
Trends in the San Francisco (mostly dog?) poop crisis - leelin
https://www.renthop.com/studies/san-francisco-bay-area-ca/2019-san-francisco-poop-crisis
======
supernova87a
I echo the point that this is merely a symptom of SF's inability to be a
little bit more hardnosed and solve its problems.

As an example: I called 311/911 to report a trio of homeless guys, operating a
bike chop shop in broad daylight on a Saturday in downtown (and blocking the
sidewalk, and creating piles of junk).

The operator said that she would report this to the "neighborhood outreach /
management team" or something similar I've forgotten the name of. And she said
they would likely be dispatched to resolve it within 2-3 days.

I asked, incredulous, "isn't this a police matter that you should pursue right
now? How will they still be here in 3 days?" She gave some unsatisfactory
answer of course.

Any other rational city, and the police would be cuffing these guys and
hauling them in for questioning about clearly stolen bikes. But here in SF,
it's "too inequitable" to be targeting homeless people for actively and
visibly engaging in criminal behavior. This is to the point that car break-ins
are considered minor acceptable crime.

This city has lost its senses, in the name of thinking it's some post-modern
utopia that has to treat everyone equally and naively, and ignore the obvious
bullshit going on right in front of our noses.

~~~
shados
That's a trend all over the country. I read an article about Seattle almost
completely giving up on this type and other non violent crimes. The east
coast, like in Boston is getting there too. If no one is about to die, just
shut up and deal with it.

~~~
noodle
AFAIK one of the causes in Seattle (can't speak to SF) is a lack of police
resources - the population boom left them kind of far behind. Seattle has ~20
officers per 10k residents. To compare, Atlanta has ~30, NYC has ~40.

------
umeshunni
More broadly, the San Francisco livability crisis is out of control. Poop is
only a visible and easily disagreeable symptom of the broader problem.

The local government can patch symptoms of the problem but some of them
(housing, mental health, opioid epidemic) are state-level or national problems
that the local government have very little power or ability to solve. Some of
the law and order issues are issues the local govt can solve, but there isn't
an incentive to solve them.

~~~
paulddraper
> state-level or national problems

Sincere question: Why does San Francisco seem to be the only one with those
news stories (not NYC, LA, Chicago, Miami, etc.)?

~~~
umeshunni
While the problems are more global in nature, they have affected San Francisco
disproportionately worse than other cities.

Some cities have been better at patching these issues than San Francisco has -
e.g Austin, TX is forcibly removing homeless encampments from their streets.
Seattle have revised zoning and is building new housing to offset housing
shortages even though the local NIMBYs oppose muh gentrification.

San Francisco has the right combination of growth, politics and local
sentiment that prevents these problems from being solved.

~~~
Keverw
Yeah I seen that the governor was going after the mayor about Austin. Wonder
what the solution is though? Actually try to help homeless or just tell them
to move elsewhere? I know Key West, FL and Nashville, TN has a busing program
to send homeless people to Colorado.

I know even here there's a huge heroin problem. Seen recently that the county
sheriff and city police joined together kicking out a bunch of homeless in the
woods, and then everytime you go to the supermarket people with signs. Sad,
but I know there's been cases of people faking homeless to panhandle so don't
know who's real or not. It seems like we have so many resources, and one of
the richest nations yet we still have homelessness.

I know in some cities it's illegal to even sit on the sidewalk, what if
someone is older or disabled needing to take a break and no benches to sit?
Then some cities it's illegal to sleep in your car even if legally parked, but
I know there's been challences over that. Some area even put spikes to prevent
people from sitting down too. Just seems like instead of dealing with it, they
rather want them to move along.

~~~
hippich
Significant correction about Austin, TX - it is not city removing them, it is
Abbot (state's governor) disliked his home city attracting too many homeless
people, and decided to override policies Austin's residents voted for. I don't
think it is a good solution to base off.

------
danschumann
You could actually enforce the laws and put people in safe jails with better
living conditions than they have now, outside the city limits. It seems like
being more and more lenient is not a solution to a problem getting worse and
worse.

~~~
dividedbyzero
Put homeless people in jails? For being homeless?

~~~
raxxorrax
Reminds me of Belarus. You have to pay fines for being homeless.

Honestly, I hope some homeless people shit in the mailbox of people suggesting
such "solutions".

~~~
raincom
What if the homeless can't afford fines?

~~~
raxxorrax
It will be put on a tab that makes sure you will never find a way out of
homelessness again.

------
11235813213455
The problem is not so much their poop, it's the pets themselves. For example,
in USA, 25% of the meat production is meant for pets [1], it's huge, given
also that meat production is not environmental-friendly. The whole pets
products industry is really large, there are maybe close to 1 billion pets
worldwide. Other example, cats affect negatively ecosystems (birds, little
reptiles, some important insects, ..)

My proposition is simply to cut down pets population, how? I don't know, a law
if necessary, nowadays the environment comes before having a toy animal in
your home. It's an easy thing to do with a significant impact, there are
others, like cosmetic products, plastic wrappings, ..

[1]: [https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/503376/all-meat-pet-
food...](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/503376/all-meat-pet-food-has-big-
environmental-impact), [https://www.treehugger.com/pets/cats-dogs-meat-
environmental...](https://www.treehugger.com/pets/cats-dogs-meat-
environmental-impact-in-US.html)

~~~
triceratops
"The animal parts used for pet food may include damaged carcass parts, bones,
and cheek meat, and organs such as intestines, kidneys, liver, lungs, udders,
spleen, and stomach tissue"[1].

These are all byproducts of the meat industry for humans. Humans don't eat any
of these animal parts. Pets are doing us a favor by eating all these things
that would otherwise simply be thrown away, with a great deal of pollution
involved. Eating our leftovers is, in fact, the traditional role that dogs
have played in human societies.

Reduction in meat consumption has to come from humans, because we actually
have a choice. We can (and do) also control pet populations with spaying and
neutering programs.

1\. [http://www.madehow.com/Volume-2/Pet-
Food.html#ixzz662tVEXrH](http://www.madehow.com/Volume-2/Pet-
Food.html#ixzz662tVEXrH)

~~~
11235813213455
I know that argument, but the more there are markets dependent on meat
production (like pets food), the more meat production will be hard to reduce

It's like saying "I just give my throwaway to my dogs", this means you'll more
or less consciously get more food because you know you need enough throwaway

Or it's also somewhat like saying, "I bought this mango at the supermarket,
which came in plane, from another continent. But what am I doing wrong? if I
don't buy it, it'll be discarded/wasted". Similar reasoning, the idea is to
cut down the downstream demand so we're able to cut down the upstream one

> that would otherwise simply be thrown away, with a great deal of pollution
> involved.

That's not necessarily true, there may some efficient ways to
compost/bury/recycle organic material, I don't know how precisely for this
case. But compared to the amount of energy for making and transporting dog
food to each final consumer? The latter is certainly more polluting

> Reduction in meat consumption has to come from humans, because we actually
> have a choice

Yes, right, well the vast majority people have the choice to not have pets,
for those who need a companion, they can try with a plant, it's less talkative
but not less sensible

~~~
triceratops
Cool, so what are you going to do with all the hundreds of millions of pet
animals that already exist?

> Similar reasoning, the idea is to cut down the downstream demand so we're
> able to cut down the upstream one

That's an inaccurate, backwards analogy. The accurate analogy would be "my pet
eats only mango cores, so I'm going to buy the mango even though its from
another continent". Which is patently untrue. Pet food demand doesn't drive
human meat demand - human meat demand makes pet food cheap and plentiful.
Cutting human meat demand would drive up the price of pet food (because there
are fewer castoff materials available) and lead to people re-evaluating how
many pets they can/should have. Alternatively, it may also lead to investments
in healthy animal-free pet foods, similar to fake meat for humans.

Since you're so concerned about the environmental impact of pets, consider
also that for many people, their pets are surrogate children. Presumably if
they couldn't have pets they might have actual children, which is far more
destructive to the environment.

------
dmode
Mods - can we update the title to “San Francisco dog poop crisis” ? Note that
the category of tickets in 311 is “Human / Animal waste”. I personally went
through 100 random tickets on the sf data portal and found that 95% were
either dog poop or miss classified (eg abandoned car or trash collection).
People automatically read the headline and correlate to human waste.

~~~
hombre_fatal
I wouldn't mind half the police force being reassigned to fine the sort of
people who let their dog shit and run.

My buddy had a small garden patch on the sidewalk in front of his house. It
was the only patch of garden on the block, so it was basically chock full of
dog feces within a day after he cleaned it from people walking their dogs.
You'd get a whiff of it just walking to his house.

He eventually had the tiny patch of land paved over.

~~~
ericmcer
Yeh! I think it would really help law enforcement community relations if they
moved away from ticketing people for violating letter of the law rules (street
sweeping hours, etc.) and started ticketing people for stuff that lowers
quality of life in the city: taking up two parking spots by not pulling
forward all the way, not picking up dog poop, parking in bike lanes, etc.

~~~
JimboOmega
Didn't we just elect a new DA who has openly stated he will not prosecute any
quality of life crimes?

~~~
mc32
His childhood history of having parents who drove a getaway vehicle to a
robbery resulting in a dead police officer apparently has colored his outlook
toward policing.

Hope springs eternal.

------
Animats
SF needs the Portland Loo.[1][2] The homeless-resistant public toilet. Not
enough privacy for a drug deal. Water faucet on the outside, not the inside.
Prison-grade stainless.

[1] [https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-aug-29-la-
na-08-29...](https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-aug-29-la-
na-08-29-portland-loo-20120829-story.html) [2]
[https://portlandloo.com/](https://portlandloo.com/)

~~~
MaupitiBlue
> Not enough privacy for a drug deal.

That is SF. Drug deals are done in broad daylight.

~~~
colechristensen
It's true. I've seen them.

Meanwhile there was that video going around of BART police arresting a guy for
eating a sandwich on the platform.

------
Animats
OK, how about "Uber for toilets"? Clean a toilet, get paid. Cameras and
machine learning to check what a clean and dirty toilet look like. Sign up,
and you get access to cleaning supplies and can turn the hose on. Works like
retrieving dockless scooters.

~~~
manux
What's wrong with the city/state having properly paid employees doing the
cleaning? Why the need to create _more_ precarious typically underpaid jobs?

I really don't get it.

~~~
newfriend
Because then you get massively overpaid jobs with no oversight, which
taxpayers are forced to fund. [1]

SF already has massive taxes and too many overpaid workers, and the city is
still a mess. There is no accountability. Throwing more money at it is not
going to help.

> San Francisco’s budget totals an astounding $9.6 billion this year — more
> than the budgets of 13 states and scores of countries around the world [2]

> By far the biggest chunk goes to pay city employees. Almost half — $4.7
> billion — is spent on the salaries and benefits of 30,626 city employees.

[1]: [https://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/04/how-one-bay-area-janitor-
mad...](https://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/04/how-one-bay-area-janitor-
made-276000-last-year.html)

[2]: [https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Billions-of-
doll...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Billions-of-dollars-flow-
to-SF-s-army-of-city-9188428.php)

------
wuunderbar
I wonder how much this has to do with an increase in people knowing that there
exists a system to complain about poop, versus the actual increase of poop
itself.

~~~
leesalminen
The only place I’ve ever seen human feces on a public street is in SF and I’ve
been to every major US city.

~~~
inferiorhuman
_The only place I’ve ever seen human feces on a public street is in SF and
I’ve been to every major US city._

Are you not looking then? SF isn't even the only place in the Bay Area I've
seen shit on the sidewalk.

~~~
leesalminen
I don't think I'd consider any other city in the Bay Area a major US city.
Maybe it's just California then? I've literally never seen this on the east
coast, mid-west or south.

~~~
inferiorhuman
San Francisco is worse than any city I've been to but it's hardly the only one
(major or not) with shit on the sidewalks. On the East Coast I've run into
shit in Brooklyn, for instance.

------
catalogia
Something about this article pinwheeled Firefox on my mac for two minutes
before I gave up and force killed firefox. Particularly strange since I have
all javascript, including first party, blocked by default with uMatrix. I had
to read it with emacs.

Anyway, the fact that this is even a question people wonder about should be
proof enough there's a problem. I lived in Philadelphia for many years and
it's generally a filthy city. People who live there know it too. All kinds of
liter all over the place, rats running around in plain sight. Trash cans
getting deliberately turned over and emptied onto the sidewalk isn't uncommon.
Vomit and the piss of drunks are common in alleyways. There is no shortage of
abject poverty and homelessness. But shit on the streets? Not in Philly; not
in this century anyway. This is one respect in which Philly is definitely
cleaner.

This discrepancy is something that I've never seen satisfactorily explained.
I've heard all kinds of comments about poverty and access to public bathrooms
and all those other explanations. But I've never been able to figure out why
this impacts San Francisco so much more than a city like Philly. Poverty,
homelessness, mental illness, income inequality, and businesses with no public
restrooms are not uniquely SF problems.

 _Edit for clarification:_

North and West Philly are filthy. North of Spring Garden or west of 40th or
so. And Kensington is a festering wound. The alleys in downtown are filthy
too, though the sidewalks of the major streets are generally cleaner. Maybe
they've cleaned it up since I lived there; I moved away about 10 years ago. I
last visited about 2 years ago and it didn't really seem like anything had
changed.

~~~
blackearl
Is it the ability to be on the street year round? Maybe the more comfortable
you are living outside, the more likely to use it as a bathroom. Colder
climates force the homeless to use shelters and similar resources during
winter months.

~~~
catalogia
Maybe, but there are a lot of people living on the streets in Philly even
during the winter. During the coldest nights they send vans around to coax
people into shelters or at least give them blankets. I'm not sure that can
account for the difference though.

------
mambodog
San Francisco needs more public restrooms. I think any map of SF's poop should
also show how few city-provided restrooms there are, so I made one:
[https://sf-restrooms-and-poop.glitch.me/](https://sf-restrooms-and-
poop.glitch.me/)

Compare with Australia's National Public Toilet Map:
[https://toiletmap.gov.au/Find/20547](https://toiletmap.gov.au/Find/20547)

------
linusnext
We call it "culture". Public restrooms don't help, people do it despite those,
and often near them. We've had people come in during a change window late at
night, and go right outside our office door. The custodian said he passed the
person on their way out, and had to clean it up. Then there is that moment you
realized someone tracked some into your office after walking to get lunch.
It's very offsetting.

------
kragen
I prompted GPT-2 with the headline and date:

Is the San Francisco Sh _tuation Out of Control? Originally posted on November
18, 2019 9:30 am

It continued:

We may be the "parking hell" of San Francisco, but at least we're predictable
about it. Just like how we've been screaming for a protected bike lane all
across the city, and it still can't be found. Well, we're not going to have a
protected bike lane in 9 months because.. well.. UberHittingTaxis is totally
derailing it and killing the entire project . That alone has me so pissy and
pissed off

I tried GPT-2 again:

We will be celebrating both Thanksgiving and the 200th anniversary of
Thanksgiving by receiving, reviving and celebrating the san francisco
sh_tuation. Very few people know that the birth of frederic Felspike on the
last day of 1847, resulted in the birth of a San Franciscan most certainly
from all over. He was a true founding member of San Francisco history, at
least a half of the San Franciscans who were still

I tried GPT-2 a third time:

by Edmund Kemper Now you can: - Save and share news and news stories from
around the Bay Area - Mention SF Asks Now for special news updates when you're
posting comments - Choose from many popular templates to create one of your
own The San Francisco Sh*tuation ® began in early 2002 as a group of
passionate Bay Area residents, many of whom had the same frustration with
local politics, media, and society. Our mission is to provide a space

I'm not sure what these GPT-2 results say about the news media or the society
the humans have built. At least it didn't immediately infer that the article
was going to be about people pooping on the sidewalks.

(I, too, had serious responsivity problems with the article in Firefox.)

~~~
pmiller2
Funny it should mention Edmund Kemper:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Kemper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Kemper)

~~~
kragen
A passionate Bay Area resident, to be sure, but perhaps not one whose byline
has ever appeared on a news article. Within the body, though...

------
fludlight
That's a nice population density map.

------
varenc
Tracking the increase in number of SF311 "Human/Animal waste" reports over
time isn't as meaningful as it seems...because a larger number of poop reports
are duplicates!

You need to the Open311 API and not just the DataSF 311 case dump to see this
unfortunately. But SF311 closes a large number of tickets with "duplicate of
SR #<....>"

So without this data it's unclear if the poop is increasing, or if it's just
that SF311 usage is way up and duplicate reports are increasing.

------
RickJWagner
I went to a big tech conference in San Francisco a couple of years back.
Walking back to the hotel from Moscone Center, I found myself pacing evenly
with what looked to be a bag lady. All of a sudden she loudly yelled "Watch
out for that sh*t!"

I honestly thought she was having some sort of episode. But then I looked down
and saw I'd stepped in it. She tried to warn me.

------
dzhiurgis
Can human genome be sequenced from human poop?

With sequencing getting so cheap, this might be an cheap data source for Hooli
and the likes.

~~~
cwkoss
In a dystopian future, pooping at shopping malls and retail establishments
could be harvested by data brokers for advertising purposes.

~~~
undersuit
I don't like these cookies at all.

------
confidantlake
A huge problem is the lack of public toilets. When I first lived there, I got
locked out of my apartment and could not find anywhere to go to the bathroom.
I had to wait until my roommate got back. If I did not have a place to go back
to, what could have I done except poop on the street?

~~~
blueadept111
Wouldn't a restaurant or fast food outlet let you use their bathroom? I think
if you make it clear that your options are to take a dump either on their
toilet or right where you're standing, they would show you the toilet
immediately.

~~~
confidantlake
I went to a fast food outlet, the toilet was so full of waste that it was
overflowing onto the floor. Super disgusting. All of the restaurants did not
have public backrooms. I guess I could have begged them, and they probably
would have let me because I was not homeless. But that is not a sustainable
solution. Do we really want homeless people begging restaurants to use the
bathroom every time they need to poop?

------
TwoNineFive
I am in the middle of an interview process with a company in SF right now. I
like the company and the job but I'm not sure about SF. I had already been
thinking about the well-known poop problems before I saw this post.

This will be a factor in my decision to take the job or not.

~~~
mav3rick
If you live in a nice neighborhood it's not an issue.

------
linusnext
I've never seen so many people who feed their dogs corn.

------
taobility
SV should have some startup to create autonomous tool to clean up the poop on
the street, which could solve this practical issue

------
khazhou
Did anyone else smell poop while reading this?

(there's gotta be a word for that effect)

~~~
mzg
Well, now it's the Zhou effect. Congrats!

------
ilaksh
It seems very wrong to describe it in those terms. I mean, what's next, an
article in January about how DC has a "frozen bodies on the street" problem?

It's a homeless crisis.

~~~
sp332
More than that, it's a lack of public toilets crisis.
[https://sf.curbed.com/2016/12/5/13845276/bathrooms-san-
franc...](https://sf.curbed.com/2016/12/5/13845276/bathrooms-san-francisco-sf)
"One for every 0.4 square miles, or one for every 6,857 residents, not even
counting tourists, commuters..."

~~~
dividedbyzero
It's an amalgamation of several crises. Homelessness, extreme surge in costs
of living, poor healthcare (esp. for psychological problems), public toilets,
opiate use, ... I guess such things always are. It's pretty much never a
single cause.

Remembers me of mid-nineties Germany (where I've grown up) – in Munich (yes,
Oktoberfest), Kindergarten teachers did rounds in the morning to clean up the
fenced-in Kindergarten playground, remove the syringes the junkies left. In
one of the better neighborhoods, too. Whole squares right in the city where
hundreds of homeless did drugs with helpless police standing by. I remember
being chased away from a playground in a well-off part of Bremen by an
approaching mob of violent homeless junkies. Lots of refugees from the Balkan
war, often in an absolutely desolate psychological state. That, too, was an
amalgamation of lots of crises – reunification, economy doing poorly, a
society built by the rules of Cold War, falling apart, war in the Balkans,
huge reluctance to change the tiniest thing.

But Germany really turned things around. A lot of targeted action, lots of
reforms, lots of small changes to how the social security net functions, a big
invest in robust police services, somehow mostly without the Police violence
issues the US have. There are some corner cases where the social services
still fail to help, other than that, it's become relatively hard to stay
homeless for long. In Munich, you really have to know where to look to find
any homeless at all (Hofgarten at dusk; one particular river bridge.) Being
poor isn't fun, and it's comparatively harder to get out of poverty (though
the US seem to be catching up there.) It's easy and cost-neutral (i.E. part of
mandatory insurance or covered by social security) to get help with mental
health issues – no doubt that contributed. No opiate crisis to speak of (got
lucky there).

A lot of money has been (and is being) spent on it though. It'll be
interesting to see whether the US will do likewise, or find a way to make it
work on a smaller budget, or simply fail to get things to improve.

------
ill0gicity
There are simply too many puns are floating around in my brain-- and they're
all terrible. My wife has always said, "everyone likes a good poop joke", but
I think that may have been targeted at preschoolers and not adults.

~~~
foolproofplan
n=1 but i like a good poop joke

~~~
WhompingWindows
n=2, shit's funny

------
thereisnospork
I feel like if you can even ask that question then the answer is probably yes.
This would make for a rare exception to Betteridge's law though.

~~~
tome
Even though this is an exception to Betteridge's law, it seems that tome's law
still applies!

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9077549](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9077549)

------
frostyj
dilemma probably is, if you build restrooms, they will do drug in there.

~~~
forinti
Give them a better place to do drugs; a place where they get free needles and
can throw away the old ones properly (so they won't leave them lying about).

~~~
gotoeleven
Im just curious if there are any examples of this kind of attitude actually
working instead of just attracting more homeless people. So far it seems like
San Francisco's policy of not enforcing basic quality of life laws has not
made homeless people say "oh gee they sure are nice not to arrest me for
dealing drugs and smashing car windows. To thank them I will not poop in the
street."

~~~
leshow
Sure, there are plenty of safe injection cities all over Canada. They save
lives, not promote homelessness.

[https://www.ottawapublichealth.ca/en/public-health-
topics/ha...](https://www.ottawapublichealth.ca/en/public-health-topics/harm-
reduction-services-in-ottawa.aspx)

edit:

> "oh gee they sure are nice not to arrest me for dealing drugs and smashing
> car windows. To thank them I will not poop in the street."

This is terribly reductionist, and apathy is not at all the same as actually
providing help.

~~~
dzhiurgis
With all of that homeless business going, would that toilet would be
acceptable enough to use for a normal person? I certainly wouldn't go into one
where I can find someone tripping, shooting, dealing, assaulting or smelling
worse than the toilet itself.

~~~
leshow
I'm talking about a safe injection facility, not a toilet.

