San Francisco Mayor London Breed, a Democrat who just got sworn in as San Francisco’s mayor on Wednesday, said in an interview Friday that the city’s streets are flooded with homeless excrement.
“There is more feces on the sidewalks than I’ve ever seen growing up here,” Breed told KNTV. “That is a huge problem, and we are not just talking about from dogs — we’re talking about from humans.”
Breed added that homeless advocacy groups which receive city government funds should teach the homeless “to clean up after themselves.”
NBC Bay Area journalists released a report in February that surveyed 153 blocks in downtown San Francisco, finding more than 300 piles of fecal matter and 100 drug needles on the streets in that area.
The shocking report brought so much attention to the filth on the city streets that one person created a website displaying an interactive poop map to shed light on homelessness in San Francisco.
The newly-elected Democrat mayor also blamed San Francisco’s high cost of living for the city’s homeless problem. In this year alone, San Francisco plans to spend nearly $280 million on housing for 7,500 homeless people within the city limits.
“About 70 percent of the people estimated to be homeless in San Francisco were actually housed in San Francisco before they became homeless,” she said. “We have to make sure people who live here, [and] sadly, people who are homeless here, that they are also held accountable for taking care of our streets.”
Even though Breed vowed to hold homeless advocacy groups accountable, she did not complain about the city’s spending habits on the problem and said Friday she has no plans to implement stricter penalties for offenders who defecate on the streets.
“I don’t think that the city is poorly spending what it already has,” Breed said. “I see the people … out there doing what they can to keep the community clean, almost every day, and then right after they leave, maybe an hour or two later, the place is filled with trash again.”