Fewer tents on SF streets, but drugs, feces, mental health still big problems

The number of tents on San Francisco streets has been cut by more than half in the past two years, but despite the shrinking numbers, the street behavior by the homeless, the mentally ill and the drug-addled continues to be a challenge — with no quick solution in sight.

The city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Services clocked the number of homeless encampments on streets and sidewalks at 568 in July — compared with 1,200 in July 2016.

In that time, social workers offered services to 1,300 people in the larger encampments. Two-thirds of those approached accepted the city’s offer of temporary shelter, said Randy Quezada, Department of Homelessness spokesman.

Of the 866 people who accepted help, 288 have been placed in permanent housing.

“I don’t think the numbers are lying,” Supervisor Aaron Peskin said of the camp clean outs. “The problem is, the mental health issues are much more acute.”

Peskin said he had recently phoned in a report of a seemingly deranged street person running in and out of traffic — hurling orange traffic cones — near a bus stop at Van Ness Avenue and Clay Street.

And for most of the city’s residents and visitors, the street behavior continues to be the problem.

Just look at the numbers.

The city’s 311 service portal reported logging 1,138 complaints about discarded syringes between July 1 and July 25 of this year — or about 45 a day. During the same period, the 311 line clocked 1,948 calls — or about 78 a day — from people reporting human feces or waste on the streets or sidewalks.

One flash point are BART’s downtown stations, where there has been a growing number of complaints from riders about hypodermic needles littering the transit system.

Four BART riders have been pricked by needles in the past two years, including a mother of two from San Ramon, who claimed she sat on a stray needle in May while riding to San Francisco. She was later tested for HIV and got a hepatitis vaccine shot — but must continue to be tested every three months over the next 1½ years.

Meanwhile, new figures from BART show that since April janitors have cleaned up more than 13,000 dirty needles left behind at the Civic Center and Powell Street stations.

The 9,004 needles found at Civic Center are among the reasons BART is moving to close down a portion of the station’s underground walkway, which had become a drug den.

Stepped-up foot patrols by BART and San Francisco police have cleaned up both stations, but the problem remains rampant on the streets.

The problems aren’t strictly in San Francisco. BART’s chief mechanical safety Officer David Hardt tells us they’ve logged from 70 to 100 reports of mostly urine, feces and blood on the transit agency’s mobile phone biohazard reporting site since it was launched in June — the good news being that the instant reporting has allowed cleanup crews to jump into action much more quickly.

Newly elected San Francisco Mayor London Breed, who has made dealing with the homeless her No. 1 priority, is pushing a new tack — launching the nation’s first safe drug injection sites.

It’s a bold idea, but given the threat that officials could be held criminally liable under federal law, odds of the injection centers actually opening anytime soon are slim.

Breed and new Supervisor Rafael Mandelman are also joining with state Sen. Scott Wiener to push for legislation to allow for more court-ordered conservatorships for the “worst of the worst” mentally ill who repeatedly wind up in emergency rooms.

However, Wiener tells us the changes in those rules would only result in commitments of 50 to 100 of the city’s worst cases.

“It’s a very severe thing to take someone’s liberty away for a year, so you only want to do it for people who are in really bad shape,” Wiener said.

In the short run, Breed has few options other than to continue the tent crackdowns started by her predecessor, former Mayor Mark Farrell, or resign herself to the type of on-and-off crackdowns that occurred under the late Mayor Ed Lee — with little effect.

But, as Breed noted the other day at the opening of the latest homeless Navigation Center, “It is not enough to merely get people indoors — we know that we need to provide services to ensure they do not end up back on our streets.”

And that may prove to be a far greater challenge.

Spy games: President Trump used a weekend rally to mock U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein over the Russia meddling probe by calling out her former driver, who we reported had been linked to Chinese spying.

“Speaking of China, it just came out that the Democratic leader and the leader of the Russian investigation, Dianne Feinstein, had a Chinese spy as her driver for 20 years!” Trump told a crowd in Ohio on Saturday.

Trump later tweeted: “Will she now investigate herself?”

Feinstein, facing re-election this fall, wasted little time firing back at Trump on Twitter, saying once the FBI alerted her that the Chinese government was seeking to recruit “an administrative member” of her staff … the “employee left my office immediately.”

There was no evidence the driver divulged any secret information or even knew the Chinese government was trying to recruit him.

“Compare that to your actions: attacking the FBI and refusing the advice of your national security team. SAD!”’ Feinstein tweeted back to Trump.

San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call 415-777-8815, or email matierandross@ sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @matierandross