In the name of fecal data journalism and clicks, the Chronicle is back on the poop beat this week — and there's some good news for the chronically poopy streets of the Tenderloin!

In the period from 2011 to 2015ish, the Chronicle's newsroom — and subsequently local TV stations — was obsessed with poop. Perhaps it was because so many new people were moving into the city for the tech boom and complaining, perhaps this was just the beginning of Mohammed Nuru's failures at the Department of Public Works, or perhaps there legitimately was an unusual boom in street defecation, but mapping the poopiest parts of the city became like a bimonthly affair. SFist crunched the numbers via Department of Public Works data on St. George Alley — which seemed to be everyone's favorite al fresco toilet in the Tenderloin — and there were at least 30 piles of human shit found in the alley weekly, with DPW getting there about once a week to hose it off.

Fast Company got in on the "SF is poopy" tip, writing a story about the Tenderloin Pit Stop program in 2015 — which installed mobile toilets and wash stations in the neighborhood on the regular. And then SFist did a whole poop-story timeline in 2019, just by way of explaining to newcomers how old and repetitive these maps and stories were getting — and again, maybe it was all Nuru's fault!

The Chronicle got Nuru on the record in May 2019, approximately seven months before he was brought up on federal corruption charges, saying of the poopiness of the city streets, "It‘s not just about the money anymore, it’s about also needing to deal with the people who are creating the problems. Cleaning the same area three, four, five times a day is not the best use of our money, but it is necessary until the behavior changes."

That kind of sounded like blame-shifting to another chronically criticized city department, the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. Then-Supervisor Matt Haney responded, sounding like he was pointing at Nuru and DPW, saying, "I’m for accountability, but I haven’t seen any plan for how to do it. The city should be accountable as well."

Well, now the Chronicle has crunched the numbers from 311 calls again, and what do you know!? The poop problem is still a problem, but not so much in the Tenderloin. And the paper credits the Pit Stop program, probably, as the strategy that helped the number of 311 calls about feces in the Tenderloin decrease 29% between 2012 and 2021. The data shows that 311 calls about poop went down 37% on streets near three particular Pit Stop locations.

As long-suffering Public Works spokesperson Rachel Gordon puts it, "If you have a toilet, there's a chance that people might avail themselves to that and not go on the streets or sidewalks." And she added, of the Pit Stop program, "We also wanted to improve the… livability of a neighborhood.”

The sheer number of shit-related calls to 311 in the last decade and a half is pretty staggering — 1,465 per 1,000 residents in the city. But, as the Chronicle points out, DPW made it a whole easier to make complaints in the last couple of years — you don't actually have to call in a complaint, you can also just tweet it to 311 or submit it online — which may have effectively skewed the data.

Also, the pandemic may have exacerbated things, with fewer fast-food and hotel bathrooms available to those walking in off the street. And perhaps all the complainers found better apartments outside the Tenderloin in recent years, or they left the city, thus fewer complaints in that 'hood.

And while complaints in the Tenderloin proper may have gone down 29% in nine years, we should make sure we're defining our terms — like what is the "Tenderloin" in this analysis? Poop complaints rose 481% in the same period in Lower Nob Hill, or whatever the paper is using to define that area. And they went up 187% in "Downtown/Union Square," 212% in Polk Gulch, and 284% in the Financial District. So yes, still a lot of street poop.

The Pit Stop program may still expand, but Gordon says that each location costs between $100K and $600K annually, to operate — with labor being the biggest cost. The city currently has 33 Pit Stop locations, with at least 15 of them added since 2020.

So, we may not be getting that Department of Sanitation and Streets that we all voted for, but maybe, someday, the streets will get cleaner, slowly but surely.

Related: A Brief History Of Poop On The Streets Of San Francisco

Photo: Annie pm/Unsplash

Several members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors who just two years ago were fully behind the creation of a separate Department of Sanitation and Streets that would not live under the aegis of the Department of Public Works, aren't so much now. They've changed their minds as implementation is slow-going, and on Tuesday they voted to put amendments on the November ballot that would undo what they set in motion.

SF voters approved the creation of the new department in November 2020, in the wake of the Mohammed Nuru corruption scandal that exposed, in many peoples' minds, a reason for why the city's streets remained dirty — namely Nuru had other things to fill his days like political glad-handing, creating an asinine TV channel, and getting free stuff for his Colusa County ranch. Voters approved Prop B with over 60% voting yes, and the ballot measure created both a new city department with its own director, as well as two oversight commissions, one for sanitation and one just for Public Works.

Confusingly, the Board of Supes on Tuesday voted to keep the two commissions, but to toss out the second, separate department — and this will be put in a ballot measure and given to voters to decide, based, I guess, on arguments about efficiency and cost.

Supervisor Aaron Peskin is one of those who have turned tail, and he tells Mission Local that it's sort of a case of "buyer's remorse." "I’ve been very forthright in saying that I think we didn’t get it right the first time," Peskin says.

Another progressive supervisor, Hillary Ronen, tells Mission Local that she voted in favor of sending the amendments to the ballot because the Department of Public Works has been so slow on the implementation and "their heart’s not in it."

DPW spokesperson Rachel Gordon denies this in comments to Mission Local, saying they've been "full speed ahead" with implementing Prop B, and the two commissions are almost fully seated. But now they'll pause in their work to see if these amendments pass in November.

The amendments would a) stop the creation of a separate city department and give street cleaning duties back to Public Works, b) lower the threshold of qualifications to serve on the oversight commissions, and c) no longer require that the Controller’s Office audit the department.

Assemblymember Matt Haney, who as supervisor helped spearhead Prop B, called the board's move with the amendments "ludicrous" and "a very strange decision" in comments to Mission Local. "San Franciscans passed a measure two years ago because we had dirty streets and dirty government, and neither of those things have been solved and the measure hasn’t been implemented," Haney says.

Will voters get behind this reversal? Does it even make sense? Presumably, the many people voting in the 2020 election gave some consideration to the expense involved in the creation of a new department and a new director position, but they went for it anyway because the city is filthy. So how the supervisors think they're going to get people to vote the opposite way two years later is kind of baffling!

Supervisors Shamann Walton, Gordon Mar, and Ahsha Safai all voted against the amendments on Tuesday.

Previously: Sanitation and Streets Department To Take Shape Tuesday, Hopes to Be ‘Laser Focused’ On Cleaning Up SF Streets

Photo via SF Dept. of Public Works

The widening Mohammed Nuru/DPW/City Hall corruption investigation is now looking into why the City Administrator and SFPUC General Manager directed $8 million in contracts to the woman who sold them their house.

This week’s news that three more city departments have been subpoenaed in the widening Justice Department public corruption investigation also shined a light on a prominent romantic relationship at City Hall. Not Nuru and London Breed, nor Nuru and Mayor’s Office director of Neighborhood Services Sandra Zuniga, but instead city administrator Naomi Kelly and her husband SF Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) general manager Harlan Kelly. Their relationship has never been a secret. But they are both now ensnared in the Nuru scandal, husband Harlan because he was named in the FBI subpoenas this week, and wife Naomi because she’s the one who tipped off the FBI that Nuru was violating his cooperation by alerting his colleagues to it.

But wife Naomi may not be in the clear here, as now the Chronicle reports the FBI is investigating possible sweetheart City Hall deals awarded to a contractor who sold the Kellys their house. Harlan Kelly owned a 50% share in a fixer-upper property in the Inner Sunset with a Melanie Lok, whom the Chron describes as a “longtime family friend,” and their real estate group bought the property for $540,000 in 2002, according to property records. The Kellys then bought out Lok’s share in 2011 for $282,000 and eventually moved in themselves. Seems like Melanie Lok did not get much of an appreciation or a return on that investment!

But as the Chronicle informs us, her software consulting company Mlok Consulting was awarded about $8 million in SFPUC contracts following that real estate deal. One of her company’s bids, in which there was only one other bidder, Lok wrote in her proposal that “Perhaps the most important advantage we can offer (the) SFPUC is peace of mind.” Ask Harlan Kelly how that “peace of mind” is working out for him right about now.

Harlan Kelly would probably not answer that question, though, because currently only his attorney is talking. “Mr. Kelly plays no direct role in the competitive bidding process for city contracts,” his lawyer Brian Getz told the Chron. “The SFPUC has a fair and transparent process for the hundreds of contract opportunities that an agency of its size and scale must extend every year.”

Kelly has an alibi, in that he was not SFPUC general manager yet when most of the original contracts were awarded to MLok. But he signed numerous amendments to the deal that raised payment ceilings, so there is at least a whiff of quid pro quo. The SFPUC maintains that those pay raises were consistent with the language of the original contracts, and approved by a five-member oversight commission.

But these days, it’s a bad sign when the name Walter Wong comes up in a City Hall employee’s personal financial dealings, as that fellow has been indicted on fraud and money laundering charges. The consultant and contractor has apparently been singing to the feds in hopes of reducing a possible 40-year sentence. And Wong’s construction business did some work on the Kellys' Inner Sunset house during renovations, which sound innocuous enough, except nothing seems innocuous in this affair anymore.

“Mr. Wong was a prominent construction contractor and community leader, and like countless others in this city, Mr. Kelly had known Mr. Wong for nearly three decades,” Getz told the Chron. “Mr. Kelly paid fair market value for this work — if anything, he may have been overcharged by Mr. Wong’s firm.”

Whoa, that shade almost sounds like the Kellys are turning against Wong. But Wong may have already turned on them, hence the FBI scrutiny of this house deal, and all of MLok Consulting's contracts with the SFPUC rendered since. The FBI is looking into sweetheart deals at City Hall, but as we see with the Kellys or Nuru and “Girlfriend 1,” some of these sweetheart deals involve actual sweethearts.

Related: Mayor London Breed Says Nuru Situation Is 'A Learning Experience' [SFist]

Image: (Left) SFPUC via Facebook, (Right) SFGSA.org

A new department would have one job — keeping our haggard sidewalks clean — under Supervisor Matt Haney’s proposal to break up the scandal-plagued Department of Public Works.

Not long after the Mohammed Nuru kickbacks, corruption, and lavish gifts scandal broke, we wondered if the perennial poop on the sidewalks problem might be connected to Nuru’s alleged corruption. The thinking was that the gigantic, no-oversight budget over which he had control was being used disproportionately to just placate the mayors he worked under (one of whom he slept with) to empower his hold on the Department of Public Works purse strings while the San Francisco “poop problem” remained a persistent national media obsession.

But with Nuru’s cronies now cooperating with feds and copping plea deals, there’s clearly a public appetite to shake up business as usual at the DPW. We informed you in February that District 5 supervisor Matt Haney wanted to break up the DPW and create a new Sanitation and Streets Department whose sole job would be street and sidewalk cleaning. Now the Chronicle reports that Haney is trying to put that proposal on the November ballot, and the tea leaves indicate he’s got a pretty clear path to doing so.

“I believe this should be done to clean up our streets and to address what has become an international embarrassment for San Francisco — streets covered in feces, trash and urine,” Haney told the Chronicle. The DPW would still exist, but as a smaller entity focused on engineering, design, and infrastructure.

This would of course cost more money, at a time when we’re back in deficits as far as the eye can see territory. An analysis from the city controller says that if passed, Haney’s plan “would have a significant impact on the cost of government, ranging from $4 million to $10 million annually beginning September 2021 depending on future implementation decisions.”

Current interim DPW director Alaric Degrafinried is against the move, unsurprising considering it would represent a significant loss of clout and budget for his position  “These types of estimates — very rarely do they wind up on the low end,” he said in an obvious understatement to the Chron. “We lowball the costs, and years later we realize we understaffed, so we have to build more and more.”

In response to the budget concerns, Haney has pushed the implementation of the change out to to July 2022, in hopes the economy and tax revenues would be in recovery mode by then.  

Haney’s proposal went before the Board of Supervisors Rules Committee today, a subcommittee obligation for new laws like this. But the measure has five co-sponsors, and therefore needs only one more vote to pass the full board. So it's likely to make it to the ballot, in a year when we’ll have fewer ballot measures just because there hasn’t been much petition-signing or signature gathering under shelter in place. But November’s election is something we’ve been waiting for awhile, so local turnout is likely to be at historic levels.

Related: City Attorney Is Investigating Private Companies That Allegedly 'Funneled' Money to DPW Holiday Parties  [SFist]

Image: @sfpublicworks via Twitter

The disgraced former DPW head allegedly tossed millions of taxpayer dollars around like candy, and benefited from loopholes with names like “BFF Gift Exemption” and “Donation Shakedown.”

The drip-drip of scandalous revelations in the FBI public corruption probe of former DPW head Mohammed Nuru has been slowed by the coronavirus pandemic, but this inappropriate gifts scandal will keep on giving. We know this because the City Controller’s office just released a report, the first of several, detailing reform recommendations based on policies which left long leashes for alleged gamers of the system like Nuru. We already know companies funneled money to DPH for lavish parties, that sweetheart deals were allegedly offered for SFO food court locations, and the owner of Lefty O’Doul’s paid for Mayor Breed’s Pride float, all of which may be connected in Nuru’s possibly crooked awarding of large city contracts. Today we learn of a surprising set of loopholes Nuru was able to exploit (with names like “BFF Gift Exemption” and “Donation Shakedown”) in a Mission Local report on how Nuru handed out $10.5 million in contracts with no oversight.

The incriminating figures can be seen in the screenshot above from the City Controller report. The Examiner adds that Nuru was able to throw around millions in your tax dollars via contracts that “were awarded through no discernable selection process and are at the greatest risk of fraud or abuse in the award process,” per the report. (You’ll notice another unaccounted $3.5 million at the bottom of that graphic, so who knows if/when that shoe will drop.)

And all of this was legal, because Nuru and DPW had no oversight commission, and the buck basically stopped with Nuru. “In August 2011 Mayor Edwin M. Lee designated Mr. Nuru as the director of Public Works to act on the Mayor’s behalf in the approval of various aspects of the contracting process,” the report explains, “including to award all public work, professional service, and construction contracts in excess of the threshold amount, which is currently set at $706,000.”

Mission Local’s reporting says two of above-noted “directly awarded” contracts went to the plea-deal copping permit expediter Walter Wong, himself a contractor, who worked as a consultant on the now pretty suspect looking 555 Fulton development financed by Chinese magnate Zhang Li. Federal investigators say that Zhang gave Nuru a tractor, a $2,000 bottle of wine, and all-expenses-paid trip to Chile with Girlfriend 1, now identified as subordinate Sandra Zuniga.

Mayor London Breed, who has her own unflattering connection with all this that goes well beyond a Pride float, told the Examiner “I am committed to doing the work to strengthen oversight and accountability in all our departments to prevent future wrongdoing and corruption.” To that end, Supervisor Matt Haney is introducing legislation to remove many of the gift-giving and palm-greasing loopholes which will be known going forward as “BFF Gift Exemption” and “Donation Shakedown.”

In other words, many of Nuru’s alleged improprieties may have fallen under the “not technically illegal, just shady” gray area. But keep in mind that Nuru had Ed Lee’s old job, and was hired for the job specifically by Lee, and clearly there was some familiarity with where legal gray areas could be found.  

Related: Federal Prosecutors Charge Former SF Building Inspection Commissioner With Bank Fraud [SFist]

Image: @MrCleanSF via Twitter

Photo: BernalHillRock/Instagram

It would take a November ballot proposal and a City Charter amendment to pass Supervisor Matt Haney’s newly proposed street cleaning department, but critics charge it would just litter the process with more red tape.

Monday’s resignation of Department of Public Works director Mohammed Nuru is unlikely to stop the drip-drip of juicy revelations in the still-unfolding public corruption and bribery scandal. And with Public Works now under the chill of a City Attorney investigation, as well as an FBI sting operation that already has god-knows-what other information, the department may not be kicking on all gears at the moment. Which could affect DPW’s everyday logistical operations, namely, the relative cleanliness (or lack thereof) of San Francisco’s streets.

As the supervisor for the District 6 neighborhoods of the Tenderloin, Civic Center, and SoMa, Matt Haney presumably gets an earful about the condition of his district’s streets whenever he makes eye contact with anyone. In order to improve the condition of streets and sidewalks citywide, the Examiner reports that Haney has proposed a Department of Street Cleaning and Sanitation, a new city department that would clean streets — and do nothing but clean streets.

“We have a huge issue with filthy streets,” Haney told the Examiner. “We should have a department that’s singularly focused on solving that problem.”

Public Works has a lot on its plate, as evidenced by the above video “The A-Z of Public Works” which mentions 26 separate domains for which DPW is responsible. (Sure, some of them, like "D for ‘dancing’" are whimsical, unofficial capacities). But Haney’s point is that the department may be too stretched with additional responsibilities like bridge maintenance, urban forestry, and maintenance of homeless navigation centers.

This largesse in jurisdictional responsibilities may have something to do with, ummm, a previous director’s ambition for personal control of potentially monetizable maintenance contracts? Haney tells the Examiner his proposed Department of Street Cleaning would represent a “restructuring of DPW and how we respond to street cleaning,” a move for which he could certainly take credit if the streets improve, or simply could add more bureaucracy, budget, and potential for executive-level malfeasance.

Haney is currently drafting the ballot measure which the Examiner says will be called the Clean City Act, and hopes to introduce it to the Board of Supervisors for approval and placement on the November 2020 ballot. Breaking up the DPW could quell suspicions that the previous director’s self-propelled PR machine was to blame for San Francisco's filth, though creating another new city department might just create different opportunity for a plucky bureaucrat to unleash another self-propelled PR machine.

Related: Nuru Defaulted to Loyalty As Feds Closed In, Alerting City Hall Friends [SFist]

Image:  Ciphers via Wikimedia Commons

San Francisco's embattled Department of Public Works director still has his $273,400 salary and $91,000 a year pension intact, but there is a process afoot for stripping him of both.

We informed you yesterday that Supervisor Matt Haney had called for the resignation of bombshell bribery suspect Mohammed Nuru, and that Nuru had been replaced on an interim basis by Alaric Degrafinried (the Chronicle has a profile on him, should you care). But Nuru is technically still on the job; he’s been placed on fully paid administrative leave, so he’ll still get his regular bi-monthly paycheck this Tuesday, and his nearly $275,000 salary is currently unaffected by all the "corruption, bribery kickbacks and side deals" of which the FBI accuses him. The Chronicle also has the interesting nugget that Nuru even might be able to keep his pension, which is currently pegged at $91,000 per year.

Even though an SFO airport director resigned Wednesday after being publicly connected to one of Nuru's alleged schemes ⁠— citing health reasons, and eliciting eyerolls ⁠— Nuru himself has not quit his post. The optics of him being on paid leave whilst out on a $2 million bail bond are terrible, prompting Supervisor Matt Haney to declare at a Thursday press conference covered by the Examiner, “For anyone who is in a situation like this, it seems clear that they should resign.”

Haney’s office sent out a press release earlier in the day saying that the supervisor “will be calling for the immediate firing of Director Nuru.”

But Haney had to tone that down after a stern rebuke from the San Francisco Municipal Executives Association (MEA), a sort of labor union for City Hall head honchos. Through their attorneys, the MEA sent Haney a letter saying, “If you do publicly call for Mr. Nuru to be fired, you risk committing official misconduct. The Charter expressly prohibits you from interfering with any appointment, administrative, or disciplinary matter involving city employees.”

The idea is that elected officials should not be meddling in City Hall hiring and firing.

That meddling will be done by the Human Resources department, and other city agency reviews, including the City Attorney’s office according to the Chronicle. Nuru also will have an interview with city administrator Naomi Kelly wherein he gets to make his case.

Nuru is charged with lying to the FBI after his original secret arrest for a slew of illegal schemes, including attempted bribery, contract fixing, and accepting illegal gifts from a billionaire Chinese developer, whom the Chronicle has identified as R&F Properties CEO Zhang Li.

All of this is why Haney called for an independent investigation of the matter at Thursday’s press conference — in addition to investigations of all city departments. Supervisor Dean Preston seconded the idea, saying, "We absolutely cannot rely on the executive branch of government in the City and County of San Francisco to investigate itself."

Golly, it’s almost as if people are already working this as an issue for the 2023 mayoral election! And well they could, as there are likely many more scandalous shoes to drop in this affair. The Examiner reported Tuesday that the FBI also raided the offices of permit expediter Walter Wong, and quoted a source saying Nuru and Wong were “buddy-buddy. They’re very good friends.”

Related: Development at Center of Nuru Case Was the Much-Delayed 555 Fulton In Hayes Valley [SFist]

Image: @MrCleanSF via Twitter

It’s not exactly "hostile architecture" if it’s just a four-by-eight-foot slab of plywood, but the Ingleside Path wall has rustled up a similar controversy to the now infamous anti-homeless boulders of Clinton Park.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock installed last month by wealthy neighbors, you’re surely aware of the anti-homeless boulders that have come and gone from a little Mission District street called Clinton Park. The class-warfare debate on neighbors’ struggles with unsheltered populations has also been ignited in Ingleside, as the Examiner reported last weekend that a roughly four-foot-wide pedestrian walkway right off Ocean Avenue was walled off and shuttered as neighbors complained of “needles in our front yard” and frequent “screaming, swearing, fighting” in the walkway. The slapdash wall has since been removed, but the debate continues among Ingleside residents on whether to barricade the tiny Ingleside Path.

An ABC 7 reporter’s tweets above provide a little timeline, and the wooden wall was apparently torn down Monday. This is not a tiny, backwoods neighborhood — the M Oceanview rolls right by this spot, and it’s a busy area of Ocean Avenue towered over by the recognizable creamsicle-colored El Rey Theater. The contained sidewalk itself is rather small and discreet, though, and according to KRON 4 it’s been a public walkway for more than 100 years.

More significantly, KRON 4 reports that “the head of the Department of Public Works signed at the director’s order allowing the lane to be sealed off at both ends by a temporarily locked gate.” In other words, a lockable gate is probably coming, but who knows which way public sentiment will turn.

SFist’s visit to the site this morning showed that yeah, people probably are crashing on the sidewalk. We didn’t see needles, but it’s certainly a place where you could leave your stuff and and have a reasonable expectation that it would still be there when you got back. But not everyone is on board with boarding up the sidewalk.

“I did not agree with the blockade at all. That was a very nuclear decision,” vice-chair of the Ocean Avenue Association Miles Escobedo told KGO. “Why board it up? That's a circumstance of fear. Which is almost worse. We should not be scared. We should be able to contact our local authorities.”

The back of the walkway facing Ingleside Terrace is now clear too, though KPIX reports that it was also barricaded “for a few days” and “with the blessings of the DPW.” KGO also added that neighbors met at Ingleside Library to discuss the situation last night, so it remains on open question if, when, and how the alley will be closed.

We tend to blame all of these urban problems on the homeless population, but that’s not entirely true. As the Examiner noted in their report, “Uber drivers consistently tried to drive into the too-small walkway and found themselves stuck.”

Related: Anti-Homeless Boulders Removed From Street By City, Might Be Replaced With Bigger Ones [SFist]

There's a parking miscalculation every San Franciscan with a vehicle eventually makes: leaving your car in a street cleaning zone during the day and hours street sweepers approach. But every thorn has its rose, and though getting a ticket for mistaking the second Friday for the third (or whatever) sucks, that bitterness is counteracted by the parking sweetness you get when you arrive on an empty street after the sweeper has passed. But what if the time constraints remain, and the freshly-cleaned streets bear signs saying it's still verboten to park for the next hour or so? Do you park?

As parking and traffic fines went up as of July, this risk seems riskier than ever. You can see the SFMTA's current full roster of fines here, in which it's noted that the ticket you'll get for a street cleaning violation rose from $71 to $73 last month. While logic and sense might tell you that there's no reason not to park on an already-cleaned street, many might argue that neither logic nor sense dictate many of the SFMTA's regulations.

But in this case, they do! So reports KQED, which was asked “If you see a street cleaner come through on a street cleaning day, can you park on the block before the end of the NO PARKING time frame that’s posted?”

According to SFMTA traffic enforcement officer Denise Golden, who spoke with KQED, yes, you may — but first, you need to be sure the full cycle of street sweeping has taken place.

The first vehicle in the street cleaning parade is the broom support truck. A worker picks up large items off the street - things like big pieces of wood or an abandoned chair — and chucks them into this truck. They’re looking for anything that cannot be vacuumed up by the street sweeper.

Next comes the street flusher, which is used mostly on commercial streets like Market and Mission. The flusher has jets underneath the truck that shoot water on the roadway, loosening grime and grit.

Third in line is the parking ticket officer, citing cars that haven’t moved.

Finally, the street sweeper comes along with big brushes and a large tube that vacuums up all the remaining trash on the street.

Of course, as with many things from the SFMTA, the practice differs from the official account. According to John Sheehan, whose official job title with the city is "truck driver" but who KQED says sweeps streets in Noe Valley, "it’s usually a two-step process: The parking enforcement person moves ahead of him and then he alone cleans the street."

But whatever the case, be it two, four, or six steps, the bottom line remains: If you see the huge truck with the big tube and brushes pass by, it's safe to park, even if signs in the area claim you're still within the forbidden hours. At least, that's what the SFMTA said that day. Have you had a different experience?

Previously: Report: San Franciscans Spend 83 Hours Per Year Looking For Parking

As you may know, San Francisco also performs a ‘homeless census’ every two years, called the "point in time count" to tally unhoused residents, and now we find via ABC 7 that the Department of Public Works has been doing a monthly count, also, of discarded hypodermic needles. It probably won't surprise you that needles are becoming more common, but the degree of increase is pretty staggering. The most recent ‘needle census’ data shows that DPW employees collected 10,000 needles from San Francisco streets in March of 2017, compared to just 3,000 one year earlier, in March 2016.

Even that may be underestimating the spike in needles thrown onto our streets and sidewalks. An AP report insists the number of needles has more than quadrupled (confusingly, that report was posted to ABC 7’s website the same day), saying that “more than 13,000 syringes” were collected in March 2017.

This has even prompted a “People Behaving Badly” segment from KRON 4’s Stanley Roberts, seen above. It’s a fairly mailed-in segment by Stanley standards, with no footage busting any people shooting up or throwing syringes around. But it drives home the point that needles aren’t just a Skid Row phenomenon, they’re also commonly found in San Francisco parks, libraries, and shopping or theater districts.

The exponential increase in needles — which can transmit Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, or HIV/AIDS — certainly justifies hysteria and People Behaving Badly segments. But the city is, in fact, putting a dent in the problem. KTVU points out that about 11,000 needles per month are collected at needle disposal boxes around the city. In other words, close to half of the discarded needles are ending up in those boxes and not landing on the streets. The problem would presumably be way worse without the needle boxes.

KTVU also got a heroin user to speak on the record, using his name, about how he handles his needles after shooting up. “I break the point off right away and stick it in the dirt,” Larry Heistand told KTVU. “Stomp it down and put it in a can. Flush it down the toilet."

Supervisor London Breed has been calling for indoor safe injection sites for hypodermic drug users, and these new needle numbers have her advocating for these again. "A safe injection site could, you know, enhance the protection of public safety," Breed told ABC 7. "Do we know if it will solve the problem or not? No. But I don't think we should be unwilling to try."

We have long considered syringes and poop on the streets to be uniquely San Francisco problems, but this spike in discarded needles appears to be a symptom of the larger, nationwide opioid and related heroin epidemics. A Vox report last month called out a Blue Cross Blue Shield study that found a nearly 500 percent increase in opioid abuse diagnoses since 2010, compared to just a 65 percent increase in the use of more effective, non-opioid medications like methadone.

“The rate of opioid use disorder diagnoses has grown by nearly eight times the rate of the most effective treatment,” writes Vox’s German Lopez. "That's a lot of people not getting the standard of care for what they’re diagnosed with.”

Can a connection be drawn between the overprescription of Oxycontin and the number of needles discarded on the streets? This is by no means a proven correlation, but it’s not unreasonable to wonder either. San Francisco has had a needle issue for decades. Maybe DPW is just better at noticing and counting them now, or maybe there are contributing societal factors fueling a genuine exponential needle increase.

DPW spokesperson Rachel Gordon told ABC 7 that when you see needles, “The thing that the public needs to do is contact 311. I cannot emphasize that enough."

For kicks, I did just that. The website sf311.org, which also exists as a mobile app, does allow you to submit complaints. There is not a specific category for reporting syringes, but I’m going to assume it falls under Street and Sidewalk Cleaning. The site prompts you to create an account (which is a bottleneck), though you can submit items anonymously without doing so. According to sf311, incidents of “Medical Waste” get responses within “12 to 24 hour(s).” The system may not be ideal, and that response time may not even be accurate. But it’s at least an indication that San Francisco recognizes the problem, and is actively looking for a fix.

Related: Jane Kim Calls For Needle Disposal Boxes In Public Parks

Sinkhole on 7th b/w Brannon and Townsend. #ABC7now pic.twitter.com/OirIZmxgVs

— Jenny Cain (@jennymcain) May 5, 2017

Morning rush hour traffic near the SoMa intersection of Seventh and Townsend Streets was more hellish than usual Friday, when a sinkhole opened its gaping maw and attempted to digest a construction truck.

According to a tweet from the San Francisco Fire Department, the sinkhole was reported at 6:20 this morning.

KRON 4 reports that driver Alejandro Curiel was inside the construction vehicle "when the sinkhole developed underneath him and swallowed his truck."

As you might have guessed from the photo, Curiel escaped unscathed. No one else has been injured, the SFFD says, and the hole is not considered a "public safety concern."

The Chron reports that the Curiel's truck was "loaded with bags of cement and a trailer attached to the rig carried two mini bulldozers." He had "just pulled up and was about to park when the pavement gave out and the truck shifted on its side, causing the sidewalk to break and give give way."

The sinkhole is around 5 feet by 14 feet, the SFFD reports, saying that San Francisco's Department of Public Works was on the scene.

"A tow truck, maybe two, will be needed to pull the truck out of the hole," KRON 4 reports. It's unclear when the area is expected to reopen, but officials who spoke to the Chron gave a ballpark estimate, saying it's "expected to take about 2 hours to remove the truck from the sinkhole."

Previously: Yet Another Sinkhole Hits An SF Street, Takes Out Bike Lane

Frustrated by how slowly the city is finding housing solutions for homeless people, the head of San Francisco's Public Works Department has reportedly authorized unofficial removals of encampments, and is mulling a DPW-run shelter in one of SF's vacant lots.

The Chron's Matier and Ross has the tale, writing that DPW chief Mohammed Nuru "has taken it upon himself to sidestep the city’s much-publicized system of coordinated agency response and is preemptively cleaning out the most dystopian tent encampments."

The cleanups, they report, needn't follow the rules sent in place by Proposition Q, which requires that 24-hour notice be given to encampments and that property storage and overnight shelter be offered to homeless campers before anyone is removed from them. That's because Nuru says "the sidewalk 'cleanups' were not technically removals," as they were spurred by complaints about trash in the area.

Coalition on Homelessness Executive Director Jennifer Friedenbach disagrees, saying “This was no ordinary cleanup where they asked people to move their tents for a couple of hours. It was definitely a removal.”

And so far, the cleanup effort has been an epic one, with "53,100 pounds of garbage and 3,295 used syringes" cleaned up in a single week from six encampments in SoMa and the Mission.

Nuru says that 15,000 pounds of garbage 700 needles, “and a lot of rats,” were found at another encampment near the Caltrain yard on Townsend. 13,500 more pounds of debris and 1,250 needles were cleared from an encampment on San Bruno Avenue between 16th and Division streets.

It was unbelievable,” Nuru tells the Chron. “No one should have to live like that — no one should work or walk by all that, either.”

None of the encampments had received any attention from the Department of Public Health, even though mounds of garbage were clearly visible at the locations. When asked why DPH hadn't intervened, department spokesperson Rachel Kagan didn't have much on an answer, instead saying “We are working together with the other city agencies to find the best way to deal with encampments, including clarifying of roles and responsibilities.”

Less concerned with "clarifying of roles and responsibilities," is Nuru. "His break with protocol," the Chron writes, "was brought on by numerous complaints from the public about encampments — and by the snail’s-pace opening of new navigation centers and shelters." In fact, "Nuru said a lack of shelter beds and space in navigation centers has him looking into whether Public Works should open its own shelter."

“I can’t have people sleeping on pallets over rats,” Nuru says, “Bathrooms, we are still exploring...if we had a vacant lot where people could stay, I think we would look into it.”

Related: Homeless Woman Addresses Letter To DPW, SFPD As They Clear Her Encampment

In a sweep of homeless encampments described by the Coalition on Homelessness, the Department of Public Works and the SFPD cleared 30 tents near San Bruno Avenue and Alameda Street on Sunday morning amid cold weather and rain. According to Kelley Cutler of the Coalition, "From what I witnessed, SFPD & DPW weren't being aggressive and were careful about not throwing people's belongings away unless given permission by the owner."

Nevertheless, sweeps like these that have Mission Local describing affairs as a "case of musical tents." The inhabitants of a 20-person tent encampment on Erie Street were moved to Division Street last month, Mission Local says, then moved off of Division Street. Now, at least some of those homeless campers have returned to Erie Street.

“Cops keep coming by," one woman told Mission Local. "They said they don’t care which way we move. Many moved one block over — It’s a big roundabout of nothing."

One woman at the San Bruno Avenue encampment, Shy Brown, penned an open letter to the SFPD and DPW officials performing the sweeps, which Brown gave the Coalition on Homelessness permission to share. That missive, which already caught the attention of the Examiner, asks authorities to simply look at Brown and her fellow homeless people with more humanity and empathy. Brown asks that they just treat her belongings, for example, however they might look, as property rather than garbage.

"To Whom it May Concern, On this date at approximately 5:30 am DPW and SFPD had us residents of Alameda and San Bruno, pack up our stuff and leave while it was pouring down rain. I understand that the homeless epidemic is out of control, but just because you don’t want to see us with our tents up and the whole nine, doesn’t mean we can’t be treated like human beings. Just like the residents of San Francisco, we too are human and have feelings as well. We got treated with such disrespect from the 2 entities (SFPD & DPW) that we are afraid to say anything to them in fear of our stuff getting taken. What you guys call junk or trash is not that to us. We hold dear to the things that matter most. So the reason for this letter is that we are asking you, our city officials, to please work with us. And to try and change your outlook upon us. Because I’m just one of the many who speak up when injustice is done to us for no reason whatsoever. The names on the following page are one’s who want to support me in asking you guys to stop the injustice towards the homeless. Like I said, we are human as well, not animals who need training. Thank you for listening and reading this letter. Sincerely yours, Shy Brown"

SFPD spokesperson Grace Gatpandan called the Sunday clearings routine Public Works cleanup efforts: The campers on Division Street could return if they wished to, she said. That's not, however, the impression at least some of the homeless people living there had gotten, and cleanups at encampments appear to be sporadic, often unexpected occurrences.

Prop Q, which enacted a formal ban on tents on sidewalks in San Francisco, requires that 24-hour notice be given to encampments and that property storage and overnight shelter be offered to homeless campers before anyone is removed from them.

In the case of the Division Street sweep effort, one encampment resident who gave her name to Mission Local as Cooper, she "didn’t see [the Homeless Outreach] team at all... Nowhere around. The cops came in and [Public Works] had the dump truck... Then they came by one more time before leaving for the day to make sure we knew we had to move.”

Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing representative Randy Quezada disputed that claim, saying an informal warning or "heads up" had been given to at least seven people at the encampment. Two of those seven sought assistance when it was offered.

Finally, Quezada drew a distinction between more formal "resolution" of encampments and routine street cleaning. “This type of engagement is not like encampment resolution team engagement,” Quezada said, clarifying that encampment resolution engagement proceeds over the course of weeks with written notices.

Related: Mayor Doubles Down On Enforcing Quality-Of-Life Citations

The naked likeness of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump surreptitiously installed yesterday in the Castro has found an unlikely champion: Anti-nudity Supervisor Scott Wiener. Wiener, who is known for his successful 2012 campaign to make public nudity illegal in San Francisco, is in talks with the Department of Public Works to reclaim the statue after it was removed just after dawn Friday by city officials.

"It does not belong here and there hasn't been a process of installing this statue," DPW director Mohammed Nuru told ABC 7 before his crew pulled down the illicit erection. There were also concerns, according to the Chronicle, that crowds gathering around the statue for photos Thursday were creating a traffic hazard.

But that's not the end of it for Wiener, and he's now advocating to get the veiny simulacrum back in front of the public.

"Naked Trump is gone," he tweeted this morning following the statue's removal. "Now let's get him back on display to remind the world that this guy is a shyster and a fraud."

Wiener, who is currently in a heated state senate race against fellow supervisor Jane Kim, held a press conference this morning to address the synthetic Donald's fate. His announced goal is to convince city officials to release the artwork to the owner of Lefty O'Doul's — who put out his own press release making his desire known to take custody of Nude Donald. The idea is to display the nude likeness inside the Union Square hofbrau so locals and tourists alike can continue taking selfies with it, maybe forever.

The statue, installed by anarchist art collective INDECLINE in five cities around the country, is titled "The Emperor Has No Balls" and plays off Donald Trump's documented obsession with his hand size — and whatever that correspondingly implies.

One person involved with INDECLINE spoke with the Chronicle about the group's process. “It was almost similar to planning a bank robbery,” said the unidentified spokesperson. “I was in New York, and we installed it in Union Square. Then it was just a matter of blending into the crowd and letting all hell break loose.”

It remains to be seen if Wiener will get his way, but, even if the statue is trashed, he'll always have the photos.

Previously: Naked Donald Trump Statue Appears In SF's Castro District, Multiple Other Cities [Semi-NSFW]
Photos: Scott Wiener And Other Locals Take (Semi-NSFW) Selfies With The Nude Trump Statue