San Franciscans lodged nearly 800,000 requests with the city’s 311 system in 2025, roughly one complaint for every person living in the city. Litter, overflowing trash cans and parking woes led the pack, turning everyday irritations into a nonstop stream of calls, clicks and app submissions.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the 311 system recorded almost 100,000 complaints about loose garbage or debris, about 70,000 reports of overflowing city trash cans and roughly 46,000 reports of bagged or boxed garbage last year. The Chronicle’s analysis filtered out duplicate and invalid submissions before tallying the numbers. Taken together, those categories made trash the city’s biggest quality-of-life complaint in 2025.
How the city collects and publishes the data
The city runs a 24/7 311 Customer Service Center and companion mobile app that let residents report non-emergency issues, according to San Francisco 311. The city also publishes service-request records on DataSF, where anyone can sort and map complaints by neighborhood or category. Reporters and researchers rely on that public dataset to see where complaints cluster and which problems spike over time.
Apps and third-party tools changed reporting
New tools helped pump up the numbers. The San Francisco Standard reported that SolveSF, an app that launched early in 2025, lets users snap a photo and have the app auto-fill details to file a ticket. Local coverage shows the app quickly generated thousands of reports, and City Hall has debated limiting its access to the 311 API, an issue summarized in coverage of its key API access. These tools make it easier to attach photographic evidence but also raise new data-management questions for city staff.
Neighborhood hot spots
Not every neighborhood complained about the same things. Reporting by the San Francisco Chronicle found that the Marina’s top gripe was blocked driveways, while residents in Noe Valley and the Excelsior most often flagged cars jutting into sidewalks. Twin Peaks recorded the most reports of abandoned vehicles. North Beach callers were especially irritated by e-scooters left in the way on sidewalks, Glen Park logged a high number of non-offensive graffiti tags on poles, and the Tenderloin stood out as the only neighborhood where the top complaint was human waste. Together, those patterns sketch a block-by-block snapshot of how quality-of-life issues differ across the city.
What officials say
City officials say 311 exists to funnel non-emergency concerns to the agencies best equipped to respond, and that its public-facing tools help staff track and triage cases more efficiently. The 311 Customer Service Center notes that residents can submit requests by phone, web or mobile and then track case status online, according to San Francisco 311. Supervisors and neighborhood advocates say the same data should drive faster, more visible cleanup and enforcement where it is most needed.
With the city publishing increasingly detailed complaint data and third-party apps making it easier than ever to hit “submit,” the 311 pipeline is likely to stay crowded, and neighborhood quirks will keep popping up in the charts. Whether that surge in reporting leads to quicker cleanups or changes in staffing at the departments that respond remains a key question heading into 2026.
