Health inspectors temporarily closed a Glen Park grocery store Wednesday after they found signs of a rodent infestation, which owners blamed on a community-wide rat problem.
According to a report obtained by The Chronicle, a Department of Public Health inspection of Canyon Market found rat droppings on the food, holes where pests nest and other evidence of “serious rodent infestation.” 311 complaints prompted inspections.
Health officials ordered the immediate closure of stores while employees worked to plug the loopholes.
Superintendent Rafael Mandelman, whose area includes Glen Park, tweeted Thursday night that Canyon Market has reopened.
Describing the forced closure as the culmination of a years-long conflict with a resident, the store’s owner, Janet Tarlov, said that despite efforts by Tarlov and others to warn, at Glen, near Canyon Market, Plenty of unsanitary practices from bird health officials left near Park BART station.
Tarlove, president of the Glen Park Merchants Association, said she has been in touch with health officials since 2020, when she said residents began “dumping 20 to 30 pounds of bird food at a time in the BART parking lot.”
“We’re begging for help,” Tarov said.
In a statement, the health department said it would investigate all complaints “regardless of the source of the rodent infestation”.
The department said it had placed rat baits in sewer pipes in Glen Park “to eliminate areas of rats” and had instructed a local hardware store to stop providing bird food to residents. The department also said it was “working with landlords where bird feeders live…to provide health services to bird feeder tenants.”
Mandelman called Canyon Market’s forced closure “completely unfair” and said the problem wasn’t limited to one store. Mandelman said his office “has been working on this for months with the health department and others.”
“There’s a rat problem in the neighborhood, which seems to be related to someone distributing large amounts of bird food every day,” Mandelman said in an interview Thursday, adding that the resident “was summoned by police at least once.” “
“The response from the health department was totally inadequate, other than punishing the person who raised the alarm in the first place,” Mandelman said, referring to Tarov.
Glenn Park Association president Hilary Schiraldi began noticing an increase in rats in her yard two years ago and said the problem has spiraled since then.
“It’s not just the store — it’s the whole community,” she said.
Marian Dalere, owner of the nearby Dalere Beauty Salon, said shoppers outside Canyons Market on Wednesday were “stunned” and “shocked” by the forced closure of “anchors of the commercial corridor”.
The rat infestation at Glen Park is well known in the neighborhood, and residents there have started organizing volunteer cleanups with the nonprofit Refuse Refuse San Francisco, Dalere said.
Dalere said as many as 40 bags of “needles, rubbish and dead mice” were collected in a single day to address what many believe is the frequent dumping of bird food.
“We’re really trying to clean up the neighborhood because of this bird-eating lady,” Dalere said.
Tarlov said she first noticed local residents using small shopping carts to unload piles of bird food in front of nearby restaurants in April 2020, when the restaurant was closed due to pandemic restrictions.
“I saw her putting out a lot of bird food in multiple places in front of all the restaurants that were closed,” Tarov said. “I thought, ‘This is horrible. There’s going to be rats in restaurants.'”
When Taroff told residents to stop, Taroff said the residents spat at her in retaliation. Taroff said she believed the resident also started leaving ground corn flakes on the loading dock of the store across the street.
Tarov said she reported the incident to police and “immediately started trying to work with the health department.” In addition to contacting health officials, Tarlov said she also contacted BART to address the sudden mass of bird food that had popped up near the BART station and its adjacent parking lot.
She believes the rodent problem at Canyon Market stems from its proximity to the station. “If you’re a mouse, it’s probably only 100 yards away,” she said.
Tarlov said she was told by health department officials that a mental health specialist had been assigned to the resident to leave bird food nearby.
But she said her “goodwill” communications with officials in recent days had broken down over what she said was the government’s inaction. “We have a serious problem here,” Tarov said. Health officials “did not take effective action”.
Nora Mishanec is a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: nora.mishanec@chron.com Twitter: @NMishanec