Up till last year the intersection at which my gym is located used to house a run down functioning motel that was torn down and made way for a very swanky and large WaWa. The gym is at the dead end of the intersection and perhaps a block away or less at best. Replacing the run down motel with swanky WaWa should’ve been a win for all you’d think? Totally. For the first few months at least.
As part of building out the swanky large WaWa at intersection, they beautified pedestrian paths on corner lot they had. The pathways are huge and WaWa put in benches and seats with streetlights and also constructed a bus stand. You’d think it almost looks communal. Except, after the first few months the homeless started appearing on the benches. First a trickle, and now its basically a tent-fest (remember I told you that pavement is big!), with all benches and seats basically taken up by drugged up homeless by evening time. The day isn’t much better but its a lot emptier, but the night is full, and frankly looks a lot unsafe even though the druggies probably are in no state to do anything meaningful to people, but still I’d not venture out there on foot.
The situation now is so bad that my gym refuses to let our female coaches coach the last sessions at night (usually 8 or 9 at night) out of their safety concern, and in fact tells us warns other women from signing up for late classes at night. Though we are block or less away, the concern around this has become very real. The police are nowhere in sight, and there seems to be absolutely no effort to do anything about this. A few blocks down is another gas station which also has druggies all sprawled out by side of the station in various states of druginness. Up the street is a park which is great in day time, but at night has evolved into a literal fight club (no, really!). Where is the fucking police you might ask? No where is where. Its truly appalling.
Not handling homeliness and drug addicts is one annoyance and major nit against liberals I have. I understand that situation demands empathy and care, but surely we can do better than this? At what point do liberal governments think its going to be enough before it becomes a menace? All this is happening in heart of Fairfax, very much suburbia of DC area, not inner cities. I live 4 miles from there. If this problem continues to be ignored by democrats they are going to lose all local elections and perhaps even the state because this is not funny. The drugs and homeless problem is real and until democrats roll up and their sleeve and actually do something to increase perceived sense of safety, they are going to lose votes eventually & fail.