With no end to the housing crisis in sight, California’s record-breaking homeless population has created a sanitary crisis that is pushing investors out of the city and threatening public health.
This week, a Twitter user uploaded a photo of a homeless man pooping in a Safeway aisle.
“Cleanup in Aisle 3!” tweeted John Dennis, a Republican running against Nancy Pelosi in next year’s primary elections.
“I publicly warned in 2018 that if we let people violate our streets the homeless problem would get worse. The answer: Arrest, then offer a choice: jail or rehab.”
If this habit catches on, there’s no telling the effect on grocery chains and their employees.
The human waste problem is so bad that San Francisco has established a “poop patrol” to respond to complaints. The patrol has received more than 25,000 complaints so far this year.
“Isn’t it ironic that a city of germaphobes, of exercise-conscious, environmentally conscious…are now in a city that’s awash in human waste?” asks Fox News medical correspondent Dr. Marc Siegel. “Big outbreaks of hepatitis A, rats in the streets feeding off the garbage in sewage, typhus, typhoid fever, rotten bacterial infections, and even the plague may be coming.”
To prevent an outbreak of “medieval diseases,” adds Siegel, California must “offer bathroom facilities in temporary shelters, get costs, get food. This is what has to happen.”
Estimates suggest there are roughly 9,700 homeless in San Francisco and about 130,000 in the state.