Jane Kim Announces “San Francisco Loves Clean Streets” Initiative to Combat the Imminent Public Health Crisis on Our Streets

San Francisco mayoral candidate Jane Kim announced her plan to address the rising public health crisis caused by the deteriorating cleanliness of San Francisco’s streets – San Francisco Loves Clean Streets.

“As the Supervisor for District 6, I am very aware of this growing problem and I’ve pushed hard for more resources to help clean up our streets. As your Mayor, I will make cleaning up our streets a top priority for San Francisco,” said Kim. “Through increased coordination and management of city resources, we can expand our capacity to clean our streets and address one of the gravest public health issues facing our city.”

Data compiled by the city indicates that over the last three years, there has been an acute upturn in reports of trash, human waste, needles, glass and other materials in the city’s streets. This trend has the potential to become a public health crisis. Recently, San Diego combatted a severe outbreak of Hepatitis A – which claimed the lives of twenty people and infected 578 others. Kim understands this is an urgent matter for San Francisco and has worked to provide emergency funding to clean streets this year. Her San Francisco Loves Clean Streets plan will help expand cleaning efforts and work towards preventing waste from being disposed of on our streets in the first place. Read more about the initiative below.

“As a business owner, I can tell you that first impressions are everything. When people see trash outside a store or restaurant, it makes them cringe and it hurts business,” said Adam Mesnick, owner of Deli Board. “I know Jane Kim and I know that she fully understands what this crisis means to our city and business owners like me. Jane Kim is my choice because she’ll take on this big challenge and win – like she’s done so many times for San Franciscans.”

Supervisor Jane Kim is currently pushing to increase funding for street cleaning by $2.5 million over the next four months to expand the city’s capacity to clean and maintain San Francisco streets.

As our Mayor, she will take three immediate steps to address this problem:

Partner with non-profit groups and Community Benefit Districts to greatly expand deployment of neighborhood streets teams which employ homeless individuals to help clean the streets while providing them with job training skills and income.

Double the number of “Pit Stops” in high problem areas to reduce public urination and defecation and cut the risk of disease and pilot programs to encourage business owners to make their restrooms available to the public.

Appoint a Clean Streets Director to align actions amongst all departments responsible for public upkeep and public health. This special projects head will report directly to the Mayor to provide maximum accountability and responsiveness in City Hall.

As our Mayor, Kim will continue to focus on fixing this grave public health, environmental and safety matter.