A 10 Point Action Plan for Clean and Healthy Downtown San Francisco

Everyone deserves safe, clean, and healthy streets and sidewalks.

When you take a walk in your neighborhood, you shouldn’t have to grapple with sidewalks covered in feces, needles, or trash. When this is your daily reality, it is no small thing. It is a constant reminder of how little the place you live is valued, and by extension, how little you are valued. It impacts your quality of life, your connection to your neighbors, and it has serious impacts on health.

It’s a fundamental question of human dignity and respect. No one anywhere, let alone in a city as wealthy as San Francisco, should live in these conditions. And yet it is getting worse: Since 2015, the requests for street cleaning related to needles, feces, and trash have skyrocketed.

The Department of Public Health reported that it collected over 165,000 needles in a single month, and the Department of Public Works collects over 100,000 a year from street cleaning operations alone. These 311 calls and needle pick ups are overwhelmingly concentrated in the city’s downtown core, particularly in the Tenderloin and SOMA.

A recent study done by NBC news surveyed 153 blocks in the downtown core, and found that 96 of them had feces, and nearly all were littered with trash and needles. The number one reason why people contact 311 is to report feces, and these reports are overwhelmingly concentrated in our city’s downtown, mainly in SOMA and the Tenderloin.

In 2018, the number of reports of human waste spiked to an all-time high at 28,084. In the first quarter of 2019, the pace continued with 6,676 instances of human waste in the public way.

This is a serious and pressing issue concentrated in the core of the city, in roughly 200 blocks of downtown San Francisco encompassing the Tenderloin, Mid-Market, Civic Center, SOMA, and South Beach neighborhoods. It is also solvable.

Since taking office 3 months ago, I’ve had dozens of meetings with the Department of Public Works, Community Benefit Districts, district residents, and community organizations— specifically about the topic of how to ensure clean and healthy streets and sidewalks. We’ve looked at best practices nationally and internationally and compared them to what we’re doing locally.

For more context, I live on what the New York Times called the “Dirtiest Block in San Francisco.” I have spent a lot of time thinking about how to address this problem on my block and across the district, and as Supervisor, I intend to make sure this gets solved.

My focus for these solutions is on the downtown area, especially the Tenderloin, Civic Center, SOMA, and South Beach, but these solutions are widely applicable for other neighborhoods like those on the east side of the city that share similar challenges.

The City and County of San Francisco spends tens of millions on street cleaning, with millions more spent by Community Benefit Districts and non-profits. Streamlining how this money is spent, making sure that cleaning is being coordinated, and most importantly making sure that the strategies we are implementing are effective, efficient, and not actively contributing to the problem will help keep the city on budget. There is also the potential for some of these solutions to fund themselves and possibly generate positive cash flow through advertising.

We also need to solve homelessness and make sure that everyone has a safe and secure place to sleep every night. That is our city’s most urgent challenge, and will undoubtedly improve the health and cleanliness of our sidewalks and streets.I am aggressively pursuing building additional navigation centers and supportive housing, safe consumption sites, hiring more street outreach for people experiencing homelessness, and major reforms and expansion of mental health and addiction treatment beds.

Still, many of our challenges with trash are not related to homelessness — some of it has to do with areas of our city that are simply more heavily used during the day and night. Many people in Downtown live in smaller apartments, so they may be more likely to be outside regularly during the day than other parts of the city. And many of the areas are also heavily frequented by nighttime use, including entertainment and nightlife.

And for the challenges that are homelessness related, we have a responsibility to get people into housing and shelter, and also to create more dignified, safe, healthy environments on our streets, for both housed and unhoused people alike. We cannot ignore our responsibility to ensure safe and healthy streets and sidewalks, including public bathrooms, while we work diligently and tirelessly to end homelessness.

Blaming people in the Tenderloin or SOMA as though they are at fault for this situation is unacceptable. And accepting the status quo, as though there is nothing we can do to solve this with urgency, creativity, and focus, is also unacceptable. This plan is not seeking to blame the hard working employees that tirelessly clean our streets and sidewalks every day, but it is seeking to challenge a status quo that is unacceptable.

There are absolutely things that we can do, many of which are preventative common sense measures, to ensure safe, clean and healthy streets and sidewalks, and this IS the city’s responsibility.

#1: More Trash Cans, Better Trash Cans

This the most basic issue: People need places to throw away their trash.

The number of trash cans downtown is grossly inadequate for the level of need that we have. Even more, there isn’t a whole lot of rhyme or reason to where trash cans have been located. It is not data driven, and it is sometimes responsive to complaints in ways that make things worse. In parts of downtown, where we have the biggest issues with trash, there have actually been many trash cans taken off the street.

Some of our most high need areas in the Tenderloin, for example Ellis St. between Mason and Van Ness Ave., have very few trash cans, in some cases just 1 for every 2 long blocks. The reason for this is not because there isn’t a need, but rather because over time some of the trash cans may have been removed because of having been repeatedly broken open or overflowing. What this means is that we may have removed trash cans because there was too much trash in them, which means that the trash likely ends up on the ground instead.

Finally, the type of trash cans themselves are often part of the problem. The trash cans that we operate are often broken, or people pull trash out of them.

The Community Benefit Districts and DPW have started to add some “Big Belly” style cans — these cans cannot be raided, are solar powered, can self-compact so they hold more trash, and give an alert when they need to be emptied. They are far superior to our standard city owned green trash cans.

ACTION PLAN: Add 200 more trash cans Downtown, with at least half of those being “Big Belly” style cans.

When there is high need, there needs to be more cans. This is a cost-effective and preventative way to address the trash on our streets and sidewalks.

It is completely reasonable and necessary to have at least one trash can on every block in the Tenderloin and SOMA. Many of these blocks are large, have heavy sidewalk traffic on both sides throughout the day and night, and need more than one can on a block.

People do use trash cans, and we’ve seen that both the regular style ones and the Big Bellys. The regular trash cans often fill up to the point of overflow. More trash cans will help; it is ridiculous for us to have so few trash cans in an area with such high need.

There are models that we should explore with advertising on the cans, that could also allow for the cans to pay for themselves (similar to what we do with bathrooms). The push for more trash cans should also be accompanied by a public campaign encouraging people to use them.

#2: Expand Public Bathrooms, Expand to 24 Hours

We have a crisis on our streets: People need to use the bathroom, and don’t have a place to go. This is inhumane and has created a public health crisis on our street, leading to sidewalks covered with human waste.

When we’ve opened public bathrooms, either permanent or temporary mobile pit stops, they are heavily used. In some cases, these bathrooms are being used by hundreds of people each day, with thousands of uses in a month. They are used by residents, tourists, and both housed and unhoused people. Many of the people who use these bathrooms would otherwise have no other place to go. We’ve finally started to expand bathrooms and pit stops, though we still don’t have enough.

But the most urgent need for bathrooms occurs at the time when we have absolutely none available: Night time. We don’t have a single public bathroom open in San Francisco past 10pm, and we only have 5 across District 6 that are open to 8pm. Many have shortened hours on weekends. None are open anywhere between 10pm-7am.

The human waste that ends up on our streets and sidewalks occurs overwhelmingly at night time. It’s ridiculous that we wouldn’t have bathrooms available at the time when people most need access to them.

ACTION PLAN: Add 10 more public bathrooms downtown in SOMA and the Tenderloin, and extend hours, with at least five 24-hour bathrooms available downtown.

The main concern around 24-hour restrooms is “security” and “safety.” Yet that was the objection to public restrooms to during the day as well, and we’ve figured that out: Our public restrooms are now staffed with security attendants. It’s worked, and worked very well.

We can do the same thing at bathrooms that are open throughout the night. Other cities have done it, including Venice, which just opened a new 24 hour bathroom on the beach. The organizations that staff the daytime restrooms have told me that they are ready to staff nighttime restrooms as well. There’s a cost to putting security attendants at the bathroom over the night, but it is more effective, efficient, and ultimately more cost effective than having to send out crews to clean up all over the city from our failures to provide adequate facilities.

Bathroom facilities open at night can also be places where people can get connected to services or shelter. Their attendants can also provide additional “eyes on the street,” which can support overall safety and outreach goals. The city should should consider staffing the nighttime bathrooms with one safety attendant and one Community Ambassador, or social worker.

There’s already a new contract with the City and JC Decaux, who manage our stationary public restrooms, funded through advertising, that includes the potential of adding 15 more. So let’s keep it simple: Add those 15, with at least 10 being Downtown, and let’s make sure at lease 10 of our bathrooms that we have out there are 24 hour.

There’s nothing preventing us from doing this, and we should make it happen right away. It’s less humane, less proactive, and more expensive to clean poop off the street. Give people a place to go!

#3: “Micro-Neighborhoods” Cleaning

We have city funded cleaning crews that come through the Tenderloin and SOMA, but they generally only come through the neighborhood once, in the morning. For these high needs areas, where trash and needles can pile up throughout the day and evening, this is simply a not enough.

As a result, city leadership is concerned about increasing cleaning in some areas because of how quickly trash can appear on the street immediately after their teams have swept through once. Mohammed Nuru, the Director of the Public Works Department, said publicly: “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?” .

It is true that some parts of our city, for a variety of reasons, are so heavily used throughout the day or night that they do become dirty quickly throughout the day. This can also be a problem during the weekends when much of the regular cleaning often ceases or goes to reduced hours. Still, the once a day cleaning has made a difference, but there’s more that we need to do in areas where the need is so great.

ACTION PLAN: We can easily identify that corridors or “micro neighborhoods,” largely in the TL, SOMA and South Beach, that require ongoing trash pick up and cleaning throughout the day and evening. We should have 10 additional “micro-neighborhoods” in the Tenderloin, and another 10 in SOMA and South Beach, where one or two people focus on the area throughout the day.

These “micro-neighborhoods” should receive the ongoing 7 day a week support throughout the day, every day. They should be no more than a 6–8 block area and should include alleys. The individuals assigned to these micro neighborhoods can also help to build community, support a culture of clean and healthy streets, and report larger problems like illegal dumping.

The way that we change behavior is by creating clean blocks and communities — all the research shows that behavior changes based on environmental changes, and by keeping a block clean, we will get people to view their environment differently and treat it accordingly.

Some of this is already happening across District 6 with great results, particularly in the TL by the Tenderloin Community Benefit District, and in some cases by the City. There’s a two block area that has received heavy focus on O’Farrell St., where not only is it cleaner than ever, but by all indications the culture on the street has completely changed as well, and there is less trash being thrown onto the streets and sidewalks.

But it needs to be systemized so that we cover the most high needs areas, and it needs to be consistent throughout the day and week (7 days a week).

#4: Regular Deep, Pressure Washing on Our Sidewalks

This may be a surprise: San Francisco doesn’t pressure washing our sidewalks in a regular, ongoing, systematic way. The city pressure washes the streets with deep steam cleaning, but does not do it on the sidewalks, with the exception of some areas of UN Plaza, Civic Center and Market St. The City actually doesn’t take responsibility for sidewalks at all; under law, that is the business owner’s responsibility.

The result is not just dirty grungy sidewalks. It also leads to massive inefficiencies due to being reactionary rather than proactive, and slow responses. A piece of poop or serious clean up need requires a call in from a resident or from a street cleaner, and is rarely dealt with in a proactive way.

Many of the requests are not addressed within 24 hours, and about 70% are addressed within 48 hours. For responses related to human or dog feces, the response can be much longer.

A single pile of human waste, said Nuru, takes at least 30 minutes for one of his staffers to clean. “The steamer has to come. He has to park the steamer. He’s got to come out with his steamer, disinfect, steam clean, roll up and go.”

Despite the fact that we have clean teams out on the sidewalks picking up trash on a daily basis across the district, they don’t have the tools or capacity to address feces. The result is that clean teams have to walk right past feces, call it in to DPW, and see it still there when they come back the following day. We can do much better.

Even when trash is picked up, or a particular issue is addressed with pressure washing, the sidewalks themselves can still feel and look incredibly unclean for long periods of time, because they have not received deep cleaning.

ACTION PLAN: Ensure ongoing, regular deep pressure washing on sidewalks in high need areas throughout D6, and provide capacity to the “clean teams” to deal with poop on their own, rather than solely trash.

The Tenderloin and parts of SOMA need regular deep cleaning and pressure washing multiple times a week, similar to what Market St. receives. And when the “clean teams” come through, they should be trailed by their own pressure washing steam cleaner crews, so they don’t have to call in an additional pressure washer, which could take days, in order to deal with it.

This will help alleviate the inefficiencies and slow response times, and provide a proactive, preventative approach that will not just address poop, but keep our sidewalks generally cleaner and less filthy.

#5: Doggie Waste Bags and Receptacles!

One thing that I noticed while living, working and campaigning in our city’s downtown areas: There are a ton of dogs here!

Many of the SROs and rental units in the TL and SOMA allow dogs. There’s a very high number of dogs in units that have very little space.

To make matters worse, there is hardly any open space for dogs. There are few dog friendly parks in SOMA, and zero in Mid-Market, Civic Center, Tenderloin or Lower Polk.

So there are a ton of dogs out there, with no dog parks, and very few trash receptacles or public noticing relating to dog feces. So the results are to be expected: There’s a ton of dog poop on our streets and sidewalks at all times, which often get stepped on and spread around.

ACTION PLAN: We need doggie bag dispensaries and little receptacles for people to throw away dog poop. These baggies should be compostable. Add at least 50 across the downtown area, targeted to where we are picking up the most dog poop and where dog owners tend to congregate.

The Lower Polk Community Benefit District has already started to put these dog baggie dispensaries, with small attached receptacles. And by all indications, they’ve been a big success. The bags are compostable, non-plastic.

But there is no similar program supported by the city, or in other parts of the district. These little receptacles and baggies can’t be found anywhere outside of the small area of the Tenderloin covered by the Lower Polk Benefit District.

There are other things that we can do as well: we should work with stores to have them provide doggie bags. Signage should be put up around the neighborhood telling people to pick up after their dogs, similar to what we put in dog parks. And over the long term, we need more spaces for dogs in District 6, including a an actual dog park in the Tenderloin.

#6: Beautify the Streets and Sidewalks — More Art, More color.

The areas where we have major problems of street cleanliness are often areas where we also have very little investment in the vibrancy of the street and sidewalks. There’s not enough color, murals, or placemaking. Graffiti can stay in place for long periods of time, windows are broken, vacant storefronts and boarded up vacant buildings are far too common.

When people have a sense that an area can be trashed or don’t have a strong sense of place, it will affect their behavior, and makes things worse.

The Tenderloin and South of Market have a long, rich and vibrant culture and history, which should be fully on display on our streets. There are three cultural districts in these areas, and there has been little success so far in placemaking, to let people know that they are in these districts.

ACTION PLAN: Make it pretty! Brighten it up! Liven it up! Create a fund to invest specifically in downtown areas where cleanliness has been an ongoing issue.

We should have a focus on murals, trash can art, painted sidewalks and crosswalks, banners on the poles. We can start by focusing on our ten highest need alleys across downtown.

Unleashing the artists in our downtown neighborhoods will also help keep our streets and sidewalks clean.

There are parts of the neighborhood where we’ve already seen this working. The alley has been completely painted on Fern Alley in Lower Polk with art, colors, and quotes. And the result is that there is a LOT less trash and poop. When you make a place pretty and vibrant, it gets taken care of.

If people have a sense of the importance and value of the place where they are, they will treat it accordingly. It’ll also lead to an overall more positive experience on our streets and sidewalks, making people connected to each other and to our public spaces.

We should start with a massive campaign around place-making in areas that have significant challenges around healthy and clean streets and sidewalks. The beauty of our streets and sidewalks, deeply rooted in our culture and history, may be our greatest and most underutilized tool in combating blight and trash on our streets.

#7: Put Syringe Disposal Boxes Where They Are Needed

San Francisco has a major problem with drug use on our streets. There are approximately 22,000 intravenous drug users in San Francisco. It’s something that we need to have to address with much more robust treatment opportunities and safe injection sites.

It has also led to a public health crisis with regards to used needles scattered across our streets and sidewalks and parks, primarily in the Tenderloin and SOMA.

The city recently employed a strategy to help to address this issue, which is working. There are little red boxes that can hold up to 400 needles, and mailbox style disposal boxes that can hold thousands.

These syringe disposal boxes work: Some collected thousands of needles every month. People do use them. By many indications, when there is a needle disposal box in an area, people are noticing that there are less needles left on the ground.

As of 2018, there were 14 syringe disposal boxes in the downtown area, with most of those in the Tenderloin. This is not nearly enough. This means that you can still be 15 blocks away from the closest disposal box, even in areas with high concentration of drug use. There are none in most of SOMA, South Beach, or along the Embarcadero. Considering the fact that these sites are collecting hundreds, in some cases, thousands of needles a month, it is hard to understand why there are so few of these boxes where they are most needed.

ACTION PLAN: Add 30 needle disposal boxes to the Downtown area. This is triple what we have now.

The Department of Public Health told me that the lack of additional syringe disposal boxes throughout the city is a political decision, not one based on health or evidence. There is concern about “push back” and a lack of leaders championing their further expansion. That’s wrong, and doesn’t make any sense. This should be based on public safety and public health.

So let’s change that: We need to normalize these disposal boxes, and expand them across downtown. We should find ways to attach them to trash cans, and use data to identify where they are most needed.

#8: Keep Private Dumpsters and Cans Inside or Locked

If you walk around downtown San Francisco, not only do you see a lot of trash on the ground, but you see a lot of trash on the ground that clearly was recently in a trash can or dumpster!

In some cases, dumpsters are open and emptied. In other cases, trash has been pulled out of blue or green bins, or knocked over by people or weather. In San Francisco, private trash, either from residential or commercial, are handled by Recology, who only offer indoor service or locks at a fee.

Very often these bins are left outside to be picked up wide open in areas where they are knocked over or rummaged through daily. The results should not be surprising. Then when they are rummaged through or kicked over, there’s no accountability, no one is responsible for that, and in some cases the trash is left right there outside the private bins.

Even when the bins are locked, DPW and Recology say that the locks are easily picked or broken, or the bins are cut open. They seem to have very little faith in their own locks.

ACTION PLAN: Secure the bins by waiving indoor service fees in targeted areas, more aggressively signing people up for indoor service, stronger locks, and better monitoring and enforcement.

The most obvious thing we can do is to keep bins inside, not out on the street. This is an option that Recology provides, but not enough of the folks who need to be signing up for it, are.

Recology and DPW recently did a pilot on Ellis St. to get people to sign up for indoor service on a street that has had huge problems with private trash bins. They went door to door to encourage sign ups, and waived the indoor service fees. What they found was not surprising: Residences and businesses signed up, and there was a huge difference in the trash on the street.

Despite the success of this pilot, there is no plan right now to aggressively expand this approach throughout downtown. This is a mistake, we should moving forward to capitalize on what we learned through this pilot.

There are many instances in which bins can be kept indoors, but are not, in part because the cost of indoor service and/or a lack of outreach. There’s a simple solution: The City should work with Recology to require the waiver of fees for indoor service in parts of downtown, and require certain types of larger businesses and residential buildings for both garbage bins and dumpsters to sign up for indoor service.

In cases where indoor service is not possible, we should require stronger locks on bins when they are outside. It is frankly hard to believe that we can’t find locks that are strong enough not to be picked or easily broken into. This is unacceptable.

If there are “repeat offenders,” including places that repeatedly leave their bins or dumpsters in ways that lead to more problems, they should be required to get indoor service. This currently isn’t the case now — they only require locks, and there should be a more aggressive ramp up.

#9: Real, Consistent Independent Data and Accountability

Despite the fact that we spend tens of millions of dollars on street cleaning every year, there is no objective data that we can look at to measure success or track progress. Yes, that’s right, no objective and/or independent data that tells us whether or not our streets and sidewalks are getting cleaner.

Instead we rely on 311 data, which tells us a number of things, but not necessarily an objective measure of how things are moving. Or we look to media reports to do it on their own.

The last time the Controller did a broader independent analysis of our successes and progress on street and sidewalk maintenance was 2015–2016. This is perplexing and frustrating because this report is actually something that is required under the Charter as a result of a ballot initiative.

Since then, they pulled it back all together, and no objective, independent analysis has been done. While they are planning a new methodology to measure trash on our streets, it hasn’t been rolled out yet, and there is no plan or public timeline released to regularly share it with the public or with DPW to use to target street and sidewalk cleaning efforts. They also haven’t yet committed to include specific operational recommendations for improvements as part of their reports.

ACTION PLAN: The Controller should commit to fulfill his responsibility to produce this report, to share the data with DPW and the public on a more regular basis, and to include operational and governance related recommendations.

We can’t go another year, let alone 4 years, without any sort of independent analysis of the conditions on our streets. There’s been some talk about accountability for behavior on the streets, but the city should also hold itself accountable for our results and how we are spending our money.

These reports should include not just objective measures and established performance standards relating to trash, needles, feces etc — it should also compile information from 311, the Community Benefit Districts, and other available sources. It should also more demonstrate not just objective measurements on conditions, but the strategies being employed, including locations of bathrooms and trash cans.

The information that the Controller collects should be released to the public in real-time, which they may actually have the capacity to do, or otherwise on a quarterly basis.

Finally, these reports must include recommendations — in the past, recommendations have not been a part of the reporting. These recommendations should focus on operational and/or governance related improvements, as a way for our city to meet our performance standards and deploy our resources effectively for the optimal results.

#10: A More Responsive and Effective 311

311 is the app that most people use to report issues related to street and sidewalk cleanliness. You call 311 or use the app, report the issue and that’s usually the end of it. There are hundreds of thousands of 311 reports every year.

Departments that respond to the 311 concerns are under no obligation to actively report back to the concerned citizen who made the original report. So in many cases, you make the report, and that’s it.

Residents regularly complain that cases are often “closed” with no notes or indications as to what work was actually done. Many cases that show “closed,” don’t include notes as to what actually occurred.

In the Downtown area, with such extensive overlap with Community Benefit Districts, many calls may go to these Community Benefit Districts as well, each of which have their own numbers for calls for service. The result is sometimes conflicting services, and significant inefficiencies.

In most cases, only the City can close out 311 cases. So if a call goes in for human feces on the sidewalk to both the CBD and 311, and the CBD pressure washes the sidewalk, there is no way for the CBD to clear that case directly. As a result, the city may send someone out to deal with an issue that has already been dealt with, leading to inefficiencies and slower responses overall.

ACTION PLAN: We need higher standards around “case clearance,” including sharing notes and information with the person who reported it, and seek greater integration of the Community Benefit District responses with 311 responses.

We should have an expectation that there is some information provided in notes, and directly to the person who reported the case. This would increase people’s trust in the system and make it much more likely that people would use on 311 and rely on it. There are also a number of different apps that have popped up that many people use for similar functions as 311 or that layer onto 311 public data — we should be looking closely at how to replicate some of these functions to make 311 more effective and user friendly.

Community Benefit Districts have long been asking for better integration into 311. If they were able to respond directly to 311 calls, or at the least, be able to help clear cases, this could greatly enhance response time and efficiency. City resources could then be deployed where they are most needed, avoiding duplication of efforts.

What’s Next:

There are a number of strategies we are going to employ to get this done as soon as possible.

Introduce Legislation and Budget Items

I am preparing legislation to move forward a number of these items, which will be introduced in the coming weeks. As a first step, we are preparing legislation that will require 24 hour public bathroom access. I will also be submitting requests and amendments to the budget to fund pieces of the plan.

Budget and Legislative Analyst’s Report

I have requested a full public Budget and Legislative Analyst’s Report, which will cost out each of these items, and help us chart a path forward to get them all done.

Regular Meetings with Department of Public Works, Community Benefit Districts, Dept of Public Health

I have requested ongoing meetings with DPW to regularly review each of these pieces of the plan. Similarly we are working directly with the Community Benefit Districts to develop ways for them to implement it. Some of the items relate to Department of Public Health, 311, or other Departments and we are working with them directly to get this done.

Community Working Group & Public Engagement

I am organizing a public forum on the plan in the community, and will set up a working group to get ongoing support, partnership and feedback.

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