Human Wasteland

Last updated

(Human) Wasteland is a map based visualization project created by software engineer Jennifer Wong. The map visualizes reports of human waste reported to the 311 complaint system in San Francisco, California.

Contents

Background

Locations were mapped out from 311 reports that covered a seven-year period from 2008 to 2015. [1] [2] The map features a brown-colored "poop" emoji used to identify locations of human waste reports throughout the city. [3] The project reveals concentrated areas within neighborhoods and brings about an awareness of homelessness in the city of San Francisco. [4]

There are thousands of homeless people in San Francisco with limited access to public bathrooms. [5] On the website, Wong urges people to educate themselves about the issue of homelessness and suggests donating to LavaMae, a homeless outreach organization. [6]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Berkeley, California</span> City in California, United States

Berkeley is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Anglo-Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emeryville to the south and the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington to the north. Its eastern border with Contra Costa County generally follows the ridge of the Berkeley Hills. The 2020 census recorded a population of 124,321.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">San Francisco</span> Consolidated city-county in California, US

San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 808,988 residents as of 2023, San Francisco is the fourth most populous city in the U.S. state of California behind Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Jose. The city covers a land area of 46.9 square miles at the upper end of the San Francisco Peninsula, making it the second-most densely populated major U.S. city behind New York City and the fifth-most densely populated U.S. county, behind four of New York City's boroughs. Among the 92 U.S. cities proper with over 250,000 residents, San Francisco is ranked first by per capita income and sixth by aggregate income as of 2022.As of 2023, the San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland, CA CSA is the 5th largest in the nation, with an approximate population of over 9,001,024.

A megacity is a very large city, typically with a population of more than 10 million people. The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs in its 2018 "World Urbanization Prospects" report defines megacities as urban agglomerations with over 10 million inhabitants. A University of Bonn report holds that they are "usually defined as metropolitan areas with a total population of 10 million or more people". Elsewhere in other sources, from five to eight million is considered the minimum threshold, along with a population density of at least 2,000 per square kilometre. The terms conurbation, metropolis, and metroplex are also applied to the latter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Skid row</span> Impoverished urban area in North America

A skid row, also called skid road, is an impoverished area, typically urban, in English-speaking North America whose inhabitants are mostly poor people "on the skids". This specifically refers to people who are poor or homeless, considered disreputable, downtrodden or forgotten by society. A skid row may be anything from an impoverished urban district to a red-light district to a gathering area for people experiencing homelessness or drug addiction. In general, skid row areas are inhabited or frequented by impoverished individuals and also people who are addicted to drugs. Urban areas considered skid rows are marked by high vagrancy, dilapidated buildings, and drug dens, as well as other features of urban blight. Used figuratively, the phrase may indicate the state of a poor person's life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Homelessness in the United States</span>

In the United States, the number of homeless people on a given night in January 2023 was more than 650,000 according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Homelessness has increased in recent years, in large part due to an increasingly severe housing shortage and rising home prices in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tent city</span> Temporary housing facility

A tent city is a temporary housing facility made using tents or other temporary structures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glen Canyon Park</span> Park in San Francisco, California, USA

Glen Canyon Park is a city park in San Francisco, California. It occupies about 70 acres (28 ha) along a deep canyon adjacent to the Glen Park, Diamond Heights, and Miraloma Park neighborhoods. O'Shaughnessy Hollow is a rugged, undeveloped 3.6 acres (1.5 ha) tract of parkland that lies immediately to the west and may be considered an extension of Glen Canyon Park.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pooper-scooper</span> Device used to pick up animal feces

A pooper-scooper, or poop scoop, is a device used to pick up animal feces from public places and yards, particularly those of dogs. Pooper-scooper devices often have a bag or bag attachment. 'Poop bags' are alternatives to pooper scoopers, and are simply a bag, usually turned inside out, to carry the feces to a proper disposal area. Sometimes, the person performing the cleanup is also known as the pooper-scooper.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Lui</span> American television journalist

Richard Lui is an American author, journalist, and filmmaker. He anchors for MSNBC and NBC News. Lui is currently a breaking news anchor for NBC and MSNBC, broadcasting from 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. prior to that role he was a co-host of Early Today, and anchor of MSNBC daytime coverage. He was formerly at CNN Worldwide. At CNN Worldwide he became the first Asian American male to anchor a daily, national cable news show when he solo anchored the 10 a.m. hour on CNN Headline News. Mediaite ranked Lui among the top 100 in news buzz on its "Power Grid Influence Index of TV Anchors and Hosts" and one of "The 50 Sexiest in TV News".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Point Isabel Regional Shoreline</span> Multi-use park

Point Isabel Regional Shoreline in Richmond, California, is operated by East Bay Regional Park District, and is a multi-use park for joggers, windsurfers, kayakers, photographers, picnickers, and people walking dogs. It has access for pedestrians and via public transit, private vehicles, and bikes. It also features a concession offering food for people and grooming for pets. A longtime community organization and nonprofit, Point Isabel Dog Owners and Friends (PIDO), is active in the maintenance and improvement of the park.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elliot Schrage</span> American lawyer and business executive

Elliot J. Schrage is an American lawyer and business executive. Until June 2018, he was vice president of global communications, marketing, and public policy at Facebook, where he directed the company's government affairs and public relations efforts. He then served as vice president of special projects at Facebook.

The San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH), previously called as the San Francisco Health Department, is the public health department of the city of San Francisco, California in the US. It has two main divisions: The San Francisco Health Network and Population Health.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hallidie Plaza</span> Public square in San Francisco, California

Hallidie Plaza is a public square located at the entrance to Powell Street Station on Market Street in the Union Square area of downtown San Francisco, California, United States. Hallidie Plaza was designed jointly by Lawrence Halprin, John Carl Warnecke, and Mario Ciampi and opened in 1973. In 1997, a perforated stainless steel-screened elevator was added to provide access to the plaza and station for disabled people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Waymo</span> Autonomous car technology company

Waymo LLC, formerly known as the Google Self-Driving Car Project, is an American autonomous driving technology company headquartered in Mountain View, California. It is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yishan Wong</span> Businessperson

Yishan Wong is an American engineer and entrepreneur who was CEO of Reddit from March 2012 until his resignation in November 2014. With Niniane Wang he is also co-founder of the Mountain View coworking space Sunfire Offices, and was an advisor at Quora. Wong was briefly a contributing blogger to Forbes magazine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Homelessness in the San Francisco Bay Area</span>

The San Francisco Bay Area comprises nine northern California counties and contains five of the ten most expensive counties in the United States. Strong economic growth has created hundreds of thousands of new jobs, but coupled with severe restrictions on building new housing units, it has resulted in a statewide housing shortage which has driven rents to extremely high levels. The Sacramento Bee notes that large cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles both attribute their recent increases in homeless people to the housing shortage, with the result that homelessness in California overall has increased by 15% from 2015 to 2017. In September 2019, the Council of Economic Advisers released a report in which they stated that deregulation of the housing markets would reduce homelessness in some of the most constrained markets by estimates of 54% in San Francisco, 40 percent in Los Angeles, and 38 percent in San Diego, because rents would fall by 55 percent, 41 percent, and 39 percent respectively. In San Francisco, a minimum wage worker would have to work approximately 4.7 full-time jobs to be able to spend less than 30% of their income on renting a two-bedroom apartment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">United Nations Plaza (San Francisco)</span> Plaza in San Franciscos Civic Center

United Nations Plaza is a 2.6-acre (1.1 ha) plaza located on the former alignments of Fulton and Leavenworth Streets—in the block bounded by Market, Hyde, McAllister, and 7th Street—in the Civic Center of San Francisco, California. It is located 14 mi (0.40 km) east of City Hall and is connected to it by the Fulton Mall and Civic Center Plaza. Public transit access is provided by the BART and Muni Metro stops at the Civic Center/UN Plaza station, which has a station entrance within the plaza itself.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Homelessness in California</span>

The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated that more than 181,399 people were experiencing homelessness in California in January 2023. This is one of the highest per capita rates in the nation, with 0.46% of residents estimated as being homeless. More than two-thirds of homeless people in California are unsheltered, which is the highest percentage of any state in the United States. 49% of the unsheltered homeless people in the United States live in California. Even those who are sheltered are so insecurely, with 90% of homeless adults in California reporting that they spent at least one night unsheltered in the past six months.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">California housing shortage</span> Extended and increasing shortage since 1970

Since about 1970, California has been experiencing an extended and increasing housing shortage, such that by 2018, California ranked 49th among the states of the U.S. in terms of housing units per resident. This shortage has been estimated to be 3-4 million housing units as of 2017. As of 2018, experts said that California needs to double its current rate of housing production to keep up with expected population growth and prevent prices from further increasing, and needs to quadruple the current rate of housing production over the next seven years in order for prices and rents to decline.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Homelessness in New York</span> Overview of homelessness in New York

In October 2023, an average of 90,578 people slept in New York City's homeless shelters each night. This included 23,103 single adults, 32,689 children, and 34,786 adults in families. The total number is at its highest ever, with 63,636 people sleeping in homeless shelters. The city reported that in 2019, 3,600 individuals experienced unsheltered homelessness, sleeping in public spaces such as streets and public transit rather than shelters. The homeless population has surged in New York City 18% in 2023 from 2022, despite efforts from Mayor Eric Adams.

References

  1. "So You've Decided to Map Sidewalk Poop in San Francisco..." Bloomberg.com. 2014-11-20. Retrieved 2023-04-06.
  2. "This Map Shows San Francisco Is Covered in Human Poop". Thrillist. Retrieved 2023-04-06.
  3. Cush, Andy. "The Streets of San Francisco Are Covered in Human Shit". Gawker. Retrieved 2023-04-06.
  4. Papenfuss, Mary (December 31, 2014). "Human feces map finds San Francisco's homeless". Reuters.com. Reuters. Retrieved 19 January 2018.
  5. Arieff, Allison (2015-01-16). "Opinion | Showers on Wheels". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2023-04-06.
  6. "San Francisco poop map: real thing or a rumor?". The Mercury News. 2018-02-28. Retrieved 2023-04-06.
  1. (Human) Wasteland
  2. Jennifer Wong of MochiMachine