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   From: lets-poop-together@abc.com   
      
   It happened again. Last week, Forbes published a piece under the   
   headline “Mapping San Francisco’s Human Waste Challenge,”   
   allegedly pinpointing the locations of over 132,000 cases of   
   human poop on the city’s public sidewalks since 2011.   
      
   Adam Andrzejewski, onetime Republican candidate for governor of   
   Illinois, penned the op-ed for Forbes. His nonprofit Open the   
   Books (which pledges to “capture and post every dime taxed and   
   spent at every level of government across America”) compiled the   
   map using SF Department of Public Works (DPW) reports.   
      
   Andrzejewski isn’t the first to chronicle what happens when San   
   Francisco’s number one public problem turns out to be number two.   
      
   In 2014, software engineer Jennifer Wong created the site Human   
   Wasteland to record and map feces-related 311 complaints. Wong   
   says that its intent is to “bring attention to the issue of   
   homelessness.”   
      
   In late 2018, Realty Hop did much the same, expelling maps for   
   San Francisco, Chicago, and New York City, and revealing that SF   
   had more than ten times the number of crapshoots as NYC and   
   nearly 21 times as many as Chicago in 2017.   
      
   San Jose Mercury News noted in 2018 that the maps have taken on   
   a political context, with right-wing commentators sometimes   
   citing them as a way to criticize San Francisco’s homeless   
   policies.   
      
   According to Andrzejewski, “Since 2011, there have been at least   
   118,352 reported instances of human fecal matter on city   
   streets. [...] Last year, the number of reports spiked to an all-   
   time high at 28,084.”   
      
   Nobody doubts that San Francisco’s streets are getting dirtier.   
   Last year, then-Mayor Mark Farrell directed an extra $12.8   
   million toward street cleaning in response to public complaints,   
   including a five-person “poop patrol” specifically aimed at   
   feces-related complaints.   
      
   However, alleged human poop maps have a problem, which may be   
   posed in the form of a disgusting conundrum: How do you   
   distinguish human poop on a city sidewalk from, say, dog poop?   
      
   The answer, according to DPW spokesperson Rachel Gordon, is you   
   don’t.   
      
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   “We do not differentiate between the origins of the waste,”   
   Gordon told Curbed SF via email. “We treat all as a priority for   
   cleaning.”   
      
   Gordon adds, “We do believe that dogs are responsible for many   
   of the incidents” and that DPW is launching a new public program   
   dubbed “Doo the Right Thing” to encourage people to clean up   
   after their dogs.   
      
   Sources like the SF Controller’s office’s Street and Sidewalk   
   Maintenance Standards report chronicle thousands of feces   
   complaints each year, but never distinguish the specific nature   
   of the deposits.   
      
   San Francisco Animal Care and Control estimated that San   
   Francisco was home to as many as 150,000 dogs in 2016.   
      
   Andrzejewski tells Curbed SF that, despite Gordon’s comments,   
   the data used for the latest map is very particular about the   
   nature of the incidents.   
      
   “The city specifically tagged the cases as ‘human waste’ in the   
   database after 311 call reporting. It’s the city disclosure that   
   we mapped. We did not manipulate the data,” says Andrzejewski.   
      
   However, in response to this Gordon told Curbed SF once again   
   that “311 classifies it as human or animal waste” when a call   
   comes in.   
      
   In practical terms this is not a particularly important   
   distinction: Regardless of where it all came from, residents   
   want it cleaned up; an influx of complaints about street waste   
   is not made any less dire by splitting hairs about its source.   
      
   Nor should anyone lose sight of the fact that, by the city's   
   latest count, SF had 7.499 residents on the streets in 2017 (new   
   count due later this year), and far too few of them have ready   
   access to bathroom facilities.   
      
   Nevertheless, with the politics of homelessness being what they   
   are, it seems consequential if alleged human poop maps are   
   inflating SF’s manmade messes, and that political commentators   
   will no doubt make much of the extra margin.   
      
   https://sf.curbed.com/2019/4/23/18511865/sf-poop-human-waste-map-   
   forbes-dpw-dog   
           
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)