Does the city government…shrug off the issue? Do they not get a barrage of complaints?
Shit happens.
Regards,
Shodan
I have to wonder about how much of the poop in the survey was human vs. canine. The doggie poop, to me anyway, is much less offensive than human poop. If I had to guess, I’d suspect most of the poop reported in New York or Chicago is doggie poop. Perhaps much of that in San Francisco is too, but I don’t see doggie poop being responsible for shutting down the escalators.
It’s interesting that according to that link, NYC has 77,000 homeless while SF only has 7000! I live in NYC and I really would have expected those numbers to be, if not switched, then at least more similar. That seems like such a tiny number for SF’s huge homeless problem!
I’d guess that the city workers picking up poop aren’t working over the weekend, so that there’s a stockpile at the beginning of the week.
New York has over eight and a half million residents. San Francisco has a hair under 900,000. You really expected the homeless populations to be similar?
Relevant: There is now an app in San Francisco that provides a poop map so a crew can come clean it up:
Jesus, who shits ON an escalator? That seems very much like going out of one’s way to mess stuff up as opposed to just taking a dump in a corner.
I didn’t really understand “sleeping out” until I visited NYC. In the warm weather, people in NYC sleep out because the weather is right for it. In the cold weather, they get arrested, move to Florida, freeze to death, or find some other solution.
It doesn’t work like that in my city, because we have irregular rain and temperature swings all year. There are a bunch of other factors, but nobody sleeps on park benches or front steps like they do in NYC in August.
Relatedly, Seattle to combat some of the homeless encampments placed porta-potties near some of the larger test camps. A couple of years back I was biking by one of the camps (10-20 tents) and was talking with the pump truck and was thanking him and the program. But he said that they had to end it the next week, because they had estimated that they would pump 1x per week (2 restrooms for 20-40 people). However, they had to pump at least 1x per day and that wasn’t keeping up! The homeless were using the bathroom happily, but due to having available services they were estimating that 200+ people were walking/traveling to use the two bathrooms. No grafiti, no drugs, no shenanigans, the users were maintaing them clean and policing to keep it nice and sanitary. Which to me and the pump guy really showed that you just need to provide the services and maintain them a little bit. Seattle was killing the program as it was just not sustainable and overflowing toilets would be an enormous health hazard (see cholera concerns above!)
Seattle has an enormous homeless problem too, but even nearby the large camps, one doesn’t find feces piles. It seems that they scatter it around enough and know how to compost it maybe. Or maybe we just have less concrete?
My wife and I were walking in San Francisco a few weeks ago and I saw this, on Market St. between 4th and 5th. I steered us away as we walked past. I hope my wife didn’t notice it. Thankfully the sidewalks on Market are wide.
Nasty.
I’ve lived in the surrounding suburbs all my adult life, and it’s definitely a problem. When deciding where to spend our entertainment & dining dollars, we have to weigh the attractions of SF vs the number of homeless people we’ll need to step around. It’s particularly bad trying to get from BART to the Opera House/Symphony Hall.
I think it’s precisely because SF is a liberal city that the problem has gotten so bad. A less humane administration would just round up the homeless and run them out of town. But because SF can’t come up with a perfect solution, very little gets done at all.
I’ve lived in and around SF for the last 40 years. It is definitely a problem. It boggles the mind how SF is such a jewel of a city, and a vacation destination, that The City’s leaders can let it get so bad.
I think a liberal and loving city can solve this problem, but some tough love may be needed.
I’m not sure in what fascist dystopia the city can “round people up”, but am inclined to believe Disheavel’s intimation that if there is a problem there are not enough public toilets. I wouldn’t expect to be allowed to walk into a random cafe to use the bathroom, but I don’t see why people would not use free sanisettes downtown in preference to shitting in an alley.
Now people are doing inside grocery stores in San Francisco:
I lived there 11 years–you don’t think a student going to Berkeley stark naked or people complaining about nudity ban except for the castro fair isn’t crazy?
That’s got to be a health code violation.
NYC is giving homeless people a bus ticket and 1 years rent to leave town. Some have ended up here in NC
How long does one have to be homeless to collect this bus ticket and rent? Asking for a friend.
Due to the expensive hotels and the shit on the streets, Oracle is moving OpenWorld from SF to Las Vegas. That will cost SF about $65 million.