Brittany Brandon
HOT SPOTS Cleaning crew SUPERVISOR
Brittany Brandon, a general laborer supervisor overseeing the Hot Spots crews for Public Works, grew up with the department.
“It was my first real job,” said Brandon, who joined Public Works when she was 18. That was 12 years ago.
After working as an apprentice with the department early on, Brandon rose through the ranks over the course of her career with Public Works, from sweeping streets and steam-cleaning alleys in North Beach to supervising cleaning crews assigned to encampment resolutions.
A native San Franciscan, Brandon’s frontline work brought the city she loved ever closer.
Listen to Brittany talk about the challenges and fulfilling aspects of keeping our City clean.
"We’re not just working here, we’re part of this community, we want to beautify this city. We love this city. That’s why we work here."
“I had been around the City, but you don’t understand how much you haven’t been around the City until you work for the City and you’re in all these different areas you’ve never seen and different streets you’ve never heard of,” she said.
One of Public Works’ core priorities is keeping the right of way accessible for the community’s benefit. It takes a dedicated workforce and lots of coordination to make sure San Francisco’s streets, sidewalks and public spaces are clean and safe for all. The effort is led by the Public Works Bureau of Street Environmental Services, housed within the department’s Operations Division and totaling some 340 workers.
To Brandon – whose team falls under the Street Environmental Services umbrella – the goal is to help San Francisco’s residents, visitors and workforce alike see the beauty that she sees in her hometown.
“We’re not just working here, we’re part of this community, we want to beautify this city,” she said. “We love this city. That’s why we work here.”
Public Works’ crews work around the clock to keep San Francisco tidy, with day, swing and night shifts, plus a multitude of special operations layered on top.
"It was my first real job."
There is no shortage of work, keeping our crews on the job 24/7. Every week, the department’s street cleaning operation averages 2,200 3-1-1-service requests and removes an average of 900,000 pounds of litter and debris from the public right of way.
Mechanical street sweepers – which cover 150,000 curb miles along 90% of San Francisco’s streets – work in concert with steam-cleaning crews, staff who scour alleys overnight, and other key personnel. That’s on top of our CleanCorridorsSF program – an initiative that sends a large contingent of street cleaners to a different neighborhood commercial district every week to conduct a deep cleaning – and other operations, including Brandon’s Hot Spots crews.
Her team focuses on areas with longstanding, larger encampments.
We do “steam-cleaning, we have our general laborers out there picking up the garbage, sometimes we might have to have heavy equipment out there and things of that nature,” Brandon said. “We’re doing big cleanups.”
Much of the work’s success hinges on teamwork and coordination. The Hot Spots cleanups involve multiple other City departments, among them health, police, homelessness and supportive housing, and fire. But relationship-building is key, too. So is respect for others.
“You don’t just build relationships with the people that you’re working with, but you also build relationships with the people that are out there, that you’re interacting with,” Brandon said. “They remember that you were respectful at the end of the day.”