Philly has 16,000 alleys. Keeping them clean and clear is a big job.

The steel frame of a chain-link gate lay twisted on the sidewalk on East Hilton Street in Kensington. A worn stuffed animal, possibly once a pink bunny, dangled from the top of the intact part of the gate — a ragged welcome to an alley stretching for hundreds of feet.

The alley between rowhouses had been choked with trash and debris until a city crew cleared most of it in recent weeks. Some trash persisted Monday: crushed water bottles and cans, foam takeout containers, a lone shoe, and contractor bags brimming with construction debris.

“Some of the alleys are connected to people’s backyards,” said Isaiah Richardson of North Philadelphia, who works for the city’s Future Track alley cleaning program, which hires and trains at-risk young adults for public service work. So far this year, they have cleaned 2,000 alleys.

“I see a lot of animals — rats, cats. I also see a lot of crack vials," he said. “Things get piled on top of each other. It could be dirt, rugs, mattresses. Anything could be back there.”

The city has an estimated 16,000 alleys. Carlton Williams, director of the Philadelphia Office of Clean and Green, said it’s a big job to keep them clean and clear.

Some public alleys are blocked by locked gates that residents have installed illegally. However, most alleys are considered private and shared among property owners.

Not all of Philadelphia’s alleys are dirty or cluttered. Many are maintained, providing pathways between backyards and even community gardens.

But numerous alleys remain strewed with trash and debris or suffocated by vegetation.

Williams said Mayor Cherelle L. Parker wanted the alleys addressed as part of her citywide goal of cleaning every neighborhood.

“We go location to location,” Williams said Monday at another alley cleaning on East Hilton Street.

There, a crew of about 10 Future Track workers squeezed single file into an alley not much more than a foot wide. They tore out small trees and vegetation. They shoveled trash and muck, eventually filling at least 50 brown bags.

When they finished, the alley was clean and clear.

“This has been an issue for years,” Williams said. “These alleys have been sitting like this for decades. This didn’t happen overnight.”

Williams says it is also the residents’ responsibility to clean the space because alleyways are shared spaces.

All of the people who are connected to an alley are supposed to take care of it, he said. “Unfortunately, if they haven’t done that, the city has to step in.”

Clean alleys ease emergency crew access and help with overall public safety, Williams said.

Trees are a major issue.

On East Hilton Street, mulberry trees clogged the alley. Though the trees start as saplings, they cause major damage as they mature by cutting off alleys, uprooting walkways, disrupting fences, and jutting into yards.

It can take hours, a day, or a week to clean an alley, depending on how much debris is there and how much vegetation needs to be pruned or hacked away.

Williams said the city learns about some of the alleys in need of cleaning from 311 calls. The city has received about 800 calls related to alleys so far this year, according to 311 records. The callers asked how to get alleys cleaned and have trees removed. They also reported unlit streetlights, which the city upgrades with LED bulbs.

Councilmember Quetcy Lozada, who represents Kensington, has asked the city to focus on alleys in the Seventh District, including much of the area between Kensington Avenue and Roosevelt Boulevard. Her district also includes part of North Philadelphia.

Lozada has posted on social media asking residents to call her office if they have an alley that needs to be cleaned.

“Alleyways are a constant source of problems in our neighborhoods,” Lozada said. “When we first started doing outreach about the program, it became one of the most popular requests from constituents to our office.”

Williams said Future Track focused on the area as a result.

Troy Cooper, a supervisor with the city’s sanitation department, and Malik Mickens, a crew chief, parked Tuesday morning on the 3000 block of North 13th Street in North Philadelphia to investigate an alley.

They had been notified by a block captain that the alley between North 13th Street and Broad Street needed to be addressed.

Many requests for alleyway help come from block captains partnered with the city’s Philadelphia More Beautiful Committee. The committee registers block captains to organize cleanups and identify areas in need of attention. The committee has 41,968 volunteers who clean about 6,000 blocks a year.

Cooper and Mickens walked into the alley and were startled by two large, barking dogs that charged toward them but were stopped by a fence. The men sidled past the dogs, stooped under branches, and edged away from a downed electrical connection to where the alley branched into a T.

The path parallel to 13th Street was completely blocked by trash, trees, downed fences, and vegetative debris.

It could take three crews of about 10 people to clear the alley over multiple days, they said. Only so many people can fit at one time into the alleys because the workspace is so tight. Crews need to be careful as they cut branches because so many other Future Track workers are nearby.

“When we clean the alleys, we just take it a step at a time,” Cooper said. “We have to slowly work our way through. It’s hard because the alleys are so tight. It’s easier to cut things down and clean it as you go.”

What’s the number one problem?

“Animals,” Cooper said with a grin as he turned to walk past the big dogs once again — but with a high enough fence to keep them away.

Some fences are low, he noted. In those cases, he calls the block captain.