san francisco homeless map
map by Chronicle Graphics

I missed this article when it appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle back in December. It presents several of the city’s neighborhoods from the perspective of the homeless.

I work in neighborhood no. 2, the “service/crack sector.” Chronicle staff writer Kevin Fagan describes it pretty accurately:

During the day, soup kitchens such as St. Anthony’s and other programs for the poor reach out to the homeless, turning the Tenderloin into a service center as vital as Market Street. But it is also where those who traffic in crack can most easily find or sell the drug. At night, it becomes frightening — the only homeless people who sleep here are those who pass out or who group up with sentries, because bands of drug dealers roam the streets all night and terrorize the unprotected.

Didn’t Mayor Newsom have a plan for improving this?

BTW, the graphic — this map is only one section of the larger map — reminds me that, while the Chronicle gets a lot of (well-earned) criticism, one area in which it excels is graphics. I worked on a project once with one of the people in this department, John Blanchard; he was a real wizard with information graphics.

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