DeSantis Campaign Press Release - Mapping San Francisco's Human Waste Challenge

Adam Andrzejewski
Forbes
April 15, 2019

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Today, San Francisco hosts an estimated homeless population of 7,500 people. Affluent sections of the city have become dangerous with open-air drug use, tens of thousands of discarded needles, and, sadly, human feces.

Since 2011, there have been at least 118,352 reported instances of human fecal matter on city streets.

New mayor, London Breed, won election by promising to clean things up. However, conditions are the same or worse. Last year, the number of reports spiked to an all-time high at 28,084. In first quarter 2019, the pace continued with 6,676 instances of human waste in the public way. …

Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com plotted all reports of human waste since 2011 using latitude and longitude address coordinates of all cases closed by the San Francisco Department of Public Works … Available data is the result of resident reporting to the city's 311 dispatchers during the years 2011-2019.

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There were 118 city neighborhoods affected. However, 72-percent of all cases since 2008 were reported in just ten neighborhoods: 1. Tenderloin (30,863); 2. South of Market (23,599); 3. Mission (19,150); 4. Civic Center (6,232); 5. Mission Dolores (4,096); 6. Lower Nob Hill (3,654); 7. Potrero Hill (2,489); 8. Showplace Square (2,022); 9. North Beach (1,826); and 10. Financial District (1,810).

Thirty ZIP codes in the city were affected. However, just four locations had the highest concentration of human feces – between 10,000 and 23,000 events each.

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The city has taken steps to crack down on the crisis. Over the last year, the Department of Public Works instituted what the San Francisco Chronicle called a "Poop Patrol." Consisting of five teammates, the Chronicle estimated each employee earned a hefty $184,000 in pay, perquisites and pension benefits.

Using this payroll information, we quantified the taxpayer cost of each human waste case last year: $32.75. And that's not including the sunk costs in trucks, fuel, and equipment such as the steam cleaning unit.

To view the current interactive map of human waste in San Francisco, click HERE.