Why Portland's Public Toilets Succeeded Where Others Failed (2012)
citylab.com
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[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/3065278/german-cities-are-solvin...
That is a meme the Prussians have created to look more scary - to all other Germans.
Usually the reasons for jaywalking are either 1) the road is empty or 2) late for a train/tram/bus.
edit: It should also be noted that jaywalking is not illegal in germany IF 1) you're not crossing the road at an intersection with traffic lights for pedestrians AND it is red or 2) you're crossing the road in the shortest and fastest manner without impeding, endangering or otherwise causing trouble in traffic.
So if you walked over the road, a police officer could at worst give you a stern talking to. If you crossed a road with a red light for pedestrians, you'd get a 5€ fine.
There is also an unspoken rule for jaywalking, don't do it around kids. I also saw 3 tween girls walking across the street on a green, they were right around half way when the crosswalk light turned red. They all turned around and went back. It was kind of funny. My American friend told me a funny story where he was drinking with German friends, and they walk back at like 3am with no cars in sight and he of course crosses the street and all the Germans were back at other side waiting for it to turn green.
As one of the grandparent comments correctly pointed out, jaywalking is legal in Germany if the road is empty. (A policeman's instructions would override this rule, however.)
Source: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stvo_2013/__25.html
He had gone to Germany for a conference. While walking back to his hotel, had to cross the street. There were no vehicles in sight, but the light was red. After waiting for some time, he thought "what the heck", and crossed the street even though the light was still red. After a few minutes, a German man walked up to him and said "Mr. Amartya Sen, in Germany we follow the rules even if there are no cars". He apologised to the German, and asked him if he knew him, may be from the conference. To which the man replied, "I have no idea who you are, I just read your name from the conference ID card hanging from your neck".
If you wait for the light, or because a car is in sight, people think you're weird. People have loyalty not to the law, but to nothing other than self-preservation. Absolutely no consideration for legality is given, whatsoever. This is in my experience in stark contrast with German culture.
I assert that there does exist in Germany a cultural appreciation for rules. This is not an exclusively German trait of course, I see similar in Seattle, but it is a trait that Germany has and some other regions do not.
I resented paying the euro a bit, but the format made a lot of sense to me.
In addition, the bathroom areas are designed to be easy to clean and brightly lit.
I have road tripped around much of the western US and can think of only one time encountering a bathroom like this. In fact, clean bathrooms seem like a major point of competition between gas stations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_to_End_Pay_Toilets_i...
The coupon was created to get acceptance for paying, which wasn't common a few years back, but most of them never get redeemed. It is a business worth billions.
Unfortunately people tend to fall for coupons of any kind because they suggest you could save money.
At least the business case isn't stupid.
With attitudes like that you should recognise you're part of the problem, you're part of the feeling of resistance to change.
* Large Public restrooms in busy city centers and transit hubs where you have attendants constantly cleaning the place and charge people to use the facilities.
* Outdoor public urinals that are little more than a drain and a shield. This is an 80% solution that solves the problem of stinking alleys. Much of the time men just need a place to leak during a night of drinking. Women are way better about finding and getting permission to use private restrooms at shops/restaurants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_architecture
Outdoor urinals are controversial. https://ktla.com/2018/08/14/open-air-public-urinals-cause-co...
Of course, the problem with pay toilets is you have to actually have change on you.
That's true, but in Europe IME, you have to have cash on you anyway because so many places don't accept credit cards.
On the streets of San Francisco I have seen several passed out heroin junkies lying flat on their back right there on the sidewalk, needles nearby, perhaps passed out or worse with some sort of projectile body effluent leaking out of them or trailing behind them. This is probably an average day at Starbucks for a non-discriminatory bathroom in a high addict area.
I discovered it first hand taking a bus from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh.
2. public healthcare
3. state-funded homeless shelters
And then not only you don't have a problem with all these undesirables messing up your public toilets - you also don't have a significant part of your society wasting their lives.
Oh but that would literally be communism, right. Carry on, then.
It works in Portugal.
> Public healthcare is working well if you are not interested in result. It tried before. It doesn't work
Public healthcare works in almost every country on Earth, and in most of developed countries it works really well. At least better than that in USA (looking at the life expectancy).
> Nobody will pay ever penny to care about zero cost homes. It tried before. It doesn't work.
They won't have a choice. That's what taxes are for.
Is number of drug uses reduced? Nope. It risen.
Is criminal drug activity reduced? Nope. It risen.
So, what exactly "works" in Portugal?
> Public healthcare works in almost every country on Earth, and in most of developed countries it works really well. At least better than that in USA (looking at the life expectancy).
If you are not a drug user, your life expectancy is at same level as in Europe.
I have personal experience with public health care. Public healthcare is interested in popping you out of clinic as fast as possible.
For example, I received no treatment for my little pain in the back until I was unable to move. In result, I spent more than year in bed. Private clinic identified my problem _decade_ before, but their results were ignored by government clinic. I was stupid enough to trust government clinic. And so on. I can tell a lot if you want to listen.
> That's what taxes are for.
I want to be homeless then.
Sources please.
> So, what exactly "works" in Portugal?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal#Observ...
- Increased uptake of treatment (roughly 60% increase as of 2012.)[12]
- Reduction in new HIV diagnoses amongst drug users by 17%[19] and a general drop of 90% in drug-related HIV infection
- Reduction in drug related deaths, although this reduction has decreased in later years. The number of drug related deaths is now almost on the same level as before the Drug strategy was implemented.[12][19] However, this may be accounted for by improvement in measurement practices, which includes a doubling of toxicological autopsies now being performed, meaning that more drugs related deaths are likely to be recorded.[20]
- Reported lifetime use of "all illicit drugs" increased from 7.8% to 12%, lifetime use of cannabis increased from 7.6% to 11.7%, cocaine use more than doubled, from 0.9% to 1.9%, ecstasy nearly doubled from 0.7% to 1.3%, and heroin increased from 0.7% to 1.1%[19] It has been proposed[by whom?] that this effect may have been related to the candor of interviewees, who may have been inclined to answer more truthfully due to a reduction in the stigma associated with drug use.[20] However, during the same period, the use of heroin and cannabis also increased in Spain and Italy, where drugs for personal use was decriminalised many years earlier than in Portugal [20][21] while the use of Cannabis and heroin decreased in the rest of Western Europe.[22][23] The increase in drug use observed among adults in Portugal was not greater than that seen in nearby countries that did not change their drug laws.[24]
- Drug use among adolescents (13-15 yrs) and "problematic" users declined.[20]
- Drug-related criminal justice workloads decreased.[20]
- Decreased street value of most illicit drugs, some significantly
- The number of drug related deaths has reduced from 131 in 2001 to 20 in 2008.[25] As of 2012, Portugal's drug death toll sat at 3 per million, in comparison to the EU average of 17.3 per million.
- Homicide rate increased from 1.13 per 100 000 in 2000 to 1.76 in 2007, then decreased to 0.96 in 2015
Seems good to me.
> If you are not a drug user, your life expectancy is at same level as in Europe.
Sources please.
> I have personal experience with public health care.
Anegdotal evidence.
> I want to be homeless then.
Nobody's stopping you.
I'm 100% opposed to this sort of thing being state-funded (I'm an AnCap), but I have to disagree with you here. I've personally subsidized housing for people who I've met that I believed were honestly trying to escape homelessness.
Most people's politics aren't as extreme as my own, but the mere existing of private, non-profit homeless shelters falsifies your idea that no one will help pay for zero cost homes.
Something had to change, it's not normal to have so many homeless people that it becomes a practical concern.
Universal healthcare, harm reduction and rehab services, comprehensive welfare, affordable housing and a sufficient number of properly trained and resourced social workers.
To some degree, we have to get used to junkies existing in jurisdictions that aren't inclined to lock them up. However, we can't spend our way out of the problem. San Francisco spends ~$40k/yr/homeless [0] , if that's not enough to solve the problem, then it's just too great. We cannot throw money away on problems created by cities that abet $4k/mo rents for one-bedrooms.
In my opinion, that is a huge problem with the US in general, such as prisons "rehabilitation": high cost per prisoner and very low amounts of actual rehabilitation.
Junkies shooting up in public, homeless people shitting on the sidewalk, etc, etc is a problem confined to a handful of cities on the west coast.
Address the causes that lead people into homelessness and addiction and you end up with less of it. That isn't conjecture, its fact, proven by dozens of disparate cultures and countries adopting or rescinding preventative measures with statistically traceable results proving positive correlation.
My point was that substance abuse is (relatively) evenly distributed geographically and pretty much every city and state has more of it than they'd like. Homelessness to the point where it is a significant impact on the day to day lives of the non-homeless is a west coast problem (I've never had to step over human feces in DC, NY or Boston). I'm not saying anything about causes, effects or correlations.
When confronting homelessness, remember that landlords, aristocrats, and even upper middle income working class all don't want to actually improve the homeless situation. To them its a cost center, and they save more money exporting their homeless by force than trying to actually get them housed and healthy. The policies currently in place out west and across the country, in relation to not just homelessness but all "problems" in society are all intentional. Its key to remember that, because recognizing the hostile actors in resistance to societal improvement is often half the battle in knowing how to make meaningful change.
Homelessness and drug abuse are both symptomatic of livelihood instability, as can be proven by how European nations demonstrated marked reductions in both as more policies are enacted to keep people from falling into extreme poverty. But neither is simple enough to distill to being the consequence of one decision or policy - the frequency of homelessness is influenced by many factors, including... 1) The livability of the area exposed to the elements (homeless in Seattle and Boston are often lower not because of good social policy but because its life threatening in the winter). 2) Local policy relating to the homeless. Mostly due to the age of many of the cities there are more well established non-profits, charities, and churches operating to assist the homeless in the East than the West. 3) Housing prices, obviously, are a huge factor. Its much easier to be livelihood insecure when your rent is a larger and larger chunk of your income. This is why, despite often rampant poverty in the South, homelessness isn't nearly as endemic because property is much cheaper in Nowhere Kentucky than it is in the Bay Area.
This just isn't true. At all. This is a problem in cities all over the country. Some cities hide it away, but homelessness and the other problems that come with drug addiction exist all across this country.
I live in Portland so I'm well aware of the effects from a large homeless population, but I try to travel as often as I can and I make it a point to get out of tourist areas as much as possible, usually to concerts or something. I can tell you first hand, within the last 2 years Philadelphia seems to have the same issues, DC definitely has the same problems, Boston, NY, Chicago, Austin, and Denver all have visible homeless.
What I find strange is how every city tends to believe their city is unique with homeless, like they don't realize this is a problem across the entire country. Go to any of those city's subreddits and search "homeless" and you'll see how they've all deluded themselves into believing their city is somehow unique and magically the only place in the country with a homeless problem. It's bonkers. This is a massive problem across the entire country. I suspect small towns across the rust belt probably have their own problems, especially considering how their meth and opiate addictions on a per capita level are significantly higher than even major cities.
Did you forget the citation for this? If so, I'd appreciate it.
$300M / year is spent and there are 7,500 homeless in SF.
I believe a good chunk of the money is spent on housing formerly homeless though.
As to the subject, gas stations and fast food restaurants, etc, have always been effectively public bathrooms all through the US. Maybe San Francisco is an exception that people here confuse with a rule.
Criticism of this sentiment is verboten. What the hell?
(1): Does the city have homeless and drug addicts? If yes, go to (2). If no, go to (3).
(2): And where are the bathrooms? If 'in private businesses' go to (4). If public toilets, go to (5).
(4): The private businesses chase off the homeless, who shit in the street. SAN FRANCISCO IS HERE.
(5): They're probably going to have people passing out in them, then.
(3): OK, so where have the homeless drug addicts gone? If they've been cured, go to (6). If you've sent them to another city, go to (7)
(6): Now you've probably got a massive spending program. THIS IS WHERE THE PEOPLE YOU'RE TALKING TO ARE
(7): Eh, you aren't the first. THIS IS UNLIKELY TO EARN YOU UPVOTES ONLINE. It might earn you re-election if you get elected then do it by stealth though.
If you've got a solution that avoids every pitfall I'm sure people would be eager to hear it - but if your explanation skips over some of the problems, that's less helpful.
Why did you put the two together though? There are many drug addicts whose life circumstances are very different, and they are leading a successful life with their addiction, because addiction does not necessarily cause such psychosocial harm.
"Homeless drug addicts" would be more accurate, which you are using later on though. :P But then again, many homeless people defecate publicly despite having the option not to, AND are not drug addicts.
I guess when people refer to drug addicts, they are referring to people displaying a certain set of behaviors that we usually see from homeless or poor people, because they are less likely to be able to hide their addictions and whatnot, mostly because it affects them negatively more, and the consequences are more obvious. I also believe it is not actually due to drug addiction alone. Do not forget that there is a reason for why they started using drugs. It could have been merely because they ended up on the streets, and for totally unrelated reasons.
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/addiction-and-choice...
The book explains it better than I ever could. It is very likely that I phrased myself incorrectly, the first two sections of this book should clear it all up. Cheers.
This is what I am talking about (posted it here to avoid confusion):
Relatedly, different life circumstances may protect people more or less well against impaired functioning (for a review, see Martin et al. 2014). For example, it is well known that addiction is associated with low socio-economic status alongside other mental health problems (Compton et al. 2007; Heyman 2009). But, in so far as addiction is diagnosed via negative consequences, wealth, alongside other forms of privilege, may offer a protective factor (cf. Matthews 2014; Schmidt et al. 2010). For example, a wealthy mother who drinks heavily but can afford a live-in nanny to ensure her children are adequately cared for is able to meet more of her role-related responsibilities than a poor woman who drinks equal amounts but whose children go hungry and miss school. The consequences are more serious by shared social standards in the latter case than the former, and so too, as a result, is the likelihood of a diagnosis.
The implication that individual differences in conceptions of how to live and life circumstances can affect the likelihood of a diagnosis may give pause. Indeed, Martin et al. (2014) have proposed that the negative consequences of use should be considered ancillary rather than core features of addiction for this very reason, namely, that they introduce significant individual and context specificity. However once we acknowledge that drug use in itself is not indicative of any form of disorder, but rather offers instrumental means to fulfilling valuable ends, the idea that negative consequences are fundamental to the pathological nature of addiction becomes evident.
Boils down to housing and social workers then?
It's an American homegrown problem with too much focus on capitalism.
edit: You can downvote this, but it doesn't make it untrue nor irrelevant to the point. If you have basically no people living on the streets, you also avoid this problem. I'm still shocked from seeing homeless (nearly) die in the cold in New York.
With a better social systems it's maybe not fully solvable, but reducible to a point where it's no longer an apparent problem in every day live. It does work, many countries in the world do it, also in major cities.
Capitalism does not preclude charity.
It could be argued that it precludes state-funded social programs, but the US has a very large number of those already, so it follows that Capitalism (as implemented here) is not the cause of this problem.
Regardless of what I or anyone else thinks about the necessity and morality of those programs, they do exist, and they are ineffective. The question is "Why are the ineffective?"
If you started forcibly hospitalizing the mentally ill homeless in SF you would "solve" the issue pretty quickly, but that goes against some core American values.
The designers were criticized for their anti-homeless, hostile architecture. If I were the designer, I was thinking to myself as to how I'd respond. My initial thoughts on what I could say:
1. "I was given a set of requirements and this is what meets the requirements."
2. "No comment. Please address your complaints to the city council who commissioned the benches."
3. "You don't want to sit on a urine-soaked bench, do you?"
4. "I'm sorry but I can't solve the homelessness problem."
They all sound defensive. What the designers actually said is excellent. It could be a lesson in Public Relations:
The designers said that: "Homelessness should never be tolerated in any society and if we start designing in to accommodate homeless then we have totally failed as a society. Close proximity to homelessness unfortunately makes us uncomfortable so perhaps it is good that we feel that and recognise homelessness as a problem rather than design to accommodate it."
It tries to misdirect the conversation by painting the criticism as "not design to accommodate the homeless", when it actually was "don't design to purposefully exclude the homeless", which their design does at the expense of being worse for non-homeless people too (everyone may need to lie down sometimes).
It also indirectly portraits anything done to ameliorate a social ill negatively, which is a shitty thing to do.
Fuck me, that statement makes me angry. At least "just doing my job" is honest, now I'm hoping they go bankrupt.
But they are designing benches so that homeless people don't bother others by sleeping on them. That reduces "proximity with homelessness" far more, than regular benches do.
There are also male urinals which literally rise up out of the ground during weekends and festivals.
I think female versions of these exist too, but haven't seen.
• No running water inside: "Some people, if they’re homeless,
use a sink to wash their laundry," says DiBenedetto.
So there’s no sink
It's sad. A similar model works fine in Paris. It's way too complicated and expensive, though. I've looked over the mechanism when one was being repaired. It's all Telemechanique industrial control and automation gear. It needs to be more like a washing machine.
[1] https://missionlocal.org/2019/02/jcdecaux-toilet-contract-ma...
Why 'dubious'?
This attitude is part the problem that public conveniences suffer under.
Surely it is glorious that Portland's first patent should be something so patently useful to the people.
Because patents are often criticized, both specific ones as the whole concept of patents?
When your child has a poo explosion you cant do a damned thing to clean up properly.
I wonder what the gastro bug pickup rate is like in portland...
I dunno how many poo-apocalypses you've had to deal with... but they get messy.
Same in Fremont, the coffee shops & restaraunts don't generally restrict access to the bathrooms in any noteworthy way, though some have a sign stating use should be limited to a few minutes.
Georgetown, Central District & Madison Park were also pretty similar last I checked, you'd be hard pressed to find bathrooms with codes on them.
Also I have yet to see human excrement in the street, though I hear this is a big problem in SF.
3rd ave McDonald's is a front for something IMO, perhaps the open air drug slinging that happens on that block? Its funny that 2 blocks away there is a much less sketchy McDonald's, seems like those franchises are way too close together.
Hopefully we don't end up with plentiful open defecation like SoCal. I'd take setting up public restrooms (that might become BJ shacks at times) over a public health crisis.
This would be pretty inconvenient, but to really deal with that situation requires wet wipes and a changing table. This is aimed at a different population who might otherwise just shit in the streets.
A parent with poopocalypse on their hands, probably can find a store that sells wetwipes and most likely has a change-table equipped restroom.
With that said, there might be a minor distinction to be drawn between a solution that solves every use-case including yours and a solution that solves the most common use case of greatest policy concern. It is, of course, very possible and in fact very likely that I'm incredibly mistaken! In which case I welcome enlightenment.