Activists say San Francisco trying to wash away the homeless (street-cleaning program)
Activists say San Francisco trying to wash away the homeless
Pilot street-cleaning program downtown exacerbates wider Bay Area conflict over living space amid second tech boom
SAN FRANCISCO — The crack-cocaine users who sleep across the street from Victoria — or "bubble boys," as she has nicknamed them, after a slang term for drug use — screamed when Department of Public Works employees sprayed them with high-powered hoses a few weeks ago, she says.
It was about 4:30 a.m. in the Mid-Market area of downtown San Francisco, a few hours before the daily arrival of tech industry employees, whose firms recently moved into the neighborhood. DPW workers gave the sleeping young men four warnings and then started spraying, said Victoria, 52, who only offered her first name out of a mistrust of police common among San Francisco’s homeless people.
Victoria described herself as a "polite," obliging homeless woman who picks up and leaves when asked by the authorities. She said the young men were given fair warning by the cleanup crew. But the sight of them being hosed was disturbing. "They were screaming," she said.
Three years ago, San Francisco’s city government backed a program to bring Silicon Valley tech into the heart of the city around the Tenderloin, traditionally home to the city’s have-lesses. That triggered what San Franciscans call the "second tech boom," which attracted a stream of moneyed young professionals, whom many critics have blamed for driving up the cost of living in the city and for pushing many lower-income people out of their apartments.
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/2/18/san-francisco-tensionbetweenhomelessandsecondtechboomers.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
They tend to get vandalized, used for shooting up or for quick sex by prostitutes/johns, and for sleeping in. 
Most of the people who are homeless in this area do not solely lack a living space but are suffering from a primarily issue involving drug/booze addiction and/or mental illness.
That area has long been a very unsanitary bit of Market -- full on urine & shit soaked sidewalks, mostly from the drunks/drug users and mentally ill -- sometimes homeless, sometimes living in nearby SROs -- that frequent that area. This type of cleaning has gone on in the past and needs to continue. Badly. Several of my co-workers tale care of landscaping along the Market Street area and they have to deal with folks passed out in the plant beds, human feces, used needles -- it is not pretty.
What may be new is the aggression with which it is done. Now that little Newsomville is up and running on Market, the Tuppies are pissed off and very vocally complaining about their new neighbors. They would just as soon have them all "disappeared" from the City -- typical little shits with no thought whatsoever about anyone but themselves.
There are many issues to deal with here, including affordable housing for those who need it, mental health services for those who need it, addiction services for those who need -- the City has worked at these for years, some efforts more successful than others. What we also have in that area is a subgroup of folks who do not wish to (or aren't in a position to) choose to engage in the programs offered by the City or advocacy groups. The City has never come up with a good working solution for this group of people -- and those people and the City suffer for it.
On edit: I wanted to expand a little on some of the folks I am talking about. There are folks whose life possessions are kept in grocery carts -- I don't know of a public or private shelter who will let someone in with a carts -- so those folks prefer to remain on the streets with their carts. There are others who do not like the rules about booze and drugs in the shelter systems. Others who are so mentally incapacitated -- but do not present a threat to themselves or others -- they are not thinking clearly enough to maintain a life off the streets. There are no answers for these folks.