San Francisco is opening a market where people can take food and walk out without having to pay for it. This time, they are doing it on purpose.

San Francisco has opened what is being called a “free food market.” It is essentially a food pantry where approved residents in the neighborhood who fill a whole list of eligibility requirements get a benefits card (think Costco) and can “shop” once a month. It functions just the same as a grocery store, with “shoppers” even scanning their groceries. You just don’t have to pay because it’s free.

Well, it’s not really “free,” of course. The market will be funded by a $5.5 million taxpayer-funded grant. But it is for a good cause. After all, the community this store will be in, as well as the other communities that it will expand to if this test goes well, is a low-income food desert. Many residents in this district need the additional options.

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Then again, they wouldn’t need those if San Francisco’s unwillingness to prosecute shoplifters didn’t cause stores to close their doors in these neighborhoods, but hey, this is California: If you aren’t spending millions of dollars to half-fix a problem that your own policies created, you just aren’t doing it right.

Such is life in San Francisco, though. The city that once almost spent $1.7 million on a single public toilet now must burn $5.5 million to make sure residents can be fed after pro-criminal policies ran stores out of business. You couldn’t write a more perfect San Francisco story if you tried, up until we hear all the shoplifting stories at this new “free” market from criminals who don’t qualify to use it in the first place.