San Francisco’s tent count rose 29% between May and September, while feces sightings continued to worsen in the Tenderloin, according to two city surveys that offer a mixed picture of street conditions under Mayor Daniel Lurie. The latest quarterly count found 148 tents and makeshift structures, up from 115 in May and marking the first increase in a year. The rise, driven in part by increases in SoMa, the Inner Richmond and Potrero Hill, broke four consecutive quarters of declines. The September tally was still 12% below the 168 tents counted a year earlier. A separate annual report from the city controller’s office found feces during 81% of survey visits along routes in the Tenderloin during fiscal 2026. Surveyors typically recorded three to four instances per visit. Two years earlier, feces appeared in 54% of evaluations, with an average of two instances per route. The annual Street & Sidewalk Maintenance Standards Report measures conditions including litter, dumped items, graffiti and feces. Surveyors walked one- to two-block routes twice during the fiscal year, so the findings document conditions on those visits rather than a continuous count of neighborhood-wide conditions. The Tenderloin has San Francisco’s highest concentration of children, and sanitation there remains a prominent challenge as Lurie seeks to improve street conditions and the city’s reputation. In a social media video Tuesday, Lurie called conditions a “huge concern” and pointed to efforts to expand treatment beds and increase police presence. “I know we have more work to do,” he said. In SoMa, the September count rose to 13 tents from four in May, tying the neighborhood with the Central Waterfront for the city’s highest concentration. That increase came months after the city opened its law-enforcement-led RESET sobering center in SoMa. The center has been operating below 30% capacity, and the city has struggled to track outcomes, according to recent reporting. People who visited the center have said they returned to the sidewalk soon afterward. Community members said the counts do not capture every measure residents use to judge conditions. Tadd Cortell, who owns three businesses near Sixth Street, said the neighborhood had improved since Lurie took office in early 2025 but still “desperately needs help.” “You can’t coast now,” Cortell said. “Make it clean and safe — and it wouldn’t hurt if you were to say, ‘Go to SoMa, it has this cool shit.’” Alex Ludlum, executive director of the SoMa West Community Benefit District, said a regular count of public drug use would be more useful to neighbors than a tally of people sleeping outside. Public drug use is difficult to measure beyond arrests and 311 reports, and people who are cited or arrested may return to the street. The Board of Supervisors was scheduled to hold a hearing Thursday on conditions related to open-air drug markets. Other indicators moved in a more positive direction. The number of vehicles presumed to be homes fell to 249 in September from 315 in May and 489 a year earlier. Large vehicles such as RVs and campers dropped from 404 in September 2025 to 193. The city credits new parking restrictions and a program to move RV residents into shelter and housing for much of the decline. In the Tenderloin, surveyors recorded fewer large dumped items in fiscal 2026 than the year before, averaging 1.2 per visit compared with two. Graffiti remained common, but the average number of tags per visit fell from 75 to 46.