Crime closed retailers in Portland, Oregon, Austin, Texas, and Seattle, Washington, unable to absorb the losses, and corporations have relocated from Chicago.
By Eileen Griffin
A Portland, Oregon store, Rains PDX, was forced to close permanently after 15 break-ins, unable to continue absorbing that level of loss.
“Crime and other issues like drug use need to be cleaned up in America’s cities or businesses will continue to suffer,” wrote Emma Colton at Fox Business News.
Beauty salon owners in Austin, TX are also considering closing shop due to rising crime in that city.
“Crime is plaguing our entire city, salon owner Erin Mutschler told Fox News.
Co-owner, Laura North, described incidents where they felt threatened and called for police assistance.
“You kind of feel helpless knowing that the police are going to take so long to arrive,” North told the outlet. “I couldn’t put a number on the amount of times we’ve had to call them in just the last year. It usually takes them anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour to arrive when we make multiple phone calls for threatening incidents like this.”
Toward the end of last year, several major companies including Boeing, Caterpillar, and Tyson left Chicago to establish locations not overwhelmed with crime, the Daily Caller reported. Citadel and United Airlines also have relocated employees out of the city.
“Welcome to the progressive dystopia, created by lefties who imagine that all shoplifting is a “crime of poverty” and so should effectively go unpunished,” the New York Post stated in an editorial. “As far as the left’s concerned, New York’s only crime problem is some people are winding up behind bars. And they wonder why so many small businesses are shutting down in the neighborhoods they represent.”
Matt Paprocki, president and CEO of the Chicago-based Illinois Policy Institute, wrote in an op ed in the Chicago Tribune that one of the underreported problems of the growth in crime in Chicago is the impact on small businesses.
The Journal of Urban Economics documented the impact crime has on restaurant use. Fewer people were willing to frequent a restaurant, or other business, where they feared becoming a victim of a crime.
“It makes sense that fewer people venture to businesses in high-crime areas, which then causes more businesses to leave those areas,” Paprocki wrote. “A community plagued with high crime loses businesses over the course of a year or two, but it can take decades to gain businesses back.”
Seattle WA business owners recently held a town hall to discuss crime affecting their businesses.
“When it comes to crime in Seattle I don’t want to be silent anymore,” Matt Humphries, owner of Steele Barber told KOMO news.
He said many business owners in the area suffer the same problems with crime.
“We all suffer consistent break-ins, huge loss of retail, fear, loss of sleep, loss of money, loss of insurance in some cases, like mine,” Humphries told the outlet.
Humphries said a big concern is safety. “I want my staff to feel comfortable coming to work. I want my customers to feel safe coming to work.”
Lara Zahaba, one of the owners of Stew Brewing told KOMO, “Our primary goal is to make sure that our staff is safe and feel safe while working and to make sure that our customers feel safe.”
“It’s clear that Seattle has a growing problem,” said Zahaba. “We aren’t in the positions to find the solutions or employ the solutions ourselves, so we are asking for help.”
“We are a small business, and our revenue feels smaller than a lot of the other businesses that are here today,” store manager Burke Lyman said at Town Hall. “A break-in, replacing the glass in the front door for $2,000 is a hit and so when you have to replace that three times in three months and you have to replace it within three weeks of doing it the last time – we haven’t replaced the glass in the front door because it just doesn’t make sense financially to continue to do that.”
Lyman said they are at the point of losing their insurance coverage due to the amount of crime.
Business owner Karen says they are at the point of considering closing locations.
“My staff don’t feel safe,” Karen said. “They don’t know what they are going to walk into and I have to say it’s just really scary. I feel like there are not a lot of consequences. I don’t know what to do anymore.”
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