Coming from Chicago, SF felt a lot less safe to me. Would not even consider living there even though I've lived in a big city for 5+ years.
Chicago has a homeless population, but it's nowhere near as large or as emboldened as SF's.
Chicago has a homeless population, but it's nowhere near as large or as emboldened as SF's.
In the past, I probably would have still felt safer walking around eg the Tenderloin than some areas of Chicago's South/Westside. But beginning a few months after the pandemic began, the streets in SOMA/FiDi/Union Square emptied out (no more tourists or commuters) and SF has started to feel much, much less safe in those areas. In the last few months, my partner has been attacked on the street twice, and I narrowly avoided being mugged with a screwdriver in Union Square itself. That is much worse than anything I ever experienced in the Southside of Chicago.