If you roam around San Francisco, you’ll likely run into garden planters on sidewalks and in public plazas.
Some are large, shiny and steel, like bathtubs or animal troughs; others are wooden barrels, rectangular wooden vats, or all manner of other vessels — pots, boxes and plastic containers.
We’ve also put together an interactive map for you to explore, showing where each of the planters that we found are located and what they look like. Click on the dots in the map for more information.
Yujie Zhou, Lydia Chávez, Will Jarrett, and Joe Rivano Barros contributed to the reporting of the story.
I’m surprised that these planters – assuming they meet ADA and city requirements – are controversial in some way? I guess I don’t see “planter installation” and “housing” as a zero sum game. The City can continue its efforts to house and care for those experiencing homelessness while property and business owners can legally take care of their sidewalks.
It’s sad to hear about needy folks getting displaced but the sidewalk isn’t really an appropriate or sustainable place for people to reside. Hopefully those folks receive the services they deserve.
Thank you for putting my thoughts into words. I resent the choice the writers made in pitting Planters vs. Housing, as if people are choosing to install these planters instead of building shelters in their backyards or something…. like what????? The suggestion seems to be that individual businesses and residents are responsible for fixing the issue. But no actual recommendation or call-to-action is made — just a thinly veiled attempt at presenting both sides which anyone with a pulse can see for what it is — par for the course for this publication; shaming of those who “have”, coddling of those who “have not”, and SILENCE on the obligations of our various public agencies as well as the NGO’s who have been tasked with ameliorating the untenable homeless situation in our city.
They are literally are a spot for the homeless to pee. I’m sure the pissed off homeless people are peeing in them!! Poor plants:((
Pee is actually good for plants. I grew up being told to pee on compost piles.
Not poop though.
No, it’s not. Urine has salt, among other things, in it and is acidic. Enough salt will kill anything on this planet.
One gentleman said he’d been homeless for 20 years living on the streets and that these planters made it difficult for him to get back on his feet. WTF? You just admitted that you’ve lived on the street for 20 years it’s obvious getting back on your feet has never been a concern.
“Getting back on his feet” means different things to different people. He might define having a consistent place to sleep at night as getting back on his feet.
Nice article and cool background visualizations. It really helped to attach the photos to different spots around the neighborhood.
Wow Mission Local. This is a the most graphic and visually appealing article I have seen in news media for a long time. 10+ years ago, I was upset with acquaintances who work in the BMR housing industry for installing planter tubs to deter the homeless in front of their York Street home. This Mission Local article has shown how friendly sidewalks can look with planters–inviting for pedestrians if not for campers. They beautify a sidewalk (Francesca Pantine’s for example) and helped Juan Gallardo find a solution for his restaurant (that makes my favorite Caldo de Res). Thank you, Xueer Lu and Kelly Waldron.
Planters are such an elegant solution to a problem the city refuses to address.
They help reduce carbon dioxide and thus make a contribution to reducing global warming. And they’re attractive. It is so nice to see green plants in a gritty urban setting. Much nicer than junkies defecating outside one’s doorstep.
This seems like a pretty reasonable response to the city government abdicating its responsibility to maintain safe and clean streets. Keep it up, planter-maintainers!
While not a fix to homelessness (do you have one?) it does deter folk from living on the streets with the accompanying filth and too often drug use–neither of which I want my children to participate in or live with.
It doesn’t deter them from living on the streets. They have no option other than to live on the streets. It just pushes them to a nearby street.
until all streets have planters. planters should be removed tho if the plants are let to die
I was hoping that Mission Local would have included these potted planters in this map:
Dolores Street Community Services 938 Valencia St
Cause Justa/Just Cause 2301 Mission St Ste 201
Mission Economic Development Agency 2301 Mission Street, Suite 301
PODER 474 Valencia
SF’s city funded nonprofits with homelessness and poverty in their portfolio who get paid to launder money and mark time need to be included in this to explain how we’re spending so much money and seeing so few results such that residents need to shell out cash for planters.
This dynamic is being reaffirmed as the Coalition of Homelessness, based in the TL, is poised to lose a sixth straight punitive homelessness ballot measure in the exact same way that they lost these ballot measures:
Aggressive Panhandling
ATM Panhandling
Care Not Cash
Sit/Lie
Encampments
When city funded services nonprofits are money laundering rackets and the CoH advocacy operation leads successive stunning losses that only further empower the conservatives, then our focus must be on why our tax dollars are being squandered by this racketeering cartel, not resident reactions to this failure that triggers biblical fears of “the unclean.”
Who gets paid to lead to loss after loss unless they’re being paid to lose?
I agree with some of the comments. Having lived in the inner Mission for 30 years, must say how conditions have gone way downhill. I’d like to have enough $$ to live in a safer and cleaner part of the city.
I hate having to look down when walking to not step in human shit. And be hyper vigilant of daily activities all around . You can’t walk on many sidewalks; many are blocked with camps, illegal selling of stolen goods, drug use. This is not in accordance with ADA compliance laws. If children and ADA people can’t navigate without having to walk on the street with cars flying by, it is dangerous. The planters are mostly ADA compliant. They don’t block the sidewalks
D9 supervisor Ronen has let the district down with false promises. Other neighborhoods should have their share of these and more social issues.
Recent stats mention how many homeless don’t want to be housed. They want to do drugs and keep their bicycle chop shops; many came here because it’s easy to score, and other reasons that give permission to behave badly.
If anyone lacks compassion it’s City agencies like the Homeless program. They have $$$ which misappropriated and lines pockets. A friend who works there tells me stories of corruption. If they wanted to solve the problems they’d be out if business, and all the managers would be out of jobs.
I agree with comments stating there are vacant properties around the City for those who want to move inside. Meantime ADA planters should be provided and paid for by the City. More oxygen and cleaner air so we all don’t have to smell daily smell feces and piss nor jump over debris. In our area fires started by campers have damaged low income working class buildings. Will Ronen, Breed, Jennifer Friedenbacker take in these people? On their residential block!! Or put out the literal and figurative fires? A complex situation with some answers . All people deserve dignity but also need to behave and keep a civil fabric together.
I have lived on Capp Street between 22nd and 23rd for 30 years. I used to have plants out front in small ceramic planters, but those all got smashed by people passing by during the night. So I replaced those with really really large ceramic pots that would require more than one person to tip over and smash. Amazingly, those got smashed, too, on more than one occasion. I have finally had to resort to the planters you describe in this article. I certainly did not do it to deter homeless people. not to dispute your overall point that many people may do so for exactly that, but I suspect I am not the only one in my situation either .
Apparently good luck to anyone who drives and needs a wheelchair or a walker.
Regardless of any other argument, it feels like a pretty straightforward issue restricting access for people with disabilities.
Here in Portland, Oregon, the city was actually sued ada violations due to the number of impassable sidewalks packed with tents.
This is a great article! I like the map and the general layout. You captured how people feel about the planters well. Even the most most enthusiastic supporters of the planters seems to get that it’s not great.
Saw some good folks walking down Capp Street with a watering device just this morning! I’m a fan of the planters and greenery in general. No they aren’t a solution to homelessness, but neither do I consider them at attack upon our at-risk neighbors.
Excellent reporting! Very comprehensive. Thank you.
With all the poop on the streets, there will be no shortage
of manure.
Some people here seem to want the money for the planters used to help the homeless. What about the homeless industrial complex run by the city? I think the number was $848 million for 2023. I would start there if you are looking to help the homeless and btw, where has this money gone AND how has it helped?
https://www.sf.gov/data/our-city-our-home-fund-6-month-report-fiscal-year-2022-2023#:~:text=The%20revised%20budget%20for%20FY22,revised%20budget%20by%20service%20area.
Fore #1 horrid negative street furniture see the Armory,
People complain about planters ?
Check out what this Tennessee owner has around two sides of the Armory.
sfbulldogblog.com
Looks like he got the structures at an auction at Auschliwitz.
My dog, Skippy and I worked with Manny’s trash crews to remove (together) ove 40 bags of trash and crap and garbage from around these human cages.
Waiting for City to pick up last of it.
Put the Homeless into the Schools, all 112 buildings of em.
If they’re not civilized enough to live inside, put them to the school yards.
This quote stuck out to me – “We pay a lot to live here and it’s like I’m living in a slum.”
People don’t seem to understand the causality here. We have lots of homelessness BECAUSE it costs so much to live here. It’s directly related.
I hate that this is the solution people have come to. Every street in the Mission has these planters now. What’s the end game? We all just walk single-file through planter-filled sidewalks and the homeless continue to constantly be shuffled around, endlessly, until they eventually die on the streets? We need to be building as much housing as humanly possible to lower costs for everyone, and build more shelters.
It’s strange that people keep misinterpreting what the planters are a solution for. Obviously they’re not a solution for our larger economic/housing problems.
However, if people are smoking meth, being aggressive to passersby and residents in front of someone’s home, yelling and screaming all night next to the old drafty, single-pane mission apartment building windows that do not block out any sound…well, people are going to need a solution to that specific problem, too.
The “end game” is to be able to sleep and go to work the next day, to not be kept awake all night by the screaming outside your window. That’s it. It’s a short term solution to an immediate problem that many residents are facing, because there is absolutely no help available to residents who are dealing with this kind of problem.
Long-term problem that needs a solution:
Yes, the cost of living is too high and we don’t have enough housing, treatment, and shelters for unhoused people living on the streets. The city and state need to do something about this. Problems like this seem to be the domain of our government and elected leaders. It’s a big problem that requires big collective resources.
Short-term problem for which residents currently use planters as a solution: Apartment dwellers have daily responsibilities they need to attend to in order to raise families, work, and pay their rent. Drug induced anti-social behavior happening on one’s doorstep makes it incredibly difficult for people to function in day to day life. The government won’t help with this problem.
I don’t agree that there is a causal relationship there. Most homeless are on the streets because they are addicted to drugs and/or mentally ill. Many of these people refuse shelter, and they can barely tie their shoes, much less function as productive citizens. Yes sadly many will eventually die on our streets or another city’s streets.
Your beliefs don’t line up with empirical data and research that suggests otherwise: https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/research-summary/learning-about-homelessness-using-linked-survey-and-administrative-data/.
50% of sheltered homeless people were formally employed, whereas 40% of unsheltered homeless were also formally employed. That isn’t to say your supposition isn’t true in some capacity; but, also consider that drugs tend to be a coping mechanism to deal with one’s own deteriorating material conditions and circumstances. Furthermore, becoming homeless amplifies the decline to your mental health.
You and I are both closer to homelessness… and at its core, policy makers and realtor special interest groups have failed all residents of the Bay Area, homeless or not. Tangentially, and in light of the new housing / permitting bills and initiatives in San Francisco – are homeowners comfortable with not treating shelter as an investment vehicle? The answer to this ultimately guides policy making with respect to ending homelessness.
Do you think there are more mentally ill and addicted people in California than in other states? Half of the country’s homeless population lives in California. It is absolutely directly related to the skyrocketing living costs. In addition, the stress being homeless makes you way, way more likely to develop mental health problems and drug addictions. It’s a vicious cycle.
And before anyone starts saying they moved here, 90% of SF’s homeless population lived in California becoming homeless, and 80% lived in SF before becoming homeless. https://sfstandard.com/2023/06/20/ucsf-california-homelessness-study/
If housing costs are causing homelessness then why do they insist on staying in the country’s most expensive city? There is the entirety of the rest of California along with 49 other states to choose from.
I wondered the same thing. If I lost my income I would not continue to live in the 10th most expensive city on the planet. So why live here if housing is scarce and food so pricey? This is just anecdotal and I am sure DPH has the real answers, but I asked several homeless until I got 2 coherent responses. They were both from Denver. They learned that SF is generous to the homeless, no one minds if they take their dog on the bus, and the sidewalks don’t freeze in winter.
MR,
I’ll post to you cause you seem very sensible and you got the most dislikes.
Real Politic is that y’all are staring at one tree and ignoring the forest.
Older I get the longer range and term is my view.
To seriously address the problem society must stop producing more Poor and Drug addicted.
Highest cost/benefit return is to give any willing adult $10k to get sterilized.
First in line would be Tweakers and Poor and do we really need more of these.
Numbers say that you then give your new eunuchs 1k a month for life.
On immediate housing options that are somehow condemned as too visionary …
First … Force (by ballot) SFUSD to provide night shelter for all of the City’s Homeless.
Second … While that pot comes to ballot in a boil build 4 large Campgrounds on TI and our Golf Courses which are far far away from Folsom Street.
All of these sites have readily accessible water and power and we have the portable toilets in storage collecting dust.
You wouldn’t have to fight SFUSD but I know one Saudi Prince with an American reporters head in cold storage who would resist losing 9 holes at Harding which by legal contract he controls thanks to PGA’s avarice.
Am I now somehow a visionary for connecting these obvious dots or are y’all ….
frankly, even assuming homeless people have been all housed, I welcome green sidewalks. more planters all over the city please
I would be interested to know the exact source of the funding for the planters. I suspect Prop C money is the source, but I do not know.
When I look at those things I see a good start at recycling. They are so pervasive they might as well be use d to collect all those bottle we are now supposed to recycle. Give the people who need a job the opportunity to collect and turn in the bottles. They become part of the solution instead of a problem.
So what happens when the plants die? Who maintains them? Or when construction happens? Or when the neighborhood gets tired of these planters and wants them gone? Some of these planters are huge and filled with concrete at the bottom – they’re not easy to move on design, but what happens in 10 years? 20 years? Who’s gonna remove them? That’s right, the city – your tax dollars continuously at work! Yes, unhoused people are pushed out of the area, but this is the equivalent of a teenager shoving all their laundry under the bed when you ask them to clean their room. It’s not actually solving any issues, it’s hoisting them onto other districts. I understand neighbors and business owners are frustrated, and feel the need to take matters into their own hands, but isn’t this incredibly shortsighted? All under the guise of “making the neighborhood more beautiful”?
SF’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing has $690 MILLION in the budget for fiscal year 2023-2024, and you want to complain about the hypothetical financial impact of cleaning up a few planters? Please tell me you’re joking. If anything is “incredibly shortsighted”, it is the status quo approach of live and let live for the degenerates and drug addicts who plague our streets.
SFUSD,
Would you mind if we declared this an Emergency like it was an earthquake and put these 8,000 people into our 112 empty SFUSD buildings nights ?
I wish the rich twats would move out of my city and give their homes to the homeless folks. 750 bucks for a fucking planter. Use that money to help end homelessness you psychos.
Wow, there is a lot of hate behind so many of those quotes. The key word in all of this is PEOPLE. These are PEOPLE. Human beings. Actual living, thinking, feeling, sentient creatures. I don’t know what the things putting planters everywhere and acting like heroes are, but they certainly aren’t acting human.
I feel like it’s possible to both help someone get on their feet, access services etc but also install a planter on your sidewalk as is legally allowed. Planters arent directly harming people, and if the argument is that the sidewalks are better used for tents than planters then that is an argument you will lose. The unhoused human beings should have their lives improved in the right ways by the right resources while businesses should also be allowed to improve the aesthetics of their sidewalks. Both can happen – we don’t have to choose installing planters or helping the people, and if not installing planters means a tent takes that space that is not good for any PEOPLE involved.
They know the political argument that folks should be allowed to live on the streets indefinitely is a loser, so they go straight to the personal attacks. It’s really all they have.
I agree, cardinal,
Let’s move them into the empty SFUSD buildings nights.
I have a slogan that seems current …
Buildings without People for People without Buildings !!
Seth,
I love the Planters.
I think of them as a much needed addition to the City’s canopy of Green.
But, let’s not make it necessary for Homeless to sleep there.
Open SFUSD buildings nights and put Campsites on TI and Lincoln Golf.
Hopefully the Planters will still be maintained when the Homeless are gone.
Yeah totally inhuman of them to wish to add something to their community. Isn’t it the overarching goal of existence to leave things better than we found them?
Perhaps you find tents and the people who choose to reside in them on our city streets “beautiful”. I do not, nor do most of the other residents of our fine city, and in 99.9% of cases would prefer a planter on the sidewalk to the alternative.
Jeremy,
Would you support creating campsites on Treasure Island and on half of Lincoln Golf Course adjoining VA Medical Center where many of the Homelss are patients ?
I’m passing sensible solutions here, folks.
There is plenty of room to create encampments and we have the mobile facilities too.
Breed keeps 24 of our 36 largest toilet/shower units in storage.
Any idea who is buying for the planters? They may rust and make a big mess that will have to be cleaned up. If they don’t have drainage some plants may die. And more important, could this money be used to support more people who are only short a small sum to pay their rents? A few extra dollars could keep some people housed and off the street.
Hi, when I have time in mid-late afternoons, I can photograph in the Mission to support your reporters. Please let me know if you want me to send you my portfolio. Thank you.
Jay,
How about some shots of Parcel 36 ?