You may be surprised at the quantity of scumzoids on the streets of SF, particularly if you've gotten used to the current state of New York City. The Powers That Be here have not yet found a way to implement their own version of Giuliani's Final Solution, and the Streets of SF are like stepping back in time to New York in the 80s.
A note on terminology: I prefer the broad term "scumzoid" to the popular term "homeless" (or "panhandler" or "drug dealer" or whatever). "Scumzoid" might be criticized as a harsh, dehumanizing term, but this sort of nicety is not the first thing on your mind, as you go walking down a street late at night and you notice someone up ahead screaming obscenities and karate-kicking the air.
(Also, you should realize that terms like "homeless" make a lot of assumptions that may not be true... some of the kids lying around the Haight hitting you for spare change are reportedly commuters from Marin County).
So for now at least, I'm sticking with the term "scumzoid", though I'm always thinking about dropping it (I'd hate to have it picked up by the "clean up the streets", i.e. "death to the homeless" gang).
It's not always easy to quickly describe areas with a high scumzoid factor, but here's a quick list:
- The Tenderloin, which oddly enough is practically in the center of town stuck between the Civic Center, Union Square and Nob Hill areas. The boundaries of the 'loin have been nibbled away at somewhat in recent years, but they're something like: West: Polk Street, East: Mason, South: Market, North: Sutter (that North edge is pretty ill-defined, though).
- Soma, 6th street between Market and Mission, and maybe a few adjacent streets. You can think of this as the Tenderloin South: the 6th Street strip is a continuation of Taylor.
- Much of Market Street east of Van Ness gets pretty sleazy at night, but it's particular noticeable in the Tenderloin area mentioned above.
- The Mission, 15th street or so (just south of the hipster strip on 16th street), and Mission St itself, through much of the Mission.
- The Lower Haight (though that's "cleaned up" a bit in recent years)
- There are probably others, but you're not too likely to wind up in them by accident.
But anyway, I don't want to exaggerate the problem too much. You can wander pretty much anywhere in San Francisco at all hours and the odds are that you'll come out safe and sound... in some places you may feel a bit nervous about it, though.
And in fact, quite often someone like me will recommend that you go to these neighborhoods (or at least near them). It's part of the dynamic of urban neighborhoods, the yuppie scum push up the property values, the suburban wannabees put pressure on the cops to clean things up, and yeah, the scumzoids get pushed out, but along with them goes anything resembling "cool" and often anything resembling "character". Sometimes an entrenched scumzoid population is the only thing that can scare away the yups and subs and stabilize the TAZ... for awhile.
In a perverse way, I think the obvious prevalence of what I'm calling "scumzoids" is a testament to San Francisco's civic virtue. Do you think your home town deserves credit because they've succeeding in making them invisible? Have you ever wondered what your local cops are doing to keep your city "clean"?