San Francisco Mayor London N. Breed welcomed the kickoff on August 4 of an expanded CleanCorridorsSF operation that deploys a large, coordinated team of Public Works street cleaners to different neighborhood commercial corridors to power wash and sweep the sidewalks, flush down the roads, dig out weeds and wipe out graffiti.

The program was tested over the last year as a pilot with crews providing intensive cleaning in a different neighborhood commercial corridor every week, focusing on five blocks over four hours. Starting August 4, the operation will expand to eight hours a week and allow crews to deep clean at least 10 blocks – double the coverage as before.

This week’s operation will put 15 Public Works street cleaners on Fillmore Street on Thursday, between McAllister and Pine streets. CleanCorridorsSF crews will be on the ground once a week, rotating through neighborhoods across the City, including the Castro, the South of Market, West Portal, Ingleside, North Beach and the Haight.

The City’s new budget included $2.1 million for the expanded CleanCorridorsSF program. A companion workforce development operation, the Power Wash Mobile Team, received $140,000 for a 6-month pilot that employs immigrants with barriers to employment to provide monthly steam cleaning services in Chinatown, the Bayview, Visitacion Valley, Richmond, Sunset, Excelsior, Mission andFillmore. The stepped-up street cleaning efforts fall under Shine On SF, a new public-private recovery initiative that aims to rekindle civic pride and improve the condition of San Francisco’s streets and public spaces.

“These investments will go a long way in making sure that San Francisco shines,” said Breed. “Keeping our neighborhoods clean creates a more inviting environment for our residents, visitors and businesses, and is especially important now as we’re reopening and welcoming more people back. But we know that the City and our nonprofit partners cannot do the job alone.

“It requires all of us to do our part. If you are able, volunteer at a neighborhood cleanup, contact 311 to report illegal dumping so we can clean it up quickly and, perhaps most importantly, help us get to a place where people won’t feel it’s OK to mess up our beautiful city in the first place,” she said.

San Francisco Public Works has street cleaning crews on the job around the clock. CleanCorridorsSF provides the department another tool to perform more intensive, proactive cleanups. In addition to the cleaning crews, Public Works will deploy outreach staff to let property owners, residents and merchants know how they can help keep their neighborhood clean.

“We saw firsthand through the pilot that CleanCorridorsSF gets welcome results,” said Acting Public Works Director Alaric Degrafinried. “Now that we have additional resources to expand the operation, thanks to support from Mayor Breed, the Board of Supervisors and our community partners, we expect greater success in addressing the challenges of keeping San Francisco looking good.”

 The San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Communications provided this report.

Isabelle Price

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