This is the correct answer. I (and many others) used to work near there. That mall wasn’t very useful and located on the edge of Union Square and a rough neighborhood. Reduce foot traffic from office dwellers by 50% and you basically kill Union Square retail. Drop tourism by however much that’s fallen and that’s the end of your mall. The dystopian takes are overblown, but the city needs a plan for a world with fewer people working along Market Street.

Worse yet, the DA and supes were on board with not prosecuting crimes, so the police stopped arresting people since they'd be out on the street in a short time anyway. People would claim people are poor and don't have money and SF is expensive to that absolves their crimes --the thing is poor people, by and large, are not thieves. The thieves are professional crews. And then, criticism of a DA not prosecuting crime, you know, their job, was met with accusations of being "right-wing," and it still is, though fewer people believe that take anymore. A new supe, who believes in prosecuting crime, Joel Engardio, is, at times, accused of being right wing, despite being a normal democrat. It's nuts.