The comedian criticized the widespread homelessness in the city, saying that the whole place looked like the Tenderloin.
During a surprise performance at the SF Masonic Auditorium on Thursday night, Dave Chappelle criticized the city.
In his show, the 49-year-old comic, who called the Golden City his “second home,” reportedly poked fun at the city’s escalating homelessness problem.
Someone would ask, “What the f— happened to this place?” Asked Chappelle.
Chappelle then related a story from a few nights previously, when he was in San Francisco for a comedy gig.
The Netflix star said that while eating at an Indian restaurant in the Tenderloin neighborhood of the city, he witnessed a homeless man defecate in front of the business as Chappelle entered.
The man from Washington, D.C., remarked that San Francisco had become “half ‘Glee,’ half zombie movie,” adding that the entire city was essentially the Tenderloin at this point. Crime, homelessness, and drug abuse are all too common in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood.
The comic proclaimed, “Y’all [expletive] need a Batman!”
The criticism from Chapelle comes at a time when the city is struggling to deal with a sharp rise in homelessness and crime. There are an estimated 38,000 persons sleeping rough in San Francisco on any given night, a 35% rise from the year before.
San Francisco’s police department lost 12% of its full-time sworn officers between 2019 and 2022, contributing to rising crime and homelessness concerns.
Furthermore, Chappelle’s encounter with public urination is not exceptional. In 2018, a new resident named Sean Miller created a free app called “the Snapcrap” app to facilitate the reporting of human feces and used needles on the streets of San Francisco.
“Look at that yucky creature! The app’s description reads, “Simply take a picture and send it in.”
To report feces, trash, potholes, and graffiti, use the city’s 311 app, and the photographs will be sent directly to the Public Works department.
San Francisco may be ground zero for the homeless crisis, but it’s a statewide issue. According to a recent study, California is home to one-third of the whole homeless population in the United States and half of all unsheltered homeless people.
At least 30 percent of the nation’s homeless population resides in California, according to a “Point in Time” poll taken in January 2022 and released at year’s end by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Half of the nation’s 233,800 “unsheltered” population, or around 115,500 people, are located in California, according to the survey.
Primarily, the homeless population in California has grown by about 6% since 2020, whereas it has grown by only 0.4% nationally. In that time period, the number of people who were “homeless but sheltered” increased by 17%, while the number of people who were “unsheltered” increased by about 2%.
According to the PPIC’s breakdown of the data, “the rest of the country’s unsheltered population expanded faster than California’s (4%), while its sheltered population actually dropped (-2%). There are more Continuums of Care in the state than anywhere else in the US, with 44 facilities serving the state’s homeless people.
Due to homelessness and crime, a recent study found that just a minority of San Francisco residents feel comfortable using public transportation.
Bay Area Council’s recent survey found that only 17% of respondents felt safe while riding BART in San Francisco between March 30 and April 9. Additionally, 45% of respondents who do not ride BART cited safety concerns as the primary reason for not doing so.
Moreover, respondents’ major reason for not using BART more often was not remote work, but rather lack of security, fear, and safety concerns, cited by 22% of participants.