San Francisco’s Public Works Department removed the vagrant-deterring boulders placed on a city street by residents fed up over the city’s burgeoning homeless crisis, a report said.
The deterrents were being repeatedly shoved into the street — posing a safety concern — and the city’s public works agency said placing them back on the sidewalk was wasting too much time, the department’s director, Mohammed Nuru, told CNN.
Nuru also said residents of the Mission Dolores neighborhood were being bombarded by phone calls from homeless advocates opposed to the initiative.
The neighbors were also the target of hate mail, Nuru told the network.
The news is a reversal from last week when the public works agency said it had no plans to remove the boulders since they didn’t obstruct the sidewalk.
Neighbors along Market and Dolores streets — an apparent haven for drug-riddled homeless encampments — raised over $2,000 to install 24 boulders several weeks ago without the city’s help.
The method — while chastised by homeless advocates — appeared to be effective in cleaning up their sidewalks, neighbors had said.
Nuru said the city plans to work with the neighbors — and they may even build off the boulder idea.
“We’re at the drawing board now. We’re definitely going to look at some of the things we have learned,” Nuru told CNN.
“It could be bigger boulders, it could be some kind of landscaping, it could be something different, but we’re going to work with the neighbors on something they want.”
But to add insult to injury, Nuru indicated neighbors will be at least partially on the hook for the cost of the rock removal.