
California’s Biggest Cities Confront a ‘Defecation Crisis’ - eplanit
https://www.wsj.com/articles/californias-biggest-cities-confront-a-defecation-crisis-11565994160?mod=rsswn
======
lettergram
I recall a homeless guy in SF laying in front of the Alameda ferry terminal.
He had pooped and was smearing it over the door, ground, and was rolling in
it.

The other passengers and myself were just watching. I remember watching
everyone’s faces and us deciding what to do. This was fairly normal for all of
us. The coast guard came off the incoming ferry and basically joined us. It
wasn’t their job, eventually we got some security and even they were like...
“ugh, I don’t know if it’s safe to move him”.

Eventually all of us just routed around the homeless man via the other doors
(usually for getting off the ferry). No one taking care of the problem, to my
knowledge.

Can’t really blame anyone for not wanting to move a man covered in feces. But
I agree this is a crisis and I honestly don’t know who they will get willing
to solve that problem.

~~~
tomjen3
In a different country, some sailor would be tasked with removing him, and
would just hose everything away with the firehose (it runs on whatever water
the ship sails in, so the only cost is the power to move the water through
it).

I am not sure it would be a better solution, but it seems to me that the
current status where you can't enforce basic societal rules, like don't roll
in shit in public, because the only social sanction, exclusion, can't be
applied is simply unsustainable and quite frankly we need to make it possible
to arrest people who act this way (and ensure they are arrested).

------
hristov
This is very much a problem but it is incorrectly stated as California's
problem. This America’s problem. It just so happens that because California is
relatively rich, tends to have some of the most tolerable year round weather
and the people are relatively compassionate a large percentage of the homeless
of all of America are moving to California.

How many times have you heard some politician or just an ordinary person from
the south or the midwest say something to the effect “we have a great
homelessness policy, we buy each homeless person a bus ticket to California
and send them on their way!” They usually say this with pride or with a laugh
instead of being embarrassed as they should be. In fact if i remember
correctly this was part of the plot of a south park episode (although i do not
exactly remember whether south park endorsed or mocked that policy).

So lets not treat this as some failure on California’s part. It is failure of
the entire USA. The reasons are the usual ones— lack of mental health
treatment for the poor, drug addiction, lack of social safety nets in general.
And of course there is one new very scary reason — out of control health care
costs that force people that were and should be fully functioning members of
society into suffering and homelessness.

~~~
chucksmash
> How many times have you heard some politician or just an ordinary person
> from the south or the midwest say something to the effect “we have a great
> homelessness policy, we buy each homeless person a bus ticket to California
> and send them on their way!” They usually say this with pride or with a
> laugh instead of being embarrassed as they should be. In fact if i remember
> correctly this was part of the plot of a south park episode (although i do
> not exactly remember whether south park endorsed or mocked that policy).

Zero times? This seems like a lazy characterization and citing South Park
doesn't really help your case. According to this Guardian article on homeless
busing in the US[1], these sorts of programs tend to originate in the Western
states:

> A count earlier this year found half a million homeless people on one night
> in America. The problem is most severe in the west, where rates of
> homelessness are skyrocketing in a number of major cities, and where states
> like California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington have some of the highest
> rates of per capita homelessness.

> _These are also the states where homeless relocation programs are
> concentrated_. Using public record laws, the Guardian obtained data from 16
> cities and counties that give homeless people free bus tickets to live
> elsewhere.

Key West and Ft Lauderdale are discussed in the article; Atlanta is mentioned
as having been criticized for this in the run-up to the 1996 Olympics. That
said, jumping immediately to "we all know how those darn Southerners and
Midwesterners are" doesn't seem to jive with the facts.

[1]: [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-
interactive/2017/dec/...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-
interactive/2017/dec/20/bussed-out-america-moves-homeless-people-country-
study)

~~~
hristov
Here is an example of nevada giving homeless people with mental problems bus
tickets to california instead of treating them.

[https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/10/nevada-
settles-...](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/10/nevada-settles-
busing-homeless-lawsuit-san-francisco/)

This is article about bloomberg himself defending his program to send homeless
to california: [https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/mayor-
defends-...](https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/mayor-defends-one-
way-tickets-for-
homeless/?mtrref=www.google.com&gwh=A3D05907E1A9A40F2CEECA3736EE0948&gwt=pay&assetType=REGIWALL)

The quote you have from the guardian is about cities that attract homeless
trying to reverse the process by sending the homeless (willingly) back where
they come from. These programs attempt to be more responsible because they
will only give a free ticket if they can make sure that the homeless person
will not be homeless at the end of their destination. This does not always
work out as intended as the guardian article explains but at least
conceptually it is the right idea.

------
scurvy
Let's also not forget the animal element of street poop here. I live in
Russian Hill, a not rough part of SF, and I daily see people neglecting to
clean up after their dogs. These people belong to no particular group: young,
old, rich, poor, students, tourists, your neighbors.

There's something about this city that attracts people who just don't give a
damn. It's unsustainable for those of us who do.

Also, homeless people tend to poop in between parked cars on the street or in
doorways. If you see a fresh turd in the middle of the sidewalk, I'd say
better than 75% chance it came from Fido, not Frank.

EDIT, I might live in Russian Hill but I walk through the Tenderloin every
work day for my commute. I see it all.

------
henryl
“Seattle Is Dying” is a great investigative report about the problems and
potential solutions to homelessness. Also applicable to SF.

[https://youtu.be/bpAi70WWBlw](https://youtu.be/bpAi70WWBlw)

~~~
cbHXBY1D
I've seen this video and it's a Sinclair hit piece. Not worth the time of
anyone who wants to engage in an informed discussion.

It's 2019 and this propaganda piece (yes, it's propaganda) is arguing mass
incarceration is the solution.

------
throebd
It is a ban of plastic bags from supermarkets. People have some decency, but
with ban there is no way to dispose excrements.

~~~
ribeyes
Also, banning plastic bags and straws has no positive impact on the
environment.

[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/04/09/711181385/are-...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/04/09/711181385/are-
plastic-bag-bans-garbage)

~~~
greglindahl
"That said, these bans do reduce nonbiodegradable litter."

------
baby
Serious question. Where are people supposed to go to the restroom when the is
no public restroom around?

~~~
samsonradu
This is an issue in some cities in western Europe also, there are no free
restrooms available. No wonder everything around train/subway stations smells
like piss.

------
CydeWeys
"But there was no “defecation crisis”—a term usually associated with rural
India—in the 1930s, even with unemployment at 25%, vagabonds roaming the
country, and shantytowns and “Hoovervilles” springing up everywhere."

[citation needed]

Bodily waste has been a huge problem for shantytowns across all of recorded
history. I doubt that Hoovervilles had some unique solution to the problem
that has not been replicated since.

~~~
nradov
Hooverville residents were mostly not mentally ill or drug addicts. They
probably dug pit latrines.

------
rasz
When I watched Jennifer Garners Peppermint (2018) I naturally assumed typical
Hollywood hyperbole. But then I saw this:

Skid Row, Downtown Los Angeles
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbTSDuQET94](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbTSDuQET94)

------
hello_tyler
You could easily solve this problem by converting a small portion of major
parks into homelessness crisis centers. Somewhere for people to sleep safely,
with facilities, and resources for reintegration. Everyone blames the homeless
though, they will rarely vote to actually help them but seem content to
assuage their guilt by dropping a dollar into the can or praying for them. As
if that helps.

------
ajross
> _The triple scourges of drug abuse, mental illness and family breakdown have
> produced anomie and derangements far deeper than those seen in the 1930s_

Completely unsourced nonsense. As if there were no homeless families or mental
illness in the great depression. Even drug abuse isn't a modern thing, though
the chemicals have changed.

I mean it doesn't even pass the basic (heh) smell test of "would you rather
walk the streets of San Francisco in 1931 or 2019? I mean, come on.

~~~
jquery
It's the classic apocalyptic mindset, of which we seem to have plenty of in
2019: "things are worse than _ever_ " even though that's not borne out by the
evidence[1]

[1][https://singularityhub.com/2016/06/27/why-the-world-is-
bette...](https://singularityhub.com/2016/06/27/why-the-world-is-better-than-
you-think-in-10-powerful-charts/)

~~~
Tade0
Because the evidence is cherry-picked.

Humans may be doing better (for now), but it all came at a great cost to the
environment.

------
notus
i wonder if incentivizing the homeless to use bathrooms would work... free
meal, joint, w/e

~~~
pmoriarty
All you have to do is have plenty of public bathrooms nearby and keep them
clean.

Neither of those is the case in SF. There are almost no public bathrooms, and
those that exist tend to be disgusting.

------
weeksie
Build. More. Homeless. Shelters. California is so damned NIMBY'd up that they
refuse to build shelters and act surprised when homeless people sleep outside.
Then they throw their hands up in the air like "uh, it must be the weather"

It's stupid. In New York we have more homeless per capita and in absolute
numbers but we have _nothing_ like the street issues that west coast cities
have. It's because we actually house the damned homeless. And for fuck's sake,
it's not the weather. Our parks aren't by any means pristine but we don't
suddenly sprout tent cities every summer.

The whole CA homeless crisis is a self-inflicted wound. For reference, an
article in SF Gate: "67 percent of Bay Area homeless are unsheltered. In New
York, it's 5%"

[https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Bay-Area-homeless-
uns...](https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Bay-Area-homeless-
unsheltered-67-percent-NYC-13757259.php)

~~~
holycrapwhodat
> In New York we have more homeless per capita...

At least based on latest 2018 numbers I found for both cities, that's not
true.

NYC 78676 homeless with 8398748 residents.

SF 9784 homeless with 870877 residents.

106 residents per homeless individual in NYC.

Only 89 residents per homeless individual in SF.

> And for fuck's sake, it's not the weather. Our parks aren't by any means
> pristine but we don't suddenly sprout tent cities every summer.

I'm certainly not blaming it on the weather either. But this statement kind of
misses the point on how exceptional our weather is. Our tent cities get to
grow year round without interruption because it's mostly warm enough in the
winter and cool enough in the summer to live outside full time.

The rest of your points stand without caveat. We don't build enough housing at
all and we're incompetent at building shelters (at least ones that the
homeless are willing and able to use)

~~~
tpowell
I’m listening to a collection of Malcolm Gladwell essays and was somewhat
blown over by one about power-law distribution of homelessness[1]. Basically a
small, stubborn minority of the homeless population are financially worth
housing (by far). “That is what is so perplexing about power-law homeless
policy. From an economic perspective the approach makes perfect sense. But
from a moral perspective it doesn’t seem fair.” [1]
[http://dpbh.nv.gov/uploadedFiles/A%20MillionDollarMurray.pdf](http://dpbh.nv.gov/uploadedFiles/A%20MillionDollarMurray.pdf)

------
pjc50
> Without wishing to return to the Elizabethan Poor Laws, we ought to consider
> what was lost when the courts discouraged Americans from thinking of
> “homelessness” in light of the old laws against vagrancy.

Ah, so we're back to imprisoning the homeless (at huge expense) rather than
providing, say, public toilets or shelter facilities. Not only is the WSJ not
learning from history, they don't _want_ to learn from history.

That's because the article is written by this guy:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_R._Kesler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_R._Kesler)

~~~
ravenstine
There _are_ public toilets in some of these cities. San Francisco has had
self-cleaning public toilets for a long time, but probably has the worst feces
problem of any first world country. On Google maps, it appears there are at
least 20 public bathrooms in SF within a few miles radius. That's way more
than I see when searching for the same thing in Santa Monica, another homeless
mecca that doesn't have anywhere near the same problem with defecation. I'm
skeptical that these toilets have much of an effect. Don't get me wrong, I do
think there should be public toilets, and perhaps more of them. But if the
homeless were that easy to reason with, perhaps we wouldn't have so many on
the streets in the first place.

~~~
pmoriarty
There should be at least one clean and safe public toilet per block that has a
"defecation crisis".

Instead, SF has maybe one public toilet per 20 or 30 blocks in the most
concentrated downtown areas, if that. I personally know of only maybe 3 or 4
public toilets in all of SF.

Toilet use at private businesses is also sometimes an option, but often in
neighborhoods with large homeless populations those businesses either restrict
toilet use to customers or only let the staff use their toilets. Of course,
homeless people can rarely afford to keep spending money to purchase things
from these businesses multiple times per day just to use their toilets, not to
mention that virtually all these businesses close for the night in SF, making
it impossible to find a toilet in some areas at night.

~~~
cameldrv
Bingo. SF has had a big homeless population for some time unfortunately, but
the poop on the streets is fairly new. What changed?

1\. ADA private right of action spawned a class of professional plaintiffs
that sue businesses over (in many cases) minor technical ADA violations like
not having a coat hook at the right height in the bathroom. Many, many
businesses closed their bathrooms to the public because of this.

2\. Less intervention by police. In SF, the police won't arrest you for
shooting heroin in a bathroom or trashing it. If the business owner calls
about someone doing this, the police won't respond. The simple solution is to
close the bathroom to the public.

3\. Street defication effectively legalized. Similar to #2, the police won't
arrest you if you poop on the street. This is different than most cities, and
different than what was historically true in SF.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" 1\. ADA private right of action spawned a class of professional plaintiffs
that sue businesses over (in many cases) minor technical ADA violations like
not having a coat hook at the right height in the bathroom. Many, many
businesses closed their bathrooms to the public because of this."_

I'd like to see the stats on the number of frivolous ADA lawsuits that caused
businesses to close their bathrooms.

In my personal experience, few businesses have no bathrooms whatsoever and the
businesses that make their bathrooms off-limits to the public or require you
be a customer to use the bathroom tend to be in areas with high homeless
populations. In areas where there are few homeless the businesses almost never
have a problem with a non-customer using their bathroom.

This tells me that these businesses primarily have a problem with homeless
people using their bathrooms, not any kind of fear over being sued over ADA
violations.

 _" 3\. Street defication effectively legalized. Similar to #2, the police
won't arrest you if you poop on the street. This is different than most
cities, and different than what was historically true in SF."_

Do we really want to fill our already overcrowded, mortally dangerous prisons
with more homeless people? Why not just build more bathrooms, shelters, and
affordable housing?

~~~
cameldrv
The ADA thing is relatively new. If you go anywhere in California, not just
areas with a large homeless population, you'll find most businesses do not
have a public restroom. This is different than every other state I've been to.
This is because California has the Unruh Civil Rights Act, which makes each
ADA violation subject to $4000 statutory damages, regardless of the actual
damages. Thousands of these cases are filed every year in California.
California businesses don't want to be exposed to this liability, so most of
them have closed their public restrooms.

This lack of bathrooms creates a sort of death spiral. In high homeless areas,
the few remaining ones have to serve more homeless people. Dealing with a
parade of homeless people using public bathrooms as a shower or shooting up
causes the remaining businesses to close their bathrooms. It becomes more
difficult for homeless people to use the bathroom, so rather than go to the
trouble of finding one, many use the street.

On the enforcement side, I'm not really trying to be proscriptive, just
descriptive. Jail is not a nice place. The threat of being arrested though is
a deterrent to crime. If there is no deterrent to pooping on the street, and
the alternative is difficult, people are going to poop on the street.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" If there is no deterrent to pooping on the street, and the alternative is
difficult, people are going to poop on the street."_

So what is the alternative when there are no public bathrooms around?

To me it doesn't sound like there is one. So why arrest people when they have
no choice?

~~~
cameldrv
As I said, I was being descriptive, not proscriptive. Obviously in a civilized
society, everyone has access to a bathroom. Also obviously in a civilized
society, people use the facilities provided and clean up after themselves.

Those that are incapable or unwilling to do this either go into drug
treatment, get mental healthcare, or if they are unwilling to do either of
these and insist on being a public nuisance, they go to jail.

SF is failing to accomplish any of these things despite a gigantic budget.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" As I said, I was being descriptive, not proscriptive. Obviously in a
civilized society, everyone has access to a bathroom."_

I don't know which civilized society you were describing, but it's not San
Francisco.

I would agree that that would be ideal, though.

 _" Also obviously in a civilized society, people use the facilities provided
and clean up after themselves. Those that are incapable or unwilling to do
this either go into drug treatment, get mental healthcare, or if they are
unwilling to do either of these and insist on being a public nuisance, they go
to jail."_

Except society's problems are not solved by sending people to jail. Quite
often they just get worse.

First, the punishment of sending someone who shits on a sidewalk to a jail
where they are likely to be raped, beaten, or killed is far out of proportion
to the crime they've committed. Few would agree that rape or death was an
appropriate punishment for shitting on a sidewalk, yet that's precisely what
many people send to US jails face. Hopefully you'd agree that in the very
civilized society you speak of, spending time in jail for shitting on a
sidewalk would have little probability of bodily harm, rape, or death to the
perpetrator. But we don't live in that society.

Second, many people who are sent to jail get out worse than they came in. They
are more likely to commit crimes, and are often denied job opportunities or
places to live because they've been convicted of crimes. Now, that might not
matter as much for homeless people, except that if they're ever to have a hope
of being integrated back in to society they shouldn't have the extra stigma of
having been incarcerated (especially not for something they couldn't help,
like simply going to the bathroom when there were no bathrooms around).

Third, it costs a great deal of money to keep someone in jail, the money would
be better spent on bathrooms, housing, and mental health care.

 _" SF is failing to accomplish any of these things despite a gigantic
budget."_

If there really is plenty of money, it's clearly being misspent. At least we
can agree on that, though I have a feeling that if we looked at the details
there'd be plenty to disagree about over which money is being misspent, how to
spend it, which programs to cut, and which to fund.

~~~
cameldrv
My intent is not coming through correctly here. What I'm saying is that to the
extent that we have a bunch of people that don't have anywhere to use the
bathroom, SF is not civilized. Now it's also not true that there is literally
nowhere to use the bathroom, but various policies have made it more difficult
to find a place and many homeless people who may also be high, drunk, or
crazy, don't make the effort.

As for jail, jail is a nasty place. It is certainly a destructive form of
punishment. We don't have many other forms of punishment though in our legal
system. In SF, it has been decided that because jail is a bad punishment, that
not punishing at all is superior. This gets you rampant car break-ins,
shoplifting, and people being assaulted on the street. The purpose of jail is
not to put people in jail, it's to convince people to not commit crimes
because they fear it. For drug addicts, a stint in jail often is what forces
them to kick the habit. Unfortunately the SF city jail is full of drugs.

I'd be all for alternate methods of punishment that are less destructive. Make
the street pooper clean up the street for a couple of days, say.

Budget-wise, SF spends almost $300 million a year on the homeless. I can't
tell you where it all goes, but that is a lot of money to spend for the result
SF is getting.

------
buboard
What percentage of HN users live in the Bay area?

~~~
erikpukinskis
Half.

------
madengr
Reminds me of the Southpark where Cartman is traversing San Francisco in a
moon suite.

------
sbhn
The defecation crisis is see is the eagerness of law fearing citizens to put a
substance that decomposes back into nature in about a week, into a plastic bag
that will still have its contents nicely stored, and brewing, ready to be
freed, for years to come.

~~~
gshdg
Riiight... have you ever read about what’s happened in places with high
concentrations of humans that tried to return their bodily wastes to nature?
See also London’s Great Stink.

------
officemonkey
Could it be dogs or could it be people?

What economic factors could lead people to stop picking up dog poop? Have poop
bags gone so far up in price that it's impossible for the average person to
purchase poop bags?

~~~
Hydraulix989
It's people.

~~~
scurvy
It's more than half dogs. People in SF just don't care. Also, it wasn't such a
good idea to give shelter animals to the permanent homeless. Now not only can
they not get into a shelter, but now something else is dropping turds on the
street and not being picked up.

------
akiselev
_> Under that understanding, no one had a right to camp out indefinitely on
public property, much less to defecate on it. Public property belonged to the
public—to everyone—and couldn’t be privatized for the benefit of one or more
vagrants, however poor or sick. Though that principle would need to be applied
to modern circumstances, it is the indispensable starting point for thinking
about the shocking problems of the Golden State._

Anyone else find this to be a rather entirely perverse way of thinking about
public spaces? Public space is meant to be used by the public and a homeless
person has just as much right to use it as anyone else, for as long as they
want to. I might be _annoyed_ that they have taken over my favorite park bench
but thats part and parcel for living in a society and I don't have a right
(morally, if not legally) to use ordinances to stop them

Obviously, it's a whole different issue if we're talking about public health
but the solution is to build more public bathrooms and shelters, not
criminalize existence.

And to nitpick: considering how much of the west coast is wilderness owned by
the Federal government and managed by BLM, you sure as hell do have a right to
defecate on public property. It's literally in our nature.

~~~
kipqi
Using != abusing. Camping in a public space means taking part of it for
yourself, permanently. In other words, you're taking away the right of the
rest of citizens of using that part of public space.

Defecating is a public health issue, too.

~~~
ravenstine
Exactly. People defecate in the woods all the time, but they have the decency
to at least dig a hole and cover it. Just because it's natural to take a shit
doesn't mean we should be stepping in it.

~~~
CydeWeys
Even shitting in the woods isn't great, it's just that most people won't use
the better but grosser alternative (shitting in a sealable bag).

In parks where restrooms are provided, like the Grand Canyon, shitting outside
of restrooms isn't allowed. Anywhere the foot traffic gets high enough, the
park service will put in restrooms and require people to use them to defecate,
because the alternative is pretty bad. Even in the wilderness.

