Brian HoweyBarely a week after city leaders installed emergency handwashing stations across San Francisco to slow the spread of the coronavirus among the homeless, many of those stations were missing or had fallen into disrepair. Officials blamed the deteriorated facilities on overuse as public health measures took effect and said the contractor in charge of maintaining the stations had probably placed the missing stations in the wrong locations.
Visits over the last several days to the locations the city mapped out for installing the units revealed that numerous stations were damaged or had non-functioning faucets, empty soap dispensers and sink basins clogged with dirty water. Others were missing from the locations the city has provided online.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing said the department was working with the company that owns and maintains the stations to fix those that are broken and locate the missing ones as soon as possible.
Read the full story here.
