Yes, because people want to walk through turds and needles and step over dead bums to get to an overpriced lunch.
The City needs the food and sales tax revenue. That's what it's all about.
I work in a “downtown” and it’s a nightmare.
Homies selling drugs, and the mentally ill panhandling are just annoying. There was a shooting/murder a few blocks from my office a couple a weeks ago during business hours. It was only a couple of homies, but just wait until it’s one of these “displaced lunch hour employees” who gets rolled and/or killed by another Jose Inez Garcia Zarate like Kate Steinle did.
Downtown is a ghost town now. There is NOBODY down there. There are only government workers, and lawyers who are in the courthouse. Beyond that... it’s depressing. No pretty young girls, no young men, just the middle-aged bureaucrats and the lawyers defending the homies and their ilk.