Is there also a petition to get the people in these encampments to stop harassing and assaulting people? I'm sure it would have the same effect as your petition.

That's nice, but where do you live? I would 100% feel the way you do if I lived in Woodley Park, sure, but I would absolutely not feel that way if I lived in Navy Yard, for example.

It's all relative. If you have the means to live in the nice parts of Northwest DC, I'm sure you feel its as safe now as it was pre-covid, but the safe areas are dwindling fast.

I agree with OP, but it's all relative. I've been in DC since 2007, give or take. 2007 - 2020 were excellent years. Yes, there were areas that were (and still are) dangerous and violent, but it didn't feel as though crime from those areas were bleeding into the rest of the city.

Now, not so much. Crime, particularly violent crime, is almost everywhere in DC in ways that it simply wasn't from 2000 - 2020. Yes, there has always been crime, and yes, it isn't as bad as it was in the 80s and 90s, but its become pretty damn terrible these past few years. I've had to run away from gunshots at least three times in the past two years, one of those times, I was truly, truly shocked and thankful I wasn't actually struck by bullets. All three times in areas that are supposed to be nice or were supposed to have changed dramatically in the past two decades - areas that in 2018 I would have never heard gunshots.

The fact is that the overwhelming majority of DC just isn't safe anymore. There is a level of diligence needed to live here that you didn't need in the previous 15 years. The city has basically thrown up its hands and decided that it's fine, that this is acceptable, and that there's nothing to be done about it except working on ways to lessen the punishments for our more violent offenders. Criminals are more brazen and bold than they have been at any point in the past two decades. There is zero deterrent, so they keep fucking up everyone else's lives.

OP isn't wrong. The 'old' 2000 - 2020 DC is eroding away. But it's still a far from what it was like from 1980 - 2000.