Why is San Francisco covered in human feces?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/18/san-francisco-poop-problem-inequality-homelessness

by wjossey • 8 years ago

40 54 8 years ago

maym864• 8 years ago

San Francisco is like a distopian future from an 80s movie where those with money have the latest technology and skate around on electric scooters while the ignored underclass don't even have access to basic amenities and live in tents.

mirceaulinic• 8 years ago

Such a sad place, makes me feel bad whenever I have to go there. This is one of the main reasons I cut my travels to SF, I just can see that poverty, it's against my life principles.

aphextron• 8 years ago

Same. I moved to the bay 4 years ago and initially loved the city. Now I avoid it like the plague unless there is some absolutely essential need, then I get in and out as fast as possible. How anyone can live in that city and think it’s a nice place to be just blows my mind. People eating $100 brunch as an insane deranged drug addict is dying on their stoop.

thatjsguy• 8 years ago

I visited a few years ago. Never again. Coming out of our BART station was like stepping into some third-world nation (no offense to third-world nations): garbage everywhere, homeless people struggling to live, cops carefully watching for gang violence to break out. Meanwhile, a block away, someone was getting a $50 basic men’s haircut.

I once walked down Mission St and for blocks the whole thing was like some kind of homeless bazaar. Two women were fighting at one point, and I passed a gentleman in a doorway who I’m pretty sure was dead (he eventually moved, but he was skin and bones..)

Something is terribly, terribly wrong in the Bay Area, and I’m unfortunately not surprised that it continues to get worse. I refuse to ever go back.

yashevde• 8 years ago

friends are shocked when I tell them that the plight of beggars on the streets of Mumbai - in terms of mental and physical health, hygiene, and support systems - is far better than that of the homeless in S.F.

gumby5• 8 years ago

A good analogy, but drive out to the Central Valley and you'll see a feudal divide that makes SF seem positively egalitarian.

For example all the farm owners' houses are on hills or birds and the workers' housing is in the flood planes. Think I'm exaggerating? Just drive through the Altamont pass and head down 205 towards Tracy. Get off the highway and the divide becomes even more extreme.

sulam4• 8 years ago

For example all the farm owners' houses are on hills or birds

They have their houses on birds? That’s ... amazing!

jjtheblunt• 8 years ago

San Francisco makes me wonder if it is proof that the policies of the Democrats are an egregious and proven failure. I don't know the answer, but it seems self evident, sadly.

xpaulbettsx• 8 years ago

At the end of the day, even extremely effective policy can't fundamentally undo the economic realities of San Francisco - there is not enough housing to meet demand. You can only do so much for the homeless when you can't actually give them homes or jobs.

maym864• 8 years ago

The Democrats are a center-right wing party by European standards. Even in SF they put business interests first. You don't see this problem to this extent in major European cities.

unixhero• 8 years ago

Policies of democrats? Who's failure was brought in itself by local government and lobbying constituents.

throwaway34241• 8 years ago

I think at least the housing policy is an egregious failure (if a metric is that locals should be able to afford it), although other cities around the bay area should also get some credit. Even if you take being anti-development as reasonable, creating office space (jobs) without proportionate housing just seems like an inevitable disaster (unless you sell your property and/or are a landlord).

At least the democrats here aren't monolithic, there are frequent initiatives at the local or state level to increase the supply but they've (sometimes narrowly) lost.

Also some of California's unusual policies (like the special property tax system and very high income tax) are actually due to a political system where ballot initiatives have more influence and weren't top-down planned by the legislature to begin with.

Anyway, yeah it does seem self evident. I think San Francisco is somewhat extreme relative to the national level though.

PaulHoule• 8 years ago

The Mozilla foundation wants to "do good in the world" but it hires interns in San Francisco; anyone who wants to hire people in San Francisco should be able to do it, but they should also sponsor a bed at the homeless shelter as an offset.

olliej4• 8 years ago

From when I lived there it basically boils down to two opposing forces:

1. People believe that there should be support systems in place so that homeless people don’t just die all the time. 2. (Kind of General American thing): the government must never give money, healthcare, welfare sufficient to have a place to live, etc to anyone. Because handouts result in “dependence”, “welfare cheats”, etc

Anyway, part 1 means that if you are homeless, for whatever reason, you’re better off being homeless in a place like SF (esp given its relatively mild climate). But once you are homeless it’s incredibly hard to stop being homeless.

That’s ignoring other issues :

* the group that wants to ensure homes for the homeless intersects heavily with the group that fights against new housing/“gentrification” * many of the well off mostly want to force the homeless to go somewhere else, and don’t want any of “their” money being spent on providing homes

Etc, etc

bogomipz5• 8 years ago

"2. (Kind of General American thing): the government must never give money, healthcare, welfare sufficient to have a place to live, etc to anyone. Because handouts result in “dependence”, “welfare cheats”"

Yeah that's not at all a "general American thing" - that's a one particular political party thing.

searealist3• 8 years ago

We are talking about San Francisco here.

nickthemagicman• 8 years ago

Really difficult to find public restrooms in San Francisco as well. just as a visitor there there were multiple times I needed to use the restroom and it was incredibly difficult to find a business that would let me use the restroom.

Los Angeles has a lot of homeless people as well but there's tons of public restrooms and also businesses are a lot more generous with the restrooms.

nradov3• 8 years ago

When SF businesses allow public restroom access they tend to find heroin addicts passed out in there.

nradov3• 8 years ago

San Francisco used to be one of the great American cities. It's a shame how the incompetent and dysfunctional city government has allowed it to decay into a literal shithole.

I'm really mystified as to why tech entrepreneurs seem so enamored of SF. Does being close to good restaurants compensate for all the negatives?

trevyn• 8 years ago

Being close to that caliber and density of other tech people compensates.

NTDF9• 8 years ago

I've lived in SF downtown (right by Mission and 5th) for a few years and know some of this first hand. Some of the reasons I've heard directly are:

1. The only city with so many shelters for homeless. Other cities would just let people die of cold, heat or hunger or send them to SF.

2. Besides homeless shelters, there are absolutely zero places for homeless to go to. At least in third world countries, poverty is acknowledged and there are charitable organizations which help keep people fed and pooped (example Churches, temples, charitable individuals). But in America, churches only get tax breaks and serve the middle class. They don't really do as much social service as their tax breaks should enable them to do.

3. SF is crazy expensive. There is no f-ing way an average homeless person can find a job, make $500 this month and can actually find a home. Why don't they go to a cheaper city/town? Most cities/towns won't allow them to sleep on the street until they find a job. The flight/bus to cheap town is expensive. Cheap town usually looks down on them even more. No shelters in cheap town.

4. American background check system is brutal. One felony record and you are instantly eliminated from many jobs. So, many of these folks with a small time felony charge are can't just walk into a safeway to find a job.

5. There are too many ways to fail in a society with no safety net. A lot of SF homeless were once good citizens. They either got divorced or had a healthcare trauma or lost a job or a combo of things and their nice $50k savings account dropped down to zero in an instant. This is how quick poverty in America is.

6. Poor person penalties are too large. $600 penalty for car getting towed in SF? Are you f-ing kidding me? This will literally cause a poor family to be thrown on the streets.

There could be more reasons but these are ones I'm familiar with. Most homeless weren't homeless from childhood. They were forced into homelessness by some circumstance. At the end, we (including me) are all responsible for this. SF needs to acknowledge their strategies are not long term sustainable. Rest of America needs to stop exporting their homeless and needs to set up retraining and rehabilitation centers. We are all to blame.

sfbayhomeless• 8 years ago

Number 1 isn’t true [1]. Sf has far fewer homeless than LA and NYC and far fewer shelters. In fact sf has one of the lowest shelter rates among cities with high numbers of homeless (<50% compared to NYC which is over >75%)

[1]https://m.ranker.com/list/top-10-u-s-cities-with-a-high-home...

nradov3• 8 years ago

For all of its faults, the Catholic church does a huge amount of service for low income people.

https://catholiccharitiessf.org/our-programs/#1

madengr• 8 years ago

The rest of America isn’t exporting the homeless to SF.

Melchizedek• 8 years ago

There are too many ways to fail in a society with no safety net. A lot of SF homeless were once good citizens.

There's a youtube channel called "Invisible People" that interviews homeless people. https://www.youtube.com/user/invisiblepeopletv Many of them are sane and not addicts, who simply became poor for one reason or another.

These interviews are really heartbreaking. Especially how so many feel the need to emphasize that they are actually human beings, just like the rest of us.

rohitb91• 8 years ago

It's interesting that one of the brightest cities of the world can't be bothered to tackle and fix the problem of homelessness.

sulam4• 8 years ago

The city spends a lot on homelessness, but the issue is not so easily solved.

burfog• 8 years ago

You always end up with more of whatever you subsidize. The fact that the city spends a lot is thus why you have a lot.

Technically, the issue is easily solved. The only thing difficult is winning the political fight.

gumby5• 8 years ago

SF needs to deploy the Motocrotte. They used to drive down my street in Paris and were surprisingly effective. Perhaps we could upgrade to an automated one.

(actually what spurred me to write was the surprise that the Guardian, a UK newspaper/web site used the American spelling for faeces).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motocrotte

hw• 8 years ago

Speaking of Paris, it recently also rolled out sidewalk urinals [0]. Poop is a different matter though.

[0] https://www.npr.org/2018/08/14/638512558/nope-those-arent-ma...

gumby5• 8 years ago

BTW they have had a variety of public urinals for over a century.

bogomipz5• 8 years ago

Don't these still exist? When did they do away with them?

gumby5• 8 years ago

About 15 years ago. I don't remember why. I thought they were pretty effective, though it was an unpleasant job and, TBH, not that nice to be around.

samstave• 8 years ago

Wow - I have been thinking about these devices for years. I didnt know a city has done them.

Sidewalk-Roomba is what I was picturing in my head, and their design has been a walk-ing exercise I do when walking around the city... basically I just observe the city as I walk through it and think about what it would take to make these feasible.

I was picturing stations where they would go to dock and dump and reload. You would have them assigned to a particular block radius and would monitor the conditions of each given area.

Perform cleanup and what not.

I was picturing something with a bunch of sensors on it, a clean/dirty water tank, tankless water heaters and a preassure washer with a battery pack.

The sensors could track the amount of foot traffic they see pass by them at all times - and you would know the ebb and flow of foot traffic throughout the city as well as the available walking space, timings of lights and buildup of foot traffic for a given intersection for each hour... lots of data.

nerfhammer• 8 years ago

The plastic bag ban.

https://www.pacificresearch.org/is-states-plastic-bag-ban-ca...

DoreenMichele• 8 years ago

Some stats on California and homelessness:

https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/05/california-...

devoply• 8 years ago

Where are startups to disrupt homelessness. It would be rather easy to at the very least figure out a sub-population of the homeless that are capable of being rehabilitated into society and specifically design programs to help those get off the street.

tim333• 8 years ago

Kinda working on it. It's not easy though.

alexandercrohde• 8 years ago

I reject the notion that this problem is even remotely unsolvable. I'm not saying it's easy, I'm not saying it'd be profitable, but it's not that hard.

The reason it feels hard is that it gets politicized and PC'd super fast, which quickly penalizes any form of brainstorming.

Here's some off-the-top-of-my-head brainstorming, that promises nothing, but is infinitely closer to fixing the problem than all the other comments I've heard on this topic in my life put together:

1. Move homeless shelters out of the city proper. This will improve the disease/sanitation problem of homeless living in the subway, for example.

2. Collect accurate data. Do this by finger-printing at food banks and other measures. Accurate data on the role of drugs+schizophrenia is important.

3. Solicit experimental ideas. Could these homeless people be farm hands? Would they want to? Could you create a digital trash-can that pays rewards to homeless who actively clean?

Why is San Francisco covered in human feces?

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