A restaurant owner in Tucson, Arizona discussed how the city’s homeless crisis has negatively impacted his businesses over the past few years.
He described a sharp rise in homelessness and crime in the area, attributing this to a lack of law enforcement related to public camping, panhandling, drug use, and other issues involving the homeless population.
“Quite frankly, it terrifies me for my own children to see this level of open drug use and distribution happen in broad daylight on our city streets, and what you might consider to be the nice areas of town too,” Union Hospitality Group owner Grant Krueger said.
The owner believes permissive border policies have also contributed by increasing the flow of fentanyl into the community.
“We’ve had more crime in my restaurant establishments over the last four years than we had in the previous 15 combined,” he said. “It’s gotten to the point that we often don’t even report it to the authorities anymore, because we feel, quite frankly, that there’s very little that they’re going to do.”
What was once a family-friendly area and riverwalk is now dominated by homeless encampments and open drug markets, frightening customers away from local establishments.
The situation has forced the owner to spend heavily on security while facing assaults on customers from intoxicated homeless individuals.
“Our municipalities are currently not enforcing many laws on the books when it comes to public camping, when it comes to panhandling, either from city intersections or from medians, when it comes to public urination, defecation or open consumption of alcohol and drugs. And the lack of enforcement of all these laws have made things tremendously worse here for us in the desert,” Krueger said. “On top of that, the open border policies that we’ve had over the last number of years have brought in a tremendous supply of fentanyl into our community.”
“Now it’s a place where I would be afraid to take my friends and family,” Krueger said.
“There’s literally zero enforcement,” Krueger said.
He argues that businesses are unfairly bearing the costs due to municipal governments’ failure to enforce existing laws addressing these problems.
“We’re paying what we call a crime tax, the cost of the city and county’s lack of enforcing the current laws that are on the books right now are essentially costing business owners like myself an awful lot of money, and it makes for situations that are substantially less comfortable for our patrons as well.”
“Nobody wants to be accosted by homeless folks in your parking lot, have your car broken into or find people living in the bushes or behind various facilities in the various commercial establishments that we have here in Tucson. And so it’s really been a cost that’s been borne by the private sector because of the public sector’s inability or unwillingness to enforce laws already on the books,” he said.
