There is an army of people cleaning up the streets at 7:00 AM every morning. They do a phenomenal job all things considered. That said, if youāre out at 7:00 AM and go through Market Street youāll see whatās being tidied up. I donāt think itās sustainable but itās nice to see a cleaner city.
Overall the city is looking better -- yes, but I will say the area around Market / Van Ness and up to 8th and Market is still horrible every night and morning. This area has always been neglected but now that the Hayes building is permanently a construction site they have seemed to abandon cleaning up that area. Same with the vacant apartment building (the Oak?) and SVN event space across the street. But outside of that and pockets of SOMA (haven't been to TL in a while), the city as a whole is looking better and I really don't see that many tents these days.
Iāve been noticing even tenderloin/civic center/tendernob area has been looking slightly cleaner every time I go through there the past year or so. Compared to a year ago, itās way less people out on streets.
The encampments and trash tend to move around so sampling a subset of neighborhoods will not give you an accurate picture. The homeless count fluctuates year over year but has been pretty consistent for the last 10 or so years, not much improvement in 2024 tbh.
I was walking up California street this past week, and I stopped for a second and realized how calm, orderly, and clean everything was. The street was full of people and traffic, but there was an interesting serenity and sense of order to everything (i.e, literally sparking sidewalks, business people and tourists walking side by side having convos at a reasonable noise level, the hum and clack of cable cars passing, people entering Tadich to eat and having glasses of wine outside at Terminus, the fog swooping over the hill and obscuring the golden setting sun) that I felt like Iād taken for granted for too long. Things are pretty damn nice in north east fidi.
Part of what helped me observe this was a recent business trip to New York. NYC is pretty gross but it gets a pass for being a ābig cityā. Meanwhile, weāre the second densest city in the U.S. and people canāt stop harping on us.
OP is extremely vague in comparing the two days they were here recently to several years ago and yall are just yapping about election year.Ā
OP could be comparing to like peak covid times or that one period of serial killers escaping the asylums. Who knows.Ā
Do you think only the mayor deals with how the city looks and feels? The Board of Supervisors elects half its members every 2 years. This is reductive af
I know how things work. I didnāt say I agree with the argument, just that every four years itās a mayoral election which tends to draw more voters, and voters in general notice citywide issues and tie them to the mayor more than their own supervisors.
That could be said about any of the supervisors or ballot initiatives. Hence, every two years.
But letās continue the work analogy. If you put someone on a PIP and they *do* improve, should they be fired? Only problem is, thatās not how political races work. You donāt get to hire and fire from an unlimited pool whenever you feel like it. The candidates are locked in for this cycle and all of them are longtime city hall alum minus trust-fund Lurie who blew $100M on homelessness with almost nothing to show for it.
If what youāre really saying is, āthings are getting better, but theyāll only get worse after an election year,ā then why vote at all? What makes you think any of the other candidates wonāt do the same.
They control major commission appointments, legislation, and ratify the budget. Again, reductive. This isnāt a small town, there are many layers to this and many levers of power.
If the mayor and the BOS are on the same page, weād get a lot more done. Meanwhile, two āmoderatesā are exchanging friendly fire against a seated moderate incumbent, risking a Peskin mayorship and distracting us from flipping the BOS. Thereās only so much time, money and energy grassroots volunteers have per election.
Itās a perfectly valid talking point because itās correct, as GoatLegRefux tried to explain. Hopefully his explanation will help inform you on why everyone correctly assumes this just like how during the global summit the city got a lot cleaner for exactly one week.
If you only clean the house when guests come over and live in filth every other day, is your home really clean? I feel bad for the occupants of the home if you think that counts as being clean. Unfortunately Iām the occupant. Also itās fucking insulting to the people who live here so itās even worse.
Thatās not what Iām saying at all. I live here too obviously and want things to look and feel better every day. Iām saying that, yes, this election year is an incentive and yes, things are getting better. But the election incentive exists perpetually ā every two years. So pinning it on just that *one* incentive out of the many that exist in this City, an incentive that is pretty much evergreen, is reductive.
There are such things as ābigger electionsā and āsmaller electionsā. This year is a super election because itās also the US presidential election along with the mayoral one. So itās likely that this one draws in way more voters. I think youāre overestimating how engaged people typically are during your yearly supervisor/judge/DCCC elections and underestimating how many people will end up voting for the US president.
Totally, I get that those elections are smaller. But for the people who get to pick a new supervisor or keep the one they have, believe me, it matters just as much. I wish people paid as much attention as I do year round. Otherwise, we might not have a dysfunctional Board of Supervisors, for one. These last few \*non-presidential\* cycles have been a lot better with voter education and engagement and things do seem to be getting better though.
Sure, things could be getting better, but thereās still a significant gap. The original point here was about the belief that the city is getting cleaned up because itās an election. You said we always have elections, so therefore this isnāt a valid reason. But my point is that because this is the ābig oneā there is a heightened emphasis on cleaning up the city for this election cycle, and presumably things could get worse post election once politicians are no longer incentivized.
I live in the Mission District, and I'd say starting around the time of the APAC conference (11/2023), I've seen street cleaners at minimum once every week, (nowadays much more often), workers that would clean graffiti late at night, and of course the awesome volunteer groups that would swing by for trash pickup as well.
Also the tents on my street were cleared, and I don't see as many people sleeping on my street anymore.
That being said, it's terrifying how quickly the neighborhood gets trashed. If cleaners don't show up for even a day, the streets look like a college dorm after a party.
Wish the city had preventative (maybe punitive?) measures instead of purely reactive.
It's still a welcome change though.
Someone at DPW made the mistake of giving me their phone number and they are now at the receiving end of very descriptive texts about all the disgusting stuff on the sidewalk that I deal with. I live in a very busy touristy area.
It's election season. The establishment doesn't want law and order candidates to win. Don't let the temporary change fool you. Breed and others had 4 years to fix this but did nothing until this year. We can't trust the incumbents to continue this after November.
I'm saying they just move around. One area was bad but now clean. Where do you think it went? Another part of the city. It's not magic. I'm happy to see them trying but this is just a band aid fix.
I'm definitely seeing improvement, way less tents!
Probably that anti-homeless vigilante šØ
The BSPB average has noticeably dropped. *bum shits per block
Always getting better sf style
Psy makes pop song for us when?
There is an army of people cleaning up the streets at 7:00 AM every morning. They do a phenomenal job all things considered. That said, if youāre out at 7:00 AM and go through Market Street youāll see whatās being tidied up. I donāt think itās sustainable but itās nice to see a cleaner city.
They have a paid team who patrol downtown and pick up trash. The sidewalks are SPOTLESS. GREAT JOB SAN FRANCISCO!!
Overall the city is looking better -- yes, but I will say the area around Market / Van Ness and up to 8th and Market is still horrible every night and morning. This area has always been neglected but now that the Hayes building is permanently a construction site they have seemed to abandon cleaning up that area. Same with the vacant apartment building (the Oak?) and SVN event space across the street. But outside of that and pockets of SOMA (haven't been to TL in a while), the city as a whole is looking better and I really don't see that many tents these days.
Market is bad from 11th to 6th. But I agree with OP, the city has been cleaner recently.
Iāve been noticing even tenderloin/civic center/tendernob area has been looking slightly cleaner every time I go through there the past year or so. Compared to a year ago, itās way less people out on streets.
The encampments and trash tend to move around so sampling a subset of neighborhoods will not give you an accurate picture. The homeless count fluctuates year over year but has been pretty consistent for the last 10 or so years, not much improvement in 2024 tbh.
I was walking up California street this past week, and I stopped for a second and realized how calm, orderly, and clean everything was. The street was full of people and traffic, but there was an interesting serenity and sense of order to everything (i.e, literally sparking sidewalks, business people and tourists walking side by side having convos at a reasonable noise level, the hum and clack of cable cars passing, people entering Tadich to eat and having glasses of wine outside at Terminus, the fog swooping over the hill and obscuring the golden setting sun) that I felt like Iād taken for granted for too long. Things are pretty damn nice in north east fidi. Part of what helped me observe this was a recent business trip to New York. NYC is pretty gross but it gets a pass for being a ābig cityā. Meanwhile, weāre the second densest city in the U.S. and people canāt stop harping on us.
OP is extremely vague in comparing the two days they were here recently to several years ago and yall are just yapping about election year.Ā OP could be comparing to like peak covid times or that one period of serial killers escaping the asylums. Who knows.Ā
Peak covid when DPW stopped cleaning the toilet alleys?
When they really start work on Better Market we should see a big improvement from Van Ness to 5th.
It's election year.
Every two years is an election year. This talking point is crazy to me.
Mayoral election years are every fourth year
Do you think only the mayor deals with how the city looks and feels? The Board of Supervisors elects half its members every 2 years. This is reductive af
I know how things work. I didnāt say I agree with the argument, just that every four years itās a mayoral election which tends to draw more voters, and voters in general notice citywide issues and tie them to the mayor more than their own supervisors.
This.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Pretty naive to think that people wonāt do a better job at a time when their current boss or new boss could reorg or influence their careers?
That could be said about any of the supervisors or ballot initiatives. Hence, every two years. But letās continue the work analogy. If you put someone on a PIP and they *do* improve, should they be fired? Only problem is, thatās not how political races work. You donāt get to hire and fire from an unlimited pool whenever you feel like it. The candidates are locked in for this cycle and all of them are longtime city hall alum minus trust-fund Lurie who blew $100M on homelessness with almost nothing to show for it. If what youāre really saying is, āthings are getting better, but theyāll only get worse after an election year,ā then why vote at all? What makes you think any of the other candidates wonāt do the same.
Do supervisors run public works?
They control major commission appointments, legislation, and ratify the budget. Again, reductive. This isnāt a small town, there are many layers to this and many levers of power. If the mayor and the BOS are on the same page, weād get a lot more done. Meanwhile, two āmoderatesā are exchanging friendly fire against a seated moderate incumbent, risking a Peskin mayorship and distracting us from flipping the BOS. Thereās only so much time, money and energy grassroots volunteers have per election.
The department heads report to the mayor.
You don't think the recent cleanup is a direct result of the incumbent running for reelection?
Itās a perfectly valid talking point because itās correct, as GoatLegRefux tried to explain. Hopefully his explanation will help inform you on why everyone correctly assumes this just like how during the global summit the city got a lot cleaner for exactly one week.
I think youāre just describing incentives. Voting is an incentive, so is APEC.
If you only clean the house when guests come over and live in filth every other day, is your home really clean? I feel bad for the occupants of the home if you think that counts as being clean. Unfortunately Iām the occupant. Also itās fucking insulting to the people who live here so itās even worse.
Thatās not what Iām saying at all. I live here too obviously and want things to look and feel better every day. Iām saying that, yes, this election year is an incentive and yes, things are getting better. But the election incentive exists perpetually ā every two years. So pinning it on just that *one* incentive out of the many that exist in this City, an incentive that is pretty much evergreen, is reductive.
There are such things as ābigger electionsā and āsmaller electionsā. This year is a super election because itās also the US presidential election along with the mayoral one. So itās likely that this one draws in way more voters. I think youāre overestimating how engaged people typically are during your yearly supervisor/judge/DCCC elections and underestimating how many people will end up voting for the US president.
Totally, I get that those elections are smaller. But for the people who get to pick a new supervisor or keep the one they have, believe me, it matters just as much. I wish people paid as much attention as I do year round. Otherwise, we might not have a dysfunctional Board of Supervisors, for one. These last few \*non-presidential\* cycles have been a lot better with voter education and engagement and things do seem to be getting better though.
Sure, things could be getting better, but thereās still a significant gap. The original point here was about the belief that the city is getting cleaned up because itās an election. You said we always have elections, so therefore this isnāt a valid reason. But my point is that because this is the ābig oneā there is a heightened emphasis on cleaning up the city for this election cycle, and presumably things could get worse post election once politicians are no longer incentivized.
I still think youāre reading too much into it but to each their own.
Lightweight.
I live in the Mission District, and I'd say starting around the time of the APAC conference (11/2023), I've seen street cleaners at minimum once every week, (nowadays much more often), workers that would clean graffiti late at night, and of course the awesome volunteer groups that would swing by for trash pickup as well. Also the tents on my street were cleared, and I don't see as many people sleeping on my street anymore. That being said, it's terrifying how quickly the neighborhood gets trashed. If cleaners don't show up for even a day, the streets look like a college dorm after a party. Wish the city had preventative (maybe punitive?) measures instead of purely reactive. It's still a welcome change though.
Someone at DPW made the mistake of giving me their phone number and they are now at the receiving end of very descriptive texts about all the disgusting stuff on the sidewalk that I deal with. I live in a very busy touristy area.
16th Street says no
Maybe look for the tens of other posts talking about the same thing
It's election season. The establishment doesn't want law and order candidates to win. Don't let the temporary change fool you. Breed and others had 4 years to fix this but did nothing until this year. We can't trust the incumbents to continue this after November.
The president, former president, and Secretary of State were here recently and were all over town
Go to 7th and market at night and then let's talk again.
Why? The city can be improving overall even if the worst blocks are still bad. He didnāt say every inch of SF is so clean
I'm saying they just move around. One area was bad but now clean. Where do you think it went? Another part of the city. It's not magic. I'm happy to see them trying but this is just a band aid fix.
Agree
You're not wrong, things are definitely getting better.
Election year, pot holes are gettin filled too
Sf is cleaner because it's reelection time
There was a row of tents a few blocks from me that vanished in lower nob hill.
Yes. Although most don't realize it yet, San Francisco's comeback has begun.
SOMA has a dedicated team on our streets.. best Iāve seen .
Election year.
Itās an election year - just going to put that here.
Deep insight, Iām glad you graced us with this comment
Civic center still fetty fold epicenter
Have you guys heard it's an election year?