Urban Crime and Disorder, Not Laziness, Drive Gen Z's Food Delivery Habits
Source: Skye Graham. "To Stop Gen Z From DoorDashing, Make The Cities Safer." August 10, 2026. thefederalist.com
The Gist
The author argues that young people use DoorDash and other delivery apps not because they're lazy, but because walking around unsafe city streets—filled with visible homelessness, drug use, and unpunished violent crime—feels dangerous, especially for women. She says cities and courts are failing to keep criminals off the streets, so people pay extra for delivery just to stay safe, and this cost is really a hidden tax caused by bad government policy.
Conclusion
Cities should be made safer (through stricter enforcement and judicial accountability) rather than blaming young people for using food delivery services, since delivery usage is a rational response to unsafe urban conditions rather than laziness.
Premises
- Many major American cities have visible homelessness, drug addiction, and threats of violence that make walking to stores or restaurants feel dangerous.
- Personal testimony from young people in D.C. and Alexandria indicates they use DoorDash specifically to avoid unsafe walking conditions, not out of laziness.
- The same individuals report not using delivery services in safer, smaller towns, suggesting the behavior is context-dependent on perceived safety rather than a general personality trait.
- Violent criminals with extensive prior records (e.g., Di-Quan Schafar Hunt, Decarlos Brown Jr.) have been allowed to remain free or avoid prosecution due to judicial and law enforcement failures, directly enabling further violence.
- Police presence does not always translate into intervention, as seen in cases where officers are present near visibly distressed or overdosing individuals but do not act.
- Because unsafe conditions are attributable to government policy failures (lenient judicial outcomes, inadequate enforcement), the extra cost of delivery functions as an involuntary 'safety tax' imposed on residents.
Assumptions
- The anecdotal experiences of a small number of interviewees (three individuals) are representative of a broader generational trend among Gen Z.
- Increased use of delivery apps is primarily caused by safety concerns rather than other factors like convenience, remote work culture, app marketing, or changing social norms.
- The specific criminal cases cited (Hunt, Brown) are representative of systemic judicial leniency rather than isolated failures.
- Making cities 'safer' primarily requires stricter enforcement and prosecution of criminals, rather than addressing root causes like mental illness, addiction treatment access, or housing.
- The presence of homeless or drug-affected individuals is inherently equivalent to a safety threat, even when not directly aggressive.