How would you save Hartford?
If you were Mayor of Hartford, how would you "save" the city? I have laid out my current perspective, maybe it's wrong, its just how I see things though.
My perspective is that the main thing killing downtown Hartford is a lack of foot traffic. Low foot traffic causes businesses to close, further lowering any reason to go into downtown (a downward spiral). Normal market dynamics would usually find an equilibrium point to stop the spiral eventually (rents would drop, until proximity to work would be a compelling enough motive to have many workers living in the downtown). And indeed, rents and housing prices in downtown Hartford are very low. You can buy high-rise condos in downtown Hartford for like $150k, while equivalent ones in Boston or NYC would literally cost millions of dollars. Hartford has become one of the most affordable cities in the country, at a time when affordability is very, very rare. This creates fertile ground for a rebound.
However, the thing that prevents a rebound from happening is crime.
https://realestate.usnews.com/places/connecticut/hartford/crime
Hartford has a higher crime rate than similarly sized metro areas. It isn't as bad as its reputation, perhaps, but it is pretty bad. Violent crime is
There isn't any price people are willing to pay, when they fear for their lives every time they walk through downtown at night. The homeless and drug addicts are impossible to ignore, and they are the anchor that is slowly dragging Hartford to its demise.
To save Hartford, you need to start by cleaning up the streets. You currently have had armed Hartford residents walking the streets in protest for their police not doing anything to protect them.
If you think this is a "just hire more cops" post, you're incorrect. Hartford already has way more cops than most cities its size, and yet it is still an outlier on crime statistics.
https://ctmirror.org/2023/04/25/ct-hartford-budget-police-spending-reduced-crime/
The problem is not an underfunded police force, it's an ineffective police force.
There are 2 ways you fix the crime in Hartford- you make the police more competent, and you reduce the number of criminals in the downtown as much as possible.
There is only solution to fix this problem-
- Police must have their hands untied, and they need to be put to work. If you're begging on the sidewalk, you must be removed from downtown. There's plenty of social services for you to use. Get off the streets. Soliciting on the sidewalk is a criminal offense without a license. Sorry. Get off the streets and go somewhere else.
Kids shouldn't have to see some bum with no shirt on begging for money or threatening them when they went with their family to a yard goats game. Make an environment that's safe for professionals, and you're gonna get more professionals.
- I also wanna see a significantly increased surveillance network in downtown Hartford, to enforce this. We have all these cops employed in Hartford, and it's time to put them to work. I wanna see way more video cameras in problem-areas, drones, facial recognition tech in downtown Hartford that keeps the repeat offenders from coming back, etc.
I understand that this sounds Orwellian. I don't see an alternate solution though. What things would you do to save Hartford instead?