Residents of the San Francisco neighbourhood of Clinton Park chipped in together to purchase and install large boulders on the streets of their neighbourhood in an effort to prevent the homeless from setting up encampments in the area, footage filmed on Thursday shows.
“Well they don’t want us to sit up or anything like that, they don’t want us being here so they just put the boulders here to keep us away, to keep us out,” said a local homeless woman, Lillie.
John, a resident of the neighbourhood, said that the boulders “arrived two weeks ago” and that it was a collective effort of local residents “where they all pulled together to get them put there as a deterrent so encampments, homeless encampments won’t come.”
“A lot of people think it’s a complete waste of time. I am one of those people as well, because it’s not going to stop them. If they want to, if the homeless people, which is a major problem in San Francisco, want to come there, they are going to come there,” John added.
According to reports, bringing in the boulders would have required a lot of work, possibly even a crane, and that whoever organised it had to have been familiar with city codes and laws regarding sidewalks, as the boulders do not obstruct the sidewalks and lie within a zone where electrical boxes and other utilities are often located. City authorities reportedly have no immediate cause or plan to remove them.