If your city can’t keep Walmart, Whole Foods, and Nordstrom due to rampant and unchecked crime, homelessness, etc, then how would you compel normal citizens and employers to remain. If you forfeit your security, protection of private property and clean streets, then society will rapidly devolve and you will end up with such vacancies. And it doesn’t matter if this is deliberate and ideological or if it’s just incompetence or ignorance, the same outcome will arrive. SF is in decline and total denial about it. California is too. Anyone who doesn’t see this is in total denial.