Item — HN Reader

Oh yeah, 6th street - 8th street on market is still the same. I actually walked back from the Mission one night and one of my co-workers was like "You walked me through a crack den." Most of the people down there were strung out and not violent, but he was definitely not comfortable.

Gilde[1] is right near the area you're talking about and they provide tons of services for the homeless and mentally ill so there is a high concentration around that area.

[1] - https://www.glide.org

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The thing is that in many other cities I've been to, the dodgy homeless areas are confined to areas of the cities that are less on the tourist line, but in SF the homeless problem is right in the centre of the city. My coworker and I were on a trip to SF after visiting a conference in the area (we're from the UK) and we got off at Civic Centre and went straight north, directly through Tenderloin!! to get to our hotel room. Looking at a map this is clearly the best way to go but I was totally bricking it when we got there. Turns out that many people just has an innate knowledge of where to go and not to go when in SF, but it's totally difficult to tell. I mean Market street looks like a main road and has all the big shops on like Adidas etc. Why would I expect the 20 min walk down this main road from Adidas to Twitter HQ to be so dodgy??

Another shock to me was that the homeless are very different between SF and where I'm from (Birmingham UK). Here, they are generally just pitied people down on their luck. They don't really cause harm but can be belligerent when drunk. In SF, many of the homeless people were _terrifying_, clearly having severe untreated mental health issues.

I think that the homeless problem in SF isn't that bad when you are a longer term resident because you get used to it, but it's definitely a big shocker for many tourists.