San Francisco is one of the most expensive cities in the U.S. in which to live. Real estate prices are through the roof — the median price of a small two-bedroom home is $1.3 million; a family making nearly $120,000 annually is actually considered low income.
And unfortunately, some people are falling through the cracks.
“A federal count shows the number of homeless people increased by double-digit percentages in three San Francisco Bay Area counties over two years as the region struggled to tackle the growing problem, including 17% in San Francisco and 43% in the county that includes Oakland,” the Associated Press reports.
More than 25,000 people were counted as homeless during an overnight tally conducted in San Francisco, Alameda and Silicon Valley’s Santa Clara counties in January. Detailed reports are expected later this year.
“The initial results of this count show we have more to do to provide more shelter, more exits from homelessness, and to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place,” said San Francisco Mayor London Breed.
The city, home to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, doesn’t like all those poor people around. City officials have cracked down on homeless camps, pushing people off of city streets. For those with even the slightest means, sleeping in vehicles became the only option.
But now the homeless are starting to move off land altogether, building makeshift boats and grouping into tent cities in the San Francisco Bay, The Wall Street Journal reports.
“The homeless population floating off the coast of wealthy Marin County, just north of San Francisco, has doubled in recent years to about 100, according to authorities. The ragtag collection of some 200 barges, sailboats, and other mostly decrepit vessels in which they live and store their belongings is a sign of an affordable-housing crisis in California that is being felt particularly acutely in the San Francisco Bay Area,” the paper reports.
“People who own multi-million dollar properties are furious that they have to look at these boats and barges, complaining that ‘they’re all filthy, because they have no place to bathe,’ ” TreeHugger.com reports.
But anchoring offshore has traditionally been legal. People are trying to clear them out in Florida, where one boater says, “If you don’t like looking at boats at anchor, buy a house in Arizona and move there. Boats have been anchoring in your backyard for a lot longer than your home has been there. We have rights too.”
Meanwhile, a new map compiled by Open the Books titled “2011-2019 San Francisco Human Waste Reportings” features a little pin (appropriately brown) showing where city residents have reported human feces. From the looks of the map, the entire city has been covered in poop.
“One report was pinpointed to Seal Rocks – a jagged formation surrounded by the ocean – and more waste was sighted in the waters off the popular Fisherman’s Wharf tourist area,” Fox News reported.
“Since 2008, over 23,800 cases of human waste were reported in the heart of San Francisco. There were 13 reports of human feces in front of City Hall; 17 events at the U.S. Marshals office; and 67 reports at the Tenderloin police station on Eddy Street,” Forbes reported.
Even the biggest companies that call San Francisco home have not be spared. “The largest concentration of complaints was in the area of Market St., where the headquarters of companies such as Twitter and Uber are located. Nearly a hundred markers also were clustered along the block that surrounds city hall,” Fox said.
Poop reports have soared. In 2011, there were 5,547 human feces reports to the San Francisco Department of Public Work. In 2018, that number was 28,084 in 2018. Since 2011, the period covered by the new map, there have been at least 118,352 reported instances of human fecal matter on city streets.
