I know which I would choose, if I was told to pick one or the other to be removed from city streets.
As compared to putting accessible restrooms and disposal bins around the city and cleaning them weekly.
I think the city is done for. It will hit a growth ceiling on population and taxes, but homelessness will keep rising and property prices will be unaccessible.
As lower income people leave the city, it will devour everything.
Proposing and negotiating regulations and creating a pilot permitting regime costs money and, more expensively, attention. It is remarkable that, given the multitude of political failures currently going on in San Francisco, that this has been prioritized.
Unfortunately they're all busy making the fourth, fifth, sixth, electric scooter company
However SF is uniquely failing to prevent feces, needles, and condoms off the streets. To prevent public daylight IV drug abuse in the densest city center. To prevent tens of thousands of car breakins from happening on organized crime scales. All while spending ever more money putting little band aids on the problem, like increased budgets for feces removal.
These aren’t problems most cities faces on that scale, why is SF struggling so much comparatively?
/s
The bathrooms are expensive because they need technology that prevents ppl from hanging out in them, so they automatically lock down and power wash the inside after every use.
The sidewalk cleaning is also expensive, it costs the city millions per year to power wash the civic center sidewalks every morning. And that's just a fraction of the area.
These expensive things don't make the city better they just improve the quality of life for the homeless population, which can now boom until the quality is right back where it started. Would you then add even more bathrooms and street cleaners in response or realize that cleaning the mess isn't going to solve this problem?