San Francisco Streets Get Cleaner, Some Say Meaner

Mohammed Nuru cruises past the notorious downtown corner known as “6th and Mayhem,” on the lookout for behavior he says has no place on any city street.

Things like dealing drugs and smoking crack, shooting heroin and tossing away the spent needle as though it were just some crumpled hamburger wrapper. Or using the soiled and smelly back alleys as outdoor restrooms.

On his orders, three times a day workers in boots, goggles and jumpsuits fan out over a 30-block area, rousting squatters and scouring the pavement with high-pressure hoses and pine-scented disinfectant.

“People have to take responsibility for their city,” says Nuru, the deputy director of public works and the point man on a controversial new city project.

To Nuru, Operation Scrub Down is redefining compassion in a city that prides itself on commitment to the poor. To advocates for the homeless, who have filed suit, it’s an infringement of civil liberties and an ominous sign of a new callousness toward the least fortunate.

Under Nuru’s gaze, crews sweep through the blighted neighborhood around 6th and Market streets. The area is dotted with raucous bars, pawnshops, check-cashing joints and scores of squalid hotels, and also serves as a commuter route to freeways connecting San Francisco with its suburbs.

Shadowed by police cruisers, the workers awaken men and women they find dozing in doorways or slouched against walls. They confiscate shopping carts laden with personal belongings and remove public benches where the homeless and unemployed congregate.

Shop owners volunteer as “block captains” who act as watchdogs, and public works employees patrol certain areas--even make citizen’s arrests--like cops walking a beat.

Nuru, 39, lived in Nigeria as a boy, and he applies lessons learned in a remote African village to the grim American streetscape. “We may have been poor, but we treated one another as family,” he says. “And it’s no different here than back home: You can’t let people sleep in the alley. You’ve got to help them help themselves.”

His 3-month-old program, which costs $11,000 a day, has enlisted the help of public health workers and even city lawyers, who battle lawsuits filed by activists alleging that officials are trampling the rights of the needy.

City Atty. Terence Hallinan has established an office in the area to hasten the filing of charges ranging from public urination to drug dealing. Some of the dozen charges filed since the operation began have resulted in jail time for wrongdoers.

Nuru sees the effort as a national model for cities with troubled urban cores. But advocates for the homeless have denounced it as overzealous and illegal. They call the operation a blatant attempt to wash away the nagging problem of urban homelessness.

Drug Use, Assaults Are Rampant at Night

On one recent day, Nuru’s caravan of trucks and police squad car threads its way along Market Street, a daytime business drag that after dark becomes the scene of arrests for drug use and assaults. In just a few blocks, they spot half a dozen men dozing on the sidewalk. Nuru springs from his blue sedan and approaches one man shrouded by a blanket.

“Hey, you can’t sleep here,” Nuru says. “You’ve got to get up.”

A man who identifies himself as George Watson, a 36-year-old Tennessee native who says he has been homeless since his wife left him in 1996, groggily brings himself to attention.

“I’m so tired, man,” he says. “Can’t I just get some sleep?”

“Not here, you can’t,” Nuru says. “But you can in a shelter.”

Adjusting his gray woolen cap and unlaced red sneakers, Watson snarls at Nuru.

“Why are you people harassing me?” he says. “I’ve slept here for six years without any problems. There’s no room in the shelters. So get off my back.”

Nuru knows the complaint: Many homeless say the shelters are crime-ridden, and they assert a legal right to sleep outdoors.

Lawyers for the Coalition on Homelessness have sued the city on behalf of street dwellers who they say have had their blankets, winter clothing and even medication confiscated without notice.

“The job of the Department of Public Works is to clean the streets,” said John Viola, a staff lawyer for the public interest group. “That doesn’t mean sweeping away homeless people and towing away their belongings.”

The program, activists say, signals a hardening of the attitude toward the destitute in a city long known for its empathy toward the poor and downtrodden.

San Francisco has recently banned loitering near automated teller machines and public toilets. And Supervisor Gavin Newsom last week introduced a bill to curtail panhandling on freeway ramps and median strips.

“The streets of San Francisco are getting meaner,” Viola said. “The city’s attitude toward the homeless gets worse every day.”

Newsom said the city is simply getting smarter: “We’re maturing. And redefining what compassion is all about.”

Officials say the city will spend $100 million this year on direct services for the homeless, such as shelters and mental health programs--double the amount of only eight years ago.

Gone are the days, Newsom says, when the city would allow the mentally ill to endure miserable conditions on the streets just because lawyers said the homeless had a legal right to be there.

“We’ve been giving people the means to suffer by allowing them access to sidewalks, streets and doorways,” he says. “That kind of thinking lacks any compassion.”

Supervisor Tom Ammiano calls the mayor’s program inadequate.

“He’s looking for Band-Aids to solve a chronic social problem,” he says. “We’re trampling the civil rights of needy citizens. I don’t think one hand of this administration knows what the other is doing.”

Ammiano says supervisors recently voted down a bill backed by civil rights activists that would have given the homeless 24 hours’ notice before their possessions were taken by city workers.

With a sweep of his hand, Nuru dismisses such critics.

City workers don’t just shoo away homeless residents, he says, but also offer them information on drug rehabilitation and services. Belongings are carted away only after repeated warnings, he says.

But activists have fought the property confiscations in court, and won several cases. The city recently paid a homeless man $1,000 for having taken his leather jacket and other items.

Mayor Willie Brown sought Nuru for the cleanup job because of his reputation as a motivator and an urban design guru. A large man with a booming laugh, Nuru is approached on the street by thankful merchants who want to join his efforts.

“Believe me, I’m not out here to break knuckles,” he says. “We want to offer people a respectful way to live, but drive home the message that we’re not going to tolerate certain behaviors.”

‘Adopt a Sidewalk’ Started by Nuru

Born in England, Nuru moved to rural Nigeria as a boy and later immigrated to the United States to study landscape architecture and urban planning. He came to California in 1990 after working as an architect at a Washington design firm.

For five years, he ran the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners, a nonprofit organization that cultivated several youth gardening and job-training programs for disadvantaged neighborhoods.

It was there that he began an “Adopt a Sidewalk” program, which put welfare recipients to work maintaining city streets while they trained in computer use and other skills.

Brown brought Nuru aboard as deputy director of public works in 2000. Last October, Nuru started Operation Scrub Down.

He has become a hero to local merchants tired of enduring the stench of San Francisco’s alleys and the seamy 6th Street corridor. His office has received numerous letters of praise, and one department store is donating uniforms for his cleaning crews.

“Mohammed has helped us raise the bar on the standard of behavior here,” says Ana Bolton-Arguello, manager of the Seneca Hotel. “And now we have a chain of access to the city’s huge bureaucracy. When things get tough, we call Mohammed’s people.”

Rick Ramirez, a director at an addiction treatment center in the area, once had to cover his nose when walking the alley outside his office.

“The odor was just unbearable,” he says. “But now the city brings those trucks and sprayers in. No way is this program overzealous. They’re just taking care of business.”

On a recent sweep, Nuru encounters a group of homeless men shaking their fists at city workers, hurling insults as he and his crew keep their distance while requesting that the men move on.

Peeling away his jacket to expose a bottle of King Cobra malt liquor, 40-year-old James Moulden says he’ll obey orders this time--because Nuru is courteous and “treated me like a human being.”

“But I’ll be back,” he says. “These are our streets. Willie Brown is just an elected official. He works for us.”

Nuru hops back in his car, vowing that he, too, will be back.

“I want people to walk down these streets and remember them because of their beauty,” he says, “not their squalor.”