https://hotair.com/archives/2018/10/10/dirtiest-street-san-francisco/
At 8 a.m. on a recent day, as mothers shepherded their children to school, we ran into Yolanda Warren, a receptionist who works around the corner from Hyde Street. The sidewalk in front of her office was stained with feces. The street smelled like a latrine.
“Some parts of the Tenderloin, you’re walking, and you smell it and you have to hold your breath,” Ms. Warren said…
“It’s like the land of the living dead,” said Adam Leising, a resident of Hyde Street…
Mr. Leising, who is the founder of the Lower Hyde Street Association, a nonprofit that holds cleanup activities on the street, feels that the city is not cracking down on the drug trade on the block because they don’t want it to spread elsewhere.
“It’s obvious that it’s a containment zone,” Mr. Leising said. “These behaviors are not allowed in other neighborhoods.”
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The streets are totally and completely out of control. I walk about three miles from home to work some days to work. Every time I do it, I risk stepping on needles (saw one today, and I see at least one most days), human feces and urine (which is on every block), trash (littered everywhere from leftover encampments), or bumping into drug dealers (especially near Civic Center), drifters, and passed out junkies.
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I want to make clear that this is not just an issue for the Tenderloin, which can always be dismissed as the “sketchy” part of town. I’ve lived in the Castro for 20 years and the homeless situation has been established in the last few years and continues to flourish. Take a walk through the residential streets in the morning and you will find people sleeping in doorways, behind bushes and hidden stairways, often leaving behind their refuse and scraps of clothing. There are now panhandlers every day stationed throughout the 2 block business center, and the drug-addled freely urinate and defecate around that area. Even when cleaned, the sidewalks are stained and repulsive throughout the city. I don’t know what the answer is, but what is currently being done is clearly not working, and the result will be a drop in tourist revenue, with businesses and long-time residents moving away. It’s very difficult for a tax-paying resident to maintain empathy and ward off cynicism.
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I moved away from the Bay Area because of this issue. The Tenderloin is the neighborhood where the problem is the worst. But even outside the Tenderloin, the problem is bad enough that it affects safety and quality of life. What the article failed to mention is how aggressive homeless people are to non-homeless people. Someone I know was punched in the face by a homeless person. My neighbor was pushed in the street. My friend had a wadded up ball of greasy, ketchup-y fast food wrapping thrown in her face. I had a homeless person start screaming and raising his fists as if to attack me — when a man behind me on the street yelled, “LEAVE HER ALONE!!” and came running to help. (Two other homeless people tried to do things to me too — three incidents in only two years.) You have to think about your safety constantly in the Bay Area. I finally realized I could move to a city where I didn’t have to constantly fear for my safety, so I moved back to NYC, where I had previously lived before for over a decade and never thought about my safety once the whole time I was there, and where I never had any instance of a homeless person trying to do anything to me.
At 8 a.m. on a recent day, as mothers shepherded their children to school, we ran into Yolanda Warren, a receptionist who works around the corner from Hyde Street. The sidewalk in front of her office was stained with feces. The street smelled like a latrine.
“Some parts of the Tenderloin, you’re walking, and you smell it and you have to hold your breath,” Ms. Warren said…
“It’s like the land of the living dead,” said Adam Leising, a resident of Hyde Street…
Mr. Leising, who is the founder of the Lower Hyde Street Association, a nonprofit that holds cleanup activities on the street, feels that the city is not cracking down on the drug trade on the block because they don’t want it to spread elsewhere.
“It’s obvious that it’s a containment zone,” Mr. Leising said. “These behaviors are not allowed in other neighborhoods.”
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The streets are totally and completely out of control. I walk about three miles from home to work some days to work. Every time I do it, I risk stepping on needles (saw one today, and I see at least one most days), human feces and urine (which is on every block), trash (littered everywhere from leftover encampments), or bumping into drug dealers (especially near Civic Center), drifters, and passed out junkies.
-------------------------------------------------------------
I want to make clear that this is not just an issue for the Tenderloin, which can always be dismissed as the “sketchy” part of town. I’ve lived in the Castro for 20 years and the homeless situation has been established in the last few years and continues to flourish. Take a walk through the residential streets in the morning and you will find people sleeping in doorways, behind bushes and hidden stairways, often leaving behind their refuse and scraps of clothing. There are now panhandlers every day stationed throughout the 2 block business center, and the drug-addled freely urinate and defecate around that area. Even when cleaned, the sidewalks are stained and repulsive throughout the city. I don’t know what the answer is, but what is currently being done is clearly not working, and the result will be a drop in tourist revenue, with businesses and long-time residents moving away. It’s very difficult for a tax-paying resident to maintain empathy and ward off cynicism.
---------------------------------------------------------------
I moved away from the Bay Area because of this issue. The Tenderloin is the neighborhood where the problem is the worst. But even outside the Tenderloin, the problem is bad enough that it affects safety and quality of life. What the article failed to mention is how aggressive homeless people are to non-homeless people. Someone I know was punched in the face by a homeless person. My neighbor was pushed in the street. My friend had a wadded up ball of greasy, ketchup-y fast food wrapping thrown in her face. I had a homeless person start screaming and raising his fists as if to attack me — when a man behind me on the street yelled, “LEAVE HER ALONE!!” and came running to help. (Two other homeless people tried to do things to me too — three incidents in only two years.) You have to think about your safety constantly in the Bay Area. I finally realized I could move to a city where I didn’t have to constantly fear for my safety, so I moved back to NYC, where I had previously lived before for over a decade and never thought about my safety once the whole time I was there, and where I never had any instance of a homeless person trying to do anything to me.
