The Bay Area has become a large declining tech company
As a short-term housing operator in the Bay Area, specializing in hosting tech workers, we&#x27;ve witnessed first hand the decline in quality of life and exile of the tech traveler.<p>It started with homeless people camping out in front of our units in SoMa and Mission (often times blocking the entrance&#x2F;exit because some units had a direct street-level entrance), petty package theft and occasional car break-ins in the building garages.<p>Police couldn&#x27;t do anything but take a report.<p>Then the pandemic started and the vacancy rate skyrocketed. We started getting reports from neighbors or the on-site management that are our guests are dealing drugs out of our units. Except that these units were supposed to be vacant. Our lockboxes were getting broken into, keys taken and people have been living there for several days and in some cases weeks. We often had footage of this.<p>We would call the police as we arrived at these units for our protection, but they wouldn&#x27;t be able to arrest anyone because the people in the unit would say &quot;so and so gave me the keys, told me this is their apartment, I don&#x27;t know anything about that broken lockbox.&quot;<p>This scheme quickly expanded to Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Milpitas and other South Bay cities. We would call the police on a daily basis in the first few months of the pandemic. Sometimes it would take them an hour or two to come, and if the squatters saw our team at the building and got wind of what was going on, they would start packing up their car with our appliances: Apple TV, Nespresso machine, we&#x27;ve even had furniture and major appliances like TVs, washer and dryer rolled out while we were waiting for the police to come.<p>At most they would temporarily restrain these squatters if they had previous warrants (many of them did, but many others didn&#x27;t produce an ID.) But even with warrants for their arrest, they would get uncuffed and released within an hour. We thought that at least a warrant would have them appear in front of a judge and we&#x27;d not have to encounter them again in a few days at another building, but the pandemic gave them a free pass.<p>The officers were very candid in saying that if it was up to them, they would book them, but they have instructions not to bring anyone in for non-violent crime. Theft is not prosecuted.<p>This is how it goes, anyone that has any doubt that crime is not prevented, pursued or prosecuted should go on a ride-along to any of these calls.