Vandalism is becoming almost unavoidable for San Francisco’s restaurants, a new survey shows.

Only 3% out of 74 restaurants surveyed said they had not experienced graffiti or property crime in the last month, according to a new survey from the Golden Gate Restaurant Association.

The city has spent $1 million on grants for vandalism relief since 2021, and nearly 800 businesses have received $1,000 or $2,000 grants for graffiti, broken windows, or other vandalism, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

San Francisco’s 311 call center has received 10,000 reports of graffiti on commercial buildings and sidewalks in the last six months, the outlet reported.

Now, the San Francisco Police Department has even assigned an officer to investigate graffiti full-time.

Meanwhile, businesses are suffering, and repairing the damage is expensive.

A pizza shop in San Francisco’s Mission District was recently hit with acid, the owner told ABC7.

“This is acid so you can’t just remove it. They have to replace the glass,” Supreme Pizza owner Leandro Jayme told the outlet. He said replacing even one small glass square costs him $300.

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Some restaurants said they gave up, including Shuggie’s, also in the Mission district, which received a grant, but gave up trying to clean up the almost daily graffiti.

Shoplifting is another major problem for the crime-ridden city.

In the past, San Francisco’s stores have geared up with unprecedented security measures to try to deter shoplifters.

Grocery stores, pharmacies, and other retailers have installed extreme security devices and paid for private security guards to combat rampant theft.

Supermarket chain Safeway installed exit gates that require customers to scan their receipts in some of its Bay Area grocery stores. A Walgreens locked its freezers with chains in response to shoplifters hitting the store 15 to 20 times a day, according to an employee.

In 2021, businesses in San Francisco’ Union Square hired private security to combat the “smash and grab” robberies that plagued the area.

Part of the reason for the shoplifting increase is Proposition 47, a 2014 voter-approved law that made the theft of merchandise under $950 in value a misdemeanor that is often not investigated.

Most Californians support changing Prop 47 to reinstate penalties for certain thefts, according to a 2022 poll.

Overall crime in San Francisco is slightly down this year, but certain types of violent crime are up, according to police data.

Murder is up 3% to 40 murders so far. Robberies are up 16% to 2,039 robberies so far. Car thefts are up 11% to 5,038 thefts.

Crime, open-air drug use, and homelessness have caused businesses to flee San Francisco’s downtown, where foot traffic has thinned.

A string of major retailers have recently fled their downtown San Francisco locations. Mall company Westfield, AT&T, Nordstrom, Whole Foods, and two hotels have all shuttered locations in the city recently.

The city’s drug crisis hit a grim milestone last month with a record 84 accidental drug overdose deaths in August, according to preliminary city data. So far this year, a total of 563 people have died from a drug overdose in San Francisco.

Homelessness has only gotten worse since before the pandemic. About 38,000 people are homeless in the Bay Area on a given night, up 35% since 2019.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said following the second Republican Party primary debate on Wednesday night that he believes Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was “the big winner” and that most of the candidates did not do anything to help themselves.

Cruz made the remarks during an episode of his “Verdict” podcast with co-host Ben Ferguson following the debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.

“This was a bumpy debate. There were a lot of rocky moments. I think most of the candidates did not help themselves,” Cruz said. “But my clear conclusion from tonight is the big winner was Ron DeSantis.”

Cruz said that after the first debate, he thought former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy did well, but the overall winner was Trump because other candidates outside of DeSantis did well.

“I think going into the night DeSantis needed to do well. And I think he rose to the occasion,” Cruz said. “I think he did by far the best of anyone on the stage.”

Cruz said that DeSantis did the best for several reasons, including the “behavior of the others,” who he said “bickered like children.”

“And I don’t think it helped them,” Cruz said speaking of the other candidates. “I think when they were just yelling at each other back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth. When you see a bunch of people screaming at each other, they don’t look like presidents. They’re not behaving like presidents. Presidents don’t have to yap at each other.”

Cruz said that DeSantis had “several best answers of the night,” including his answer on education, which Cruz said was the “single best answer of the night.”

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“The topic came up about education, it came about school choice, and he gave a strong, powerful answer about school choice, about how number one, Florida had implemented universal school choice,” Cruz said. “Florida has led the country in school choice. So, they’ve got a heck of a record to talk about. He was asked about the attacks on their efforts to root out Critical Race Theory in Florida. And he directly confronted that, and I thought it was a tight, crisp answer. That was strong.”

Cruz said he also thought DeSantis gave a “very, very strong” answer while talking about victories that he won in Florida. “The reason people got excited about DeSantis when he launched the campaign is the victories that he had in Florida, big policy victories,” Cruz said. “He emphasized that.”

Cruz said he also liked the moment where DeSantis talked about winning and how he won in landslide fashion during the midterms while the Republican Party largely underperformed across the country.

“He talked about winning in Florida, even as nationally, we were getting clobbered in 2022,” Cruz said. “He won by 19 points, and I think he did an effective argument. In many ways, his strongest argument against Trump is that he won while many other candidates that Trump had supported nationally did not win that cycle. And his argument, you want a winner, you want someone who can beat the Democrats, I’m that guy. I think he articulated it much, much better tonight than he did in the first debate, that’s why I think Ron DeSantis won tonight.”