Property crime and overdoses in San Francisco have declined since 2025. So did traffic fatalities in 2025 compared to 2024. Meanwhile, on the sidewalks of the city’s Tenderloin District, another statistic is on the rise. Throughout fiscal year 2026, Street & Sidewalk Maintenance has fielded a record-high volume of reports concerning feces: 81%, versus 72% in 2025, and 53% in 2024. The Tenderloin has the highest concentration of kids living in SF. And yet people and their pets insist on treating this neighborhood like a toilet. What will it take to get more sanitary sidewalks in San Francisco's most densely populated district?
A crappy situation
It isn’t just the Tenderloin’s problem. Nob Hill, immediately north of the Tenderloin, also reported an increase in 311 complaints regarding feces on sidewalks versus 2025. Bayview and South of Market however saw fewer reports, and the Mission saw no significant change. Then again, not all neighborhoods in San Francisco were surveyed. Budgetary shortfalls limited the scope of the report. The City Controller's office had to curtail its operations from 2,600 routes last year to 368 routes in 2026. Surveyors from the Controller's office also chose to focus on busier, commercial corridors with historically worse evaluations.
As if crappy sidewalks weren’t bad enough, people are living and sleeping on top of them. Some are fortunate enough to possess a tent. Many cobble together makeshift camping structures to protect themselves from the elements. Others sleep on discarded mattresses or foam mattress toppers, sheets of cardboard, or bare pavement. The day after the City Controller published their findings, the SF Standard reported that temporary shelters become more numerous. In May, that number hovered around 115. By September, it had ballooned to 148—up by 29%.
South of Market, with its many alleyways and freeway underpasses, saw a pronounced increase in encampments. The City Control office counted at least four in May; by September, thirteen. As the rainy season arrives, that figure will likely climb. Conditions continue to deteriorate despite a Rapid Enforcement, Support, Evaluation and Triage (RESET) Center opening on 6th Street in May.
"We have more people coming into the [homelessness] system that we are able to measure and assess than we have exiting the system in a way that we can measure and assess.” That’s what Executive Director of the Department of Homelessness Mike Levine told the SF Standard in late September. Meanwhile, on the opposite side of this social canyon, an A.I. tech boom is raking in untold profits. Average housing costs in San Francisco have consequently jumped by nearly 30% over last year. Worse still, as of October 2026, eviction notices are up 44%.
Where is our mayor?
Mayor Daniel Lurie has apparently vowed to take action. The mayor characterized conditions in the Tenderloin and SoMa as “a huge concern,” per the Standard. He has discussed at length his administration’s efforts to help San Francisco’s homeless people off the streets. Lurie expanded the Street Ambassador program, provided a handful more treatment beds, and directed SFPD to enforce stricter anti-drug measures. With that in mind, Mayor Lurie also admits, “I know we have more work to do, and we’ll keep at it.”
When Lurie’s critics cite his shortcomings, they point to the Mission District, specifically the 16th and 24th Street BART stations. Crackdowns on illegal narcotics and overgrown encampments in the Tenderloin, Mission and South of Market neighborhoods created a cycle. Police dissolve one encampment and it appears in another district; they sweep that district and it reassembles in yet another. They aren’t actually addressing the crisis. Lurie and his overpaid police are shuffling the drugs, tents, and waste in a circle.
Lurie also said he’d tackle the City's affordable housing crisis, even naming the A.I. boom that so worsened it. Curiously, the mayor also vocally opposed the Affordable Housing Guarantee Act, a tax measure that would fund affordable housing. As we see Daniel Lurie’s inefficacies play out, a metaphor of waste emerges from the shit-stained streets. It feels—and smells—like the mayor is wasting time, votes, and resources.
In fairness, San Francisco’s infamous homelessness crisis does not exist in a vacuum. It is not a result of “Democrat policies” or the tired Fox News “doom-loop” narrative. The city’s visibility has a distorting, magnifying effect. Realistically, it’s hard to say any city has fully recovered from the civic-stripping policies of the Reagan Era. Federal funding cuts and wage stagnation in the years since has fixed those consequences firmly in place. And yet, whether we like it or not, fixing this will require more compassion, and compensation, than we’re used to.
