Posted on 07/02/2015 6:21:37 AM PDT by Kaslin
Downtown San Francisco feels like a large public toilet without enough janitors. More than once this year, I've seen men drop their pants in public places -- including at Fifth and Market -- to leave a smelly mess on the sidewalk. You can walk for blocks and never escape the stench of stale urine. At lunchtime, I see street people passed out on high-traffic sidewalks, and I am afraid to walk around them.
The homeless have been a problem in San Francisco for as far back as anyone remembers, but to me it seems this year is the worst. There's a sense among people who work downtown that City Hall doesn't care about cleaning up San Francisco's Summer of Muck.
If this year is worse, two culprits are the drought and the city's booming economy. The drought means "there's no rain washing down the streets," San Francisco Public Works spokeswoman Rachel Gordon told me. The city's housing and office building boom has filled in alleyways and once-neglected pockets where the homeless used to be able to hide.
Jim Lazarus of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce told me businesses have more complaints about the homeless. "We are a live-and-let-live town genetically," quoth Lazarus, "but we're also letting people live on the streets who shouldn't be living on the streets."
What can be done? Increase the number of uniformed officers on the street. The chamber supports Mayor Ed Lee's 18-month plan to add 300 police officers and bring SFPD to its authorized maximum of 1,971, as well as Supervisor Scott Wiener's proposal to hire an additional 200 cops. "Not that that means you want police out arresting homeless people," said Lazarus, but their presence alone should "encourage more civil behavior."
Lazarus also suggested more public toilets in places like city parking garages. BART is looking at reopening bathrooms in its underground stations -- and erecting canopies to prevent homeless people from using escalators as toilets. It says something about how dysfunctional Bay Area politics are that these common-sense solutions did not happen years ago.
Mayor Lee implemented a Pit Stop program that set up staffed public bathrooms in neighborhoods, starting with the Tenderloin. "It's not going to fix the stink in the city," said Gordon, but requests for sidewalk, alley and street steam cleanings are down near the four Pit Stops. First, I caution, the city has to send the message that it's not OK to eliminate in public.
S.F. homeless czar Bevan Dufty is big on the city's new Navigation Center on 16th Street. Some homeless adults are reluctant to go to a shelter because it means giving up their possessions or splitting with a partner or pet. With services and space to accommodate shopping carts and dogs, the center is designed to transition street people off the street for good.
I love the idea, but I want to see -- or not smell -- something for it. The city's 2014 homeless services budget was $167 million -- to serve 6,355 homeless people. The new homeless census will be out shortly. Dufty told me, "The number is going up, but not significantly up." So you've got about the same number of homeless people passed out, peeing and pooping in the crowded city.
San Francisco is such a beautiful city. Why do we let people poop all over it?
Man Caused Global Warming - makes it stink more.
Or Bush’s fault.
Both would be a good lib’s response.
To me San Francisco is like Nigeria. I’ve never been and have no desire to ever go there. For that matter all of California except for the Bridgeport region is off the list of places I want to visit.
Bridgeport is beautiful and mountainous. I enjoyed mountain warfare training there back in ‘87.
“and erecting canopies to prevent homeless people from using escalators as toilets.”
Oh wow, a sh** conveyor.
Behold, the third world renaissance.
Having lived in New York and SF, I’m convinced many of the mentally I’ll homeless would not use toilets even if such public toilets were widely available
Better make sure they’re transgender whatever ones, or they’ll be in court soon.
One thing the homeless can look forward to, when a republican is elected they will get more across the board attention from the media than they ever dreamed possible.
Since we all know how well throwing tax payer's money at a social problem works so well, the City Counsel of SF needs to give their homeless residents more money.
Rachel should know about this place, since she works for the SFDPW. It is the Emergency water pumping station at the foot of Van Ness Ave, which was built in 1909. The station has four diesel engine driven pumps built by the Byron Jackson Corporation. The station pumps sea water to a below ground reservoir located at a high point above the city. The pumps are ‘exercised’ one day a week (one pump each week).
The reservoir is connected to the cities fire hydrant system so in the event of another 1906 style quake, the city can still have water to fight fires.
Today, they could be used to flush the sidewalks of the debris from the human debris which ifects the once beautiful city.
The remaining salt may be an issue though, as well as damaging to the piping and hydrants.
I left my -——— in San Francisco.
.
.
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It's a craphole! And has been for the last twenty years, thanks to the liberal progressive politicians that cater to every damned whim of the wacked out leftist idiots and the burnt out birkenstock-wearing old hippies.
Ding ding ding we have a winner!
What? SF, the center of tolerance and caring? You mean SF doesn’t provide complete room and board for the homeless? You mean that room and board are not a right for everyone? How cold and cruel. Why SF must be run by those heartless mean-spirited Republicans!
bttt
Even with more police - so suppose a policeman sees a homeless man sprawled out on the sidewalk and asks him to move on, and the homeless man tells the policeman to drop dead. Then what?
Does the policeman arrest him? And suppose he resists arrest? As soon as there is any physical confrontation, the two are surrounded by a crowd with their smart-phone cameras out and the cop is putting his job in jeopardy, among accusations of “police brutality.”
The cop figures it’s wiser just to let the homeless man be and not to disturb him.
Wolves.
There’s your answer.
Reintroduce wolves to San Francisco.
Wolves always look to kill and eat the most vulnerable.
Nothing more vulnerable than some hobo with his pants down squatting to take a Democrat on the sidewalk.
And even if they did use the additional public toilets provided - just imagine the condition they'd leave them in!
Regards,
... and then get arrested for harassing protected "citizens."
Regards,
That's $26,299 for each homeless bum, and the San Fran Idiots can't clean-up the streets. Liberalism really is a mental desease.
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