SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — A photo shows seven needles at the end of Beale Street in San Francisco’s South Beach neighborhood.
The concerned resident immediately notified city workers.
The city sent out crews to clean up the syringes, but it’s the location that has people in the neighborhood upset.
The needles were found a few feet away from the homeless navigation center on the Embarcadero.
“It’s disturbing but it’s not really a surprise for me though and it’s not really a surprise for people in the neighborhood,” Wallace Lee said. “Because when this navigation center was announced, a lot of us actually went to look at other navigation centers and that’s the same kind of problem we found about the other ones.”
Lee chairs the group Safe Embarcadero For All, which opposes the navigation center.
The center opened last month.
The facility has 200 beds to provide shelter and services for the homeless.
San Francisco police assigned four additional officers seven days a week that extends two to four blocks from the vicinity.
Still, there are problems.
“Our issue is not with homeless people,” Phillip Archer said. “We’ve seen needles all over so it’s not just right around here. So it’s a constant problem right now in the neighborhood.”
Residents are concerned about the potentially hazardous debris, and say they’ve spotted more homeless people camping out since the new center opened.
The City says there is an expedited 311 queue for the area surrounding the navigation center and they are closely tracking it.