Street and Sidewalk Standards Annual Report Fiscal Year 2024

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Key Findings

The following report details results from Street and Sidewalk Maintenance Standards, which are objective evaluations of the cleanliness and condition of San Francisco’s streets and sidewalks. The City Charter requires the Controller’s Office (CON) to develop and evaluate these maintenance standards and report out on the City’s condition under the standards. The current standards were developed by CON in 2018 with input from the San Francisco Department of Public Works (Public Works), and evaluate litter, dumping, graffiti, feces, as well as other health hazards and sidewalk issues. 

This report covers the results of over 2,600 in-person evaluations over twelve months of data collection between July 2023 and June 2024, as well as comparing results to those in prior years. The report begins with a discussion of key findings from high-salience cleanliness issues, then compares findings in neighborhoods across the city. This is followed with additional detailed analysis of the standards. The last section of the report compares results from 311 service requests to CON’s evaluations of the Street and Sidewalk Maintenance Standards. 

The table below shows the main results of evaluations of the standards and the following section provides additional analysis. For more detailed information on the Maintenance Standards and data collection see the program Reference Manual and Appendices. For citywide and neighborhood dashboards visit the Street and Sidewalk Maintenance Standards dashboards. 

Sidewalk litter citywide decreased slightly from the prior year

Sidewalk litter decreased slightly citywide between January-June 2023 and July 2023-June 2024, but levels increased some in the last six months of that period. On the five-point scale used to measure litter, average sidewalk litter levels remain between a “few traces of litter” (Litter level = 2) to “More than a few traces” (Litter level = 3). The visual below shows this stability over time. 

Most evaluated sidewalk segments have some litter. It’s rarer to see a sidewalk either completely free of litter or with significant accumulation. This trend holds true over time and across neighborhoods. 

Street litter followed the same pattern as sidewalk litter 

The standards define litter on streets in the same format as sidewalk litter. Street litter trends are similar to those of sidewalk litter. Street litter levels are slightly lower on average which makes sense given pedestrians spend more time on sidewalks, and street litter is likely either dropped out of vehicles or blown in from other areas. Between July 2023-June 2024, street litter averaged 2.40, down from 2.61 in the prior period. 

Dumping did not change significantly citywide

The standards define dumping as the number of items larger than litter present on an evaluated route. Citywide, dumping has remained relatively stable over the data collection period, with a decrease between January-December 2022 and January-June 2023. Between July 2023-June 2024, 27 percent of routes had at least one dumped item, mostly unchanged from levels between January-June 2023 (29 percent).

Graffiti fluctuated within periods but is stable over time

Graffiti includes text, symbols, and images marked on buildings, sidewalks, street pavement, trees, and other areas visible to the public. The likelihood of seeing some graffiti on a city street or sidewalk has remained high. Between July 2023-June 2024, 86 percent of evaluated routes had graffiti, with an observed average of 18 instances of graffiti on evaluated routes across the city. The average was the same between January-June 2023, slightly down from 20 between January-December 2022.  

Feces levels increased from January-June 2023 to July 2023-June 2024

The standards count instances of feces on an evaluated route and reported measures include both the percent of routes with at least one instance of feces, and feces levels—the average count of instances of feces on a route. 

Feces levels remained high between July 2023-June 2024; 30 percent of routes evaluated had feces present. Feces decreased from January-December 2022 to January-June 2023, but average observed instances increased sharply between July 2023-December 2023. Feces levels varied significantly between July 2023-June 2024, but the citywide average over that period remained higher than in prior periods. This was true both for the percent of routes with at least one instance of feces and for average feces levels.

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Neighborhood Findings

The following section details major trends across neighborhoods between July 2023-June 2024 and looks back at any changes over time. During this period of data collection, the number of evaluations increased and the sampling method changed to improve reliability of reporting at the neighborhood level (see Appendix 2 for more detail). For more detailed neighborhood maps visit the Street and Sidewalk Maintenance Standards dashboards.  

Neighborhood trends between July 2023-June 2024

Between July 2023-June 2024 West of Twin Peaks and Noe Valley/Glen Park/Twin Peaks generally showed the least cleanliness issues while the Mission and the Tenderloin showed the most.

Neighborhoods in the south of the city and downtown had the most litter between July 2023-June 2024.

• The Tenderloin, the Mission, and Bayview Hunters Point had the highest street and sidewalk litter levels compared to other neighborhoods between July 2023-June 2024. These were the only three neighborhoods to reach an average sidewalk litter rating of “More than a few traces” (Litter level = 3).
• West of Twin Peaks and Noe Valley/Glen Park/Twin Peaks had the lowest amounts of street litter between July 2023-June 2024 (2.0 rating) and the lowest amounts of sidewalk litter (2.1 rating) in the city, followed closely by the Castro/Upper Market and Chinatown (2.2 rating). 

Neighborhoods with the most street and sidewalk litter generally had the most cleanliness issues in other categories.

• South of Market had the highest average feces count per route at 2.18 instances of feces per route, followed closely by the Tenderloin at 1.91 instances of graffiti per route. Chinatown had the lowest percentage of routes with feces at 15 percent of routes containing feces, followed closely by Noe Valley/Glen Park/Twin Peaks and West of Twin Peaks at 16 percent and 17 percent respectively.
• The Mission had the highest percentage of dumping present on evaluated routes, with 56 percent of evaluated routes containing at least one large, dumped item. West of Twin Peaks had the lowest percentage of dumping present on evaluated routes at eight percent.
• The Mission and the Tenderloin had the highest average graffiti count at 79 and 71 instances of graffiti per route, respectively. South of Market had the third highest average graffiti count at 59 instances of graffiti per route. West of Twin Peaks had the lowest average graffiti count at three instances of graffiti per route.

Neighborhood Trends Over Time

Neighborhood-level trends generally match citywide trends in most issue areas.

• The percent of evaluated routes with at least one instance of feces increased significantly in some neighborhoods, increasing by 30 percentage points or more from January 2023-June 2023 to July 2023-June 2024 in South of Market, the Castro/Upper Market, Portola/Visitacion Valley, and Bayview Hunters Point neighborhoods. Note that South of Market had a smaller number of evaluations in the first two periods (18 routes evaluated).
• Maintenance standards define sidewalk clearance obstructions where the sidewalk does not have a passable space of at least four feet wide and eight feet tall. Evaluations capture any time there is at least one obstructed area on a route. Sidewalk clearance issues decreased in every neighborhood by an average of 30 percentage points from January 2023-June 2023 to July 2023-June 2024. Previously, sidewalk clearance issues increased in every neighborhood by an average of 21 percentage points from January-December 2022) to January 2023-June 2023. In most neighborhoods, sidewalk clearance issues were at their lowest between July 2023-June 2024 compared to both previous periods.

• The percent of evaluated routes containing broken glass decreased in most neighborhoods, decreasing by 30 percentage points or more from January 2023-June 2023 to July 2023-June 2024 in the Castro/Upper Market, Hayes Valley/Haight Ashbury, and the Marina neighborhoods. 

Dumping and graffiti trends varied the most from neighborhood to neighborhood.

• Dumping remained stable in most neighborhoods but several neighborhoods saw more variation compared to previous periods. The Oceanview/Merced/Ingleside & Lakeshore area had the highest increase in percentage of evaluated routes containing dumping, from eight percent between January-June 2023 to 31 percent between July 2023-June 2024. Castro/Upper Market had the highest decrease in percentage of evaluated routes containing dumping, from 47 percent between January-June 2023 to 27 percent between July 2023-June 2024.

Percent of routes with dumping present, neighborhoods with over 10 percentage points change in last period

• Graffiti increased in half of neighborhoods and decreased in the other half. The most significant decreases in graffiti counts occurred in the Mission and the Tenderloin. The most significant increases in graffiti counts occurred in South of Market and the Outer Mission. Please note that the Tenderloin had a smaller number of evaluations in the first two periods (10 routes evaluated). 

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Additional Findings

The following section contains more detailed findings on standards, including those addressed in the Key Findings section and on some additional standards like sidewalk clearance, broken glass, pavement condition, and other health hazards. 

In some places there is context added from an additional small-scale study performed in 2024. The purpose and details of the study are below, and relevant findings are added in yellow boxes throughout this section.

Maintenance of Cleanliness Study 

From January-June 2024, the Controller’s Office collaborated with Public Works to conduct the Maintenance of Cleanliness Study, an exploratory analysis of one of its street and sidewalk cleaning programs, CleanCorridorsSF, which focuses on deep, comprehensive cleaning of busy commercial corridors. This analysis focused on how long streets and sidewalks stay clean after cleaning, a resource concern for the department. The purpose of the study was to provide Public Works with focused data and analysis that could be useful for operations and internal decision-making, not a program evaluation. 

Key analysis questions included:

• Do deep cleaning services impact the cleanliness of included streets and sidewalks in the short term? 
• How long do improvements in cleanliness last?

To address these questions, the evaluation team analyzed data collected from five CleanCorridorsSF locations in different neighborhoods. The study collected data the day before cleaning, a few hours after cleaning, the day after cleaning, and a week after cleaning in the following locations:

• Columbus from Washington to Lombard in North Beach
• 24th from Valencia to Potrero in the Mission
• Haight from Divisadero to Laguna in Haight Ashbury
• 16th from Noe to Guerrero and Church and Sanchez from Market to 17th in Upper Market
• Mission from Geneva to Sickles in Excelsior 

We include initial findings from the study in yellow boxes throughout this section of the report where they provide helpful context to the main evaluation results. 

Maintenance of Cleanliness Study Litter Findings

Findings from this small study may attest to the difficulty in decreasing litter levels on the City’s streets and sidewalks.

Even after comprehensive cleaning efforts in distinct neighborhoods, the results were mixed: 

• Sidewalk litter decreased in most corridors following the cleaning, except for Haight Street.
• Sidewalk litter did not return to the initial levels, even a week later, in the Mission St and 16th/Church/Sanchez corridors.
• Street litter bounced back to the initial rating just the day after cleaning in the Columbus Ave corridor.
• Street litter also returned to the initial rating a week after cleaning in the 24th St corridor. 

Additional Litter Findings

Over half of evaluated routes between July 2023-June 2024 had only “a few traces” of litter. 

Because we measure litter on routes on a five-point scale, providing only average levels doesn’t show the full range of resident experience. 

Sidewalks with either very significant litter or zero litter might be very high salience for a resident but they are rare across the city. The percent of sidewalks with accumulated litter remained the same in the two most recent periods of data collection. Decreases in routes with more than a few traces of litter and increases in the level just below drove improvements in litter between July 2023-June 2024. As shown in the picture above, sidewalks rated between a two and a three might look something like this, with more than a few traces of litter, but no accumulation.

The graphic below shows the distribution of sidewalk litter and how it changed over the three data collection periods in 2022 and 2024.

Graffiti

Graffiti levels on all property remained stable citywide.

In general, the City is responsible for removing graffiti from City property.  Residents, business owners or building owners are responsible for graffiti on their properties, while other entities (such as BART or PG&E) are responsible for maintaining their properties. The standards separate graffiti on these three locations into separate measures, as well as capturing total graffiti across all property types.

Average instances of graffiti observed on City property remained the same between July 2023-June 2024 after decreasing slightly between January-December 2022 and January-June 2023. Graffiti on the other two types of property remained the same across all three periods of evaluations. 

Maintenance of Cleanliness Study Graffiti Findings

• Graffiti on city-owned property decreased across all corridors evaluated (18 percent – 49 percent decrease).
• In three of five corridors evaluated, graffiti did not return to pre-cleaning counts even a week later.
• Graffiti on private property was largely unaffected by the CleanCorridors cleanings, even though most of the corridors cleaned are eligible for Public Works’ Graffiti Abatement Opt-in Program.
• Decreases in private graffiti in the day/week following the clean corridors cleanings may be attributed to other cleaning efforts, such as Community Benefit District cleaning. 

The standards also define the presence of graffiti containing offensive language on a route. The proportion of routes with offensive graffiti was very low in the first two periods of data collection but spiked over the last year. 

Dumping

Very large dumped items or grouped trash bags are rarely observed.

Because dumping is a major citywide and neighborhood concern and requires considerable resources both by the City and by Recology to remove, the standards were modified to capture more nuanced information. Removing larger items sometimes requires special equipment and teams from Public Works. To see how common it was for larger items to be dumped, the Controller’s Office included a question about the size of dumped items. It was rare for items larger than eight feet in diameter to be found on the street or sidewalk. Larger items appeared on about one percent of evaluated routes. 

To better distinguish between trash bags that may have been intended for scheduled pick-ups and cleaning efforts and illegal dumping, we added a question to identify grouped trash bags. Evaluators observed these grouped bags on less than one percent of routes. 

Maintenance of Cleanliness Study Dumping Findings

• In corridors with significant dumping (Columbus Avenue and Haight Street), large, abandoned items decreased after cleaning.
• On Haight Street, it took a week for large, abandoned item counts to return to pre-cleaning numbers.
• On Columbus Avenue, large, abandoned items did not return to pre-cleaning counts even a week later.

Sidewalk Clearance

Sidewalk clearance issues increased over the first two periods of data collection and dropped rapidly and remained stable between July 2023-June 2024. 

The standards define sidewalk clearance obstructions when the sidewalk is blocked either by temporary objects like a fallen tree branch or an improperly parked scooter or by permanent objects such as utility boxes. Sidewalk clearance is obstructed if it is reduced to less than four feet wide and eight feet tall at any point for any reason. Obstructions to the sidewalk can impede safe passage for pedestrians and people with disabilities. 

Sidewalk clearance obstructions increased steadily over the 18 months between January 2022 and June 2023 before dropping sharply in the last period. The percent of routes with sidewalk clearance issues dropped by over 30 percentage points between January-June 2023 and July 2023-June 2024. Between July 2023-June 2024, 16 percent of sidewalks were obstructed. 

These changes do not appear to be caused by seasonality. Since sidewalk clearance issues may be caused by items like downed branches or trees, we might expect clearance issues to be cyclical over a year, but we saw a steady increase for a year and a half and then a sharp drop. We did observe the highest rate of clearance issues during the winter and spring of 2023, which were marked by a series of severe winter storms with heavy rainfall and strong winds. Over that period, 21 percent of issues were identified as some type of tree, shrub, or other greenery, more than twice as high as during other times. 

Top reasons for sidewalk clearance obstructions over time

Construction-related obstructions have been the most common reasons for sidewalk clearance issues across time periods. From January 2022 to June 2023, construction obstructions increased by 23 percentage points-rising from 21 percent of obstruction issues in January-December 2022 to 43 percent in January-June 2023. The rate of construction issues blocking sidewalks decreased by 34 percentage points, down to 10 percent between July 2023 and June 2024. 

Trees, shrubs, or other greenery are the second most common obstruction issue. The percent of evaluated routes observed with greenery obstructions increased by 20 percentage points from January-December 2022 to January-June 2023, up from 18 percent to 37 percent. Between July 2023-June 2024, these obstructions decreased 34 percentage points and trees and other greenery comprised only three percent of sidewalk clearance issues citywide over that time period. This finding supports the trends noted above with the severe storms in the winter and spring of 2023. 

Following trees, mobile objects like scooters, bicycles, and carts are the third most common reason for sidewalk clearance issues. Compared to construction and trees and other greenery, there is less variation in this category across time.   

Broken Glass

The Street and Sidewalk Maintenance Standards define a five-point scale measuring the distribution of broken glass on a route. Measuring the distribution of glass helps distinguish areas with a high concentration, like a broken car window or bottle from a section of street or sidewalk with a small scattering of glass. 

• Broken glass levels averaged 1.50 between July 2023-June 2024, down from the earlier two periods, (2.01 in January-June 2023 and 1.89 in January-December 2022, respectively). 
• Over half of evaluated routes were free of broken glass and more than 70 percent of glass distribution levels were “None” or “A few traces” in every period.
• Between January 2022 and June 2023, 15 to 20 percent of evaluated routes had some concentration of glass (potentially broken bottles or car windows). This dropped to nine percent between July 2023-June 2024. 

Health Hazards

In addition to counting instances of feces, the standards define other health hazards, capturing a count of syringes, dead animals, and used condoms. 

Syringes remain very rare across time periods. Less than one percent of routes had syringes in the first period of data collection and observations have decreased since. We observed syringes on 0.5 percent of routes between July 2023-June 2024. 

Used condoms and dead animals are also extremely rare on observed routes. 

Continuing high average feces levels are described in Key Findings. Challenges in lowering feces levels were observed in the Maintenance of Cleanliness Study as well. 

Maintenance of Cleanliness Feces Findings

Even after deep cleaning, lowering feces levels remains challenging: 

• Feces levels remained mostly unchanged directly after cleaning in four of five CleanCorridor sites. 
• Feces decreased directly after cleaning only in the Mission Street corridor and returned to original levels quickly. 
• In the Haight Street and 16th/Church/Sanchez corridors, feces remained high the day of cleaning and decreased the next day, likely unattributed to the CleanCorridors cleaning.
• It’s possible that the cleanings either had no impact on feces levels, or that the increase happened too quickly to be captured by evaluations the same afternoon as a cleaning. 

Pavement Condition

More than two thirds of routes citywide have some pavement defect in every period.

The pavement condition of the City’s sidewalks is important for ease of passage as well as the City’s broader infrastructure. Standards define sidewalk defects as missing or sunken pavement or cracks, chips, and voids, and include both those marked for repair and those not yet marked. Evaluators rate the severity of defects at each route in three categories-minor, moderate, and severe. 

Moderate to severe pavement defects appear in more than half of evaluated routes in every period, but the percent of evaluated routes without any pavement issues increased between July 2023-June 2024. The severe pavement defect levels fluctuated some over time, but have remained more stable than moderate defects, which spiked in January-June 2023. We do not have clear evidence, but it’s possible this is related to particularly poor weather conditions in those months. 

Trash Receptacles

We measure overflowing trash receptacles on routes, including both City trash cans and privately maintained receptacles like those sometimes managed by Community Benefit Districts. Between July 2023-June 2024, 23 percent of evaluated routes had at least one trash receptacle present. 

• Overflowing trash receptacles are rare across periods- between 0.8 to 2 percent of all evaluated routes.
• Among routes with a trash receptacle, nine percent had an overflowing trash bin in 2022. This decreased to four and five percent, respectively, in the next two periods.

Transit Shelters

When transit shelters are present on evaluated routes, we observe frequent cleanliness issues. Transit shelters are generally maintained by SFMTA rather than by Public Works. 

• The percent of routes with transit shelters that had cleanliness issues was over 80 percent in every period. It decreased slightly between July 2023-June 2024 to 83 percent, down from 87 and 89 percent in the first two periods. 
• The most common cleanliness issues observed at transit shelters were feces, graffiti, and improperly parked scooters or bicycles. 

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Comparing Standards to 311 Resident Service Requests

311 Service Requests

The 311 Customer Service Center provides support to the City’s residents for a variety of non-emergency requests—from street and sidewalk cleaning to parking enforcement. Service requests are available as a public dataset. Because of the size and availability of the dataset, they are frequently used by the public for research or reporting and by cities for operations or decision making. However, because 311 data is entirely based on resident and visitor reports, the data are subject to bias if people in certain neighborhoods are more or less likely to report, or if specific issues are always reported while others are not.

Several service request categories in 311 mirror issues in the Street and Sidewalk Maintenance Standards, as shown in the table here (see Appendix 6 for more detail). Although the 311 service request categories do not map exactly to the street and sidewalk standards, they are closely related and provide insight into whether and how San Francisco resident and visitor reports differ from the Controller’s Office’s randomly selected observational data. 

We examine relevant 311 service request trends over the same timeframe as standards evaluations to compare trends over time at a citywide level and across neighborhoods. For each 311 service request category we calculate an average monthly number of requests per mile of street to compare neighborhoods of different sizes. 

The graph below shows the monthly average total 311 requests related to street and sidewalk issues for each standards evaluation time period. The table shows the overall totals for these 311 requests. Monthly requests increased between January-June 2023 before decreasing slightly between July 2023-June 2024. 

311 Requests match some but not all standards trends

Cleaning requests make up a large and increasing proportion of all street and sidewalk related requests. After street and sidewalk cleaning, dumping and graffiti requests are the next largest categories. 

To visualize these changes across service categories, we created an index value, setting January-December 2022 equal to 100, and using the monthly average values to observe changes in the later two time periods. In the visual below, we can see this increase in street and sidewalk cleaning requests, while requests for feces and dumping changed very little over time.

Proportion of cleaning requests by service category and standards time period

Street and sidewalk cleaning requests have been increasing since 2022 while observed litter levels decreased slightly. 

Among the four service categories we focus on, we see the largest difference between 311 requests and citywide standards findings for street and sidewalk cleaning. Although litter levels have remained relatively stable year over year in the standards evaluations, monthly average requests for street and sidewalk cleaning increased by 59 percent from the first to second period, and decreased by less than three percent between July 2023-June 2024. Comparing the litter levels from standards evaluations, we see a slight decrease that looks quite different from the steeper, upward trend in requests.

The steady downward trend in requests related to large, dumped items tracks with stable trends in standards evaluations. 

Monthly average requests for large, dumped items decreased consistently over time. Monthly average dumping requests decreased at the same rate of eight percent between January-December 2022 to January-June 2023, and then from January-June 2023 to between July 2023-June 2024. Dumping in street and sidewalk standards evaluations has shown a similar, stable to slightly decreasing trend over time. 

Graffiti requests reflect more variance in contrast to the stable trends in graffiti over time. 

311 service requests related to graffiti are more variable over time. They increased by 23 percent from January-December 2022 to January-June 2023, and decreased by 18 percent in 2024. In contrast, in the standards evaluations average instances of graffiti decreased from January-December 2022 to January-June 2023 by 12 percent and remained relatively unchanged after that. 

Feces-related requests are unchanged despite rising observed human or animal waste in standards.

Service requests related to human or animal waste are much more stable over time than the frequency observed in standards evaluations. 

Neighborhood findings in service requests

The following section compares trends in 311 service requests across neighborhoods to trends observed in standards evaluations between July 2023-June 2024. We use average monthly number of requests per mile of street to identify neighborhoods with high or low volumes of requests to see if relative patterns are similar to those in standards evaluations. For more detailed 311 neighborhood maps visit the 311 Service Requests by Neighborhood dashboards.  

The maps below show relative severity across the city and the tables list the five neighborhoods with the most 311 requests and highest observed severity from the standards. 

• The Tenderloin and the Mission both appear in the top five neighborhoods for severity in all issue areas, and in both 311 requests and standards evaluations. 
• Other neighborhoods appear much more frequently in 311 requests than the evaluated severity of issues would predict. The grouped neighborhood of Russian Hill, Nob Hill, and North Beach appears in three of four issue areas despite low-to-average evaluated litter levels, dumping, graffiti, and feces. 
• Other neighborhoods like Chinatown, Hayes Valley and Haight Ashbury, and South of Market show up relatively frequently in one or both of the measures, suggesting that they are not perfectly aligned on all issues, but there aren’t large differences in patterns between service requests and evaluated standards. 

Street and sidewalk cleaning 

Two out of five neighborhoods with the highest litter levels in standards evaluations, align with neighborhoods with higher monthly average requests for this issue: the Tenderloin and the Mission. 

Comparing monthly average 311 cleaning requests to average sidewalk litter levels shows that some neighborhoods with some of the most severe litter issues, like the Bayview and South of Market, are not necessarily the same as neighborhoods reporting cleanliness issues.

These 311 requests align with neighborhood-level standards evaluation findings for the Tenderloin and the Mission, which had higher street and sidewalk litter levels. However, Chinatown had relatively lower litter levels between July 2023-June 2024, closer to a value of two (a few traces of litter), suggesting residents there submit more 311 requests at a given litter level than in other neighborhoods. 

Neighborhoods with highest average 311 cleaning requests and standards evaluations, Jul 2023-Jun 2024 

Dumping

The Tenderloin ranked third for both 311 service requests and dumping levels. Although Russian Hill, Nob Hill, and North Beach has relatively lower levels of dumping present (29 percent between July 2023-June 2024) compared to the other neighborhoods shown here, it has the highest monthly average requests. In contrast, Western Addition has lower average requests at 20 per month, but shows higher dumping levels in standards evaluations. Chinatown submits more 311 dumping requests, and also has higher dumping levels at 32 percent. Similarly, Portola, Visitacion Valley had a relatively higher level of average requests at 50 per month between July 2023-June 2024 and ranks second in dumping levels in standards evaluations. 

Neighborhoods with highest average 311 dumping requests and standards evaluations, Jul 2023-Jun 2024 

Graffiti

In standards evaluations, graffiti trends across neighborhoods and between time periods fluctuated, but showed stability over longer time periods. 311 graffiti requests mostly align with observed levels in standards evaluations. There is variation in these rankings, but four out of five rankings had a matching neighborhood, with the exception of the Castro/Upper Market and South of Market. 

Neighborhoods with highest average 311 graffiti requests and standards evaluations, Jul 2023-Jun 2024 

Although Hayes Valley, Haight Ashbury has high graffiti levels in both 311 service requests and standards evaluations, it is comparatively much higher in service requests. It has the highest monthly average graffiti service requests per mile at 134, and graffiti related requests comprised 34 percent of all service requests here between July 2023-June 2024. In the maintenance standards, on average there were 26 counts of graffiti per route evaluated in this neighborhood, much smaller in comparison to the Mission and the Tenderloin (81 and 71 average instances per route evaluated between July 2023-June 2024). 

The Castro/Upper Market had 12 average counts of graffiti per route evaluated between July 2023-June 2024, although its ranked fifth in graffiti request volume. South of Market also was on the higher end of 311 requests, averaging 30 per month. 

Feces

Neighborhoods with the highest feces-related monthly average 311 requests per mile also tend to have high observed levels in standards evaluations.

The neighborhood with the highest monthly average request per mile was the Tenderloin with 148 requests between July 2023-June 2024. The volume of requests coming from the Tenderloin is three times larger than the next highest rate of requests. In standards evaluations, the Tenderloin ranked third, with feces observed on 53 percent of evaluated routes.

Neighborhoods with highest average 311 feces requests and standards evaluations, Jul 2023-Jun 2024 

South of Market, the Mission and Hayes Valley, Haight Ashbury had higher monthly average requests and relatively high evaluated feces levels. In contrast, Russian Hill, Nob Hill, and North Beach follow similar patterns to those in dumping. There are relatively low feces levels present (27 percent) compared to their higher monthly average 311 requests. Fifteen neighborhoods had average monthly 311 requests per mile below 10 between July 2023-June 2024. These geographic trends may reflect that this issue is particularly concentrated in a few neighborhoods. 

 

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Find out more

Visit the Streets and Sidewalks Program homepage to see information on past years. For citywide and neighborhood dashboards visit the Street and Sidewalk Maintenance Standards dashboards. 

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