San Francisco's public defecation problem really stinks

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Too bad lawmakers and communities don’t care about the homeless so…


Also, maybe some businesses might consider that this sign is not a solution, but rather, part of the problem.


I invite San Francisco’s mayor to Philadelphia for a ride on the Orange Line.


It is painfully hard to find a restroom without buying a cup of coffee or tea in SF. Medical assistance, mental health care, food, and housing are no easier. It sucks.


San Francisco’s new mayor, London Breed,

That isn’t a real name - its like a punk band name…


BlockquoteDr Lee Riley, an infectious diseases expert at the University of California in Berkeley, told KNTV that parts of San Francisco may be dirtier than slums in some developing countries. “The contamination is … much greater than communities in Brazil or Kenya or India,” Riley said.

It sounds like SF stands to learn something from those third world cities…


Seattle is that way too. I hate going downtown anymore.


I just came back from a week in San Diego, and I have to say - at least it rains in San Francisco. That stuff never gets washed away in SD.


Easy low cost solutions: incentives for businesses to open restrooms to everyone, install public restrooms, distribute methods for cleaning up after yourself.

Likely solution that we’ll see: homeless crackdown and people sent to prison so we can pay $100k a year to a private prison.


I lived in Vegas, things stay dirty there even when it rains because the second it touches ground it just evaporates into a stinky mist.


In DC the stink is coming from the White House.

Is Starbucks not handling the overflow?

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People gotta poop, the mayor might as well just ask people to “hold it in” for all the good it’ll do. Either build public restrooms or stop complaining and live with the stink, there’s no magical third alternative.


Sounds like a portapotty

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Yeah, non-profits, make sure you curb your hobos. A 12 year old google exec is looking to buy my 1/4 block Edwardian compound and I don’t need your “clients” leaving their curb appeal laying around.


I visited SF a lot during the 1990s for business. Even back then the problem with the poop and with aggressive hobos and crustpunks (as opposed to other homeless) in the Tenderloin and the Haight and SoMa was shockingly bad (this from someone who lived in NYC at the time). The city seems chronically incapable of solving this issue, and the impression I get is that both the municipal government and local businesses have effectively given up and just decided to live with the public display of squalor and inequality.


As I recall the city tried set up pissoirs in a gentrifying neighbourhood a number of years ago, perhaps free ones. The local hobos apparently didn’t use them and continued to take dumps on the sidewalk and in the playground. The behaviour was interpreted (probably correctly) as a gesture of contempt and protest directed at the local homeowners.

My observation as well. People living in the city are either very affluent, very poor or homeless, or house-poor old people or their heirs. San Francisco regularly makes the top 10 of most economically unequal American cities for a reason.

In the end I think the only real solution to getting homeless people in SF the help they need is a designated “Hamsterdam” area with social service support (including supervised injection sites). I don’t know possible that is in SF, though, given the scarcity of real estate, the famous NIMBYism, and the lack of political will.


There’s actually a pissoir near Dolores Park. Huge issue getting it in, but AFAIK it’s pretty successful. But as bad as piss is, the poop is far worse and it - and needles - are everywhere now.


Yeah, but think how much better it will be once all those heaps of plastic straws are gone.


Yeah that statement by the mayor is dripping with contempt for the homeless. Great way to fix the problem.


Not any more thanks to the new Starbucks policy. Out of order you say? Travel half a block to the next Starbucks. So long JC Decaux.