Public restrooms are hard to find in America | Hacker News Reader

Public restrooms are hard to find in America

washingtonpost.com

231 pointslinusg789481 comments

Shameless plug: I developed a site to help with this in my city Winnipeg called Winnipee.

It went viral last summer and had a flurry of activity with community contributions (locations, updates). Winter came, traffic levelled off, and it didn't spike again this summer (though it has remained stable).

I tried to track whether it was OK to use the washroom without a purchase, wheelchair accessibility, size. When I worked at McDonald's, an executive told me they wanted their customers to know there was always a bathroom they could use anywhere in the world even if they weren't making a purchase this visit.

AFAIK, Starbucks had a similar policy for a long time.

It was interesting to see how some locations featured immediately locked down their washrooms.

I had a Tim Hortons franchise owner email me and freak out, so we marked her location as "purchase required."

It's been pretty brutal here with the meth crisis, though, so I also get it.

At the end of the day, I would love for our governments to provide taxpayer funded facilities around the city and even on several of our major highways. We used to have a lot here but they closed almost all of them.

You can check it out: https://www.winnipee.com

McDonalds in the US 1000% does not have bathrooms available to non-customers. Was that a long time ago, or is that actually the policy in Canada today?

Yeah I've been in many urban US McDonalds where the bathrooms are locked and you need to get a code from the cashier to get into them.

I can't speak to in US cities (where indeed restaurants tend to police non-customer restroom use more regularly) but I've never had an issue with using a McDonald's restroom when I've been driving someplace in the US.

Same experience here. Just got back from a six-day driving trip where my wife and I used McDonalds restrooms without issue multiple times. Some of them were even quite nice, as such things go. But I've also found myself in dire straits in cities, with nothing truly public and the McDonalds/Starbucks all locked down. The most dangerous place I've been in the last several years was an MBTA restroom (I was desperate). So much for "walkable cities" I guess, but good luck finding a proponent who will engage with that aspect.

Boston is extremely difficult to find public bathrooms especially around the Common/open drug marketplace.

You're not really that far from either Faneuil Hall/Quincy Market or North Station there. Can't speak to how easy it is to find one in any of the local hotels. Of course, in the latter case it helps to look the part and not look too clueless.

> Of course, in the latter case it helps to look the part and not look too clueless.

This is not just applicable to using the restroom as a non-paying customer. You can pretty much go anywhere if you just don't look guilty of doing something your not meant to be doing. They also say carrying a clipboard and looking in a hurry increases your "getting away" with it, whatever "it" may be.

The basement bathroom in Quincy Market is the best option in most of the city.

It would be really weird for McD's to require a purchase, at least for our use case. We often stop at McD's on a road trip (we have kids), and the first order of business is always the bio break, wash up, and then order food. It would be irritating to have to reverse that process and then leave our food to get cold while we sought relief.

It must vary a lot by location even in the US. When I used to bother asking, it was almost universally customer-only in urban and many suburban areas… and almost always got me strange looks for even bothering to ask in more remote areas (where they are often clustered next to a couple gas stations along a freeway exit).

I've never used a McDonald's bathroom where I was required to make a purchase. Sometimes the bathrooms are located around the corner from the counter, near a door, in such a fashion that the employees can't generally tell if someone comes in, uses the bathroom, and leaves. I suspect it varies based on location.

This has been my experience on this planet as well.

I've only ever seen a McDonald's bathroom that requires a purchase in NYC around 15 years ago. I doubt that's changed in the years since unless the city made customers only bathrooms illegal.

All the ones I know have a coded lock on the door, and one (in a college kid area) requires employees to open the door.

I think this is a pretty broad generalization. Personally, I’ve never once been refused access to a McDonald’s restroom.

I haven’t been to a McDonald’s in a large city (like downtown Seattle), so perhaps it’s different there.

But so much of the world exists outside of cities :)

I went to a McDonald's in Seattle's SoDo in 2021 that had a bouncer at the door, and the bathroom had super annoying blue-lighting. It certainly looked like ordering before using the bathroom was the right thing to do.

There was a ton of street camping around there.

The blue lighting makes it harder to find a vein.

Yikes.

This was a pretty long time ago, like early-Millennium. It was my first job and I was 15.

I saw people come in, use the bathroom, and leave, so I asked the executive what I was supposed to do.

We were a corporate store and usually a test site for new products and procedures.

>This was a pretty long time ago, like early-Millennium.

LOL, yep, I'm officially old!

Sorry, but as I approach 40, 20-23 years ago does seem like a long time. It went by in the blink of an eye, though.

It only gets faster

90-95% of McDonalds are franchised, so the lofty ideals of a McDonalds executive are entirely detached from what restaurants actually do. I doubt they are sending secret shoppers just to check the bathroom availability.

I use McDonalds bathrooms in a pinch quite often. I don't ask or anything, I walk in, it's there, nobody cares. However, it depends very much on location, and I do this only in suburban areas. if you go into Manhattan, bathrooms that are easy to spot are very much locked down, if there is even one at all, so you have to try to find less obvious bathrooms that don't attract a lot of attention from street traffic.

Same in Spain. There's an access code printed on the receipts. At least in the ones in tourist areas. Though you can wait till someone comes out or ask another customer.

In some areas of Spain, restaurants and bars that occupy the public space with terraces are obliged by law to provide bathrooms to anyone asking if I recall correctly

A counter-balance act

They have that for some restaurants in the US, but you can ask the worker and they will just give you the code.

It’s entirely a city/suburb/rural divide.

If you’re in an area with homeless restrooms can’t be found.

If you’re not, they’re plentiful and free.

I believe this. When I go downtown, the restrictions on facilities go up dramatically. Out in the 'burbs where we live, it's far more relaxed. But we don't have homeless people here (to speak of; we do, but it's on the order of a dozen for a city of 40K).

Even the ones where they lock the bathroom you don’t need to make a purchase. I just ask the worker to buzz me in and they let me. Its not making or breaking their paycheck to police the bathroom so they generally don’t care if you look like you won’t cause a mess in there.

I’ve been up and down this country and outside of the pandemic one certainty had been that if I need to piss and I see a McDonald’s I know I’m covered. This changed during the pandemic since many of their lobbies were closed. But in the last year I haven’t seen a McDonald’s that you couldn’t walk into and use the facilities. Now they’re not always the cleanest bathrooms, but they’ve always been there.

People talk a lot of shit about McDonald’s but there’s a lot to be said for a rock solid never changing option anywhere in the country.

Hotel lobbies also have great facilities

Supermarkets. Big Box stores. Malls always. Bars usually, buy a soda, tip the bartender.

One time I availed myself of a 24 hour porn shop at 3am. The bathroom was spotless.

I relied on department stores and Western-style hotels when indisposed in Japan. There weren't many McDonald's around where I was.

> outside of the pandemic

This was when our reliance on McD's became much more obvious. During the pandemic they closed outright for a while, and then opened just the drive-thru, and it was months before they were fully open inside with bathrooms again. It made road tripping with the kids a bit more exciting. Fortunately one of my kids can pee on the side of the road easy enough in a pinch.

This may be regional, or a franchise vs corporate thing, but in the PNW I have never been to a McD's that had a purchase requirement to use the restrooms. But we very rarely go to an urban McD's, so that may be part of it.

A few years ago I visited three different McDonalds in Washington DC. All three were newly renovated in downtown.

All three restrooms were unlocked and disgusting. After notifying the staff I figured out some homeless would vent their rage by literally smearing their feces on the walls. When the staff clean it up, they would do it again.

The McDonalds in downtown Dallas, at least for a time, played classical music outside as well as inside. The theory was that the homeless wouldn't hang around as much. This was back in the 80s when my mom worked downtown, and it was common water cooler conversation. I'm sure as a manager, you're pretty much willing to try anything to avoid the situation you've described. Making it even harder, the location is one block away from the central Greyhound bus station.

My favorite is when places use opera music to drive away loiterers.

That’s seriously disgusting. But even without mental illness, you still have people that seem like they don’t know bathroom etiquette. I worked at a retailer during college that had a public bathroom, seemingly normal people still did the most disgusting messes in the toilets that I was left to clean.

When I was a teenager, I worked as a janitor at McDonalds as my after-school job, and I cleaned the bathrooms. I walked the lobby all the time and could see who was going in and out, and I can assure you (at least back then) there is no correlation between socio-economic class and bathroom etiquette, or mental illness and bathroom etiquette. We had a feces-smearer who was a middle aged lady visiting the restaurant with her normal-looking middle class family. One other fun fact: The men's room was pretty uniformly (but medium) disgusting, but the women's room was where the variance was. I saw foulness in the women's restroom that haunts me to this day.

Agreed regarding the variance of the women’s bathroom, I shocked it up to a larger number of women vs men customers in that particular retailer.

They have the right to refuse entry to homeless people. They should exercise it.

How are you going to say it's because they are homeless and not whatever minority.

Wouldn't the burden of proof lie with whomever is making the claim of bias? And it would be easily countered with surveillance footage showing just one white male homeless guy getting turned away.

Let's make life more difficult for the people already with the hardest life. Nice mentality.

Invite them into your home then. Let them smear shit all over your walls.

> At the end of the day, I would love for our governments to provide taxpayer funded facilities around the city and even on several of our major highways. We used to have a lot here but they closed almost all of them.

You are almost there. Now we should ask why this happened:

> but they closed almost all of them

There is no civic sense in large swathes of the population. Strict enforcement of basic rules will help us a lot here.

> There is no civic sense in large swathes of the population. Strict enforcement of basic rules will help us a lot here

Strict enforcement of basic rules against a subset of the population while letting off other groups is a major contributor to the lack of civic sense.

I assure you that rich white people defecating in the streets will be treated the same way as poor brown people doing the same thing.

This is baselessly asserted: rich people consistently receive gentler treatment at the hands of the police for similar crimes[1]. Black Americans get dinged for this twice: not only are they poorer on average than Whites, but are also disproportionately likely to be brutalized or killed by law enforcement[2]. When Black people do die in custody, their deaths are more likely to be characterized with pseudomedical terms like “excited delirium[3].”

[1]: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/696355

[2]: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2022/12/22/policing_survey...

[3]: https://www.psychiatry.org/File%20Library/About-APA/Organiza...

Per interaction they are more likely to experience violence per police office but per interaction black Americans are all about equally likely to die to law enforcement as the average.

"disproportionately likely to be brutalized or killed by law enforcement"

Hi woodruffw - what group is disproportionaly likely to kill or brutalize law enforcement? What happens when you correct for that?

ah yes the just and even handed laws that prevent both the rich and the poor from sleeping under bridges.

Yes, but those low level crimes are much more disruptive to having a safe and orderly society that’s nice to live in.

yes. We truly must crack down on these crimes that so disrupt a safe and orderly society. That said, maybe we're being slightly hasty with bringing in the criminal justice system to deal with this injustice. I think we as a society underestimate the importance of our social safety nets in the crimes of the homeless.

When you stop and think about the bigger picture, clearly it's the food banks that are responsible. By letting the homeless scum of the earth get food twice a week, we give them the feces that will just be maliciously defecated upon streets and in our businesses. Clearly we should be closing them down to preserve a nice to live in society.

> When you stop and think about the bigger picture, clearly it's the food banks that are responsible. By letting the homeless scum of the earth get food twice a week, we give them the feces that will just be maliciously defecated upon streets and in our businesses. Clearly we should be closing them down to preserve a nice to live in society.

So are you opening up your home for a total stranger to relief themselves? Why not? You seem much kinder than us folks. If enough people living in cities with this issue open up their homes to strangers in need, we won't have this issue in the first place.

I will be waiting for the eventual proof that you do so.

Hyperbole requires hyperbole ;)

I disagree. Rich white people have "a long life ahead of them" which it would be a shame to ruin for "20 minutes of action", so they would be let off without charges or without jail time, while the poor would be sentenced to the maximum penalty allowed by the law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_v._Turner

Yeah rich white people never get 39 years in prison for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Weinstein

They get that rarely enough that it's newsworthy when they do.

So was Brock Turner.

Source needed.

By basic civic laws, I mean things like not allowing open air drug markets in downtown:

Very recent video

https://v.redd.it/x87v0nws5anb1

FFS, if you have an open air drug market, it doesn't really matter if there are public restrooms. This is one major reason why BART boarded up their restrooms in downtown SF.

"This is one major reason why BART boarded up their restrooms in downtown SF."

We live in a society where we can't have public restrooms and progressives (including virtually half the commenters here!) think that we're being too mean to vagrants. Just incredible.

Why are Tokyo and Singapore nice cities? What would they do if someone was shooting up in the streets in front of children?

In Japan that's not a problem. It begs the question what they do differently.

There is no way to get half of America to wear a 1-ply cotton cloth for their countrymen during a pandemic, and much of the other half is too fucking stupid to pull that cloth up over their noses even after two years of practice. I think the idea of pleasant bathrooms is a lost cause.

I don’t think the data supports this assertion. I think the perception that this is true is likely due to news click bait designed to generate revenue based on fostering outrage. Here is an excerpt from USC public health article.

Overall, since late March 2020, between 80% and 90% of U.S. adults consistently have viewed wearing a mask or face covering as an effective way to stay safe from the coronavirus, according to the Understanding Coronavirus in America Tracking Survey, an ongoing nationally representative internet-based panel survey of more than 6,000 people aged 18 and older (see Data Source).

Similarly, about 90% reported wearing a mask in the previous seven days to keep safe from the virus, although there are significant differences by locale, age, gender, race, income, education, and other sociodemographic factors. Generally, people who live in rural areas, are younger, are male, are white, have lower incomes, and have less education are less likely to report wearing masks, the survey found (Figure 1).

Source article: https://healthpolicy.usc.edu/evidence-base/most-u-s-adults-w...

Thank you, that is better than what my perception was.

10-20% is still 30-60 million which is a lot of people. One can see how you'd get that impression.

You apply the phrase "too fucking stupid" to others yet fail to mention that mask mandates are not effective:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/21/opinion/do-mask-mandates-...

Those "1-ply cotton cloths" do little more than prevent police from IDing ANTIFA protesters burning, robbing and generally raise hell in, e.g., Portland, Oregon (even though police will likely never do anything about it).

Clean restrooms are something we can do - it only requires will, acceptance, skill and persistence: the will to maintain certain hygeine standards, the acceptance that some tasks are unpleasant yet worthwhile, the cleaning skill (most young'uns don't know how to properly sweep a floor, much less swing a mop) and the persistence to, well, persist!

You are in a cult, but I am glad you are trying to maintain normal hygienic standards.

"cult"? Is that the "cult of people who clean their restrooms"? Are you perhaps not a member? Hmmm, I can't follow you there.

But thanks for the pat on the back and FWIW feel free to shit anywhere you want!8-)) [in CA that is]

> There is no civic sense in large swathes of the population. Strict enforcement of basic rules will help us a lot here.

It won't solve the problem, and that is a ton of mentally ill people with barely to no access to adequate treatment. Locking them up in jails may help for a few days or weeks but is horribly expensive to taxpayers while still not solving the problem (or make it even worse, given how conditions behind bars tend to be).

Love it. Please scale this to other cities and call it "wannapee.com".

I'd always assumed an app like this already existed, like Yelp for public restrooms. I never actually looked, though.

If it were to be Yelp like, I could only imagine the references to the worst toilet in Scotland.

There is already an app for this, called Where Is Public Toilet that covers most of north America and parts of Europe

If you don't already, you should strongly consider improving the data on Open Street Map. Many apps use that data. I frequently use OsmAnd to find public bathrooms.

That sounds like this data should essentially be an overpass-turbo (OpenStreetMap) query away, with an overlay for reviews. Why build a new dataset from the ground up with ©Winnipee at the bottom so nobody can reuse the data when the project is inevitably abandoned (even if that's fifty years down the line)?

Edit: example data query http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1A2I

Here: https://mapcomplete.org/toilets

And which I packaged in an easy to use and easy-to-update website: https://mapcomplete.org/toilets

> AFAIK, Starbucks had a similar policy for a long time.

>It was interesting to see how some locations featured immediately locked down their washrooms.

If you can just walk in (no passcode or any) then it is open to me as far as Im concerned.

The staff doesnt give a shit. The only point at which theyd care is if you’re exploiting it or causing problems. If you just walk in off the street, do your business, and leave then no one has a problem.

Great to see that openstreetmap is being used. The attribution needs to be fixed though. Did you add the toilets to OSM as well?

I've sent them a reminder about the missing attribution [1] via the contact form on https://www.winnipee.com/about.php?tab=contact

[1]: https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Attribution_Remi...

Thanks for bringing this oversight to my attention and for your patience while it is fixed. I threw a couple of attributes on the site before I left for work an hour ago and will make sure the attribute meets the requirements once I get home this evening.

Thanks for fixing this so quickly at the moment. And taking the time to fix it for good once your time permits.

Have you considered merging efforts with Where Is Public Toilet? Service has existed for many years and seems to have a decent amount of locations in Winnipeg

San Francisco has tried. The first modern try was the JCDecaux self-cleaning street toilets. (JCDecaux is really an ad company. The street toilets are just a way to get ads on public property.) The first problem was that that the US required them to be wheelchair-accessable. So they were 3x as big and several times more expensive than the smaller units in Paris.[1]

They are noted for working fine in tourist areas, and badly in homeless areas. Making them big enough for wheelchair accessibility makes them big enough for drug deals, too. They're also far too expensive. The cleaning machinery is standard industrial automation equipment from Telemechanique. I've seen one opened for servicing. If you built a washing machine that way, it would cost $20,000. It requires power, water, and a phone line.

There's the Portland Loo.[2] This is designed for maximum homeless proofing. Graffiti-resistant. Gratings at top and bottom instead of solid walls, for reduced privacy. It's not self-cleaning, but can be hosed down or pressure-washed. Only needs a water line; power requirements are low enough to be supplied by a solar panel. “It’s not supposed to be a comfortable place” - Portland Loo sales manager. Seems to work, but $500,000 installed is a bit much, even with all that heavy stainless steel.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanisette

[2] https://portlandloo.com/

Most of the US gets by just fine with gas stations and restaurants providing them to the general public with no questions asked. Maybe instead of spending huge amounts of taxpayer funds treating the symptom, San Francisco should ask itself why local businesses find it impossible to keep their restrooms open?

The answer is pretty simple: because when you let non-customers use the toilets, you're letting homeless, mentally ill, drug addicts, or just shitty people use the toilets at a far higher rate. They do insane things like smear shit and blood on the walls and leave used needles lying around, or they OD in the toilet, so it ends up becoming a real pain for the businesses to keep them open and clean for their actual customers. I don't know if Europe has the same issue with toilets, but I do remember having to pay to use public toilets there (in Paris, for example).

Right, but this is a very San Francisco problem. To the extent it is a problem in the rest of US, it's not a big enough problem to outweigh the benefits to the business of offering a public restroom. Even most major cities I've been in don't have trouble providing public restrooms, there's a very specific set of cities that do.

San Francisco and Portland and Seattle could spend tons of money trying to fill a need that most businesses in the US fill for free, or they could spend that money solving the root problem.

And how exactly would you solve the root problem of _other cities_ sending their homeless populations to those areas? Make it more miserable to be homeless there so they are forced to go somewhere else?

Law and order is one way. Homeless don't seem to gather in cities with Broken Window policing

So your solution is to criminalize poverty and mental illness. I hope you never lose your job and have trouble paying your rent.

You get what you pay for. You spend billions on homeless services you get more homeless people. You spend hundreds of millions on Law and order and you get law and order. You defund the police and you lose law and order.

I guess SF just have to stop the practice of dumping their problem on the rest of the country?

"Between 2005 to 2017, the city of San Francisco sent 10,500 homeless people out of town by bus.[1]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_homeless_relocation_pr...

According to the Guardian the free tickets to SF are in the 100s, while SF sent 10 000 away.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/...

The root problem is drug addiction.

And mental illness; which is likely related

The biggest cause of homelessness is the cost of housing.

Sadly, no, it's drug addiction. 90% of the homeless in Seattle are drug addicted, alcoholic, or have mental health problems. About 10% are homeless for economic reasons.

So if I created a drug that cured drug addiction, corrected most psychological disorders (schizophrenia, bipolar, OCD, etc.), and raised IQ by 50 points (to get that "worthless" lower 50% up above the current average, that would be enough?

In fact I have created such a drug. Unfortunately at the moment I have neither the time to write down nor is this post sufficiently capacious to allow delineation of the significant factors involved in the development of the drug. However I do resolve to do so at a later time.

I have been offered billions to NOT release this drug or its derivatives b/c it's use would severely disrupt the USA wage structure: wages would plummet (as a tremendous number of highly-qualified amped-IQ former homeless entered the market), immigrants would suffer and indeed, everyone doing well would suffer. I have refrained from releasing the drug not for that reason but b/c, were I to do so, everyone who posts on HN would then hate me!8-)) But I digress...

My point is that, if we cured this problem(drug addiction) we would only be creating other problems. The only solutions that could work are socially unacceptable. Nonetheless I personally favor the "Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B" solution from "Hitchikers' Guide to the Galaxy":

https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Golgafrinchan_Ark_Fleet_...

> if we cured this problem(drug addiction) we would only be creating other problems.

Like what problems, that they could then hold a job? Drug addicts can't hold a job. Their only interest/activity is drug seeking. This is why they are homeless.

I don't pretend to know how to cure drug addiction, but treating it as an economic problem is like giving cough drops to a lung cancer patient.

O ye of little imagination, how sad and frail thou appearest. Were only there a God to protect thee but I fear there is none and thou shalt die tangled on thine own snares.

Source? that's a pretty big claim.

And besides, this feels like a cause and effect issue. Are they addicted to drugs because they became homeless and it was the most humane way to cope outside of suicide? The alternative scenario where perfectly normal Seattle citizens get baked to the point where they can't keep a job seems fantastical.

Do you have a source for that? The numbers I’ve seen show about a third of homeless being drug addicted, and about a quarter with chronic mental health problems. I would assume there is quite a bit of overlap between those two groups.

It’s not just San Francisco, cities all over CA have similar issues (as well as the west coast - Portland, Seattle, etc).

I cannot fathom how you could possibly think how fecal vandalism just a San Francisco problem.

Cleaning literal blood and shit off the walls is a shared experience of “retail service” workers everywhere. This is both a hazard to workers and the customers that keep the place running.

Hell I had to do it at least weekly in an expensive sandwich shop in a small midwest city downtown that was 99% middle/upper class whites and no homeless or druggies in sight.

I cannot imagine having open bathrooms in an area populated with those more likely inflict problems.

I didn't say it wasn't a problem elsewhere, I said this:

> To the extent it is a problem in the rest of US, it's not a big enough problem to outweigh the benefits to the business of offering a public restroom.

There are a few cities where businesses have had to take the extreme measure of closing all public restrooms to combat this abuse. Most haven't.

As a data point, I personally know the owner of multiple restaurants in Minneapolis. He has very happily kept the bathrooms entirely closed to the public since covid -- breaking the law while doing so -- because people are trash and, if allowed, will wreck the bathrooms. Including shitting on the toilet bowl, the walls, floor, etc; drug use; and bathing in the sink, which makes a giant mess that he or his employees have to clean.

How are there fewer homeless on display in Europe? Are the governments there more empowered to use force to take care of the problem?

Likely more subsidized housing for the poor, along with much less expensive medical care.

> Maybe instead of spending huge amounts of taxpayer funds treating the symptom, San Francisco should ask itself why local businesses find it impossible to keep their restrooms open?

SF businesses already have to deal with a near daily hosing down of human feces from the street in front of their stores. If they opened up their bathrooms to vagrants it would just double the number of places they’re literally cleaning shit up.

That's exactly my point: that is not a problem in most other cities. Which is why other cities can have the bathrooms open. For San Francisco to spend money on truly public bathrooms is putting lipstick on a pig.

Eh, New York City would absolutely benefit from more public restrooms (paid or not). Central Park is a prime example.

> that is not a problem in most other cities

The well-meant and originally-necessary drive to end criminalising poverty overcorrected into absurdity by equating poverty with mental illness, and compassion for the mentally ill with not arresting people who smear feces over restroom walls. This fallacy, which dovetailed with anti-police sentiments, is most pronounced in San Francisco. But it’s also present in other American cities.

San Francisco has the problem of inequality and an incompetent management, backed by people who wish the "homeless problem" just magically disappeared overnight.

The toilets and piles of human defecation rolling down the hill are a consequence of the above, and unsolvable until the above is addressed first. You can't borrow ideas from other cities around the world because those don't have rampant inequality.

The obsession with "Inequality" is misplaced envy. The issue is government policies that enable and support lawbreaking.

So arrest all the homeless then?

If they break the law then yeah, why not? They’re not above the law.

General principal among civilized peoples is you can't punish people for breaking laws they they are unable to follow through no fault of their own.

"Through no fault of their own" is the point of contention with this topic. One side believes the homeless are mostly victims of circumstance, the other that they're mostly victims of their own poor choices and addictions.

There are no free public toilets. So the homeless shit in the street. Arresting them for that fixes nothing. Except maybe buys you a day or two without shit, until another homeless person settles in.

There are plenty of public toilets where I live, and the homeless use them the same as the rest of us.

Can the tv news both sides nonsense. Other points of view are the failure of governments to provide services to their citizens. For example what if the government provided for different solutions and support for those with mental and physical illness. What if governments provide stable housing AND emergency shelters. You can't just work harder to afford housing and you can't just go to AA to treat your addiction and underlying conditions.

>Other points of view are the failure of governments to provide services to their citizens.

of which services are funded by and voted in by taxpayers.

So yes, to some extent it is the people's fault.

And while certainly not in all cases, it’s at least sometimes their deliberate choice and preference to live a life of zero responsibility.

Ship drug users off to drug camp? All the drugs you want, free, for as long as you live. Test clean for a week and you're out.

Friendly reminder that sending people to camps with the tacit expectation that they will not leave the camp again alive is something that we all agreed not to want a repeat of in history.

Wow. HN is one of the few places I'd expect to encounter someone stuck in Kohlberg Stage 4.

When some people can afford a place to live and others can’t, I’d say that inequality is a problem. Calling it envy doesn’t address that at all.

Envy of what?

Other large cities in the US have exactly the same problem.

> That's exactly my point: that is not a problem in most other cities.

Except it is a similar problem in most cities?

The only exceptions are cities with nasty weather which basically "solves" the homeless problem every winter or cities which basically shuffle the homeless into jail.

I haven't really seen any big city (even in Europe) "solve" their homeless problem any other way.

It's not just SF. Was in the Venice/Santa Monica area recently, every restaurant had a prominent sign "Restrooms for customers only. No Exceptions"

My impression is the USA is falling apart. Every year people get more rude, more selfish, break more laws, are less courteous, there is more crime. I'm not sure I believe the "crime is going down" stats. (hope that doesn't make me stupid)

The problem as I see it is people stop reporting crimes because they know the police will do nothing about it. I've had my car broken into 5 times. I don't think I reported it more than once. Further, some places like California, have declared they won't prosecute property crime under a certain amount so again, even less reporting. So, the numbers appear to be going down but in reality they seem to be going up (That's certainly my personal perception but maybe I'm being influenced by sensational news and personal experience. I definitely see objectively going up in traffic violations. People don't seem to give a fuck anymore. They just do whatever they want)

I have no idea how to fix it or influence people to be nicer and more respectful of the law. Maybe it's the bankers getting off from the financial crisis. Maybe it's the police being perceived as part of the problem. All I know is more and more I think I should go back to a 1st world country because this one no longer feels like one.

>My impression is the USA is falling apart

In a theead about public toilets you move within 3 sentences to a vague thesis that the US is 'falling apart' without any metrics to a definition of what that looks like, a framework that is simpke, vague, generalized with very little quantitative datapoints that I cannot help but simply disregard the rest of what you have to say as anything more than hearsay amateur opinions.

If you want to make a comparison between a pair of nation, state your specific metric and bring numbers. Ive had plenty of rude encounters in south america and europe

Have to agree with this assessment of that comment. Of all things to complain about, Americans are not rude on average. Really quite nice, possibly even overbearing at times. Tells me GP hasn’t travelled outside of the US and if they had, sat at resorts the whole time.

>Of all things to complain about, Americans are not rude on average.

on median, no. But the extremities make me think that he US falls below the arithmetic mean in urban areas. If you have 200 polite people and one person with a knife being swung around, guess what impression you get of that area?

We don't calculate "rudeness" in a mathematically logical way.

Whatever city or state you’ve chosen to live in seems to be falling apart. Move

You'll get a kick out of this comedic rant: https://nitter.net/AmericaWeek/status/1694415737790898349

You can jump to 1:30.

Nice. I'm not a huge fan of Taibbi anymore, but that segment rings true, especially about needing a plan B for mundane things. Basic, mundane things that you used to be able to just do and count on working, like sending an important document in the mail, or hiring someone to install flooring, or ordering food for delivery, or making a doctor's appointment, now have a reasonably high chance of just not working. And it's always due to human incompetence. Businesses don't pay enough -> they don't hire competent workers who care -> nobody knows what they are doing and everyone screws everything up.

It isn't just that businesses aren't paying enough (though I am sure that contributes) is that increasingly we are beholden to large entities and systems to which individuals are just fucking gnats and beneath the notice of.

As an example I've had issues where I've ordered groceries delivered online and had the driver tell us that they won't deliver to us because there isn't parking at our apartment, and I've left the apartment ten minutes later and seen their delivery truck parked literally a one minute walk up the block. We called and complained, and we got a voucher we can use to get some amount off of our next order. Sure. Ok. But now we are still without our groceries.

The thing is the person we were complaining to was front desk call center staff for a large supermarket chain. They have absolutely no ability to do anything to help us in a meaningful way. They do not have permission to tell the delivery driver to cross the fucking street, or to talk to the deliverer's manager, or anything like that. They literally cannot actually solve my problem.

Same with making a doctors appointment. It's now done by software, which helps things scale but when it goes wrong none of the people you personally are interacting with are likely to be able to fix themselves.

This is still ultimately the result of business squeezing every red cent they can out of every link in the chain, which leaves things brittle as hell/designed to work at scale but not necessarily be able to accommodate things even slightly out of the ordinary.

It sounds to me like California is falling apart, not the USA—your experience doesn't match mine at all.

Where I'm at, decreased crime rates are very obvious. Our restrooms are all open, our grocery stores barely have any staff monitoring the self checkouts, and we barely think about locking our doors. People are as friendly as ever.

Further, some places like California, have declared they won't prosecute property crime under a certain amount

Most U.S. states don't prosecute property crime as a felony under a certain amount. In fact, more than half of the U.S. states use $1000 or more as the threshold for treating theft as a felony. At $950, CA actually has a lower threshold than more than half of the U.S. states.

so again, even less reporting.

It's crazy that you took the overturned policy of a single D.A. in a single city and FUD'd that into the policy of an entire state of 40 million people. That D.A. was kicked out of office the following election, and his successor did not maintain that policy. He tried again in L.A., and his staff not only refused to go along, they actually sued him over it and won.

I have no idea how to fix it or influence people to be nicer and more respectful of the law.

Not spreading FUD would go along way.

>Not spreading FUD would go along way.

doesn't fix his car's windows for the 6th time, though.

It's not anything special. San Fransico is one of the top 5 largest cities in the US, maybe even in the world. So while crime may be average or even below average, it is going to feel worse because you will see more instances of it. Because there are more people.

By the way, SF replaced their "soft on crime" DA. And the crime has gotten worse.

Where is your correlation now?

Or, maybe, just maybe, complex problems have complex causes and complex solutions.

If the DA is known to not charge crime, then people will not report crimes that occur because they believe it to be a waste of time. In the year after a special election to replace a DA for being too soft, I expect the crime rate to go up as people test if the new DA will actually take it seriously this time.

If it stays up for several years then I would see a problem, but all I'm seeing right now is the expected result of a forced regime change.

America also doesn't have paid toilets like Europe and many parts of Asia thanks to a bans pushed by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_to_End_Pay_Toilets_i.... Before this America had many paid toilets. In Europe and Asia often the toilet requires a nominal fee (sometimes unfortunately expensive though) to keep out drug addicts or other folks at the bottom, but due to the bans from the campaign cities with huge drug problems are hamstrung from offering paid toilets.

I think it's important to have free options but to blanket ban a paid toilet contributes to the restroom issues we see now in urban areas IMO.

I think we should address the root problem, which is Jack Nicholson, who convinced everyone that mental hospitals are bad.

They were bad, very bad

It does seem like there should be some sane middle ground between abusing patients and throwing them onto the street.

Yes, but surely giving mother nature the task instead is not the proper reform.

Psychiatric medication have come a long way since the 60s, so running wards should be alot simpler than back then with all those insane displine procedures.

Part of the problem is that it works like prison, where some of what makes it awful are crazy assholes ruining things for everyone else dialed up to 11.

The idea behind closing down the mental institutions in the 70s/80s (pursuant to a legal decision about the rights of the mentally ill) was that community-based mental health support should be offered instead. But of course, it never was. For yers mentally ill people were shoved into the prison system; that approach has been abandoned but they've mostly been left to rot on the street instead.

It’s a situation like congressmen who vote for a budget, the take a “principled” stand to block the debt limit. Or taking the Bill Clinton’s “fundamentally changing welfare forever”, by pushing recipients to Social Security Disabilty, and off of the federal and state government’s balance sheet.

In the case of mental hospitals, the closures were supposed to be replaced with community based care, but of course Medicaid and Medicare funding was not set to meet demand.

the doctors and knowledge wasn't bad, (a select few) people and biases were bad. That plus lack of due process to keep them in check lead to yet another form of discimination. The treatment of some high profile cases made a mental ward look worse than a prison.

I don't have a true answer to fixing all of this, but it should definitely be said that it WAS in fact bad. And that the fixtures are not technical in nature.

Mental hospitals may have been bad, very bad, but what if the alternative is worse? I walked into a Starbucks in downtown San Jose a few weeks ago and there was someone in there asking for water. Their clothes were soiled rags. They had sores on their ankles. Their face was smeared with dirt. Is that kind of an existence better than spending time in a mental hospital? Is it really the most humane option to let people slowly die on the street? I know what my answer is.

>Is it really the most humane option to let people slowly die on the street?

Legally, yes. Unfortunately. If nothing else, it is something done in their own power, and no governmental institutions can be accused of breaking the 7th amendment over it.

There are current and forming solutions to this, but the US has always had a fickle relationship with actually voting in welfare options when push comes to shove. Crabs in a bucket; They want the homeless out of sight, out of mind, but don't want to pay taxes that goes towards "free handouts". That mentality needs to change if the US is ever going to make headway on this.

It is better that they now live under the bridge and randomly murder people and smear feces all over town.

Clearly this is the better outcome.

Both you, and the historical commentary reply are correct.

Mental hospitals _were_ very bad, and the problem continues to be very bad.

However the solution was never going to be END the old social program. We see the results in any major urban area today, it's what everyone in this thread is talking about.

It's far too easy in politics to rally around a common 'goal' of 'stop doing X / being X' (E.G. BRexit) without the 'replacement' action selected. If 'and do nothing' is really what's supported that should be fine as an affirmative assertion. 'Stop doing X and do nothing instead'. Or (as an example) 'End sanitariums and make mental health a public drunkenness level crime while funding the police and jail / hospital systems for treatment'.

The problem is lack of agreement and follow through on a plan leading to the default failure mode of the universe; everything fails in uncontrolled ways.

There was a old This American Life episode which was re-aired recently that covered a court case that possibly changed psychiatric health care as much if not more. The patient in this case got better treatment but sounds very unwell even with medication, at least according to now estranged children.

Act one: Burning Down The Couch https://www.thisamericanlife.org/808/the-rest-of-the-story?2...

newspaper article https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/oct/11/psychiatry-w...

Whatever Jack Nicholson convinced you of, I can assure you that reality was far worse.

Try to find a bathroom in a tourist town in france and then get back to me. In america if you go into most shops and ask, they will let you into the bathroom. In touristy areas sometimes they are dicks about it, but still you can find a way. In france, if you don't have coins on you, they will literally watch your bladder explode. This isn't an american problem, I find it way easier to know where to go in the US (any mcdonalds, starbucks, etc... will let you in no questions asked)

At this point it seems cheaper to go about solving the upstream problems.

That would involve Americans voting to solve the housing crisis, which they aren't interested in doing.

Fair, but I think a bigger problem is that politicians don't align their policies with public opinion so I'm not gonna blame inefficient or disenfranchised voters. When everything is Kabuki can you blame people for being confused?

Requiring water and power seems like a pretty basic requirement for a bathroom! Or are you expecting a sunlit composting toilet?

Same thing happened with accessibility of these in NYC. So please tell me how it’s better for the handicapped that there’s no restroom at all. It’s ridiculous.

> San Francisco has tried

I wouldnt say they’ve tried. Trying includes not letting the homeless ruin it.

> JCDecaux is really an ad company. The street toilets are just a way to get ads on public property.

At the risk of going off on a tangent, JCDecaux is actually a marketing company which sells ad space to the highest bidder. Their business model consists of offering municipalities free public equipment/urban infrastructure such as bus stops, public toilets, public fountains, etc, and in exchange have the right to use that to post curated ads.

> The first problem was that that the US required them to be wheelchair-accessable.

I don't think that holds any truth at all. All JCDecaux public toilets I've seen were all designed with accessibility in mind. Why do you think that asking JCDecaux to provide something it already provides everywhere would be suddenly an issue?

https://www.jcdecaux.com/press-releases/world-toilet-day-ove...

> So they were 3x as big and several times more expensive than the smaller units in Paris.[1]

Those are already wheelchair-accessible. What's your point?

> They are noted for working fine in tourist areas, and badly in homeless areas. Making them big enough for wheelchair accessibility makes them big enough for drug deals, too.

I don't see your point. Do you think there are no homeless people in tourist areas where JCDecaux deploys public toilets? People still vandalize those, and also coin-operated ones.

JCDecaux also operated Paris' public bike sharing system; there wasn't any ad space on those (but then it wasn't free).

Even the Portland loo needs to be cleaned, and unfortunately the populations that uses them poses a hazard to workers.

https://www.wweek.com/news/city/2023/08/30/city-of-portland-...

This is very much a regional thing.

In most of the US, my experience has been that every gas station and every restaurant has a public restroom that's unlocked at all times. They're sometimes nasty, but always available, and even the ones that are nominally for customers only aren't regulated at all.

There are some places I've been that keep the restroom locked, but where I've been that's a sign that you're in a particularly sketchy neighborhood, not a regular thing. The first time I had a major problem finding a restroom at all was driving through Las Vegas a few years ago. I've only become aware that there are other places like that through articles like this on HN.

Right, I guess maybe high crime areas have this problem? I drove from Kansas to South Florida last year and there were public restrooms literally everywhere we stopped.

I’m pretty sure that homeless folks are the main reason some areas (generally urban) have few public restrooms. If someone decides they’d rather hang out or sleep in your restroom than on the street, the headache associated with offering a public restroom rises dramatically.

Sleeping there is one thing. Shooting up and leaving the needles there and painting the walls with feces is when you really start to wonder

100% agree.

In the Southwest, I would say 95% of the places I visit have plenty of public restrooms if you count businesses that have unlocked bathrooms. Fast food, coffee shops, grocery stores, gas stations, restaurants… nearly every public business.

When my wife and I visited Scotland, we were flabbergasted at how difficult it could be to find a restroom when we were driving the countryside. Even when we would find signs of civilization, it was hard to find open businesses with restrooms.

When in nature, earth becomes the restroom

It's all about homelessness and drugs. If an area has issues with homelessness and drugs, public restrooms are very rare; if they do exist, they are often out of order.

It won’t be for everyone but there’s a show on HBO called “How To With John Wilson” where he picks a theme for the week and deep dives down multiple threads around the chosen topic.

A few weeks ago he did one called “How to find a public restroom” and it was shocking to me how unavailable such a necessity is in even major cities with high population density. I get that in general public restrooms end up in disarray but I also think that represents more that we just aren’t willing to fund the required maintenance to keep them in better shape.

Side note: the funniest part from the episode was when he tricked one of the self cleaning bathrooms in New York to run a cleaning cycle while he was inside filming, was hilarious.

Was coming in here to mention John Wilson. Such a slow-paced yet interesting show. This season has really caught my attention better.

>in even major cities with high population density

I'd say that was typically where the issue is. I wouldn't expect to find a bathroom in the middle of random forest of course but pretty much anywhere in suburbia/exurbia has grocery stores, Walmarts, McDonalds, gas stations, with restrooms you can use. Worst case, make a small purchase.

When the poop is literally falling out, you don't always have time to make a purchase.

Anyone with kids understands this plight well.

What abides you from shitting first and buy later?

Usually a key or door code.

Right

You can just ask for that, you don’t need to buy anything. People are pretty understanding.

More reason why those with kids stay out of the high density urban areas, or plan ahead.

Around here there are any number of 24 hour gas stations with easily accessible restrooms with no locks or anything.

Edit: completely misread the above as a suggestion and not as a description of what people are doing. My bad.

I interpreted the statement as descriptive, not normative.

You’re totally right after I reread.

In that case it would be really hard to believe a worker would hold you up. Ask for the code and they will give it to you if they need it. No one is so rigid about these things especially when you are a shift worker paid minimum wage.

When your kid is actively pooping their pants, the last thing you want to do is waste time asking for the code, but yes, most people are pretty understanding.

We had one accident like this when our twins were 3 and immediately bought a portable potty. It uses heavy plastic bags, which sucks, but I'm not going through that again. It goes everywhere with us.

Yeah we have one too, which is great when you're near the car... We don't usually carry it with us though. I suppose we could, never really considered it.

I keep a small urinal, an expanding toilet and travel bidet in my car. I feel liberated and so glad to never deal with that.

Do you have any name or link to specific products?

I've had a Zojirushi travel bidet for years and years now. Battery operated. The thing is a champ. I keep it in the downstairs bathroom (both upstairs bathrooms have bidets installed) but take it with us if we travel anywhere by car.

Do you mean Toto? I have the Toto travel bidet as well as a few Zojirushi products and I’ve never come across a bidet by Zojirushi…

I'll double check when I'm home a little later. You may be right, but I could swear it's a Zojirushi. I bought it in Tokyo on a trip to Japan almost a decade ago.

Sigh... It's a Toto. In retrospect I don't even know why I thought it was a Zojirushi.

They’re both top notch Japanese brands that make high quality household goods, that’s why I thought you might have confused the two in the first place.

I was actually hoping to be wrong and there was some Zojirushi bidet I had never seen before.

This design looks good in theory: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4753565

It's a 3D printed urinal with a captive lid that attaches to a standard plastic bottle.

You just pop that bad boy onto the sidewalk/parking lot ? Or is this some van/RV setup?

For anyone curious, this is the clip mentioned, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2D5qK8oh5lY

Oh, I’m so glad you brought up “How to with John Wilson”. I didn’t know there were new episodes and now I’ve got to watch these! I was floored by the first season, especially ending on Covid, so my hopes are high!

Plenty of public bathrooms in Japan and Korea.

Hell even India seemed to have piblic bathrooms within reach when I visited

So sad that John Wilson is over now. One of the weirdest best shows ever. The S1 E2 episode How to put up scaffolding about all the scaffolding in NYC was one of my favorites. Never has a show loved and showcased a city so authentically, except maybe the Wire with Baltimore.

If you’ve watched the final episode (absolutely riveting in typical Wilson fashion) the conversation with “Mike” is just shocking. But in some ways it makes sense the show had to end. Similar to the Ali G show back in the day, once you achieve some fame, ironically strangers will know who you are and be less likely to tell their true stories and opinions. And at that point the show would be dead anyway.

Public, no, but in general every Walmart / Starbucks / ... (except Subway) have a restroom available.

Try finding a place in Belgium... if you find one, you have to pay, even if you area already a paying customer (e.g. Kinepolis, a large theater chain) or when you're in a park there's a restroom with a friggin' card reader to charge you half a Euro to take a piss. I found a tree close-by.

And grocery chains aren't even legally required to have a restroom available to customers.

Sitting in Amsterdam thinking the same thing. America is practically covered in accessible restrooms in comparison.

Having just gone through Belgium and the Netherlands, it’s a huge relief to know that public restrooms are definitely around if you’re willing to part with some change.

Probably most of EU, too. And the extra coins it takes means it is at least moderately clean. But just in case, always good to carry a few Euro coins around for the attendants.

The card readers are all over the UK's largest parks, too.

(A nasty issue I encountered in Iceland was that my debit card did not support Icelandic vendors, and as a result, could not be used to purchase anything which the strip reader. I jumped many turnstiles, sorry Iceland...)

Definitely not true in most of the Netherlands. Once you leave the touristy city centres you are down to very limited or no options. It's even worse for women because most urinals in the city centre of Amsterdam are for men only.

Thankfully there are "adapters". Essentially just suitably shaped funnels, and thankfully there are materials that shed the droplets so one won't need to clean much before stowing.

I'm a dude in his 50s now (that still feels weird to say), and I have to pee all the damn time. Going out in public always involves studying the restroom situation ahead of time. Even so, I've pee'ed in countless alleys, side-roads, and parking lots; I'm always discreet as possible, but I still don't like to do it.

New York City is the absolute worst. Disgusting doesn't bother me, but why are the damn subway restrooms always closed?!

Vandalism and drugs. It doesn't have to be everyone - just enough people - but if you had to go clean up blood and feces smeared over everything once a week, would you stay in that job?

I had a similar problem at probably a similar age. Turned out that it was an enlarged prostate. Had surgery and things are much better now. The urologist said he typically saw it with men 10 years older.

One bad side effect was that urine was being held in my kidneys, damaging them. So I'd urge you to get it checked out sooner rather than later.

You know why they're always closed.

This is not normal, respectfully. Something is up and you should go get checked out by a doctor sooner rather than later.

This is a symptom of hyperglycemia or ketalacidosis. This happened to me when I was a kid, as will typically happen to undiagnosed diabetics. Have you thought of testing your blood sugar (faster) or A1C (tests average over longer period)? I don't speak Chinese but I heard of this, 糖尿病

糖 (táng) - sugar 尿 (niào) - urine 病 (bìng) - disease

Please get yourself checked (for diabetes)

Public restrooms are hard to find in America but even harder in most other countries.

Yes this is a problem we should solve but it's kind of ridiculous to imply it's an issue only in America. In the vast majority of countries on earth, you must either pay or purchase something to use the restroom.

"Spend a penny" is a common euphemism in the UK for using a toilet precisely because that used to be a typical fee on a public one; well before my day though (and I'm middle-aged).

Free public ones do exist but they're not common (and the ones with a charge are a lot more than a penny).

The outright paying to pee blew my mind. Especially when you don't know that the UK has different money than the EU.

I found paying to use the convenience to be much more common in Germany than in the UK.

It was especially annoying at railway stations and shopping centres, both places which usually have free conveniences in the UK.

Came here to post this. If you think the US is bad, try Paris.

>try Paris

Literally the worst example. There are +400 automated self-cleaning toilets (accessible to people with disabilities)

https://capgeo.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Media/index.html?appid=5...

https://www.paris.fr/pages/les-sanisettes-2396

Just make sure you don't need to go at night, since many (most?) are only open during daytime.

according to the link, a third of them is open 24/24

Are they free to use?

The rounded ones in GP's link are free to use, yes.

There are some public restrooms which aren't, mainly around tourist areas, but there's usually a sign and an attendant. The ones in GP's post are fully automated.

Ok, that's not been my experience, perhaps I just don't know how to find toilets en français

> Public restrooms are hard to find in America but even harder in most other countries.

the third graphic in this article refutes this directly.

Pay toilets used to be common in the US, they were banned in many US states after lawsuits alleging sexism and lobbying by the "Committee to End Pay Toilets in America", not making this up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_to_End_Pay_Toilets_i...

When I was a kid, pay toilets used to cost 10 cents. My mom would put one dime in and have my sisters and me hold the door so she wouldn't have to pay again.

I don’t understand this. I’ve lived in America my entire life (I’m roughly 40) and literally never been unable to find a public restroom.

I’m sure there are certain cities where it’s harder (maybe NYC, etc.) but “Public restrooms are hard to find in America” is stretching the truth pretty far.

Yeah, I’ve never encountered this issue outside of an urban area.

You’ve hit the core. Whoever wrote this is clearly an urbanite through and through.

Even in cities it just depends on where you ask. A little hole in the wall pizza joint where the bathroom involves tredging through the code violations in the kitchen? Yeah nah they aren’t letting you in there unless you have a six year old with you who is threatening to pee right then and there. Your standard urban mcdonalds or other new construction building will have full bathrooms by code on the other hand. And if there is some code or whatever, just ask. They say you need to make a purchase to legally exclude homeless people but if you don’t appear homeless they just give you the code without having to bother with that in my experience. Not to mention every single bar you see in a city will have a bathroom and zero police that for patrons.

Yep. People from large coastal cities see nothing wrong with openly mocking Kansas when they're talking to me. I ask them about the public restroom situation where they live, and I tell them they're living in a primitive area if they don't even have easy access to public restrooms. For some reason they think I'm joking. They're just so used to putting up with that and other things that make life miserable that they don't know what life is like in the more advanced parts of the country.

While there are trade offs in every place one chooses to live, and can relate to the eye rolling elitism of folks who’ve never visited most of America as a person who grew up in Tennessee. I think you overplay your hand referring to a state in the bottom third of GDP and growth rate with slightly above median GDP per capita as an advanced part of the country.

Free public restrooms and other facilities. No homeless. No pollution, clean air and skies. Massive food self sufficiency. I'm not a Kansas fan exactly but I wouldn't balk at calling it advanced in terms of quality of life.

There are literally thousands of homeless people in Kansas. Maybe "food self sufficiency" refers to farming, but nearly ten percent of the state is on food stamps, and more than ten percent lives below the poverty line. And there is nowhere "no pollution" is less true than in agriculture belts: https://www.kcur.org/news/2022-03-29/as-fertilizer-pollutes-...

I believe that your quality of life is great. I also believe that is not universally true for Kansans -- and I think that these issues exist across America, and pretending you can just move to avoid them is a little childish.

Actually being able to buy a home is a big plus.

each of the qualities you described are also qualities of a sufficiently large empty plot of land

Kansas has a homeless problem. (https://www.cjonline.com/story/news/state/2023/03/03/kansas-...)

And an air quality problem. (https://www.kansascity.com/news/weather-news/article27670887...)

And a huge problem with pollution. (https://www.kansascity.com/news/weather-news/article27670887...)

Restrooms in the US are super easy to find, compared to Germany where I grew up. It's not only public restrooms (at least here on the west coast), but it's also completely acceptable to walk into a restaurant or store and just ask if you can use theirs. Several visiting relatives and friends from Europe were completely amazed by this. Contrast that to the fact that lots of public restrooms in Europe cost a small fee - with cash in the right small value coins that you of course don't have on you when you need to go urgently.

The thing that's a little odd to me is that in the US it swings wildly depending on region, from "we don't really care if you're a customer" (suburban retail or gas station) to "there is literally no restroom here for the general public even with purchase" (in some big cities).

And yet, here the "pay a small fee for the privilege" model seems to be completely absent. That model is also used in parts of Latin America, and it seems like it could be a useful middle ground between these US extremes.

Yeah, my experience with this was mostly very positive in suburban and rural areas. Even gas stations in LA for example will often not have restrooms at all. Makes it hard to drive through with little kids who don't have great potty break planning skills yet.

In a lot of states it’s illegal to charge money for the use of a restroom due to lobbying by the Committee to End Pay Toilets in America in the 1970s. (Of course, the unintended but entirely predictable consequence is that in a lot of places it became very hard to find a restroom of any sort, for the reasons discussed in this thread.)

>but it's also completely acceptable to walk into a restaurant or store and just ask if you can use theirs.

...same as in Germany

... not my experience. At all. Most stores don't even have restrooms for non-employees.

This is really only a problem in densely urban areas and even then not across all of them. To say public restrooms are hard to find in America is I think a mischaracterization. It would be more fair to say public restrooms are hard to find in American cities, but then Id wager all urban areas around the globe have struggled with this problem in one way or another.

Anecdotally, in my hometown in Florida I’ve never had an issue finding a bathroom, not even in larger cities like Orlando and Tampa. But my experience finding bathrooms in Seattle, Washington was quite horrendous.

I've personally never had trouble going to a restaurant or other place with restrooms for customers, but I'm sure things are very different in places known for people who are homeless, drug-addicted, mentally ill, or criminals.

If people use few consumables and keep the restroom clean, it's probably more likely to remain open to the public. But I'd imagine the staff doesn't want to clean up a biohazard or deal with dirty needles.

The restroom situation in the US is better than in any other country I've visited.

Agreed. I’ve never once not been able to easily find a restroom in the US. Europe is much worse, where you often have to buy toilet paper or something silly to keep people from using the restroom.

What? I've never seen that in "Europe" in any country I've visited.

Which country are you talking about where you have to buy toilet paper?

In the UK I can think of a couple pay toilets at some of the big London train stations but other than that I can't remember seeing one.

Free toilets are everywhere.

The author probably hasn't been to London or continental Europe.

Good luck finding a trash receptacle in Victoria station. (Yes, the historical reasons.) Meanwhile, the US has millions of potential shrapnel trash cans everywhere. After some psycho terrorists goes after them, then it would change. A hoop with a clear bag is far safer for everyone.

How about we put the few human-animals back in their cages, so the rest of us can live in a civilization that doesn't need to have clear bags full of trash on display.

California effectively outlawed mental health care for paranoid schizophrenics back in the 1980’s. (You can’t even get future-you committed in the event of a psychotic break)

I don't think the author is referring literally to people with mental illnesses.

They're referring to the IRA.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_...

They’re easy enough to find if you actually look, the problem is they’re always locked. It’s as if the city thinks people only poop from 9am to 8pm.

A local park has the bathrooms in the rec center that has separate hours from the rest of the park. So by 5pm when everyone gets off work to play pickup basketball on the courts the only place to piss is this discrete bush that absolutely reeks as a result.

I'll never understand why more cities haven't invested in the Portland Loo or similar concepts for public bathrooms...

https://portlandloo.com/

Afaik it’s cuz they cost like $300k

Not a big amount though for city governments. They do tend to overspend anyways on building such facilities.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-10-20/san-fran...

It's literally that, a FAR more expensive permanent structure, or shit and piss on the streets. End of list. If you've ever lived in a Western US city I think you'd be really, really inclined towards option #1.

There's a touristy little town about half an hours drive from me (NZ not America) that has a few cafes and what not. We used to go there multiple times a year, but recently they cut their number of public toilets down to about a third. Now I just don't go. I don't want to queue up to take a piss with a bunch of tourists.

This isn't rocket science. Just rent a line of portapotties. The portapottie company will maintain them. Increase or decrease the number as required. Move them around.

An order of magnitude cheaper than any other option.

Just got back from Europe and this was my biggest complaint about the places we visited.

Living in Florida, I never have a problem finding restrooms. Not sure what kind of restroom oasis the author is from, but, at least here in Florida, restrooms are not hard to find.

I got kicked out of the house by my dad when I was 16. He let me keep my car thankfully. I lived in Florida and I would park at the beaches that had public bathrooms + showers just to get by.. Weird time of my life. No pub bathrooms anywhere else..

Europe solved this problem ages ago with pay toilets and regular police patrol. Some even clean themselves which has an added benefit of dissuading long term residents. The problem has been solved but city's avoid this because NIMBY's will say it incentives drugs, sex, homelessness, etc.

Citizens do not trust that the government will maintain and police them properly, and I think the homeless and sanitary situation in San Francisco is a perfect example.

Define Europe, please.

The problem is that some people do not want pay toilets. They want free public toilets and would call Europe backward/racist/whatever for making people pay for toilets.

Because it is backwards, state governments ought to supply and maintain enough bathrooms that the streets remain sanitary.

Sanitation is one of the main things we need a government for; failure here is unacceptable.

The only people who pee on the streets are drunks and they're not going to a public toilet anyway.

Why not?

Because they don't care, can't be bothered to wait for one, and any ones with personnel are probably not going to admit them because they will make a big mess.

As a drunk, we for sure care.

If a person were begging outside of a toilet I'm sure someone would help them out until it becomes a regular hustle like people outside of grocery stores is.

Some people don’t want to pay for anything. Those people can be ignored most of the time.

Would they rather have toilets that cost a dollar to use or no toilets?

Someone who needs to pee is going to pee, whether they have a dollar to spare or not; I'd rather they are able to pee in a restroom rather than on the grass, sidewalk, or someone's doorway. It is cheaper and healthier for society as a whole if people do their business in restrooms, which is basically the reason why we've converged on a society where toilets exist in the first place, rather than fleets of trucks circling around and washing the streets constantly.

Yet Europe, with pay-to-use toilets, does not have urine-soaked streets or the need for an app to map poop…

I would not mind a reasonably priced pay toilet. The toilet should make enough revenue to pay for itself ideally.

Even if you want to pay, it is hard to find toilets that are clean and do not have a big line. It is a horrible situation, especially when visiting with young children.

I won't assume what people would call "Europe" which is a big place. However, it's certainly true that pay toilets are not a thing in the US in general and certainly not in train stations, restaurants, etc. as you at least sometimes see in other countries.

It's probably complicated at this point in that I assume most people in the US don't carry change today and tap to pay small amounts is fairly nascent.

Citizens do not trust that the government will maintain and police them properly

This is the problem not NIMBYs, It is the correct assessment that the bathrooms will not be policed or maintained. If they were policed and maintained, no one would even notice them.

The toilet situation in Europe is pretty bad from the few places I've been: France, Italy, Greece, Spain, UK. You can't find clean, free toilets and there is a line to use many of the toilets all the time. Most toilets do not have disposable seat covers, some don't even have toilet seats, some don't have toilet paper, etc. It is a sad state of affairs and makes me miss the much better (though still lacking) situation in the US.

Perhaps it is area dependent in UK. When I lived in the North I think access to toilets was a lot worse than down South. We went visiting to many tourist places like the east coast, Yorkshire moors, various historic places. All these trips had to be planned carefully as usually there were no toilets available. Even in food places in such tourist areas. The only place one could always find a toilet at were petrol stations. Another thing is toilet availability for people going for a night out.

In contrast when I lived in London I always felt access to public toilets was pretty good. There were lots of places like McDonald's, Starbucks etc that always let the public use their toilets for free. Then there are free toilets on many large rail stations past the barriers as well as paid toilets before the barriers. Finally there are free standing paid toilets dotted around the city. Back then one had to put a coin to open them.

Personally I think London is one of the better European cities in this regard.

The thought that San Francisco homeless would pay to use the bathroom is quaint. Why pay when you can use a sidewalk/bush without repercussion?

Public toilets in France are frankly horribly maintained and smelly (wtf is wrong with ventilation there?) that San Francisco is a toilet paradise in comparaison.

This is a huge problem in San Francisco. It's solvable too, but for whatever reason famously the City's leadership isn't really trying to make things better. We live right by Oracle Park where the giants play. On game days there is a flood of fans that piss all over our block. They pee all over our building, sidewalks, everywhere. There is vomit all over too. So much so the buildings here have to pay people to clean it up every morning.

While all this is happening...there is a public restroom in the area that was clearly built for this purpose. It's never open, it's been locked the entire time we've lived in the neighborhood.

I've been working on an idea to just start a non profit that distributes those 5 gallon buckets with those cheap toilet seat lids you can get for them. Then pay people to pick them up and drop them off periodically. Anything is better than letting people continue to defecate in our streets.

I'm not even talking about the homeless population here, just average people, baseball fans.

I'm also not trying to dog on baseball or sports fans in general, I'm one. I'm just saying we should try to figure out a better way.

https://archive.ph/FYK9P

A show called 'How to With John Wilson' did an episode on exactly this topic recently, and as a non-American it was truly bizarre to see what the situation is like in New York. Not sure how embellished it was, but I was shocked.

As someone who lives in New York and has seen the episode you’re referring to, it is not embellished at all. New York might be the hardest city to find a public restroom that I have ever been in. Sometimes buying something isn’t even sufficient grounds for using a bathroom - a business might only have an “Employees Only” bathroom in the back.

Reading through this thread about open drug markets, cars being smashed into and homeless people smearing shit on the walls, I feel extremely grateful to live in Australia.

Even in the "bad areas" of major cities, you don't get shit like this. Worst I've seen regularly are junkies scamming on Facebook marketplace, or minor shoplifting.

There are a few cities that have explicitly declared themselves sanctuaries for this kind of lawlessness and the results are unsurprising. Most of the country is nothing like this.

What are some non-sanctuary cities which also have year round temperate, but not too hot or humid, weather?

We will take our junkies to your killer snakes, insects, arachnids any day, thanks.

I was a bit shocked when in some Canada's Horton's there was a disposable needle trash for the junkies, so I get why WiFi might be free for all but restrooms not so much

That’s pretty common everywhere in the USA now, even places where it’s clear the box has never ever been used.

People are prescribed iv drugs its not only addicts

Right insulin and such

Those boxes are also for people with diabetes, especially at eating establishments.

The fact that people with diabetes make up any notable percentage of Tim Horton's customers is scary.

Pretty much the only times I'll go into a Tim Hortons is when taking a break on a long drive. There's a lot of highway out there where Timmy Ho's will be your only option, especially at night, so it's not surprising to see the drop boxes. Proper rest stops have them too.

Is this a big city, east coast, west coast problem?

I feel like in the Midwest most businesses treat this as a loss leader and want you to come in and use their bathrooms.

I feel comfortable calling myself a world traveler, and with that in mind I have to say: no, they really aren't. Outside of VERY small town america, there is a bathroom at every gas station. Every big box store. Every fast food restaurant.

Try going to most of Europe, or Asia. Finding a bathroom is like a needle in a haystack in comparison, and often times when you do find one, you need money to pay to use it. I will say they are generally cleaner, and more "private" than most US bathrooms (at least in western Europe), but if you think it's tough to find one in the US - you probably don't want to travel abroad.

Is this a homeless thing or something?

When travelling in the US I've just done the same thing I do anywhere. Enter a fast food place, coffee shop etc and ask to use the loo. Job done.

I very rarely use truly public toilets in the UK either.

It's a problem in some cities, but not in most of the country. Stories like this are weird to me because it feels like the author has never gone out into the majority of the US.

> Job done.

Well played.

Apparently in 70s there was also a bit of a moral panic over "illicit sexual encounters" happening in public washrooms as well that might have had something to do with them being closed.

In the 50s, too, and before. But it's just one of many excuses. Here in the Bay Area our public transit system closed all restrooms "temporarily for security reasons" after 9/11. That was 22 years ago. They're finally reopening a few. One every year.

My company designed and built the first few prototypes for a startup, Throne Labs, who deploy prefab, off-grid, (semi-)publicly-accessible (you have to have their app) bathrooms.

Seems like they solved some core problems: finding suitable sites and partners, using semi-permanent modules that don't require [quite as] complicated/slow/expensive permitting and utility tie-ins, and some clever ways to get them re-stocked and cleaned regularly using gig labor (I always understood this to be the biggest challenge for offering public bathroom - labor cost of cleaning and resupply.)

They moved on to a higher-volume producer so I've been out of touch on their progress, but I thought it was a interesting solution in the face of what I learned to be outrageous expenditure - $300k, $500k(!) - on municipal bathrooms that quickly go defunct or get destroyed, and a lack of public restroom access during the pandemic.

During the project I learned a lot about how rideshare and package delivery companies just assume stops with restrooms are available on the routes (I'd love to hear what the actual company training/guidance says! It's easy to find stories about Amazon drivers peeing in bottles etc...)

I also gained a lot of empathy for people who have more frequent and urgent bathroom needs than my own - having trust in availability of facilities can make a world of difference!

I feel like restrooms are much easier to find in America than anywhere else. Restaurants and hotels usually offer them for free. It’s weird to have to pay for them in Europe

It’s things like this that prevent more public restrooms.

https://ibb.co/CzpmTR6

For a while, the highway-adjacent gas station and restaurant bathrooms were shut down in California because of covid.

I suspect that many ditches got “irrigated” that year.

It wasn't long ago that the enlightened people writing news stories were informing us that public toilets encouraged homelessness and crime. Business that allowed the public to use their toilets were "gently encouraged" not to do so anymore.

Perhaps we could go back and see who wanted to make public toilets unavailable, and make sure they're not still influencing public policy?

> It wasn't long ago that the enlightened people writing news stories were informing us that public toilets encouraged homelessness and crime.

Link?

In the UK we mostly get that excuse from the councils/government because they want to cut costs, and I think people just parrot that excuse.

Nobody seems to take 2 seconds to even ask how much vandalism existed only because there were no attendants (because they were fired) and therefore there was no surveillance.

All the good public toilets I’ve seen have constant cleaning during the day with a strong staff presence. Funny that!

> encouraged homelessness

As if the only thing stopping me from trying homelessness as a lifestyle is the lack of public restrooms. "No restrooms? Damn! Guess I'll have to sleep at home then."

I’m American but I’m typing this comment out at a campsite in Iceland.

I noticed they pointed out how many public bathrooms Iceland has. This seems misleading to me. From my understanding, in Iceland it is literally illegal to just pull off the side of the road and pee if you need, since nearly all areas of the country have laws to protect the nature. (For example it is also illegal to hike or camp off-trail.)

This is only tenable if there are a large amount of public bathrooms available, otherwise tourists would just ignore the law. So Iceland has a disproportionate amount of bathrooms for conservation reasons.

It is even more misleading because many of these bathrooms driving around cost a small fee (200ISK) to use even though they are “public”, I.e. owned by the government and available to everyone. And they only take credit card.

In Reykjavík finding a bathroom is probably about as hard as finding one in NYC.

For those who want to help out with adding all public toilets to OpenStreetMap: I made a website to make this easy: https://mapcomplete.org/toilets

You can see all toilets without an account and add a missing toilet or update information with a free/libre OpenStreetMap-account. Adding information also means it'll get picked up eventually by many of the navigation apps out there (such as Maps.me, Organic Maps, OsmAnd, nearly all of the cycle+pedestrian route planners, ...).

And there are many other thematic maps - a template system makes them easy to setup: https://mapcomplete.org/

In case you want a table format that shows the nearest ones in a list, I built https://free2pee.github.io/free2pee/ on top of OSM

Maybe one reason? https://abc7news.com/sf-expensive-bathroom-noe-valley-millio...

This must be regional.

There are public restrooms basically everywhere by me in WI.

Every gas station, every restaurant, fast food etc, every store in general has a public and unlocked restroom in my experience. There are public restrooms at most parks too.

Public bathrooms are actually one of the few things that US cities are undeniably better at than European cities. You almost always have to pay in Europe and even paid ones can be hard to come by.

Some public restrooms in other countries are well kept without frequent maintenance. Most restrooms in America are gross and it'll take more than a couple generations to fix this.

This will be an unpopular opinion but I think parents should teach their children how to go #1 or #2 properly. For example, water tension will make pee drizzle splash everywhere. Pee on the left or right side of the porcelain.

Good habits begin at home and most are being taught in daycare by teachers who would rather not stare at kids while they go.

All you have to do is learn to lift the seat to pee and not hover over the toilet while having the worst poop of your life. Those two points would go a long way as far as cleanliness goes.

I am just back from Naples. Even in restaurants, restrooms are not a given. And for sure no toilet seat, toilet paper, or paper towels. Never had this issue in the US.

Seems like it would be possible to come up with partnerships between local businesses and governments. A business could be paid a certain amount to make their bathroom publicly accessible. As I’m writing this it’s sounding familiar, so maybe this is already a thing in some places? Could maybe even have the local government send out crews to do the cleaning.

They may be hard to find, but in the Netherlands - you can't find them. There are a few "paid" toilets (if you have exact change) in the cities (Rotterdam, Amsterdam) and maybe other places.

Needless to say, if you go out - just plan on holding it in until you get home.

Somebody should make a subscription membership that allows you access to any bathroom you want.

Crappr

It’s like the Clear program at the airport, but for public restrooms.

In cities yes because of vagrants yet in the suburbs and rural areas ... public bathrooms are easy to find everywhere. I think Ive been to some places of businesses in cities that gave me the keycode to the bathroom once you buy something.

Except at the Asian shopping plazas in the US suburbs. They make the restroom situation quite difficult.

You can tell a lot about a society by how it treats its toilets. Both about the maintainer/owner of the toilet as well as the users.

In the U.S., a toilet might as well be an insect that is about to be smashed underneath a shoe.

I built something too, uses OpenStreetMap and has a catalog of ~400,000 bathrooms.

https://free2pee.github.io/free2pee/

Plenty of public bathrooms in Japan and Korea.

The U.S can't have many nice things because it has an epidemic of homeless people, many of whom are mentally ill and/or addicted to drugs, but can't get treatment.

It is a breakdown in US culture and law enforcement, not the lack of treatment options.

If anyone thinks public restrooms are hard to find in the US, try living in a developing world country like the Philippines. Public urination is so common here; you see it and smell it everywhere.

How about wearing a diaper? Problem solved. Just kidding. What's the problem with providing public urinals? I don't get it. Here is an simple example from Hamburg. https://www.heringinternational.com/fileadmin/images/content... You'll find something similar everywhere in Europe. I had been in SF once. This was the smelliest city expierence I ever had yet.

Women and children never need to pee apparently. And apparently pooping is just out and out forbidden to all. Urinals are not anywhere near a replacement for public restrooms and really only fill the gap of trying to discourage public urination probably around bars.

Urinals are not a replacement for public restrooms, but urinals are a very good addition to reduce stink. Not sure what your absolutism should tell me. Also urinals probably reduce the queue at "starbucks". If you need to poop it's your turn quicker.

The real problem is homelessness this is just another symptom

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/H7UGS

Isn’t it odd that there hasn’t been created a better method of dealing with poop and piss? Why aren’t we all wearing waste recycling systems already?

Lol another plug. People with paruresis have trouble finding places to pee in private. Enter paruapp.com. it's mostly a personal project

How exactly is it legal to charge people to use bathrooms when it’s not something you can control for long? Seems like inhumane logic.

The same way it's legal for restaurants to charge you for food, even though you can die of starvation.

Yeah you can last weeks without food

You can't last hours without pissing

If I own a business with a bathroom it costs me every time someone uses the bathroom. Bathroom use is never free, someone is paying for maintenance and consumables.

Okay it'll cost a lot more if someone pisses on your floor or the outside wall which will happen after a certain amount of severe poverty strikes. Just look at India where people shit in the street.

I wonder if this is the death of public spaces. If you want community you need people to be able to leave their homes for extended periods and join each other in public. It should be stable stakes for any civilised democracy to have public conveniences IMHO

In france you've public urinals by the beautiful siene lmao

Until recently the Siene was the beautiful urinal.

There is a Seinfeld joke here somewhere

People think its the homeless pooping on the streets of San Francisco but I was an employed software engineer making 6+ figures and pooped on the street one time since I could find a restroom.

Was there a possibility of finding a cafe or Macdonalds and just buying a coffee or something so you could use their restrooms? (as you said you were making 6+ figures) I mean I imagine that would be preferable to pooping on the street. But I don't know San Francisco, was there a reason why that wasn't possible e.g. no cafes open or something?

Yeah the lines in those places are incredibly long just to get to the counter at least in the market street area where I was. I desperately tried.

Starbucks the world over. If they might give you any trouble, stare vaguely at the menu on the way in. One can always change their mind to not order something on the way out.

Starbucks has restroom codes in large cities with homeless populations. They won't give out unless you buy something.

One of the Boulder Colorado Starbucks has a biohazard needle disposal box. Either that's for people with diabetes or there a high population of IV drug users.

Shit. Pun intended. Try finding a public restroom in LA. Almost every business there sports a prominent sign proudly proclaiming "no public restroom."

Los Angeles was rough for public restrooms I remember when I was there!

I do remember if you were on the west side the Santa Monica boardwalk and the beaches all having public restrooms which was a lifesaver numerous times for me!

But that was around 2015ish not sure how it is now.

Suckers. I do NFPA25 fire protection inspections throughout NYC and let them know they will be getting a visit from the fire department if they do not let me use their bathroom.

I have an entire map of private luxury bathrooms in NYC I can use now.

10 year old boy arrested in Mississippi for urinating in public after he couldn't find a public restroom in August

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/08/us/mississippi-boy-arrested-u...

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