San Francisco to allow residents to sue fleeing groceries that don't give six months' notice before closing

Want more food deserts in San Francisco?

Here's how you get more food deserts in San Francisco.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is considering a remarkable policy that would allow people to sue grocery stores that close too quickly.
Earlier this week, Supervisors Dean Preston and Aaron Peskin introduced an ordinance that, if passed, would require grocery stores to provide six months' written notice to the city before closing down.
Supermarket operators would also have to make "good faith" efforts to ensure the continued availability of groceries at their shuttered location, either through finding a successor store, helping residents form a grocery co-op, or any other plan they might work out by meeting with city and neighborhood residents.
Lest one thinks this is some heavy-handed City Hall intervention, the ordinance makes clear that owners still retain the ultimate power to close their store. It also creates a number of exemptions to the six-month notice requirement. If a store is closing because of a natural disaster or business circumstances that aren't "reasonably foreseeable," it doesn't have to provide the full six months' notice.

For the poor, that's bad news because all it will do is ensure that new grocery stores don't open.

Who'd want to do business in a city that requires six months' notice plus the difficult task of getting a replacement or organizing a food co-op for the 'privilege' of closure when all they want to do is get out?

It’s an absolute disincentive to try to supply food to all the local residents in the area, and for those without cars, of which there are many, they’re looking at two-hour journeys by the lousiest city buses, driven by the meanest union drivers, with the highest number of bums onboard in close quarters in any urban area.

As for the owners, it’s no treat either. Under the new law, this cumbersome regulation to businesses that are clearly in distress is nothing more than insult added to injury. They pay high taxes for the privilege of operating there, they sustain so much thievery they have to put their goods behind plexiglass cases, which costs money, they get zero law enforcement help when they get robbed because thefts are so common, and as a last resort, they try to close doors, they get hit by a raft of lawsuits.

But for the thieves of San Francisco, who steal and fence stolen goods as a lifestyle choice to pay for illegal drugs, the six-months’ notice, plus the right to file lawsuits, is a gravy bonanza.

There have been massive efforts in my city, and in many large cities, to ameliorate the problem of “food deserts” in predominately black urban areas by infusing a LOT of taxpayer and grant funds into building food retailer establishment with tax abatements and other incentives in these ghettos. They are almost ALWAYS failures. Businesses don’t want to build where they are going to be victimized to the point of bankruptcy.

As a result, the few convenience stores and other food outlets in these areas charge highly inflated prices to make up for the loses by theft.

One answer is to have state-run grocery stores there.

Type A Freepers: read the rest before you make fools of yourselves.

Think you can do it better, City of San Francisco?

Then when you inevitably fail miserably, perhaps you will learn.

Leftists have to hit bottom, or worse, before they will learn.

Sue a business that no longer exists?

Or they don't "close" just leave the doors open and disappear?

Or if it's a chain closing a particular store, give notice as the law requires but stop restocking?

Or any number of dodges I haven't thought of?

In any case it will accelerate stores leaving. The first big wave just before the law takes effect.

Ohio did some similar as companies fled South for relief from unionization. Then Gov. Celeste place a fine of 6 months wages on companies that left the state under the guise of using those funds for retraining. Several months later, they noticed that there were no new businesses formed in OH since the law was passed. They repealed the law.

Does CA think this won't have an affect on the grocery companies and their plans to do business in CA? You clowns in CA need to think this through a little more.

I haven't gotten tired of rereading it yet. Directive 10-289, point 2:

Point Two. All industrial, commercial, manufacturing and business establishments of any nature whatsoever shall henceforth remain in operation, and the owners of such establishments shall not quit nor leave nor retire, nor close, sell or transfer their business, under penalty of the nationalization of their establishment and of any and all of their property.

That last part - I doubt Fran Sanfrisco will be any better at running the stores than the current ripped-off owners but it might be entertaining to see them try.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

WELCOME TO THE HOTEL CALIFORNIA