Robert Milton began his day, as he has done so many times over the past three decades, by filling a garbage truck with garbage.
Discarded sofas. mattresses Whole blocks full of abandoned trash. He has seen everything.
“As fast as we pick it up, they put it down,” he said. “It’s a never-ending fight.”
Behind him, a group of cleaners from the city’s contracted garbage truck company Recology and the city’s public works shoveled piles of trash that clogged the streets near the intersection of Jennings Street and Egbert Avenue.
In recent years, San Franciscans have weathered a deluge of garbage.
Complaints to 311 have increased; Public works contracts have risen and Recology staff have collected millions of pounds of illegally dumped rubbish each year. In some of the hardest-hit neighborhoods, city sanitation workers have increased their collection services. The board increased fines for dump-and-run scoffers.
But other efforts failed. The number of subpoenas has dropped dramatically since 2019, and years after the city announced it would use license plate-reading cameras to catch trash scoffers in hard-hit neighborhoods, the devices are nowhere to be found.
And the garbage keeps coming.
In 2022, the city received over 200,000 complaints about its garbage disposal — more than four times more than a decade ago. In 2012, the city received around 45,000 complaints.
San Francisco Public Works defines illegal dumping as leaving trash, trash, or discarded items on public streets. It can be something as innocuous as a bookshelf on the sidewalk, or bags of trash next to a public bin — or dumping vast amounts of construction waste in deserted areas.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, complaints about illegal garbage disposal mounted in many Bay Area communities, and cities across the country reported increases in garbage collection. That was due to the shift to remote work, which led to more personal garbage in homes, and homeowners finally getting around to making long-overdue renovations and remodels.
In some parts of the city, garbage is everywhere. Residents call the city’s 311 customer service number an average of 14,000 to 17,000 times a month to complain about abandoned trash, according to a Chronicle analysis of four years of call data. Public Works internal data shows that abandoned waste disposal orders for its packer trucks peaked in 2022 and have declined slightly this year.
Complaints about illegal dumping at 311 are generally filed under the “street and sidewalk cleaning” category and include calls about bulky items, liquids, and other loose debris on the street. Data does not include duplicate cases where multiple calls are made regarding the same illegal dumping incident.
Part of the increase in 311 complaints could be due to the complaints system being easier to use, public works spokeswoman Rachel Gordon said, admitting she didn’t want to downplay the challenge of illegal landfills across the city. Nonetheless, complaints of illegal dumping now make up a larger share of all 311 complaints, rising from just over 25% before the pandemic to almost 35% afterwards.
“People are devastating our city,” she said. “How do we get away from this?”
A recent report from the city’s Controller’s Office concluded that high-traffic commercial corridors are hotspots for illegal dumping compared to residential areas. Data from the report shows that San Francisco’s commercial zones were dirtier overall than residential streets and sidewalks.
In 2022, the Central Waterfront neighborhood had between 1,300 and 311 illegal landfill reports per 1,000 residents — the highest in the city among neighborhoods with more than 500 residents. The mission followed with 730 reports. Another area with many complaints was Portola, particularly on roads near the intersection of Interstate 280 and Highway 101. One intersection — at San Bruno Avenue and Bacon Street — had more than 700 complaints between 2019 and 2022.
“People throw it out there because they know someone else is taking care of it,” said Alex Hobbs of the Portola Neighborhood Association. “It’s a common thread of complaints with pretty much everyone I speak to in the neighborhood. … It really hurts civic pride.”
Another area that drew hundreds of complaints last year was 12th Avenue and Clement Street in Inner Richmond. After a house burned down in the area, debris landed at the intersection for months before finally being removed, residents said.
In the Mission or the Haight, city workers often see litter when tenants move out, and they or their landlords dump the contents of the apartments outside.
Bayview Hunters Point is a common landfill, Gordon said. Many blocks are filled with warehouses and there is hardly any traffic on the street after dark or on weekends.
“There aren’t many eyes all the time,” Gordon said.
Trash mockers often leave couches and trash bags along Carroll Avenue — a six-block strip of asphalt. Its east end lies between a waste disposal company and Grand Roofing, where Michel Mikery worked for nearly 20 years. Over the years he’s watched the heaps of rubbish just by the side of the road.
“It’s very difficult,” he said. “Customers are afraid to come here because they think it’s not safe.”
As garbage problems mounted, Public Works has pumped millions of dollars into its Bayview operations. Gordon said crews have switched from crossing the neighborhood twice a week to five days a week. She estimates that illegal garbage disposal in Bayview costs the city $1.9 million annually.
On Monday, for example, Milton and his crew would start their morning at Jennings and Egbert’s and then spend hours zigzagging the streets surrounding the neglected Candlestick Park. Milton has worked on the cleaning crews of these streets for years, and the burly 51-year-old knows every landfill in the area.
Egbert, Gilman, Carroll – he’s rattling around with the dumps in quick succession.
They often pick up most of the trash from areas near homeless camps, where area residents leave their old belongings, he said.
“People see homeless camps and use them as landfills,” he said. “Who will bring a bedroom furniture to his camp?”
Recology responded to more than 100,000 of those 311 calls last year, said Robert Reed, a company spokesman, and in the process collected £8.8million of left behind or illegally dumped rubbish – A Down by around £2million since the peak of the pandemic.
Many residents may not be aware that in addition to regular garbage collection from Recology, they can also contact the company to arrange free collection of bulky items.
Milton estimates his workers could pick up 12 tons of trash from around Bayview every week, aided by a packer truck that follows them for three hours each day.
“It’s job security,” said Recology employee Hugo Santoyo, laughing as Milton’s team shoveled trash onto the back of his truck. “It’s a good, honest job. Someone has to do it.”
The city has tried to curb illegal landfills — with little success. If emergency responders can find out who dumped the trash, they will issue a subpoena, Milton said. In 2020, the board of directors increased maximum fines for garbage disposal to $1,000 per offense per day.
But the department issues subpoenas in only a fraction of illegal dumping cases — and that number has been declining in recent years, Gordon said.
A review of public works citation data shows that in 2019, the department’s staff issued nearly 17,000 warnings and citations related to illegal waste disposal. That number dropped to about 2,200 in 2020 and about 3,800 the following year during the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year, inspectors issued about 6,600 summonses.
Gordon attributed the decline to the relocation of some employees due to the department’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and other staffing shortages.
In March, in response to concerns about street cleanliness, regulators voted to bolster Public Work’s street cleaning and graffiti removal efforts with a $25 million budget increase. The department’s total budget for 2022–23 was approximately $360 million.
After years of delays, the city also plans to install 10 moving license plate reader cameras in known hotspots in Bayview to catch trash scoffers. The city proposed the plan in 2020 but delayed the process to switch providers, Gordon said.
“We want to catch the perpetrators, take action against them and scare people away,” she said. “You won’t always know where the cameras are.”
They’re also examining strategies other cities have employed — in Los Angeles, for example, authorities have begun impounding cars and trucks caught in illegal dumping.
And now residents across the city have taken matters into their own hands, with groups like Refuse Refuse San Francisco holding meetings for residents to help beautify their neighborhoods.
“Even though we treat the symptoms, it works,” said the group’s founder, Vince Yuen.
On a recent Thursday, half a dozen volunteers swarmed through downtown Richmond, using grab claws to scoop up debris from sidewalks on blocks north and south of Clement Street.
“Why search the streets when the garbage is back a week later?” asked one of the volunteers.
“Why are you making your bed?” Yuen answered. “Why clean your house?”
Reach St. John Barned-Smith: stjohn.smith@sfchronicle.com, reach Adriana Rezal: adriana.rezal@sfchronicle.com
