At 4:00 a.m., the silent street waits. A row of swathed bodies slumbers along the Tenderloin Health Center wall at Leavenworth and Golden Gate. Brilliant lights stab the darkness. A siren screams. A police car hurtles just ahead of a Department of Public Works “flusher truck.” Seconds later, orange-vested men approach, shouting groggy sleepers off the street. People scatter, gathering belongings. A huge white vehicle roars past jetting a powerful water arc over struggling people. A phosphorescent halo spray glows eerily around carts, heads, and bodies.

Memphis was there: “They run me off four times this morning.” He pointed. “I moved here and over there and up there, circling the block.

“They start at 2:30, 3 o’clock. You just keep moving. You’re tired all day. You don’t get no sleep.

“Three days ago around 3:00 a.m. they soaked me three times when I was asleep. They didn’t give me no warning. I was soaked through and through. My shoes were soaking wet. I couldn’t walk in them. I didn’t have no shoes for three days. Finally somebody gave me some. Once I caught pneumonia behind it.

“There are chemicals in that water, chlorine or something. You can smell it. It burns your eyes.”

At 4:30 or 5:00 a.m., Mr. Tek Chau, manager of the All Day Café at 7th and Market approached, passing businesses on his block. It was not raining, but water shone on the street and sidewalk. The large white trucks working this early shift had surged water through his open door at 9:00 and 10:00 other nights. Hard pressure from a 10 cm diameter fire hose-like nozzle had soaked the floor inside his door. Before he could open, he had to mop his entryway.

A soft-spoken unidentified man awaiting a bed inside Tenderloin Health Center on Golden Gate had witnessed water sprayed with force into the All Day Café. Three times in the previous two weeks, and again around midnight, the soft-spoken man saw housed and unhoused alike struggling for footing as they scurried from the flusher truck’s pressure hose. He watched the orange-vested DPW worker walking in front of the truck, yelling, “Get out of the way!” There was no advance warning, no police siren. He quietly observed that the water, which, “seems more powerful than just to clean,” could topple small children and adults.

On October 10, 2008, “Mountain Flower,” reported witnessing the spraying of All Day Café street clientele. She told me that several mornings at 4:00 a.m., DPW workers woke this well-spoken, disabled 60-ish woman and her attentive guardian, “Bruce Wayne,” where they slept at 50 Ivy behind Tom Waddell Clinic. With five minutes’ warning, DPW rousted them. Workers announced, “We have to clean up the streets for the Mayor. He wants to clean out the homeless.” They were ordered to go South of Market. They gathered cardboard and sleeping bags and, instead, ran to the Civic Center children’s park, because that would not be sprayed. There, they escaped the, “big, fat trucks,” filled with, “500 gallons of water,” using powerful hoses at, “280 pounds’ pressure,” shooting, “right over the vehicles [onto] the sidewalk.” (Bruce knew this. His uncle was a fireman.)

In the last six weeks, DPW appears to have stepped up the frequency and vigilance of its street washing operations. DPW officials confirmed three shifts a day, trucks out seven days a week. All ten interviewees for this article mentioned increased police and DPW presence Downtown. Office workers on Mission reported spray from the powerful flusher truck hoses washing over car tops, hitting sidewalk pedestrians, shoppers, and tourists.

On Tuesday, October 21, blond Chris, a homeless man outside the downtown San Francisco Public Library, repeatedly crossed himself to emphasize his honesty. He said that, for the last month, his group slept on the 50 Ivy sidewalk behind Tom Waddell. DPW usually arrived in a pickup truck at 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. forcing them to relocate. Two weeks ago, however, things changed. Workers arrived at 2:30 a.m. saying, “Get out. We’re spraying the streets.” The flusher trucks roared in. Suddenly, two moves and sleep disturbances were mandated: the first to a nearby parking lot, the second when the police appeared there and threatened to arrest them for outstanding tickets or infractions of any kind if they stayed.

Mountain Flower’s friend, Bruce, noted that, around 10:00 a.m., while he was reading outside the San Francisco Public Library, DPW hosed the statues, apparently to clean them of pigeon droppings. He was hit with spray that stung his eyes. Diabetes had sensitized his eyes to pain and damage from chlorine. For Bruce, suds signified another chemical present. October 17, outside the library, “Mousie” and Britain Hartman agreed the suds smelled like the “cheap, clear… general cleaner you buy at the dollar store.”

Inquiries with DPW’S Bureau of Street and Environmental Services officials verified two water truck types used in street cleaning operations: a gigantic white vehicle called a “flusher truck” containing a powerful spray hose coming out of a huge tank filled at City water hydrants, and a pressure washer called a “steamer.” A biodegradable product DPW calls “Smell Good,” is applied to the pavement. Then the steamer sprays heated water.

An unidentified South American man at THC insisted the pressure washer had chemicals. Despite reports—from both homeless people and others who have witnessed the sprayings first-hand—of an odor emanating from the newly cleaned pavement, officials have stated that the chemcial is only “pine.” They also insisted the streets were cleared for this procedure, thereby removing the possibility of human exposure.

The procedure was a response to neighborhood complaints of homeless people’s, “using the streets for a bathroom.” Mountain Flower, Bruce, and others testified they could not use Civic Center restroom facilities either inside or outside because they were unsafe.

All ten interviewees reported sleep deprivation and exposure—recognized forms of torture.

The South American man surmised that the morning DPW worker was impatient to end her shift: “I got a little late because of my bag, blanket, and clothes.” Two nights ago at 4:30 a.m., she rushed: “I got wet.” He took it upon himself to drop a water bottle at her feet. Then he asserted that, under the Geneva Convention, she had assaulted him, “in violation of my human right to sleep.”

Carol

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