Clean Streets: People taking San Francisco’s trash into their own hands
missionlocal.org
missionlocal.org
This is pretty well-known in a lot of places. Around major cities, the police will send the persons into the city. Then the suburban people say there must be something wrong with the city, with all these problems. Personally, I'd rather be the community that takes care of the people that need it.
> doing drugs and homeless people
I don't equate the two. Even doing drugs is just a vice and now frequently legalized, and I'm sure the locals do plenty (without needing to know the locality). But to the extent that the drugs are illegal, being homeless certainly is not. There is nothing wrong with it or illegal about it. Some homeless people do bad things, and so do some people of every other group, including HN readers, rural locals, and wealthy people in big houses (and measured by total cost to society, there's no doubt which group does more).
In response to this, I'd say that I do equate the two. a lot of people think that you can help homeless people. but for most homeless people being homeless is a symptom of a greater problem. the problem is usually drugs. and I'm sure that's not true for all 100% of the cases but I'd be willing to bet that it's true for about 80 to 90% of the cases. you can give a homeless person a million dollars, and a large percentage of those people will use that money to squander it on things like drugs and other things that degrade their behavior and not improve it so that's the only reason I'd say I equate the two. drug abuse is a direct affect of what causes someone to become homeless. homelessness like I said for most situations is a direct result of being a drug addict and having mental illness caused by drug abuse, specifically crystal methamphetamine. I have hundreds of rentals and I see this everyday, and I'd say it's getting worse because 20 years ago there was not as many mentally ill people caused by drug abuse as there is today and specifically crystal methamphetamine. crystal methamphetamine the way that it's produced the last 15 years it produces permanent psychosis and brain damage it literally turns your brain into Swiss cheese so to say that drug abuse isn't related to homelessness means that you're just not looking into the correlation as much as you should be and it might be just because of a lack of experience.
From a relatively well-known perspective, that is essentially slave labor. The argument is this: The Constitution's 13th Amendment, which banned slavery, made an exception for prisoners. The obvious path, which many believe was taken, was to arrest many of the same people who were enslaved and use them as slave labor. And after segregation was ended in the 1960s, the US government's 'war on drugs' began the era of mass incarceration, which resulted in the former victims of segregation going to jail in large numbers.
There are arguments for doing it too, and picking up trash isn't hard labor. However, we need to think about who ends up picking up trash for a minor infraction, and who gets a warning and is sent home (I now nothing about your county in particular).
On another note, let people read without pop-ups please.
It's not official but a lot of us take trash bags out on our walks and hikes too. I like to save up the really out of reach stuff for new years day. It's a nice way to start the year and kinda fun to go MacGyver on those really long-neglected beer bottles under blackberry bushes. Close in feel to geocaching...
(And sort of odd isn't it? Instead of taxing you and providing you with this service, we'll require you to do it? Seems inefficient.)
A workaround is to buy your home in a neighborhood without sidewalks.
...or where it doesn't snow.
Toronto is probably the poster child of that idea but it is actually going away. The city decided they will plow the sidewalks themselves starting this year. While you were “required” to do it, tons of people wouldn’t do it and enforcement wouldn’t be consistent. This would leave you with dangerous sidewalks where the people who need it the most (disabled, elderly) would be stuck walking in the street because the roads for car would be perfectly plowed.
I live in a "bad" part of SF, by choice - I have a huge, cheap apartment. Until about 5 or so years ago, the homeless situation was not that bad around me. There would be periods where people with problems would be around, but generally it wasn't a big deal. I'd clean up around my and my downstairs neighbor's doors, and a bit wider if needed. Some of the folks that used to live on the street here would also help keep things clean.
Then the cops decided we are good place to funnel campers. Inevitably, dealers followed, and the street went to hell.
I won't go in to all the ins and outs, I can become very boring on this topic. Suffice to say, when you have a local small business that considers piles of garbage a competitive advantage, sweeping out my bit of sidewalk became pointless.
I'm constantly picking up litter from my tiny front yard, sidewalk, and curb. Cigarette butts are the worst and I bought a small electric leaf blower to help deal with it quickly. It wouldn't be as much of an issue if everyone took care of their own front property as well, instead of leaving litter and letting it blow onto mine. Also doesn't help that people see a full garbage can at nearby fields and just place their waste next to it instead of bringing it with them.
I think the big problem here is that there's no inertia to keep the place clean.
I recently ran into a great youtube video※ about how Japan stays clean (spoiler: it's about personal responsibility from a young age). When kids have to clean their own classrooms and be held accountable by their peers, they grow up with good habits. When I lived in South Korea, it wasn't as spotless as Japan despite a similar education, but not as bad as North American cities.
I would absolutely support littering enforcement officers, paid by large fines (in addition to community service), constantly roaming areas. Not sure how practical it would be in lower density areas like Outer Sunset but I can see it working along any commercial strips, or downtown.
It’s mostly certainly not due to civic mindedness. Join the Singapore subreddit and examples abound of locals throwing trash everywhere and generally being dicks.
It’s clean because the government has a pool of cheap labor they can use to constantly clean.
Huh? Isn’t the big problem the litter-ers and their littering?
I live in Oakland, CA, just off a major street. When I moved into this place I got annoyed at the litter on the street, until I eventually just started picking it up. The first day, I filled a trash bag travelling just 100ft along the sidewalk. A week later I would fill a trash bag every two or three laps of the entire street. Now I think I fill one trash bag per week. And I just feel better looking at, walking, or biking down my street, and I've gotten good conversations with neighbours to boot.
Culturally, right now, people will keep on littering on American city streets, and you and I aren't equipped to change that. It takes surprisingly little effort to carve out a considerably improved space though, and I find that when I consider it a gift to my neighbourhood and a constant task fighting against entropy (rather than something that can be "finished"), it's easier.
("you" in this context is a general "you", and not meant to be singling another_story out, of course)
He’s asking for the well funded sanitation department to do their job.
> Alas, Clean Streets is closing up shop.
> You may have noticed the falloff in times and quality the past couple weeks. [Redacted name] lost his main cleaner and has not been able to adequately replace him.
While I agree that the market isn't the panacea and God it's portrayed to be, I didn't understand the GP that way.
Your point goes much too far the other way. Most of most community problems are solved by 'free' markets, including food (most food is bought and sold in the market), much of transportation (cars, planes), shelter (most homes are owned by private parties), etc.
I think the interesting question is, where is the market good at, and what are other tools good at?
That's shifting the goalposts and not what I said. They are mostly solved (along with other issues) by free markets. Most people get their food and shelter that way, and the market generates most of the wealth needed to feed and shelter the others.
Free markets have a great time servicing 80% of the people with 20% of the resources and then pocketing the rest of the resources as profit. Community solutions need to be able to service 100% of the community. It's like the "last mile" problem of economics. "Sorry, it's not profitable for the police to protect your neighborhood" is unacceptable.
Imagine that shit… Google gave up.
It's not really hard to imagine though? https://killedbygoogle.com/
Stronger fines and other enforcement would help, but the first thing is to make sure that you actually have accurate places to throw stuff out (or have the culture where people bring stuff with them and throw out at home, like some non-American countries). This article mentions how the streets got really bad during the pandemic when the city stopped doing certain things.
SF, NYC, and other cities with trash problems could significantly solve this just by having more trash and recycling cans and by changing them more often. You'll notice how much cleaner DC and its surrounding urban areas are than SF and NYC and that's because they have a bigger commitment to making it easy to not litter and they do more cleaning.
https://missionlocal.org/2021/03/newsoms-experiment-to-get-r...
Getting rid of it seems…to make things worse? People still dump their trash, it’s just more spread out now.
Yes, surely a primary cause. There are areas without trashcans anywhere. Which is so insane. As public policy it seems obvious to maximize trashcans everywhere to make it convenient to keep it clean.
The vast majority of people aren't out to be filthy, but humans are also lazy. To keep a city clean, make sure there is a trashcan within sight at all times no matter where you are, and nearly everyone will use them and keep things clean. Remove trashcans and lots of people will give up and litter.
Same issue with public toilets. Make them available everywhere and nearly everyone will use them, everyone is happy. Take them away and the inevitable consequence is obvious, what else are people going to do.
People do litter here, but there's an army of old people that clean the streets... like this article is suggesting.
Linked in the article, too. While it's not the only source of the problem, it's still a big reason people get tired of looking around for a can in SF and just toss their litter.
I guess people in San Francisco just don't care enough to really push the council to solve the problem?
In practice elections are often quite competitive between the two major Democratic factions: moderates and progressives. Right now the mayor (Breed), state reps (Weiner, Chiu), and congressional rep (Pelosi) are moderates. The board of sups is 6-3 prog dominated, partially due to Breed becoming mayor and her seat being lost to apartment-tax Preston.
There's a shuffle happening right now due to the downstream consequences of Harris becoming VP that will result in Chiu's seat being taken by prog-allied Haney or Campos (no viable moderate is running, I believe). The rest of the progs support Campos though, so Haney is shifting toward moderate positions (e.g. supporting housing approvals) to improve his chances.
every... single... one... corporations/government doesn't fucking matter. group of humans working together? inherently inefficient.
[added] Since this is such a controversial topic, I would recommend reading about Portugal's approach to solving drug problems (hint, it has been quite successful(): https://transformdrugs.org/blog/drug-decriminalisation-in-po...
Everything else is not a solution and only exacerbates the problem.
There's nothing safe about staying addicted to drugs.
Obviously there's nothing safe about being addicted to drugs. But there are certainly methods of drug use which have wildly varied risk levels. Same for other things - drinking alcohol, eating unhealthy foods, etc.
Portugal is the best example of how to tackle the drug problem. There are many articles, but here's one: https://transformdrugs.org/blog/drug-decriminalisation-in-po...
Sadly, no. The junkies I knew, back when I knew junkies, were terrified of rehab, not of prison.
One of them told me, to justify behavior that was mystifying to me, "I can still use in prison".
Those responses have been tried for many years, with very poor results. Also, it's not clear that there is anything criminal about the vice of drugs, and thus taking away their freedom would be highly unjust. We take away people's freedom for bad behavior or because other people are uncomfortable.
Based on the little I know, what does help people is giving them access to social services. I think several American cities are pioneering bringing the services to the person - when authorities are called, they don't send police or only police, but people who can connect the person to various agencies.
Apparently this approach results in a much higher rate of service use (which makes sense commercially - if someone had to wait in long lines and fill out dozens of forms, and then face long delays for service, you wouldn't have many customers. If someone showed up, when need the service, and offered it on the spot, you'd sell a few more). And those people gain more stable lives and are able to better care for themselves.
We can see plenty of wealthy professionals turn to damaging behavior under great stress. Imagine how they would do if added to that stress is having no roof or reliable food, the loss of safety, the loss of any credibility - even enough to get basic jobs, the harassment, etc. But then them: 'We'll take care of the shelter, food, etc., and here are classes to help cope with your other problems without using drugs', and I can imagine they would have a much better chance.
So what? An addict is going to shoot up whether it’s tolerated or not, and non-addicts aren’t going to take up heroin because they say a billboard. If you really want to end it, it’s going to need to be a lot more comprehensive, expensive, and expansive than the presence or absence of a billboard.
>When you smash a window to rob a store, be careful not to cut yourself on the glass. Wear thick gloves.
after all, a billboard is not going to stop a burglar, is it? and if we're going to have burglaries, it's better that the burglars don't injure themselves while committing their crimes, because after all it will reduce the burden on hospitals. it will also protect the store owners from liability!
I'm not a nietzchean but I start to sympathize with how zarathustra must have felt when he saw those pathetic last men, bleating about "harm reduction" as they huddled together for warmth.
I asked the librarian if there really was a problem with the library being a law-free zone. She shrugged saying "what can I say". Personally, I doubt that a sign would dissuade the types who go to the library to commit crimes.
Compassion and understanding of drug use issues is a different world than enabling spiraling dens of despair.
responsible treatment of drug addicts =/= the government somehow telling people to throw trash in the streets.
Besides actually cleaning the streets, it brings very big spotlight to the problem.
And in some rare cases, if activity like this may go viral, some people in charge of public sanitation might remember of the shame enough to do their work.
San Francisco 2020 budget is ~$13 billion (https://londonbreed.medium.com/san-franciscos-budget-how-it-...)
This is the money that is supposed to pay for cleaning the streets and many more things.
For comparison, Austin budget is $4.5 billion (https://www.kvue.com/article/money/economy/austin-city-counc...)
What you see is unbelievable corruption and incompetence of city government, not the lack of money for cleaning the streets.
It's as competent as the work you put in to make it competent
Most of us manage to get clothes on before we leave the house each day, and that's a lot more complicated than just putting trash into a bin (or god forbid, carrying it until you reach a destination which has a trash bin). So there is no excuse for littering.
I would impose very strict penalties for littering - namely forcing the one who is caught littering to spend two hours every day for a week, or even a month, walking the streets (and beaches or riverbanks or parks) and collecting trash.
If an alternative punishment must be provided, they could instead sit on the spot where they littered for a day, holding a sign which says "I'm a poorly trained human, and I throw my trash on the ground."
I like the idea of a $1000 fine or community service spent cleaning up trash.
Yes, if caught (unlikely) you will be severely punished. But that’s not the reason Singapore is so clean.
SF has no willingness to actually punish crime. The cops won't show up to stop shoplifting, bike theft, or any number of other crimes, and now you think there's going to be a trash patrol that is going to actually do something?
This is only part of the issue. I've been picking up trash for years while walking or hiking in the outdoors and have observed a lot of different situations and setups that are really common:
- Pocket design on clothing isn't designed to allow easy litter insertion, exactly. A lot falls out of coats, jogging pouches when people think it's secure. Open wrappers from things like candy or granola bars have this banana-peel splaying effect that can help them to practically leap out of pockets while being stuffed in.
- Animals like local corvidae can spread litter like crazy.
- Wind, especially on garbage collection day, or around outdoor events
- Some hilarious amount of litter is meant to stay there because someone really does intend to come back and get it later. From water bottles left by runners to legit trash left by well-meaning people who really will be back soon, and then feel angry and confused about how they are perceived when they find that another do-gooder picked it up
- Vehicles, from garbage trucks to other work vehicles headed from site to site...man, some of the trash vortices I've seen :D
The inexcusable people you mentioned, I guess, are easy to spot and often easy to clean up after because they'll put their trash in the bag before hucking it out the car window, so you can use their bag to hold other trash as well. Or at least it's thrown in the same general area, and amounts to a couple bottles.
If they are drunk/high you can often get their names and stuff really easy too. Starbucks cup, receipt...wallet...oops they forgot that lol. Stage a gentle community intervention if so inclined, nobody necessarily needs the police involved.
But emotionally if someone has just had it with rules and abuse of rule systems for control purposes, if they perceive that they have been unfairly treated by society, I find that those are the litter bugs people worry about. But I can also sympathize...
the real hardcore street addicts really don't do or buy anything but sit in a heap on the sidewalk for hours at at time.
do you mean that casual users just get so ... crazy .. that they feel compelled to throw trash on the street just for the thrill?
the homeless (often drug using) do certainly contribute to th e problem since they do go through the trash and gather stuff they think they might be able to sell or use.
but somehow I don't think that's what you're asking
Mostly civilians who are not also drug addicts (“civilians” and “drug addicts” are, of course, overlapping sets.)
Beyond trash, the streets actually had a lot of shit and piss on them, too. I think it's hard to really understand just how bad it was unless you go there. I'd watch movies and they didn't seem real to me because the streets were too clean.
To me it seems like an obvious failure of the government, but perhaps it does reflect a popular sentiment of the dominant culture, that people's individual right to live a life of misery in squalor on the street trumps any other concern. I dunno.
Even better is getting the idea inside people's brain. "I don't litter, because this is how I am". There is a book titled "Made to stick" where they expose the case of Texas and the problem they had with littering. A campaign was made "Don't mess with Texas", basically everyone should police anyone who doesn't comply with this don't litter attitude. This was done by appealing to the ideal of what a Texan should be, through clever advertising and marketing. Never been to Texas btw :)
It comes back to the policies around law enforcement adopted by SF. Since it is effectively the epicenter of progressive politics in the world, there are a lot of radical policies in play. One of them is "restorative justice", which claims to make criminals / law breakers less stigmatized and more able to constructively reintegrate into society. Personally, I feel the motivations are sincere and have good intentions behind them.
However in practice, that framework of restorative justice has been warped into something more like an us versus them narrative, where those who break the law are viewed as helpless victims while those who seek to enforce the law are viewed as oppressors. I think this is partly because of the divisive nature of American politics in general, and partly because of the extremist language used by some activists who support these policies.
While I agree there is no excuse for this, and it shouldn't be tolerated (alongside open drug abuse, shoplifting, defecating on the street, assault, armed robberies, burglaries, and so on), the reality is that the politicians elected in SF and people like Chesa Boudin (the District Attorney) are very much all-in on restorative justice. In effect, they've decriminalized most crimes. And unfortunately it is a two-tier justice system where law abiding taxpayers are subject to the penalties of the law, while criminals are somehow not subject to penalties.
As far as I can tell, the only practical way out for SF is for constituents to wholesale reject fringe progressive politics and return to moderate politics that is closer to the Clinton or Obama era left. However, I don't view that as being very likely despite all the complaints, simply because the voice of activists is louder and more feared than other voices.
Maybe it is more persuasive and appealing. If it doesn't appeal to you, that doesn't mean the only explanation for everyone is volume and fear.
The real question isn't the obvious, but what we find when, discovering that the obvious isn't working, we dig deeper.
Do you live in a community with these problems? Try speaking to the people there; you may learn a lot. They aren't fools who have never considered the issue; they are intelligent, mostly well-meaning human beings who nevertheless find themselves in this situation.
I'm not talking about the obvious, so please avoid pinning on me the anti-obvious ('I support litter!'). The obvious in this case is an obstacle, preventing us from seeing and addressing the reality.
> I just don't understand why throwing trash on the ground is tolerated.
Tolerated? Come around some neighborhoods and not tolerate it. Who said the problem is our toleration?
> I would impose very strict penalties
This is an understandable reaction to bad behavior, but it doesn't work. Humans aren't so easily pushed around and it becomes a tool for harassing innocent people (e.g., minor drug possession offenses).