A lot of people point to 'crime rates in SF are not noticeably high' but one of the reasons for that is that everyone who lives in the zone knows to avoid the worst areas at the worst times, and there are a lot of bad times and bad areas. If average people were walking around these areas frequently, crime rates would be much higher.

This is of course really bad for local businesses. And yes, a certain fraction of the homeless population needs managed care in controlled facilities until they recover, but neither the city nor the state nor the federal government wants to pay for that. Practically, that means there are areas of the city where homeless are ignored, and areas where they are chased out. If homeless people show up and start acting out in Pacific Heights etc., the cops do show up... it's just policing for the wealthy in that respect.

However, much of the rest of the city is really no different than anywhere else, but for some reason there's an epidemic of opiate use down around that Mid-Market area and that's also where the worst of the mental illness episodes seem to take place, i.e. people screaming their heads off at all hours for no apparent reason. It's too bad, for some years that whole zone was seeing an economic boom and was getting a bit nicer.

The shitty drivers are really the greatest threat to public safety across the rest of the city at present, something about the end of the pandemic has turned drivers into imbeciles it seems. (Homicides are about twice the level of auto-related deaths, but the reckless and drunk drivers are everywhere, not concentrated in the worst areas).

I suppose the organized gun-armed gangs of smash-and-grab car thieves targeting the tourist zones are part of the problem, in their nice cars with the removable license plates, but the cops are apparently too worried about their image to do anything about that. Bait cars could be an option, but then they might have to shoot somebody, which would be bad PR. Their mentality seems to be, "why risk it?"