California Governor Under Fire After Retail Giants Begin Closing Stores Megan Wright
The Great California Retail Exodus: A Monument to Policy Failure
A Walmart that served families in Fremont, California, for two decades has locked its doors forever. The corporate press release cited vague “business conditions,” a polite euphemism that covers a multitude of sins. But let’s be clear about what those conditions actually are. This isn’t about the rise of Amazon or a sudden disinterest in affordable goods. This is a retreat. It is a surrender. Across the Golden State, the fundamental social contract of commerce—that you can open a store, sell goods, and expect the law to protect your property—has been shredded. We are witnessing a systemic collapse of retail infrastructure, driven not by market forces, but by a catastrophic failure of governance that has effectively legalized theft and abandoned the working class to chaos.
To understand the scale of this disaster, look at the story of Sarah Chen, who managed a Target in Oakland for eleven years. This wasn’t just a box store; it was a community hub with thirty-seven employees. In September 2023, she had to tell her customers that the store was closing because it had become unsafe. “Unsafe” is the sanitized corporate word for a war zone where employees are threatened and customers are robbed in broad daylight. When a manager has to close a profitable location because she cannot physically protect her staff from organized criminals, we have moved past bad policy into the realm of civic breakdown. Sarah’s story is not unique. It is the new normal in a state that has decided enforcing the law is too politically inconvenient.
The catalyst for this disintegration is Proposition 47, the 2014 ballot measure that reclassified theft under $950 from a felony to a misdemeanor. Sold to voters as a noble effort at criminal justice reform, it has mutated into a permission slip for predation. The logic was that reducing incarceration for non-violent offenses would create a more just society. Instead, it created a sanctuary state for shoplifters. The numbers are damning. Following the passage of Prop 47, California’s larceny rate jumped 9% higher than similar states. By 2023, reported shoplifting had hit its highest level since 1998. But the most terrifying statistic isn’t the crime rate; it’s the clearance rate.
In 2014, police cleared about 14% of property crimes. By 2023, that number had collapsed to just 8%. This means that today, if someone walks into a store and steals, there is a 92% chance they will face absolutely no consequences. We have effectively decriminalized theft in practice, if not entirely in law. When you tell a criminal class that they can steal $949 worth of goods every single day without fear of arrest, they don’t just steal occasionally; they professionalize. They bring calculators to ensure they stay under the felony limit. They organize. They strip shelves bare while security guards, instructed by legal departments terrified of lawsuits, stand by and watch.
The corporate casualties are staggering. Walgreens closed five hundred stores in 2025 alone. Their stock value has been obliterated, dropping nearly 90% in a decade, a decline driven largely by the impossibility of operating in high-theft environments. We saw CVS shutter hundreds of locations and Macy’s pull out of key markets. Even the giants are bleeding. Target’s CEO admitted that organized retail crime is having a material impact on their bottom line. But frankly, I don’t care about the corporate balance sheets. I care about the hypocrisy of a political class that claims to champion the poor while creating “food deserts” in vulnerable communities.
When a store like the Target in East Palo Alto closes, it isn’t the wealthy who suffer. The affluent can afford Instacart delivery fees and Amazon Prime memberships. It is the elderly resident who needs a prescription, the single mother who needs affordable diapers, and the worker who relies on that store for a paycheck who pay the price. Monica Reyes, an assistant manager at that location, said she would rather have her job at lower pay than no job at all. But that choice was taken from her by a state apparatus that prioritizes the comfort of criminals over the livelihoods of honest workers.
The economic reality is undeniable. Retailers typically operate on razor-thin profit margins of 2% to 3%. In California, “shrink”—the industry term for theft—has ballooned to 3.5% of revenue. You do not need a degree in economics to understand that you cannot run a business where the theft rate exceeds the profit margin. It is mathematical suicide. To compensate, retailers are spending $145 per square foot on security in California, double the national average. They are locking up toothpaste, deodorant, and baby formula behind plexiglass, turning the simple act of buying necessities into a humiliating, time-consuming ordeal.
This is the “fortress retail” future we were warned about. The stores that survive will not be the open, welcoming community anchors of the past. They will be hardened bunkers with controlled entry, armed guards, and AI-surveillance systems. Or, they will simply cease to exist in physical form, replaced by automated warehouses that dispense goods without the risk of human interaction. We are already seeing this with the rise of online-only retailers who have abandoned the storefront entirely to avoid the “California tax” of rampant theft.
Critics of this analysis will point to Costco as a survivor, noting its continued growth. But Costco is a fortress by design, with paid membership barriers and receipt checkers at the door. It is the exception that proves the rule: to survive in modern California, you must treat every customer like a potential suspect. Is this the society we wanted? A society where you need a membership card and a security screening just to buy bulk toilet paper?
The most infuriating part of this saga is the gaslighting. We are told that theft is a result of poverty, yet we see organized gangs clearing out luxury goods and beauty products for resale markets. We are told that crime is down, yet we know that reporting has collapsed because store owners know the police won’t come. The clearance rate dropping to 8% is an indictment of the entire system. It reveals a state that has given up.
As we look at the empty storefronts lining Market Street in San Francisco and the hollowed-out retail corridors of Oakland, we are looking at the monuments to this failure. These are not victims of “changing business conditions.” They are the victims of a deliberate policy choice to dismantle deterrence. The politicians who championed these reforms will never have to worry about losing their jobs because a gang looted their workplace. They will never have to take three buses to buy groceries because the local market closed down. They are insulated from the chaos they created.
The passage of Proposition 36 in 2024 shows that the voters are finally waking up, demanding a return to sanity and consequences. But for many communities, it is too late. The stores are gone, the leases are broken, and the jobs have vanished. The trust that holds a community together—the belief that the law applies to everyone and that hard work is protected—has been shattered. California is now a laboratory for what happens when you let ideology override reality, and the results are in: closed doors, lost wages, and a society that feels less safe, less prosperous, and less free.
