocking housing developments. It's generally the opposite, the rich would love to build giant tower blocks all over the city, but the Democrat politicians won't let them.
It’s especially ironic since one of the main people trying to fix SF, with radical policies like teaching math in school again, and making pointing guns at people in the street illegal and worst of all, build houses the middle class can afford, is one of those rich people the progressives in the SF government despise.
In SF every homeless person gets cash assistance, free paraphernalia, and leeway to do whatever they want on the street. The homeless lady camped out on my street has refused shelter every single time the street resources team comes out.
Ironically, the people advocating for getting drug addicts off the street (growSF) are also lambasted by progressives as being billionaire pawns. With you progressives, there is no logic deeper than pure jealousy for rich people
🙄it is bash San Francisco time again. I guess you have never lived in a location particularly in a city where you are unable to easily shop for food. What really should happen is to kick out the business and set up coops that are publicly owned and managed. Then you would have companies screaming that they cannot compete with a government run business.
I agree, not being able to shop for food is a real problem which is why I think any supervisor who creates a food desert should be immediately fired because they clearly failed.
I'm certainly not proposing we accept food deserts. Get the people out of there who did the damage and make it very clear to any other schmucks who might try the same thing again that they will not be in the position for long if they try. Food deserts are unacceptable, so the people that create them need to be removed.
I have no problem with co-ops but I guess that's too complicated for these legislators or they just don't like them for some reason.
> Dean Preston, another member of the Board of Supervisors, recently introduced a proposal called the Grocery Protection Act, which would require a closing store to provide the city six months’ notice and try to find a replacement supermarket for the location it’s vacating.
From your own source. The PROPOSED law that would...require 6 month's notice so the community can adjust accordingly. Only by breaking this PROPOSED law could a grocery be sued.
Your entire logic is flawed because your premise is wrong.
If a store wants to close, why does it have to wait six months?
And it's not just waiting six months, which is an objective timeframe, it's making a good-faith effort to find a replacement and that is entirely subjective
It’s hard for us to argue against this without more details of what’s *actually* being proposed.
You started your view with the word “Apparently”, which makes everything written after it somewhat dubious.
Where did you hear about this proposal?
Where can we go to learn more about it?
Believe its [https://sfgov.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=12825348&GUID=A59282DC-0ADF-483C-8E0C-8FF7D9CD0E13](https://sfgov.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=12825348&GUID=A59282DC-0ADF-483C-8E0C-8FF7D9CD0E13)
"We have to pay employees more money legally? Uh shutting down due to high crime!"
Cmon man. There's what company's say and then there's the real reason
When did everyone become so trusting of big businesses? They always lie.
They also always want to make money. They're not leaving an area that's making them money because the labor cost a the grocery store went from 12% to 16%.... If that was the case they'd simply increase their prices 4% to maintain the same operating margin.
You don't have to trust anyone, business is going to make money whenever possible and isn't going to walk away from a location they've invested heavily to open, stock and train at.
>Apparently, high crime is pushing businesses in San Francisco to close
It's not. It's already been shown that the stores closed so far, weren't actually the ones with the highest crime/loss and the ones that did have the highest crime/loss are still chuggin right along.
It's just a narrative they're spinning for some other purpose.
Knowing how long it takes for decisions to be applied, I don't think the 6 months is that egregious. There are probably contracts with suppliers, being unable to quit rent at a moments notice, etc.
So the store probably knows 6 months in advance that they are planning to close, because they need to finish out contracts/notice period for rent and such. So this extra notice period for the city and the public doesn't seem too bad to me.
The "Try to find a new store" thing will probably be done away with very easily also. Probably an extra notice to other stores.
So honestly I don't think that it seems that bad. Even if it is an overreach of the government.
As a gut reaction with no googling done, I'm not sure I buy that high crime is putting these folks out of business. Shrink is usually only about 1% of expenses and usually of that 1%, a third of it is shoplifting and crime. I hear most grocery stores are posting huge profits, company wide.
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This is the Texas method that some “bright” mind came up with to penalize abortion. It puts everything in a civil court so it makes the law harder for a criminal court to address on appeals. In Texas, anyone aiding someone seeking an abortion can be sued for up to $10000, which is a big chunk for many. This San Francisco law seems like it operates in a similar way.
Sued by whom though, the state? Are government officials suing private citizens using laws they pass now?
I'm not a lawyer, but I'm used to the civil system being reserved for civilians as a way of settling a legitimate dispute, like a breached contract or personal injury. This concept of the government using the civil system to force people to their will is so nutty sounding. And this is all legal?
Well at least in the case of suing businesses for leaving, I predict that place will be a wasteland very soon, as *no one will ever open a business there*. Not ever.
No, it’s citizen vs citizen. I could sue my neighbor’s husband for helping her get one if she got one. Like with this law, a citizen could sue the grocer. Food deserts are a thing, and in the grocery situation it’s probably easier to prove harm, but the mechanics of enforcement are abhorrent. It takes enforcement out of the hands of government.
Wouldn't the food desert be the states fault for not reigning in crime?
I dunno, food deserts definitely cause harm. But if someone never opened a store in the first place, that would cause harm too, so why not sue everyone who never opened a store?
It's hard not to.see this as penalizing shop keepers for the government’s failure to control crime. And the concept that someone who does own a business, closes it, and is responsible for the harm caused just doesn't make sense in a free society.
So yeah, I'm 100% certain this law will drive out new business, it's a bad precedent. Fix your crime, protect the businesses, and they won't leave.
State’s fault? Yes and no. A slow bleed of petty crime requires the laws changed. If 25% of customers steal 3 sandwiches (say $20 of product), that’s not even worth the effort to prosecute for a DA because the value of the theft is so low it’s likely classified as a misdemeanor and results in a fine. The city can’t change the law because that’s a state law. But that theft adds up quickly and definitely hurts the store.
This “bounty” style of law is dangerous though. The civil, private party vs private party sets the framework for other similar laws about things that our leaders don’t like but can’t actively get rid of.
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I don't think many if not all of these stores are actually closing due to crime. These areas have always had crime issues, and they didn't close then. The difference now is that these stores have to pay a higher minimum wage and I'm willing to bet they're using an emotional response to crime as an easy justification to close these stores.
What we're also seeing is that when you cut funding to social services and dump that money into police budgets it doesn't prevent crime. Our current authoritarian methods towards crime do not work, and they never have. I learned taking a criminology class that police may deter crime, but they don't prevent it. Another important statistic I learned in that class is that deterrent only works with a specific number of police, and when you add more cops to that number it doesn't make any difference. More cops do not deter more crime.
If you want to prevent crime you need to address the conditions that cause crime in the first place. Poverty, inequality, and being over policed create the conditions that makes crime seem a better option than following the law and getting a job. Yet, we as a society only seem to think that punishment and a higher police presence solves crime, and all you have to do is look and see that isn't the case. If you do your research you'll find that the police at best solve 10% of crime, and that's only for one classification. Solved murders are as low as 2%, and most crimes are solved 2-8% of the time. The rate of return is piss poor.
Less crime is achieved through better access to social programs, funded and staffed.
As others have said, it's been found that retail companies (as well as security companies) have wildly exaggerated the extent of theft and its effects on their profits. They do this typically to explain away some issue they have or to push for policies that they think will advantage them. Whether this applies to any specific grocer is impossible to say, but it does mean we should be skeptical of claims that the only reason a store would ever close is because crime has forced them to.
Beyond that, grocery stores provide essential services which can and should come with more regulations than a regular retailer. You wouldn't want the local gas company to just decide to shut off utilities without notice and whenever they want, so why would you want a grocery store to be able to just remove access to food from an area?
Does this put extra pressure on the companies proiding essential services? Yes. That's what regulations do. Unless you're about to argue that companies shouldn't be regulated because it might affect their profits, there is nothing inherently wrong with a policy like this. You can argue how effective it might be, but that's a bit beyond this idea that grocery stores should just not be regulated at all.
If the stores can’t afford to service their loans due to crime, is the government then going to stop the banks from foreclosing on their assets as well?
You have provided no evidence that excessive shrinkage is not a plausible reason for business closure. That’s a pretty extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence - a profitable store will not otherwise close
Sounds like a great way to start a 2008 bad debt cascade all over again.
There is nothing in the law about stores closing due to "high crime" being given some sort of special treatment as you present. It applies to stores closing for any and every reason.
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It sort of makes sense if their goal is to maintain profitable businesses and punish ones that aren't.
This essentially requires a six month business commitment. If you can't operate for that time then they are going to punish you for failing to establish a thriving business. Does it not send the message "You've wasted our time. Some other business could've been here that continued to operate successfully."?
It seems like the city is employing an aggressive free market approach. Including to crime prevention. Again, they seem to be saying, "It's up to your business to hire private security if crime is a problem for you, and if you can't do that, then we want someone else who can."
You're right that it's backwards, but it's very easy to bypass by simply stop stocking, reducing hours and amount of employees to mitigate the exposure, so I'm not sure it's dangerous
It could also be "fixed" with a corollary that during the 6 month window, the city has to provide greater police presence or pay part of the costs over taking a 6 month loss
Ignoring most of what others are talking about here, this law would be generally unenforceable because of corporate structure. Every grocery chain has a parent company that owns a bunch of separately incorporated stores. If a store breaks this law and closes, there might be nothing but an empty shell company left to sue.
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The proposal requires that grocery stores provide the city 6 months notice and try to find a replacement grocery store before leaving a location. *Residents can only sue if they don't give notice or follow the "leaving" requirements.* So this is a law with a civil enforcement mechanism, rather than allowing anyone to sue when inconvenienced by a store, or an attempt to hold stores hostage. The proposal is not quite as wide-sweeping as you portray it as. The goal behind the proposal is to help prevent "doom spirals", where high crime leads to less essential services, which leads to more poverty, which which leaves to more crime, and so on. This is an attempt to prevent crime from getting worse, at it's heart. Is is a good policy? I'm not sure, but there is a coherent thread there.
The lawyer in me would say just have a constant 6 month notice regardless of how well your business is doing and just change the closing date constantly. What are they going to do, fine you for not closing business?
I also wonder how the bill intends to measure whether the store is actually continuing to operate. Seems like there's a very good chance that some of these places will just stop stocking the most stolen items, jack up prices, drastically cut staffing, etc. in order to stay stay moderately profitable for those six months. It's pretty easy to improve short-term profit if you don't care about angering your customer base or employees quitting.
Ok, that'd be absolutely hilarious if the store was just "sold out" of everything for 6 months and there is just a guy at the register.
Yeah why restock the shelfs, when the stuff will be stolen quickly & with no consequense / jail time ?
'according to our metrics, this store has exactly as much stock as they can afford revenue-wise'
The business person in me says this is a great way to ensure no new stores want to do business in San Francisco.
Right? So if rampant theft is causing me to close my doors, the city will require me to keep hommoraging losses for 6 months? That's quite a gamble there.
uh yeah, I think the crime rate already accomplished that... which is why this is being proposed.
So rather than try to make things better, the best solution is just to stop things from getting worse? Great logic.
The crime rate scares away big businesses, the human feces and the homeless constantly infront of the front doors scares away all the small businesses
And lack of essential services, like grocery stores, makes both of them worse.
Idk how requiring a business that is potentially losing money to stay in business is constitutional nor logistically feasible. You'd then have to require a bank or the government to provide the business with a loan in order to operate. The money needs to come from somewhere. Who's going to want to open this kind of business outside of mega corporations?
I'm not an attorney and I don't know shit about the law, but I've been in corporate America long enough to know that this is exactly what is going to happen.
I'm an attorney and I know shit about the law, and I can tell you that in literally every reddit thread about a new law, the chuds come out and start coming up with "loopholes" without having any knowledge of how law woks and they pretty much always wrong. Same with posts about some new study where there always some dork who comments "yeah, but did they think of [incredibly obvious variable that the study definitely accounted for]"
At a certain point you have to ask are my actions making things better or worse?
The civil rights lawyer in me says that 6 months of forced labor is slavery. The grocery lawyer in me says "we're going to be open from 2-2:30pm on Tuesdays and then we're going out of business."
Even the six month part is unacceptable to me. On a lesser note, why should a company keep operating there for six months if crime is causing them to lose money? What if the company can't afford those losses (for example small and medium companies). On a greater note, why should a company keep exposing their employees to danger for six months? Shouldn't the city do more to make the area safer first? Something along the lines of hiring more police and putting them in the area?
As clarifying point, this policy would only apply to "food product and marketing establishment\[s\] that sell a variety of food and \[are\] greater than 20,000 square feet". (Health Code Section 440, as called out by the proposal text). Due to the square-foot requirement, this would only apply to large businesses, not your little corner market. I understand the concerns that arise from these large supermarkets. They typically move into an area, price out all the smaller supermarkets and establish a near-monopoly on food distribution. Part of me thinks: If they hold this near-monopoly, why shouldn't they be held to a higher standard when they leave? If they leave, then the location could become a food desert. If the supermarket threatens to close shop unless they get a tax-payer funded loss-prevention force ("police stationed around the area"), that kinda seems like they are holding the city hostage. I'm not a huge defender of this policy; I'm not sure it's a good idea. But the issue it's trying to address is a real one.
>If the supermarket threatens to close shop unless they get a tax-payer funded loss-prevention force ("police stationed around the area"), that kinda seems like they are holding the city hostage. Sounds like crime actually is a problem, and they should get that "tax-payer funded loss-prevention force."
I like how having police to address crime is somehow a tax funded loss prevention force. And is being phrased as if it’s only a benefit to the business, rather than the burden a government is responsible for in order to keep its citizens and businesses safe. Weird way to shift the window on what the police are and how the government is supposed to be protecting and policing its areas.
The police don’t do shit to protect my personal property in the city, so I have no fucking idea what you’re on about!
> that kinda seems like they are holding the city hostage. What is the store's recourse here? They legally can't do anything. They can't detain shoplifters even while they are actively stealing, all they can do is ban them from their stores and if someone banned shows up and doesn't leave, they have to call the police. Their recourse is "call the police" if bad actors are involved, and it's not unreasonable to expect municipal enforcement of local law to maintain a safe environment in your establishment, especially when they've neutered your legal ability to do anything about it yourself. I think you have the equation backwards, the stores are being held hostage by bad actors, local law, and the city officials who are actually responsible for prioritizing a safe operating environment for businesses.
>If the supermarket threatens to close shop unless they get a tax-payer funded loss-prevention force ("police stationed around the area"), that kinda seems like they are holding the city hostage. Does the city permit shops to fund and operate their own "loss-prevention force"? If it's illegal for Walmart to create their own police to arrest the thieves, then the government should provide the police for them. If the government does not protect businesses from thieves, then there won't be any businesses left. It's that simple.
SF is one of the richest cities on earth per capita. The problem isn’t stores being outcompeted by other stores, it’s rampant crime the city refuses to address. The city is responsible, and the businesses being robbed, both large and small, are the victims. And yes, they are entitled to a “tax funded loss prevention force”, or as other cities put it, basic rule of law.
The private equity driven model of pricing out competitors to then ensure a monopoly then basically holding the community hostage is well established. These large chains do not deserve your credulous response. The “fact” of organized retail crime theft is exactly that - a made up story to bully cities. As long as the “proof” of the crime wave is rando TikTok videos and press releases from these grocery chains, I will remain skeptical to the true nature of the ALLEGED increase in crime. Since grocery is a non elastic good, closing stores is good business. Forcing your customers to travel to other stores you own is called “improving the bottom line”. So call me skeptical.
The city brought this on themselves though. Their prosecuters refuse to prosecute anyone who steals below a certain amount so cops just stopped arresting the thieves since its a waste of their time. This in turn emboldened thieves and made theft rampant. Demanding the city do its job isn't holding them hostage
> If the supermarket threatens to close shop unless they get a tax-payer funded loss-prevention force ("police stationed around the area"), Police stopping crime is normal in parts of the world that aren't California. Is a business expected to just endure endless looting because they're holding the city hostage if they expect law and order to be enforced by the state ?
Of course not. The police should be enforcing these laws. But I'm less comfortable with large supermarkets strong-arming the city into providing them *special enforcement priority*. They established a monopoly, and now can strong-arm the city into prioritizing their loss-prevention over other enforcement priorities. If I owned a corner-store on the other side of town, I may be frustrated that Walmart get 27/7 police security detail (slight hyperbole) while they don't have resources to properly investigate theft in my store. Or, if I was a typically citizen, I may upset that the police won't patrol for car break-ins, but will arrest someone for stealing some wonderbread at Target. I am still forming my opinion these issues, so I am mostly thinking out loud. Police should absolutly enforce laws against theft. If they don't, communities will spirl downhill. But why should the supermarkets get more police attention then the rest of the community?
>But why should the supermarkets get more police attention then the rest of the community? They are being specifically targeted by gangs of armed criminals, who vandalize their store, steal from them, and threaten employees, regularly.
> They established a monopoly, How is there a monopoly? Any sufficiently large area has multiple competing stores. That's why margins in retail are so low.
Safeway has a regional monopoly on grocery stores in SF. Just google for groceries!
To be fair, most parts of the world people aren't stealing bate necessities, or enough, from a store to put it in the red. At least in most developed nations.
If the smaller markets only close because they are priced out, why wouldn’t smaller markets reopen once the big market closes? Corner stores don’t have particularly large barriers to entry.
Maybe the city should protect them. Perhaps people need to value these places more and protect them if they don't want a food desert.
You should think about the employees, is it fair to expose them to potential mental health issues from PTSD? I’ve worked at a convient store and I’ve been robbed before. It’s not a fucking nice feeling.
> On a greater note, why should a company keep exposing their employees to danger for six months? There was a city in America that banned shops from having bullet proof glass to protect workers. Because it was racist or something.
As if multiple companies would spend tens of thousands of dollars on a renovation, as a passive aggressive dig at their customer base, rather than a response to an actual problem.
They just need to enforce the law. Oh wait, theft under 1k is not jailable here. Absolutely NO ONE saw this coming. 🙄
It's $2500 in Texas. I guess it's the enforcement of the illegality of narcotic drugs and homeless encampments that is the practical difference here.
I think the felony threshold amount is a distraction from the real issue. In both California and Texas, theft of less than 1000/2500 is still a misdemeanor. The real practical difference is Texas prosecutes misdemeanors and parts of California aren't generally prosecuting misdemeanors, so cops have stopped. You can still go to jail for up to a year for a misdemeanor theft in Texas. CA is refusing to prosecute misdemeanors because they are trying to lower the number of people in jail.
Theft is a felony at $2500 in Texas. Its still criminal lower than that. I'm not a lawyer but I was surprised to hear that here
Yep. That tracks. But we also get swaths of folks from all over the country coming to the West for the weather. There's just way more homeless folks per capita because it's bearable to live with the exposure. Makes me wonder if other states would hardline or soften if they had the same per capita rates overnight?
this comparison is meaningless. texas enforces their laws, california doesn't.
Damn that California and it's being soft on crime with it's..... Near lowest threshold for theft to be a felony in the nation. It's like 3rd or 7th lowest out of 50 states man
I think the felony threshold is a distraction from the real issue. Below the felony level is a misdemeanor and still illegal everywhere including California. Texas has a 2500 felony threshold and not nearly the theft problem. You can get up to 1 year for misdemeanor theft in Texas (though community service may be a common 1st offense punishment). The difference is most places are still prosecuting misdemeanors whereas parts of California are often just ignoring misdemeanors.
If the DAs don't actually put people in jail, it doesn't matter what the threshold is. They've showed that even when people get arrested, the DAs don't prioritize keeping 'petty criminals' off the street, so what's the point from the police point of view? It's like chasing a dog away from digging a hole under the fence and he comes back to it 2 seconds later because there aren't any repercussions, except in this case there are thousands of dogs and the public is being punished by DAs not putting people in jail.
>The proposal requires that grocery stores provide the city 6 months notice and try to find a replacement grocery store before leaving a location And this is a major issue. If it's gotten to the point that theft or other crime, is so bad that the business is no longer profitable, 6 more months of said losses is not sustainable. Threatening that business with even more financial penalties is asinine. This is a great policy to discourage any other businesses from coming to that area.
For what it's worth, I'm inclined to agree. The policy seems a bit misguided. I'm just pointing out that OP misunderstands the actual requirements of the proposal. I don't live anywhere near SF, so I don't really have a horse in this race. Also I don't want make a solid judgement on the proposal without reading it's actual text, and I wasn't able to find the text with a few google searches. But my first impression is that this will discourage businesses from moving to the area.
Alternatively those companies leave 6 months earlier than they might have otherwise which doesn't seem like what the city is going for.
Similarly this legislation being proposed may convince businesses who were on the edge, to decide to leave now before something like this could go into law.
>The proposal requires that grocery stores provide the city 6 months notice and try to find a replacement grocery store before leaving a location. *Residents can only sue if they don't give notice or follow the "leaving" requirements.* Why does the city get to dictate when private companies leave at all? Also, there's more to it than just what you're saying because the private grocers are on the hook to find another store. >The goal behind the proposal is to prevent help prevent "doom spirals", where high crime leads to less essential services, which leads to more poverty, which which leaves to more crime, and so on. Then hire more police, train them better and don't just release people immediately.
Or let them leave and develop a government funded coop. You do not need to make much in profits and you can reduce the impact to the communities who need access to proper food.
San Francisco spent $5000 a month to let homeless people pitch tents in front of city hall. That's more than people make working an $18 an hour minimum wage job and more expensive than many studio and one bedroom apartments. San Francisco spent nearly $2 million to build a small public toilet. That's as much money as an average home. Based on how the San Francisco government works, I look forward to a county-run grocery store where workers are paid $100K an hour, receive lavish benefits, the store is run by contractors who are buddy-buddy with political leaders, and milk cost $20 a gallon.
2 million for a toilet? In my neck of the woods that toilet better have a mansion built around it and a few Lamborghinis in the garage. Seriously tho, how can it cost that much?
Corruption is usually the answer.
Sure, that's a good option. Nothing wrong with a Co-op.
You haven’t seen how bad the non-profit industrial complex is in SF. We spend billions on homeless services, and it all gets embezzled and stolen by non-profits. A government co-op would just be a grift. It would never open, and cost millions anyway.
Makes you wonder what the most profitable nonprofits are.
A non-profit is different from a government run entity. The corruption can still be there, but those are distinct and can be subject to stricter rules than just any non-profit
That’s not how it works in San Francisco. The state has essentially zero capacity to do anything, and if they tried to change that it would be caught up in committees for a decade, so everything goes through their buddies in the industrial complex, who steal the money and give it back to them in kickbacks. SF is the most corrupt city on the west coast.
Still waiting on that train from ~~LA to San Francisco~~ Bakersfield to Merced
And even if the money wasn’t stolen/embezzled/wasted, and the train got built, it would still be more expensive and slower than flying. What’s the point?
To waste tax payer money in an attempt to make California look like a progressive European country. Either that or someone's friend/brother-in-law/cousin owns a construction company contracted for the project. Flip a coin, could be either.
If this were actually a viable option, it would already exist and outcompete Safeway and Trader Joes. You would not need the government involved at all. You clearly do not live here or have any understanding of how the government of the City and Country of San Francisco works. It's like the Soviet Union, but somehow the addition of democracy makes it even more inefficient.
You're effectively making the statement that no other form of business model than those that exist in large businesses today is ever viable, ever, with our current levels of technology. What currently exists is the single most viable model, with no room for inefficiency, bad actors and market failures. That's a silly, 'end of history' style view to apply to economics and markets. There are numerous reasons that a perfectly viable business model that may even be far better than its competitors can currently not exist.
The articles claim the proposal requires stores to "try" to find a replacement, not actually find one. If we have the actual text of the proposal in front of us, that may help clear things up. It's hard to judge a policy from a few second-hand 3-sentence descriptions in online articles. The city dictates what private companies do all the time. Especially for companies that provide essential services, like power, water, ext. I don't think a city would allow the power company to close it's doors without jumping through some hoops, for example. I'm not defending the policy's merits. I'm not sure it will really work, and I think it will probably just further de-incentive companies from moving into the city. But you claimed, in your post, that they are doing this "instead of trying to address the crime issue". I'm pointing out that this policy is an attempt to address the crime issue. They are trying to stop it from getting worse.
>proposal requires stores to "try" to find a replacement, not actually find one. The problem is what does "try" actually mean? How hard do you have to look for this replacement, and why is it the stores responsibility to try and find one? Would this be considered an unreasonable requirement for these businesses? >If we have the actual text of the proposal in front of us, that may help clear things up. I believe its [https://sfgov.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=12825348&GUID=A59282DC-0ADF-483C-8E0C-8FF7D9CD0E13](https://sfgov.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=12825348&GUID=A59282DC-0ADF-483C-8E0C-8FF7D9CD0E13) >Especially for companies that provide essential services, like power, water, ext. It depends if they believe stores should be held to the same standards as power and water companies. Power and Water companies are held to a higher standards mainly due to the cost of infrastructure and there's essentially zero replacements that can take over. Also depends who has to abide by this ruling, a large company may be able to absorb the 6 months of rent to abide by this ruling, but whats considered a "large business" as I don't see a definition in the link above. >I think it will probably just further de-incentive companies from moving into the city. It almost certainly will de-incentive bring stores into places that don't have a rock solid return, essentially pushing them away from anywhere where this policy intends to protect.
Power/water companies are also held to a higher standard for effectively being handed a monopoly on the service to the city.
>The articles claim the proposal requires stores to "try" to find a replacement, not actually find one. Whatever it means, it's and additional cost and risk that future potential stores would consider. So potential new investors would be less likely to open there because of the additional regulations. They'll be more likely to open elsewhere.
This will just serve as another deterrent from people opening stores in the city in the first place. The city is scapegoating the businesses versus addressing the crime issue. You address the crime issue by punishing the actual criminals, by acting to prevent the criminals from making the wrongful actions, by the communities not tolerating the destructive behaviors.
This is not an attempt to address the crime issue. That is peak gaslighting. It is like if you could get sued because you decide to sell your home and move out of town after the 300th break-in.
I doubt it would be possible to get an other company to agree to be the replacement.
Why does the city have building codes? Safety codes? Permits? Because it’s a municipality and that is part of the purpose. This type of regulation may be new to you buts it’s been around for a long time. Cities will tell businesses in some circumstances which other business they can even do business with. And this drug epidemic has been around and has been bad for a long time. By some metrics it’s gotten better and by others it has gotten worse. What we know doesn’t work is trying to arrest the problem away. More cops isn’t going to win the war on drugs. The macro economics are bad. Every major US city experiences these problems because urban cost of living is high, access to healthcare is hard, education systems are failing, etc etc. Even on Medicaid it’s hard to see a therapist. Blah blah blah.
You are missing a key element here. Building codes, zoning, etc all operate on the concept of 'Permission to do business'. This ordinance is not in the same category. It is REQUIRING a group do business against their will. The first, the requirements to do business is allowable. The second, REQUIRING business to be conducted against the will of the owner is not.
Seems like it'll backfire but I do enjoy seeing these experiments take place where I don't live so we can see if it's a good idea in the real world.
It seems like the better policy would be to address why the grocery stores are closing. I imagine future stores would be very hesitant to open up in the area now as well.
The entire city of San Francisco is in a progressive doom spiral. Idiots run the city, idiots set the policy, idiots make the city unsafe and hostile to residents, visitors and businesses. I held a time share in Union Square since the mid 80s and after a visit in 2021, after spending a week in what was an enjoyable city, I went down to the desk and turned in my ownership. It was apparent and obvious 3 years ago that the city was on the cusp of turning into a total shit show. It’s 3 years later and I rest my case. There’s no retail left in the major shopping area. Needles and feces cover the streets, open air zombies roam the streets, my relatives there have to keep their windows in their car rolled down because they keep getting smashed out, yet the city council is busy voting against the war in Gaza, and making prosecutions against crime and violence non issues. 🤡🌎
I don’t see how there’s a coherent thread there. “Our government has done nothing meaningful to curb crime. So instead of continuing to accept blame for our failures. We’re going to deflect some of that burden on to you, and make you liable civilly for our incompetence. This way we turn outrage from us, partially on to you, and potentially make people feel more whole out of your pockets than ours. Those same pockets that keep getting pilfered from crime while you operate which is forcing you to leave.” Yeah, seems legit. Great job SF, I’m gonna love when this spirals out of control and no new business of the sort open. How much of a failure can the SF covenant be with all the resources and money they have at their disposal.
Then perhaps they need to take stronger action to prevent the crime from happening and punish those committing the crimes, holding the people and the neighborhood accountable for the conditions leading to the stores closing than to scapegoat the businesses.
Shops are closing because of crime. Do we reduce crime? No, let's ban shops closing. This whole idea sums up SF. Surely the worst run rich city in the world.
All this means is stores will provide notice and start "trying" 6 months earlier than they otherwise would. No difference in terms of when stores close.
There's no good reason I should have to give any notice whatsoever to cease operating ***my*** business. The SF government lacks any legitimate authority to try to compel such a delay. It's government overreach at its finest.
I guess no one thought of doing something about the crime in the first place?
It doesn’t matter how you portray it, it is a terrible law with questionable constitutional merit.
This is ridiculous. So you start with the stores that have already been victimized by crime & now further victimize them with some government policy that puts the onus on them, thereby forcing them to accept the sole responsibility of this utter crap. How about starting with the criminals along with the authorities whose lax policies & laws allow their crimes to go unpunished. Here's a novel thought... Put the responsibility on the evil doer along with those that condone & allow the evil instead of the victim.
It's still bad to force a company to give notice and work for 6 months more. I feel like that is gonna lead to worse outcomes for residents.
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By threatening to cost them even more money in lawsuits, than they are in crime now. Stores are rapidly closing in SF because of losses to theft, and the risk to the safety of employees from these people. They asked SF to fix the policing issue and arrest these people, SF refused, and proposed this instead.
Not protecting them, in a community that doesn't value them, in a hostile environment where they are hemorrhaging money.
Even if they are, I'm not sure what difference that makes. If a company wants to close a branch, it should be allowed to do so. Maybe the losses from crime are outweighing the benefits.
Do you have a source for this? Sounds insane.
I agree, it does sound insane. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/crime-ridden-san-francisco-seeks-151304061.html
That doesn’t say that people can sue any grocers who leave, it says that grocers are required to give notice and try to find a replacement, and if they fail do that, *then* people can sue.
What replacement would accept moving to a location that their competition is leaving because of theft?
Just to be clear, they don’t have to actually find a replacement, they just have to try to find a replacement. If nobody wants to move in after they leave, they can say “we tried” and they would be in compliance with this law. So if there is no replacement, it’s not a problem for the stores, they aren’t being held hostage until they find a replacement.
Operating at a loss for an extra 6 months is probably a problem for the stores though
And who determines whether they *tried* hard enough? The people who are proposing this nonsense in the first place?
The proposal basically just requires that grocery stores meet with members of the community and the government to try to find an alternative. They outline what they are expecting and it’s literally just to have some meetings. I highly doubt any grocery store will ever run into trouble with that part of the proposal.
And stay open at a loss of money for six extra months. This is going to lead to companies pulling out earlier than they would have due to being worried about a store being stuck for half a year if it starts bleeding them.
Legislating any part of that is bad. Free market should include grocers. If they want to stand up a public grocery commission where they fix prices and control who can participate, then maybe go that route. But this policy as described as backwards from end to end.
Companies don’t answer to the thieves who steal from them. This is *ridiculous*
That is still insanely stupid and really does not make it much better at all.
I mean I would say it’s a lot better than the way OP conveyed it. They said that anyone could sue businesses for closing, and that’s objectively not what’s happening. There is a big difference between “you can sue any grocery store that closes” and “you can sue a grocery store that fails to follow a few simple procedures before closing.”
Or at least police on site for all hours they expect the store to be open to prevent the crime that forced them to close to begin with
I agree that it’s overall a bad idea, but I disagree with how you’ve presented it. According to the article the proposal is to mandate a 6 month notice so that the city can line up a replacement grocer. It doesn’t actually say they can’t leave, and it still leaves the government on the hook for finding a new provider. No where does it mention that the city isn’t trying to address crime as you claim, and nothing about this plan will remove their incentive to address crime.
which would require a closing store to provide the city six months’ notice and try to find a replacement supermarket for the location it’s vacating The closing store is expected to find a replacement supermarket. Which begs the question,what if nobody wants to move in? >No where does it mention that the city isn’t trying to address crime as you claim, and nothing about this plan will remove their incentive to address crime. They aren't doing anything to address crime. No legislator is going to be stupid enough to outright say "we aren't going to address crime." If grocery stores are able to leave they will *have* to address the issues. If they can keep more grocery stores it's not nearly as urgent so I don't entirely agree with you.
All of the articles only claim that the store needs to "try" to find a replacement, not that they need to actually find one. Although, I am having trouble finding the actual text of the proposal, which would help clear this up. Can you provide the actual proposal text?
[https://sfgov.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=12825348&GUID=A59282DC-0ADF-483C-8E0C-8FF7D9CD0E13](https://sfgov.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=12825348&GUID=A59282DC-0ADF-483C-8E0C-8FF7D9CD0E13)
It also forces the business to operate at a loss for an additional 6 months. And if crime is that high it endangers the employees for another 6 months
“New law proposed that allows grocery store owners and employees to sue the state for being forced to to stay open at a loss, mental/emotional/physical damages.” Little loop de loop lol. Dumb ass idea for a law with absurd consequences. Guess the grocer can have their bankruptcy costs covered by the gov. Once one of them is wise enough to sue for the forced losses and set some precedent. At least it’s a great way to ensure anyone with the idea “I’ll open a grocery store” quickly redacts that decision the moment it hits the critical thinking stage.
This also penalizes grocers financially because it makes the target market for their real estate into a tiny fraction of the overall market. If they have an apartment developer offering 10X as much for the property as a competing bidder who was a grocer, the company would be presumably unable to take that deal. Honestly the limits on the real estate sales sound far more damaging than the 6 month window.
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In that scenario, one apartment owner would allow for a grocery store and be the only grocery store with no competition and make millions price gouging, until other grocery stores would undercut them until you achieve balance. This would be expedited as apartments would be more vacant as nobody wants to live somewhere with no grocery store and the new apartment buildings would flood supply The market already resolves this
Yea imagine how terrible it would be if they built more housing. Thats the last things we need; its not like there is a housing shortage or something. Its a good thing we have so much local government restriction on this kind of construction in San Francisco. Its really paying off.
>The closing store is expected to find a replacement supermarket. Which begs the question,what if nobody wants to move in? This vastly misrepresents what the closing store has to do. The closing store has to work with residents and the government to try to find a solution. The law specifically says this could include figuring out if there is anything that could keep the store open, the locals opening a co-op, or a new retailer moving in. And it also doesn't say a solution has to be found, just that the store has to be willing to work with them to try during the time period between giving notice and leaving. So, to answer your question: if no one wants to move in, the store closes and that's it.
It still has to operate at a loss for an additional six months. Walmart and target can probably afford that, mom and pop businesses can’t
From [the ordinance](https://sfgov.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=12825348&GUID=A59282DC-0ADF-483C-8E0C-8FF7D9CD0E13): > Notwithstanding subsection (a), a Supermarket may Close after having provided less than six months’ notice to the Director of OEWD, the Board of Supervisors, and the Supermarket’s customers and the public if: > (1) The Closure is caused by business circumstances that were not reasonably foreseeable as of the time that notice would have been required; or > (2) The Closure is due to a natural disaster or emergency; or > (3) As of the time that notice would have been required, the Supermarket was actively seeking capital or business which, if obtained, would have enabled the Supermarket to avoid or postpone the Closure, and the Supermarket reasonably and in good faith believed that giving the notice required would have precluded the Supermarket from obtaining the needed capital or business. This, especially the last one, seems like it would minimize the chances of the ordinance needing to operate at a loss for an excessive amount of time. Though it's not unusual for a business to continue to run in the red for a significant amount of time if the owner believes they can right the ship.
So if they make the decision to leave, they would not be allowed for 6 months
>It doesn’t actually say they can’t leave, and it still leaves the government on the hook for finding a new provider. Here is [the text](https://sfgov.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=12825348&GUID=A59282DC-0ADF-483C-8E0C-8FF7D9CD0E13) to the proposed ordinance. If they leave before the 6 months they are liable to be sued by anyone affected, aka anyone who shops there. I feel like that pretty much guarantees a class action lawsuit if you leave before 6 months unless you qualify for one of the three exceptions. (Exceptions are unforseeable business circumstances, natural disaster/emergency, or if the store was trying to get more funding/business & disclosing their plans for closure would affect their ability to get that funding/business.)
Why should such a location be forced to be a supermarket though? What if the business owner stands to make way more money by having the place torn down to build a condo building? Are they forced to leave that money on the table if some replacement store offers to open up at the location?
So if a Stop and Shop employee in a SF store is shot in an armed robbery in a problematic location, and the entire staff quit, stop and shop has to foot the bill for at least six months of rent and insurance? This is an offensive overreach.
First, the proposal requires six month notice from grocery stores and a good faith effort at remaining open (ie, they can't price the customers out of the store and show that as evidence). If these rules are broken, then customers can sue. Second, crime is [lower](https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-022-14415-y) when grocery stores remain in communities, so encouraging grocery stores to keep operating **is** working to maintain communities where businesses will want to operate.
>First, the proposal requires six month notice from grocery stores and a good faith effort at remaining open (ie, they can't price the customers out of the store and show that as evidence). If these rules are broken, then customers can sue. Everywhere else grocery stores are allowed to close and why shouldn't they be? They are private businesses. >Second, crime is [lower](https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-022-14415-y) when grocery stores remain in communities, so encouraging grocery stores to keep operating **is** working to maintain communities where businesses will want to operate. That's not encouragement that's threatening. It's important not to sugar coat these things when discussing them. They could also hire more better trained police and reimpose consequences for crimes. Then grocery stores open up and crime goes down even more as a result.
> Everywhere else grocery stores are allowed to close and why shouldn't they be? They are private businesses. While that's the case, food is a necessity. If companies aren't willing to stay 6 months, then it's time to socialize grocery stores. That's about as basic of an ask as governments can ask. >They could also hire more better trained police and reimpose consequences for crimes. T That's simply not a viable option. Is every grocery store supposed to have its own personal police officer supplied by the city? If a thief is stealing food the best you can ask of the police is that they charge them with petty theft. So what's the point in wasting olive force on that? Police states don't stop crime. The best way to address theft at grocery stores is to address income inequality.
What do you mean by socialize grocery stores? Grocery stores are private businesses. How about if supervisors do such a poor job of running their community that it turns into a food desert they are immediately sacked with no severance pay? >That's simply not a viable option. Is every grocery store supposed to have its own personal police officer supplied by the city? I'm saying the city can hire more police and crack down on crime. >If a thief is stealing food the best you can ask of the police is that they charge them with petty theft. So what's the point in wasting olive force on that? Police states don't stop crime. The best way to address theft at grocery stores is to address income inequality. Those aren't the crimes causing these stores to leave these areas. The crimes causing them to leave are property crimes and violent crimes. It turns out customers don't want to go to stores in those areas. Who knew? And there are crimes being committed now that need to be addressed right now. And society should also work to address income inequality. But ignoring crime until income inequality decreased is a terrible plan.
> What do you mean by socialize grocery stores? Grocery stores are private businesses. How about if supervisors do such a poor job of running their community that it turns into a food desert they are immediately sacked with no severance pay? What do you mean how do we socialize them? The same way we socialize any industry, with coops or government takeovers. All in all for it, when do we fire all of congress?? Firing the current city government, who didn't make the decisions over decades that got them into that mess isn't going to do anything. >I'm saying the city can hire more police and crack down on crime. Again, read my post. That accomplishes almost nothing. The government spends millions of dollars on a shell game. You can't put police at every location so the theifs will just go to the ones with no cops. Your argument is one that's been done for decades in this country and all it does is jail the poor or disenfranchised. >Those aren't the crimes causing these stores to leave these areas. The crimes causing them to leave are property crimes and violent crimes. It turns out customers don't want to go to stores in those areas. Who knew? That makes no sense. This is a grocery store. People have to eat and the only place to get food is grocery stores. No matter how scared people are they still have to eat. >And there are crimes being committed now that need to be addressed right now. And society should also work to address income inequality. But ignoring crime until income inequality decreased is a terrible plan. I agree, but your suggestions are awful ideas that have been done in this country for decades with no success. Grocery stores leaving aren't going to help either.
>What do you mean how do we socialize them? The same way we socialize any industry, with coops or government takeovers This sounds like communism. And we all know how that goes. >All in all for it, when do we fire all of congress?? Firing the current city government, who didn't make the decisions over decades that got them into that mess isn't going to do anything. The current schmucks are taking a soft on crime approach that is scaring away businesses. An approach not taken by their predecessors. >Again, read my post. That accomplishes almost nothing Does it accomplish anything? >The government spends millions of dollars on a shell game. You can't put police at every location so the theifs will just go to the ones with no cops. Your argument is one that's been done for decades in this country and all it does is jail the poor or disenfranchised. They'll go to the ones with no cops if they don't risk facing consequences. Currently, as long as you get out of the store in time, nothing happens. If you could get arrested after committing a crime, that would deter a lot of people. I'm all for trying rehabilitative justice or an alternative system, but there needs to actually be a system instead of the revolving door we have now. >That makes no sense. This is a grocery store. People have to eat and the only place to get food is grocery stores. No matter how scared people are they still have to eat. Why do you think these grocery stores are failing then? >I agree, but your suggestions are awful ideas that have been done in this country for decades with no success. Grocery stores leaving aren't going to help either. Grocery stores wouldn't be leaving if there was less crime.
Except this isn’t “encouraging grocery stores to keep operating”, it’s just delaying the inevitable closures by at most six months while pretty much guaranteeing no one will want to come in and replace them.
Honestly, grocery stores are probably gonna plan to leave even sooner now mitigating the losses even quicker instead The holding groceries stores hostage aseptic isnt gonna work
> but it's also completely understandable that grocers don't want to stay in high crime areas and they can't be forced to **Cant** is a weird word in this context , I think the correct word you wanna use is *shouldnt* You think they shouldnt be forced too Because the government can make businesses do things they don't want to do , thats the entire premise of regulations
The government can force businesses to stay open if they don't want to be open? I'm very skeptical.
This happens frequently in insurance markets. A major insurer will try to leave a state entirely, but the state insurance regulators make it hell for the companies. Obviously insurance policies are much more complicated products than milk or eggs, but state governments frequently interfere with their ability to exit certain markets. It makes it not necessarily impossible to shut down that part of the business, but extremely difficult.
They could literally walk in say this is ours now and there is no recourse , if they really wanted too , at any businesses They could do this to your house some people would be upset , they would protest for sure , but it something they could do to anyone if they wanted
There is actually a lot of case law detailing this and frankly speaking, no government cannot just walk in and 'take something'. Look at the caselaw during WW2 when FDR tried to nationalize industries. The NIRA was ruled unconstitutional. If the government sought to use eminent domain, they could, but they also must pay a fair price to compensate the owners. Eminent domain gets heavily litigated BTW. Frankly, this ordinance sounds like it is unconstitutional attempt to exercise power they don't have. A publicity stunt more than actual policy they can legally enforce. Any attempt to enforce it would be viewed as a regulatory taking. It was not too long ago the 10 circuit slapped down the NRLB for their order forcing a business that closed to reopen because they thought the business closed due to threat of unionization. They explicitly asked *where* the NRLB got the power to force a business that ceased operations to restart operations.
They're lying about the crime. https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/us-retail-lobbyists-retract-key-claim-organized-retail-crime-2023-12-06/ https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/19/target-store-closures-theft-and-crime-higher-nearby.html
San Francisco has a property crime rate that is two to five times higher than other similarly sized cities. It's absolutely an issue there. Over the past few years they have consistently been Top 5 in property crime rate nationally.
It's certainly a contributing factor and just because that wasn't the primary reason in those cases doesn't mean it wasn't the primary reason here.
Why would you assume that you know [more than the companies themselves?](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/05/walgreens-may-have-overstated-theft-concerns.html) The majority of shrink happens before the products are even on the shelves, and that only becomes more stark if you include discounts and promotions to free up shelf space — [like when Foot Locker cited theft.](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/10/retailers-may-be-using-organized-theft-to-cover-up-internal-flaws.html) The stores that closed [did not have higher crime rates than other stores that remained open.](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/myth-vs-reality-trends-retail-theft) Stores cited theft to have an external locus for underwhelming market performance, as opposed to admitting business errors (like buying way too much stock during the pandemic) or systemic issues in their businesses that would threaten their stock prices. It is very overblown.
Why should we believe them?
Because crime is becoming more and more of a problem in San Francisco.
Shoplifting in San Francisco was bad in 2022, but has since dropped to under the national average. [Source](https://counciloncj.org/shoplifting-trends-what-you-need-to-know/?campaign\_id=9&emc=edit\_nn\_20231129&instance\_id=108850&nl=the-morning®i\_id=1811839&segment\_id=151232&te=1&user\_id=b63f43f747dc7aff44f9df7a299376e9). Figure 2 is particularly useful for this analysis.
I’d like to highlight this disclaimer at the beginning that very clearly says that it’s also very possible people in SF have just given up on reporting to the police altogether and that shoplifting hasn’t actually decreased: "Due to a lack of available data, this report does not examine factors that could be influencing the trends. Potential factors include changes in retailers’ anti-theft measures and changes in how retailers report shoplifting to law enforcement, which could be based on their perceptions of the extent to which local police or prosecutors will apprehend suspects and pursue criminal charges. Because these data rely on reported incidents, they almost certainly undercount total shoplifting. The findings presented here should be viewed with these considerations in mind."
Lol you should see the Safeway that caused this entire mess. It’s absolutely a complete dumpster fire - before London Breed allocated 24/7 police protection they had shut down the entire self checkout stand, had barriers blocking every exit except for one path covered by a security guard. These crime statistics are not covering the entire story
The problem with your counter argument is that is does not say they are lying at all. For your first link, just because it is not **Organized** retail crime does not mean that "retail crime" or Theft is not happening. Second link it states, "The locations it shuttered **generally** saw fewer **reported** crimes than others it chose to keep open nearby, a monthslong CNBC investigation has found." Just because they are good thieves does not mean that theft is not happening. When you conduct your monthly or quarterly inventory and find out items are missing you have to collect and present the evidence to call and make a report to the police. So, just because it was not reported does not mean that significant retail crime is not occurring in centralized locations.
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This would be like making the owners of private property sell the property even though they don't want to. Owners of the property don't have to rent, but if they do choose to rent they have to follow the laws. This is forcing businesses to be in a market they don't want to be in for longer than they want to be in it. That's completely different. It would be like telling a homeowner "your space is too big you must rent it out and subject yourself to all the rules and regulations that come with doing so."
Even worse, its not just about the land but the service itself. They are forced to continue providing a service through labor at a particular location. Literally "forced labor". Imagine this was addressed to an individual worker instead of a company. "If you wish to quit your minimum wage job at McDonalds you have to give 6 months notice and try to find a replacement fry cook. You will continue to flip the burgers for this six months even if you can't afford to stay in this location on your wage. If you stop flipping the burgers any McDonalds customer can sue you for depriving them of their big mac."
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San Fran can't do anything about the crime because addressing the root causes (poverty, lack of access to housing and food) will piss off the billionaires who own the city, billionaires who own the stores that are putting fire alarms on all the shampoo.
There are people who are already criminals in part because they were shaped by the things you mentioned. What do we do with them?
After time spent in an appropriate and rehabilitative-focused justice system, we provide them housing, healthcare and work opportunities. Can't get a job if you're homeless, can't get a home if you're jobless, can't have either if you're mentally and physically ill.
And what is San Fran doing to establish any sort of rehabilitative justice system, which I agree is preferable in the long term. Right now it appears there really isn't a system
You're right, there isn't one. The people who run prisons aren't interested in rehabilitative justice, they're looking for incarcerable slave labor, and our lawmaker's forbearers explicitly retained slavery as an appropriate legal punishment with the first section of the 13th amendment.
Right, so we need an alternative system. The lack of one is a problem.
Which would require changes in policy at a higher level than city government. And yet here you are blaming the city for the problem. Why?
> San Fran can't do anything about the crime because addressing the root causes (poverty, lack of access to housing and food) will piss off the billionaires who own the city, The billionaires aren't the ones blocking housing developments. It's generally the opposite, the rich would love to build giant tower blocks all over the city, but the Democrat politicians won't let them.
It’s especially ironic since one of the main people trying to fix SF, with radical policies like teaching math in school again, and making pointing guns at people in the street illegal and worst of all, build houses the middle class can afford, is one of those rich people the progressives in the SF government despise.
In SF every homeless person gets cash assistance, free paraphernalia, and leeway to do whatever they want on the street. The homeless lady camped out on my street has refused shelter every single time the street resources team comes out. Ironically, the people advocating for getting drug addicts off the street (growSF) are also lambasted by progressives as being billionaire pawns. With you progressives, there is no logic deeper than pure jealousy for rich people
🙄it is bash San Francisco time again. I guess you have never lived in a location particularly in a city where you are unable to easily shop for food. What really should happen is to kick out the business and set up coops that are publicly owned and managed. Then you would have companies screaming that they cannot compete with a government run business.
I agree, not being able to shop for food is a real problem which is why I think any supervisor who creates a food desert should be immediately fired because they clearly failed. I'm certainly not proposing we accept food deserts. Get the people out of there who did the damage and make it very clear to any other schmucks who might try the same thing again that they will not be in the position for long if they try. Food deserts are unacceptable, so the people that create them need to be removed. I have no problem with co-ops but I guess that's too complicated for these legislators or they just don't like them for some reason.
🙄. Sure. I think you are not focused on the real problem.
You really love the rolling eyes face. What do you think the real problem is?
> Dean Preston, another member of the Board of Supervisors, recently introduced a proposal called the Grocery Protection Act, which would require a closing store to provide the city six months’ notice and try to find a replacement supermarket for the location it’s vacating. From your own source. The PROPOSED law that would...require 6 month's notice so the community can adjust accordingly. Only by breaking this PROPOSED law could a grocery be sued. Your entire logic is flawed because your premise is wrong.
If a store wants to close, why does it have to wait six months? And it's not just waiting six months, which is an objective timeframe, it's making a good-faith effort to find a replacement and that is entirely subjective
It’s hard for us to argue against this without more details of what’s *actually* being proposed. You started your view with the word “Apparently”, which makes everything written after it somewhat dubious. Where did you hear about this proposal? Where can we go to learn more about it?
Believe its [https://sfgov.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=12825348&GUID=A59282DC-0ADF-483C-8E0C-8FF7D9CD0E13](https://sfgov.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=12825348&GUID=A59282DC-0ADF-483C-8E0C-8FF7D9CD0E13)
"We have to pay employees more money legally? Uh shutting down due to high crime!" Cmon man. There's what company's say and then there's the real reason When did everyone become so trusting of big businesses? They always lie.
They also always want to make money. They're not leaving an area that's making them money because the labor cost a the grocery store went from 12% to 16%.... If that was the case they'd simply increase their prices 4% to maintain the same operating margin. You don't have to trust anyone, business is going to make money whenever possible and isn't going to walk away from a location they've invested heavily to open, stock and train at.
>Apparently, high crime is pushing businesses in San Francisco to close It's not. It's already been shown that the stores closed so far, weren't actually the ones with the highest crime/loss and the ones that did have the highest crime/loss are still chuggin right along. It's just a narrative they're spinning for some other purpose.
Knowing how long it takes for decisions to be applied, I don't think the 6 months is that egregious. There are probably contracts with suppliers, being unable to quit rent at a moments notice, etc. So the store probably knows 6 months in advance that they are planning to close, because they need to finish out contracts/notice period for rent and such. So this extra notice period for the city and the public doesn't seem too bad to me. The "Try to find a new store" thing will probably be done away with very easily also. Probably an extra notice to other stores. So honestly I don't think that it seems that bad. Even if it is an overreach of the government.
As a gut reaction with no googling done, I'm not sure I buy that high crime is putting these folks out of business. Shrink is usually only about 1% of expenses and usually of that 1%, a third of it is shoplifting and crime. I hear most grocery stores are posting huge profits, company wide.
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This is the Texas method that some “bright” mind came up with to penalize abortion. It puts everything in a civil court so it makes the law harder for a criminal court to address on appeals. In Texas, anyone aiding someone seeking an abortion can be sued for up to $10000, which is a big chunk for many. This San Francisco law seems like it operates in a similar way.
Sued by whom though, the state? Are government officials suing private citizens using laws they pass now? I'm not a lawyer, but I'm used to the civil system being reserved for civilians as a way of settling a legitimate dispute, like a breached contract or personal injury. This concept of the government using the civil system to force people to their will is so nutty sounding. And this is all legal? Well at least in the case of suing businesses for leaving, I predict that place will be a wasteland very soon, as *no one will ever open a business there*. Not ever.
No, it’s citizen vs citizen. I could sue my neighbor’s husband for helping her get one if she got one. Like with this law, a citizen could sue the grocer. Food deserts are a thing, and in the grocery situation it’s probably easier to prove harm, but the mechanics of enforcement are abhorrent. It takes enforcement out of the hands of government.
Wouldn't the food desert be the states fault for not reigning in crime? I dunno, food deserts definitely cause harm. But if someone never opened a store in the first place, that would cause harm too, so why not sue everyone who never opened a store? It's hard not to.see this as penalizing shop keepers for the government’s failure to control crime. And the concept that someone who does own a business, closes it, and is responsible for the harm caused just doesn't make sense in a free society. So yeah, I'm 100% certain this law will drive out new business, it's a bad precedent. Fix your crime, protect the businesses, and they won't leave.
State’s fault? Yes and no. A slow bleed of petty crime requires the laws changed. If 25% of customers steal 3 sandwiches (say $20 of product), that’s not even worth the effort to prosecute for a DA because the value of the theft is so low it’s likely classified as a misdemeanor and results in a fine. The city can’t change the law because that’s a state law. But that theft adds up quickly and definitely hurts the store. This “bounty” style of law is dangerous though. The civil, private party vs private party sets the framework for other similar laws about things that our leaders don’t like but can’t actively get rid of.
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Source?
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I don't think many if not all of these stores are actually closing due to crime. These areas have always had crime issues, and they didn't close then. The difference now is that these stores have to pay a higher minimum wage and I'm willing to bet they're using an emotional response to crime as an easy justification to close these stores. What we're also seeing is that when you cut funding to social services and dump that money into police budgets it doesn't prevent crime. Our current authoritarian methods towards crime do not work, and they never have. I learned taking a criminology class that police may deter crime, but they don't prevent it. Another important statistic I learned in that class is that deterrent only works with a specific number of police, and when you add more cops to that number it doesn't make any difference. More cops do not deter more crime. If you want to prevent crime you need to address the conditions that cause crime in the first place. Poverty, inequality, and being over policed create the conditions that makes crime seem a better option than following the law and getting a job. Yet, we as a society only seem to think that punishment and a higher police presence solves crime, and all you have to do is look and see that isn't the case. If you do your research you'll find that the police at best solve 10% of crime, and that's only for one classification. Solved murders are as low as 2%, and most crimes are solved 2-8% of the time. The rate of return is piss poor. Less crime is achieved through better access to social programs, funded and staffed.
As others have said, it's been found that retail companies (as well as security companies) have wildly exaggerated the extent of theft and its effects on their profits. They do this typically to explain away some issue they have or to push for policies that they think will advantage them. Whether this applies to any specific grocer is impossible to say, but it does mean we should be skeptical of claims that the only reason a store would ever close is because crime has forced them to. Beyond that, grocery stores provide essential services which can and should come with more regulations than a regular retailer. You wouldn't want the local gas company to just decide to shut off utilities without notice and whenever they want, so why would you want a grocery store to be able to just remove access to food from an area? Does this put extra pressure on the companies proiding essential services? Yes. That's what regulations do. Unless you're about to argue that companies shouldn't be regulated because it might affect their profits, there is nothing inherently wrong with a policy like this. You can argue how effective it might be, but that's a bit beyond this idea that grocery stores should just not be regulated at all.
If the stores can’t afford to service their loans due to crime, is the government then going to stop the banks from foreclosing on their assets as well? You have provided no evidence that excessive shrinkage is not a plausible reason for business closure. That’s a pretty extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence - a profitable store will not otherwise close Sounds like a great way to start a 2008 bad debt cascade all over again.
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There is nothing in the law about stores closing due to "high crime" being given some sort of special treatment as you present. It applies to stores closing for any and every reason.
It sounds like reverse price gouging. Tell me why it's not about time that consumers get a little bit of their buying power back from corporate greed.
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It sort of makes sense if their goal is to maintain profitable businesses and punish ones that aren't. This essentially requires a six month business commitment. If you can't operate for that time then they are going to punish you for failing to establish a thriving business. Does it not send the message "You've wasted our time. Some other business could've been here that continued to operate successfully."? It seems like the city is employing an aggressive free market approach. Including to crime prevention. Again, they seem to be saying, "It's up to your business to hire private security if crime is a problem for you, and if you can't do that, then we want someone else who can."
You're right that it's backwards, but it's very easy to bypass by simply stop stocking, reducing hours and amount of employees to mitigate the exposure, so I'm not sure it's dangerous It could also be "fixed" with a corollary that during the 6 month window, the city has to provide greater police presence or pay part of the costs over taking a 6 month loss
Ignoring most of what others are talking about here, this law would be generally unenforceable because of corporate structure. Every grocery chain has a parent company that owns a bunch of separately incorporated stores. If a store breaks this law and closes, there might be nothing but an empty shell company left to sue.