San Francisco residents put boulders on sidewalk to ward off homeless

As San Francisco officials clamber to find a solution for the city’s escalating homelessness crisis, locals have taken some extreme measures to block homeless encampments on their streets.

About two weeks ago, residents of the city’s Clinton Park neighborhood placed two dozen giant boulders along the sidewalk to keep homeless people from setting up tents in the area.

David Smith-Tan, who lives in Clinton Park, told local news station KTVU that he and his neighbors “chipped in a few hundred dollars” to have the boulders delivered. The neighborhood, he said, is frequently occupied by drug users who “shoot up and stay overnight.”

Read more: San Francisco’s dirtiest street has an outdoor drug market, discarded heroin needles, and piles of poop on the sidewalk

San Francisco has nearly 10,000 homeless residents, a number that’s risen by 30% since 2017. Around 42% of these homeless people struggle with drug or alcohol abuse.

Ernesto Jerez, who also lives in Clinton Park, told KTVU that the boulders have already “helped” with the issue. The boulders each weigh hundreds of pounds, so the chances of homeless individuals being able to move them are slim.

Beck Diefenbach/Reuters

The Clinton Park residents’ decision to set up the boulders follows the lead of San Francisco’s city government, which placed boulders under a highway in 2017 to block homeless encampments there. At the time, city officials said it was a “humane” way to discourage people from camping out, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. But after that, homeless residents either found a new spot to pitch their tents, or placed sleeping bags in the empty spaces between the rocks.

A San Francisco Public Works department spokeswoman told the Chronicle that the city doesn’t plan to move the boulders in Clinton Park. She added that the department is even “looking at options to sanction the boulders.”

In previous years, various groups in San Francisco have tried to deter homeless residents in other ways. In 2015, the San Francisco Roman Catholic Archdiocese installed sprinklers outside a cathedral that sprayed homeless residents who tried to camp out in their doorways. In the 1990s, the city removed benches from a plaza near City Hall to prevent people from sleeping on them; other benches throughout the city feature rails and spikes to prevent homeless individuals from lying down.

On his recent visit to California, President Donald Trump accused homeless people of ruining San Francisco’s highways, streets, and building entrances. Many residents, he added, “moved to San Francisco because of the prestige of the city, and all of a sudden they have tents. Hundreds and hundreds of tents and people living at the entrance to their office building.”

On Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency informed the state of California that it was “failing to meet its obligations” under federal environmental laws, citing the “growing homelessness crisis” in LA and San Francisco as key contributors to the state’s pollution.