This is worth reading for the Free Stores option which got me thinking. We know the Agenda 2030 goal (elucidated by Rosa Koire) is to condense people into concentrated smart cities for more control and surveillance, and with a major financial collapse incoming with a remaking of the world’s financial system which all the nations have been stacking gold for, what if free markets are a way to bring a lot of people into these smart concentration camps along with maybe cheap rents? There is a considerable amount of the population living paycheck to paycheck, with many having already maxed out credit cards as current food prices due to inflation have already increased significantly. And sometimes the carrot works better than the stick, and literally in this case.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed agreed to send more police to the store to keep it open longer
By Kenneth Schrupp
(The Center Square) – Safeway is shutting down its grocery store in San Francisco’s Fillmore District, in part citing “ongoing concerns about associate and customer safety.”
One year ago, Safeway announced it would be shutting down the location as part of a deal with a developer to turn the store into a mixed-use development with housing and commercial spaces — which could mean space for another grocery store in the future.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed agreed to send more police to the store to keep it open longer, saying, “Longtime Fillmore customers and residents have also expressed concerns with public safety in the area. As part of the site’s extension of services, Mayor Breed has directed the San Francisco Police Department to commit additional resources at this location.”
At the time of the agreement, Safeway said it would keep the store open until early 2025. The San Francisco Chronicle, which exclusively reported on the new shutdown date of February 2025, said Safeway removed the location’s self-checkout kiosks in December 2023 “in an effort to reduce theft,” and that police reports at the location included “frequent car break-ins, assaults, loitering, and illegal dumping.”
Rev. Erris Edgerly of the Fillmore United Alliance told the Chronicle a community boycott of the closing store is commencing on December 23.
Earlier this year, the lot’s new developer, Align Real Estate, said it would work to “find an interim solution to keep services in the area for the Fillmore community while future iterations for the site continue to be determined.”
However, it’s unclear if a new grocery store would be able to survive in the location. Grocery stores are capital-intensive businesses with profit margins that averaged just 1.6% in 2023. This means for every stolen item, many more items must be sold to help the store break even again, meaning that persistent theft can easily make a grocery store unprofitable.
“This Safeway is the only one I’ve ever been to where the security guards wore body armor and military patches,” remarked political activist and YIMBYS for Harris co-founder Armand Domalewski on X.
Fillmore District has the same population density as New York City, suggesting there’s still high demand for a grocery store, even if crime is keeping businesses away.
One alternative model to grocery stores San Francisco is exploring is free food “markets” where approved residents can show a benefits eligibility card, put what they want in their carts, check out to keep track of outgoing inventory, and leave without paying.
The first such facility opened in June in Bayview-Hunters Point, the first of the food empowerment “markets” funded by the San Francisco’s Human Services Agency.
District 10 Market operates on a $5.5 million taxpayer-funded grant from San Francisco and purchases high-quality fresh produce from a local farm, while relying on donations from the dwindling ranks of other grocery stores for its shelf-stable items and toiletries.
District 10, a USDA-designated “food desert” is one of the city’s poorest communities and has some of its largest public housing projects. As a result of high crime, grocery stores in the area have had a hard time staying open.
“We’ve had plenty of chains come in and out of the community. Over my lifetime plenty of chains have come in and left,” said Geoffrea Morris, who spearheaded San Francisco’s Food Empowerment Market legislation in 2021 while working for a county supervisor and is a senior consultant for the District 10 Market, to The Center Square.
Morris’s model for District 10 Market is to both serve as a supplemental source of food for when food stamps run out at the end of the month, and encourage people who run out of food to use social services. Eligibility is limited to individuals who live within one of three zip codes, are verified social services clients, have dependents under 25 or a qualified food-related illness, and Beneficiaries must be referred by one of eleven community organizations.
“If you’re having food insecurity you’re having other issues as well and you need to be engaged with the services the city has put in place to improve your life and the life of your children,” Morris said.
But things could be turning around for California grocery stores soon with the recent passage of Prop. 36, which allows prosecutors to pursue felony charges for serial thieves and major drug crimes after Prop. 47, passed in 2014, made many only chargeable as misdemeanors that would be rarely prosecuted. Prop. 47 was blamed by many for increases in shoplifting; Los Angeles shoplifting increased 62% in 2023 alone.
Reported shoplifting in San Francisco, on the other hand, decreased from 2,785 incidents in 2022 to 2,199 in 2023. But less reporting in San Francisco might not mean less crime.
When one San Francisco Target started reporting all shoplifting, the store became the source of half the shoplifting reports in the whole county, doubling the county’s shoplifting total. Earlier this year, Sacramento told a Target store to stop reporting rampant theft or face a public nuisance charge, which, along with higher insurance premiums from demonstrating higher crime risk, could have made businesses more cautious of making shoplifting reports.