It Can’t Be Too Scary If People Keep Moving There…

CRIME, DRUG USE, HOMELESSNESS — I’m not denying that these are problems in many of our cities that urgently need to be addressed. And yet, I look at certain data points and cannot help but wonder whether, perhaps for political and psychological reasons, their impacts are sometimes overstated. I’m working right now on retail strategies in two places where sidewalk conditions are thought to have worsened considerably amidst the pandemic: Hollywood (in L.A.) and Mid-Market/Tenderloin (in S.F.). Yet the residential population in the former increased by nearly 6% in the last three years, and in the latter, by 36% in the last four — with virtually all of the growth in both cases resulting from new upmarket residential towers. So it would seem that, hyperventilating politicians and click-baiting journalists notwithstanding, real (upwardly mobile) people continue to rent real (and not especially cheap) apartments in these areas. Now, as my colleague Ken Stapleton always says, safety thresholds and risk avoidance vary by demographic — and it is telling that 56% of Hollywood’s residents are male. At the same time, these numbers undercut the broader narrative that our urban cores – even some of their most challenged parts — are “hallowing out.” Lots of us, it seems, still want to live there, evidently undeterred by all the scary stuff.