San Francisco's Sixth Street, two blocks of it anyway, has been a circus of drug use and general chaos for going on four decades, if not more. But business owners and police say that it's suddenly gotten much worse.

The Chronicle reports from a Wednesday town hall meeting organized by the South of Market Business Association at which multiple community members spoke about deteriorating conditions on the street, as the fentanyl crisis continues to ravage the area.

"I’ve been here for 14 years and I’ve never seen it this bad," said Tadd Cordell, who opened Monarch nightclub at Sixth and Mission in 2010. "In the middle of San Francisco, Sixth Street has been ceded to junkies."

The "it's worse than it's ever been" refrain is a very familiar one in San Francisco of the last decade, usually in discussions of homelessness and crime and usually without data to back to up the assertion. But San Francisco Police Chief William Scott was on hand at Wednesday's meeting and he confirmed what business owners were seeing, per the Chronicle.

And there's a simple explanation for why this is. Efforts by the city to visibly clean up and clear out UN Plaza and the areas around it have pushed dealers and fentanyl users to other locales, Sixth between Market and Howard being one of them.

The mayor's much-touted efforts to curtail illegal activity in the Tenderloin this year has likely played a role as well — in addition to the ordinance that put a curfew on all corner stores in a specific swath of the Tenderloin just across Market Street from this stretch of Sixth. Stores on Sixth Street don't have this curfew.

As Scott told the attendees at the meeting, per the Chronicle, he had walked Sixth Street recently and "It’s bad. There’s no mistake about it." Scott also acknowledged the significant improvements at UN Plaza, saying, "we’re seeing the displacement of the problem to other areas."

Sixth Street has had the reputation it's had for many years in part because of the row of single-room occupancy (SRO) hotels on its first two blocks, drawing a population of people who often come down to the street to socialize, as well as to score drugs.

In an otherwise less-violent year around town, Sixth Street saw several shootings, including one in which two people were injured and one person was killed in August.

Wednesday's meeting was held at Trellis, a nine-year-old coworking space and cafe at Sixth and Mission. Owner Rebecca Pan tells the Chronicle that she saw around 100 people gathered and injecting fentanyl across the street from her cafe on Monday, and the next morning, about 15 of them were outside the cafe's door "drugged out of their mind." And during Wednesday's meeting, as the Chronicle reports, someone's cellphone was stolen off a table.

The SFPD didn't make any promises about when or how the situation may improve for businesses on Sixth Street. Chief Scott only said, "We’re trying to get people off the streets, not off Sixth Street so they go to Fifth Street."

Related: SF Supervisors Approve Mayor Breed’s Plan to Shut Down Tenderloin Corner Stores at Midnight