California: The Feces-Strewn Streets of San Francisco
The NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit surveyed downtown San Francisco and found litter on every block. Needles were strewn across 41 blocks and 96 blocks had piles of feces. An infectious disease scientist from the University of California compared the contamination in San Francisco to the slums of Brazil and Kenya.
From NBC Bay Area:
Until the problem is fixed, Mohammed Nuru, the Director of the Public Works Department, is charged with the towering task of cleaning the streets, over and over again. “Yes, we can clean, he said, “and then go back a few hours later, and it looks as if it was never cleaned. So is that how you want to spend your money?”
The 2016-2017 budget for San Francisco Public Works includes $60.1 million for “Street Environmental Services.” The budget has nearly doubled over the past five years. Originally, that money, was intended to clean streets, not sidewalks. According to city ordinances, sidewalks are the responsibility of property owners. However, due to the severity of the contamination in San Francisco, Public Works has inherited the problem of washing sidewalks. Nuru estimates that half of his street cleaning budget – about $30 million – goes towards cleaning up feces and needles from homeless encampments and sidewalks.
