Comment by johnisgood | Hacker News Reader

Comment by johnisgood | Hacker News Reader

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> Step 2: Public bathrooms are closed due to the drug problem found in step 1

> Step 3: Now everyone begins shitting in the street because public bathrooms are no longer available. And those people shooting up in the bathrooms are also shooting up on the street.

I am having difficulties following. How did you get from step 2 to step 3? Since when does lack of available public bathrooms lead to public defecation? Is this really a thing somewhere? I cannot wrap my mind around it. Are people really this incapable of controlling themselves? Do they just let it go wherever they are when they get the urge? Horrible. This is not really the case in the country where I am, so "everyone begins shitting in the street" certainly depends on where you are, what the culture is, and so on. It sounds really alien to me. We already do not have available public bathrooms in many areas, but public defecation is certainly not a thing. People are taught to hold it back in until they get to a bathroom...

Edit: we also have fecal collecting bag dispensers, which is basically a bin (+ bags) specifically for collecting feces, usually dog. They are emptied on a daily basis. Take a fecal collection bag, put your feces inside the bag, throw it away into the bin specifically designed for collecting feces. No bathroom required, and no feces on the streets!

It's not a matter of not holding it until they get home. These people are homeless, and often resort to things like shitting in a suitcase. No joke: https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Neighbors-disgusted...

I have never seen any human feces on the street in the east coast of the US. We have plenty of homeless people too, but the feces/needles problem is an SF thing.

Also live on the east coast and public defecation is a real thing. It's just not as flagrant as San Francisco. I live downtown where the homeless have limited access to toilets. Occasionally, it will be on or near the sidewalk. More commonly it will be in alleyways, behind dumpsters, and in the bushes at our public park. Usually, the public defecators also have the white wristbands. Meaning they recently left the psych ward of the hospital.

The city has started to roll out public sanettes. Like a stripped down version of what you would find in Paris. I'm hoping they deploy more of them, quickly. They are useful to everyone.

Does Philly count as East Coast?

There is no link. The people who shit on the sidewalk or street have serious mental issues. A large amount of the homeles there are batshit fucking insane and can be very dangrous.

A person in the right mind does not shit in the middle of a street or sidewalk, they'll shit in an alley or something. Or over a storm drain.

It's not like it's tourists urinating in public because there are so few public bathrooms.

We used to have institutions for the batshit fucking insane. Then came deinstitutionalization and we closed them in favor of the supposedly more humane community-based care organizations. Look how good a job those organizations are doing.

But why have I never seen this in Western Europe?

We have mental people here too. (And homeless mental people, it's not like all of Europe is some social democratic paradise.)

I think the root cause in SF is the crisis of homelessness which seems massive compared to what I have seen elsewhere.

Exactly. Apart from that, we have fecal collection bag dispensers (bin + bags) for collecting dogs' feces. It is emptied on a daily basis. Most homeless people here actually use it, apart from going to a homeless shelter which is another option.

SF has a weird advocacy culture that keeps people on the street. I can’t recall any other US city where this problem exists at scale.

I understand that in SF it is principally people who have nowhere else to do it. People who do not currently own or rent a domicile with a toilet, and who do not work anywhere where such facilities are provided, and who have no access to any public facilities.

"People are taught to hold it back in until they get to a bathroom..."

For these people, there isn't one.

OK, but do not these places have those fecal collection bag dispensers (with a bin, of course) for dogs? We do, it is emptied on a daily basis. Homeless people actually use it, apart from going to a homeless shelter which is another option.

I think it's a matter of local culture so to speak. I can see a different attitude in different cities and a 50/50 between "I am not using a dog bag, I am not a dog" and "I'll do what I can not make a mess on the street".

See the remarks about de-institutionalization and the insane.

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