In San Francisco, community relations on the rocks
Upscale neighbourhood’s residents used boulders to keep homeless away
For about a month, the rocks were just a mystery. Two dozen boulders had popped up along a San Francisco sidewalk — and even officials were stumped. “We don’t know who put them in, but it wasn’t the city,” a councillor said.
By the time the rocks were hauled away Monday, they’d spawned days of headlines and split a community.
Local media began to piece the story together last week: Weary of alleged drug dealing among homeless people camping out on their block, neighbours on the street of Clinton Park had pooled several thousand dollars to physically bar the way. To some, it was a creative tactic from desperate residents. For others, it was a declaration of hostility to the homeless — a Band-Aid measure in a city where their plight has drawn national scrutiny and where shelters can’t meet demand.
By last weekend, the boulders were exposing just how high tensions are running amid a homelessness crisis that years of policy proposals have done little to dent. They’d become a “symbol,” said Danielle Baskin, a San Francisco artist who walks through Clinton Park on her way to work and whose Twitter account now identifies her as an “Anti-Rock Agitator.”
“They shine lights — not just to people in San Francisco, but to thousands of people in the country — that the housing crisis is a serious problem, if people are fighting over rocks,” Baskin said.
Baskin’s dismay taps into long-standing frustrations with an increasingly expensive Bay Area and tech prosperity that has left many behind. Clinton Park sits in the Mission Dolores neighbourhood, home to the city’s oldest building along with a median home value and condo listings that top $1 million. Real estate company Redfin estimates houses overlooking Clinton Park at more than a million in worth as well. Residents, many of whom have declined to give their names to media, push back on accusations they are overreacting to homeless campers.
“This is about people yelling and screaming at three in the morning and openly flashing weapons,” one woman told the San Francisco Chronicle.
“I’m not rich. I’m having a hard enough time making it myself. They even set up a shelf and were openly dealing drugs, and nobody was doing anything.”
Reports to San Francisco’s 311 service show frequent requests from Clinton Park for “encampment cleanups” and complaints of needles. And city officials say the concerns are valid.
“A neighbourhood had people in tents who were literally selling drugs,” San Francisco Public Works director Mohammed Nuru said. Echoing residents, he said the rocks were working — drug dealing in the area seemed to stop.
“So we fully support the neighbours in this situation,” Nuru said.
Critics have noted “antihomeless” design choices around San Francisco, from spiked planter boxes to benches that fold up overnight. One man who said he camped on Clinton Park for two months, Daniel Bartosiewicz, lamented to NBC Bay Area that none of the neighbours talked to him about their concerns.
“They would have saved a lot of money and a lot of trouble if they just said something to us,” he said.
“Use your compassion and love and understanding. We’re humans.”