Clean Streets: People taking San Francisco’s trash into their own hands

It constantly blows my mind how dysfunctional SF is. Having lived in clean, safe, well run cities around the world, the amount of WTF generated by SF is unbelievable.

Its sad that 1) so many people just throw trash on the steet, 2) there is no law enforcement preventing this behavior, 3) the city isnt paying any people (in my area the prisoners do it from the jail) and then 4) that it has come down to the residents to come up with their own pool of money to pay for this... every week you read stories of the human feces on sidewalks, public urination, needles left on sidewalks, public drug use, all this is without law enforcement action to stop it. Its up to the leadership of elected officials to allocate money and make decisions to stop this type of behavior, but from most of what I have read about the subject it seems that the elected officials want to condone and even encourage this type of plague going on in san francisco. Its up to the voters to vote for the right people to make these changes, but I would never want to live like that or in that type of environment personally. I think thats why you see an exodus of families leaving san francisco. (I lived/worked there for a year)

In Taiwan the locals, usually the elderly, sweep and clean near their own houses or the parks where they congregate. Some do it as part of a neighborhood group, while others clean parks and areas near temples for religious reasons. Good way to build community.<p>On another note, let people read without pop-ups please.

I was a Patreon supporter of Clean Streets and was pleased with having cleaner streets in my neighborhood. Unfortunately, these guys just closed shop. Here is the email I received on Oct 23:<p>&gt; Alas, Clean Streets is closing up shop.<p>&gt; You may have noticed the falloff in times and quality the past couple weeks. [Redacted name] lost his main cleaner and has not been able to adequately replace him.

I don&#x27;t understand. I often hear about people making $200k, $300k a year in that city. I know that it&#x27;s not everyone, but I think there are lots of people like that. Why is this problem not solved by the market? That may make a good YCombinator project, go to San Francisco-based tech companies, ask them (or the people in them) to give you money to clean the streets. Is this because there is no cheap labour in San Francisco?

One of the things that causes littering is a lack of trash cans or a lack of non-filled trash cans. Not all littering (or throwing recycling in the trash) is done out of pure malice. If you make it easy for people to throw trash out, they generally will. If you make it hard to throw trash out, many will litter.<p>Stronger fines and other enforcement would help, but the first thing is to make sure that you actually have accurate places to throw stuff out (or have the culture where people bring stuff with them and throw out at home, like some non-American countries). This article mentions how the streets got really bad during the pandemic when the city stopped doing certain things.<p>SF, NYC, and other cities with trash problems could significantly solve this just by having more trash and recycling cans and by changing them more often. You&#x27;ll notice how much cleaner DC and its surrounding urban areas are than SF and NYC and that&#x27;s because they have a bigger commitment to making it easy to not litter and they do more cleaning.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;missionlocal.org&#x2F;2021&#x2F;03&#x2F;newsoms-experiment-to-get-rid-of-public-trash-bins-in-san-francisco-seems-to-have-failed&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;missionlocal.org&#x2F;2021&#x2F;03&#x2F;newsoms-experiment-to-get-r...</a><p>Linked in the article, too. While it&#x27;s not the only source of the problem, it&#x27;s still a big reason people get tired of looking around for a can in SF and just toss their litter.

why does the local council not employ people to clean the streets?

This isn&#x27;t new, in SOMA and other neighborhoods they have had different associations you pay into for years for someone to go around and clean the sidewalks and ask some of the homeless people to move at 7-9am.

I advice HN readers to go, and to participate.<p>Besides actually cleaning the streets, it brings very big spotlight to the problem.<p>And in some rare cases, if activity like this may go viral, some people in charge of public sanitation might remember of the shame enough to do their work.

Same James Thompson as astronaut.io[*], by the way. Also designed much of the UX in Palantir&#x27;s products.<p>[*] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;astronaut.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;astronaut.io&#x2F;</a>

Great, can they get a discount for the time they’re giving out if the taxes that supposedly go to things like this? Nah

Hear me out: trash cleaning robots…

I just don&#x27;t understand why throwing trash on the ground is tolerated. There is virtually no argument for why someone should need or be allowed to throw or leave their trash on the ground.<p>Most of us manage to get clothes on before we leave the house each day, and that&#x27;s a lot more complicated than just putting trash into a bin (or god forbid, carrying it until you reach a destination which has a trash bin). So there is no excuse for littering.<p>I would impose very strict penalties for littering - namely forcing the one who is caught littering to spend two hours every day for a week, or even a month, walking the streets (and beaches or riverbanks or parks) and collecting trash.<p>If an alternative punishment must be provided, they could instead sit on the spot where they littered for a day, holding a sign which says &quot;I&#x27;m a poorly trained human, and I throw my trash on the ground.&quot;