San Francisco forced to BARRICADE McDonald’s after homeless people and vendors crowd sidewalk

San Francisco continues to try and grapple with its crime and homelessness crises, this time going so far as to barricade a local McDonald’s to keep vagrants and vendors away.

Local police have put what they’ve termed ‘event fencing’ around the perimeter of the Mickey D’s next to a stop on the city’s BART transit line at 24th Street.

The barricades have been in place since at least this past Sunday and have remained in place.

It turns a location of the fast food giant with a sign on the front door saying ‘come on in’ into a door you literally can’t walk into. 

The BART station itself has had fences put up for the past ten months as part of a city-led attempt to get rid of the illegal vendors.

One month later, protesters ripped down the barricades, according to SFist. The whole ordeal led to a licensing system and larger police presence at the station. 

In a statement, San Francisco police said that this was done in partnership with those in the area to make it easier to move around. 

‘The event fencing placed in the area of 24th and Mission Streets was done so in collaboration with local business, residents, and community stakeholders to help facilitate the flow of foot traffic in the neighborhood while ensuring ADA compliance.’ 

They did not say how long the barriers would remain standing. 

DailyMail.com has reached out to McDonald’s for comment. 

San Francisco has had myriad troubles with homelessness and crime since the beginning of the pandemic, leading to a mass desertion of the city. 

Researchers tracked smartphone use across 63 cities and found that San Francisco, which is battling waves of crime and homeless addicts on its streets, only has 32 percent of the activity that was recorded before the pandemic.

A disturbing report showed 95 retailers downtown – more than half the total – have closed since the start of the COVID pandemic. 

Local police have put what they’ve termed ‘event fencing’ around the perimeter of the Mickey D’s next to a stop on the city’s BART transit line at 24th Street

In a statement, San Francisco police said that this was done in partnership with those in the area to make it easier to move around

The location is often the site of both homeless people and illegal vendors

At least one more is set to, with Williams-Sonoma announcing they’ll shut down in 2024.

Out of 203 retailers open in 2019 in the city’s Union Square area, just 107 are still operating, a drop of 47 percent in just a few pandemic-ravaged years.

Among the heavy hitters, Brooks Brothers, Ray Ban, Christian Louboutin, Lululemon and Marmot have all packed it in. 

Another 12 new retailers have opened in the area since the pandemic began in 2020 but already two have them have either closed or plan to shut down.

San Francisco’s decline has been spotlighted once again by a sharp uptick in overdose deaths among the city’s homeless population.

The city saw a staggering 41 percent surge in the number of drug-related deaths in the first quarter of 2023 compared to the same time last year, as fentanyl ravaged the city’s homeless population.

The Californian coastal hub saw 200 people die due to overdoses between January and March, compared to 142 deaths in 2022, according to recent data from the city’s medical examiner.

That amounts to one overdose death every 10 hours in a city that has seen its reputation as a coastal gem ravaged by worsening crime, drugs, and, homelessness rates, even as it remains home to tech billionaires.

The overdose victims were disproportionately black and Latino men, and frequently based in the Tenderloin area, a gritty downtown neighborhood, where a drug treatment center was shuttered in December. 

San Francisco saw a staggering 41 percent surge in the number of drug-related deaths in the first quarter of 2023

Addicts openly smoke drugs on the sidewalk of the Tenderloin area of San Francisco, where overdose deaths have rocketed upwards in recent months

Those living on the streets were particularly hard hit — with the number of homeless people dying from drug overdoses doubling.

Fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid that’s frequently trafficked from Mexico and can kill in even tiny quantities, was detected in 159 of the deaths.

The drug is 50-100 times stronger than morphine.

It is cheap, packs down small, is relatively easy to smuggle into the US, and is mixed into pills that then claim the lives of users, who are often unaware they are taking something so powerful.

Methamphetamine and cocaine were also present, although to a lesser extent.

The sharp increase in deaths started in December and continued into a record-breaking January.

This followed the shuttering of the Tenderloin Center, where addicts were allowed to use drugs and where the overdose reversal treatment, Narcan, was available for those who had taken too much.