By Rick Moran
San Francisco has a problem with poor, starving homeless people rooting around in the city’s garbage cans looking for another meal and salvation for another day.
But the homeless need to be taught that only the city government in its infinite goodness should be relied upon for salvation. So the city is looking to swap out the garbage cans to make them more secure so the homeless won’t disturb or purloin the valuable contents.
If the city were as concerned about people breaking into residences as they are about the homeless breaking into garbage cans, San Francisco might be an almost livable city.
The city is dead serious about this secure garbage can idea. The public works department has developed a pilot program to determine which sort of garbage can will work best. They estimate that the program will cost between $12,000 and $20,000 per trash receptacle — about $537,000 for 15 trash cans.
That $20K is just for the outer shell. The inner bins will have to be custom-made. Public Works acting director Alaric Degrafinried told ABC7, “They’re going to be made here in San Francisco on a one-by-one basis, so there is a lot of manual labor that goes into that cost.”