Brian HoweyBy Carly Graf and Brian Howey
Chelsea Hung is a second-generation business owner in San Francisco’s Chinatown, running Washington Bakery and Restaurant, which her parents opened 25 years ago.
She invested “a few thousand dollars” into building an outdoor platform under Shared Spaces, a city-run, fee-free program created during the coronavirus pandemic to help businesses convert parking spaces, sidewalks and streets into outdoor space for commercial activity. Her restaurant’s location on hilly Washington Street made leveling out the platform a particularly difficult task that required more time and money than originally planned.
Only two months later, the spacious outdoor platform now sits empty and boarded up with wooden planks.
“We don’t want to be boarded up, but it’s for our safety,” Hung said. She recounted multiple stories of arriving at her restaurant in the morning to find trash, waste and even people’s belongings on the platform.
One day, Hung discovered nearly one dozen syringes and other paraphernalia. Without any background in how to safely handle this kind of material, she called 311, only to be told that it would take as many as three days for someone from the Department of Public Works to help with the cleanup.
“It shouldn’t be up to us to clean up someone’s syringes and waste when we don’t have the proper equipment to do so,” Hung said of the responsibility that’s fallen on business owners to keep their Shared Spaces platforms clean and unhazardous. “The reason we boarded up is that it becomes very unsanitary, and we need to keep everyone safe.”
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