Hundreds of San Francisco Department of Health and Human Services employees have been ordered to work from home due to high crime rates in the office's area, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The department recommended employees work remotely “for the foreseeable future,” the report said, citing an Aug. 4 memo sent to employees, a copy of which the Chronicle said it obtained.
The advice was given to workers “in light of conditions at the (Federal Building),” said Cheryl R. Campbell, the department's assistant secretary for administration, according to the report.
The Federal Building is located at 90 7th Street in San Francisco, a known drug hotspot where drug dealers often hawk near or across the street from the building, the Chronicle reported.
Two men were indicted in May on suspicion of conducting drug deals in front of federal building surveillance cameras, according to a June news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office.
San Francisco has struggled with a drug epidemic and a homelessness crisis in recent years.
The California governor's office said in June that the California Highway Patrol had seized more than four kilos of fentanyl in the Tenderloin and the “immediate area” of San Francisco in just six weeks.
It was claimed that this was “enough to kill the entire population of the city almost three times over.”
Elon Musk has also spoken out about crime in the city where his company X, formerly known as Twitter, is headquartered.
“Violent crime in SF is terrible,” Musk said in a tweet in April.
After the fatal knife attack on Cash App inventor Bob Lee, many described San Francisco as a “lawless” place to live.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
