u/benhameen1911

I own a very small business downtown and have owned it for nearly a decade. We’ve always had issues with homeless folks in the area.

Over the last year it has gotten extreme. Once a week, like clockwork, the same woman would come at 3-4am to the little hidden corner behind our shop, break into our (and our neighbors) locked trash bins, dump EVERYTHING out, take a shit on the cement, and leave everything there.

Finally, our landlord had enough and had an iron gate installed to protect the back entrances to the businesses and to keep the trash bins behind. Not two days after it was installed, the same lady stole a neighbors trash bin, rolled it up to the gate, and used it to hop over the gate, dumped out all the trash, and took a shit again.

The landlord then had the gate company install sharp metal spikes on top of the gate. Now, just a few days ago, the same lady attempted to put cardboard on the spikes to hop the gate, realized it wouldn’t work, then pulled a tool out of her backpack, cut a hole in the gate to allow her to enter, dumped out all the trash, and took another shit.

We had the police come by, gave them the camera footage, but this lady clearly knows what she’s doing and made sure her face was turned out of sight of the cameras at all times. The police said unless they catch her in the act they can’t really do anything. That is encouraging. So basically that tells me if I ever want any free stuff in San Leandro, as long as I’m sneaky enough to not get caught in the act, I can just go do and take whatever I want.
Not only that but the benches between Tapioca Express and Los Pericos #5 has essentially become San Leandro’s skid row. We constantly see multiple homeless people sitting there drinking alcohol, smoking meth, shouting threats at innocent passerby’s, I even saw one setting stuff on fire. That whole area now smells like a BART elevator (basically like layers and layers and layers of dehydrated persons urine stained into the concrete).

It’s getting to the point where customers are getting more concerned about coming to do business here, us businesses are feeling helpless about our property and our environment deteriorating before our very eyes, and the authorities unable to do anything that helps long term makes it seem like it’s only going to get worse.

I 100% understand these are human beings that are victims of the housing crisis, drug addiction, and untreated mental health issues. But that doesn’t mean we should just look the other way and accept their behavior that is constantly deteriorating the downtown area and fucking things up for us small businesses.

Something needs to be done. I honestly have no idea what that something is but for christs sake, turning a blind eye and looking the other way is doing nothing but enabling this to continue further.
I’ve been here for over 40 years. I’m well aware San Leandro has always had issues with homeless. But over these 4 decades I have seen downtown change quite a bit, some things good, but a LOT more things bad. And a lot seems to be at the hands of the homeless population and the idiots in city hall who are too busy dealing with their corruption and scandals (that the taxpayers foot the bill for) than doing anything that warrants their enormous salary raises.

What needs to be done to end this? Because it’s only a matter of time before all the small business in the area that help make up the cultural fabric of San Leandro throw their hands up and leave to greener pastures and San Leandro will be left with vacant buildings or filled with soulless corporate carbon copies of every other city.

I’m working out at Planet Fitness this morning, glance over, and see two peckerwood idiot loser piles of dogshit with prison tattoos working out across the room.

One had tattoos that said “WHITE” down one arm and “POWER” down the other arm. The other had some confederate flag tattooed on him.

Typical scumbag Nazi trash don’t deserve to be in a gym that promotes inclusivity for everyone.

What...a...game!