San Francisco’s nastiest block lies just 15 minutes from Twitter’s and Uber’s headquarters, according to a Monday report from The New York Times, which found that the 300 block of Hyde Street has received more cleanliness complaints than any other in the past ten years.
Drug deals are the daily routine on Hyde Street’s 300 block, where the profusion of human waste is apparent to any visitor’s eyes and nose, reported The NYT. More than 2,200 “complaints about street and sidewalk cleanliness” were filed about that single city block over the last decade, according to The NYT.
The sidewalks in the area “have come to resemble a refugee camp,” according to The NYT.
San Francisco expects to spend $60 million on street cleaning in 2019 to combat the public defecation and urination that comes with its high number of people living on the streets. The city installs portable bathrooms for homeless people to use, but the streets are still “stained with feces,” according to The NYT.
The 300 block is part of San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, where renters can pay roughly $1,500 for a studio apartment compared to $4,500 in other parts of the city, reported The NYT.
In fact, Hyde Street 300 block is just a short stroll from the headquarters of cutting-edge technology companies Twitter and Uber, which are some of the companies that “have helped push the median price of a home in San Francisco well beyond $1 million,” according to The NYT.
Meanwhile, San Francisco’s Public Works Department has established what it calls its “proactive human waste” unit to try to clean up the refuse that piles up each day. Human urine has even caused the city to replace corroding lampposts, especially after one fell over and smashed a nearby car in 2015, reported The NYT.
Some residents think the city views the area surrounding the dirtiest block as a “containment zone” for illegal drug activity, even though the neighborhood police station has made 424 arrests for drug dealing in 2018, according to The NYT.
San Francisco’s drug problem also contributes to the harmful litter like heroin needles on its streets and sidewalks. The city’s Public Health Department “retrieved 164,264 needles in August alone,” reported The NYT.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed took office in July and has been trying to reverse the decline seen on the city’s streets. (RELATED: San Francisco’s Homeless Population Is Surging — And Getting More Violent)
“There is more feces on the sidewalks than I’ve ever seen growing up here,” Breed told KNTV in July. “That is a huge problem and we are not just talking about from dogs — we’re talking about from humans.”
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