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Comment by lwhi | Hacker News Reader

Where do you go if you don't have any money?

The answer to this question should be self-evident. A city either offers free public toilets, or it becomes a free public toilet.

It’s also a tragedy of the commons thing: you offer free toilets but don’t fund maintaining them every half hour so they are only usable by a few before they become completely thrashed and unusable. Or they are used as drug/prostitution dens and are never available anyways except for whoever got lucky to grab and squat them. A free resources that isn’t available isn’t very useful when you need to go.

King county just pulled the plug on a pilot for public restrooms at a couple of transit stations because with maintenance and, more significantly, security the cost was $77/use [1], we simply can’t afford that. Seattle famously bought five multi million dollar self cleaning toilets that only lasted a few years [2].

[1] https://www.theurbanist.org/2024/07/17/king-county-to-close-...

[2] https://portlandloo.com/seattles-failed-experiment-with-sub-...

I was wondering how far I would have to go to see King County come up. Not very far!

We simply can't have nice things here. At least not in the Seattle city core. Everyone says "just have free bathrooms bro" but no one saying that actually has had to pay for and maintain a free bathroom in downtown Seattle. Discussing exactly why this is the case tends cause a flamewar, but the fact that we can't be honest about the cause means we'll never have the nice things.

I’ve lived in lots of cities, I don’t think the dynamics are very different. Yes, crappy people mean we can’t have nice things, but that is as true in Lausanne. The problem is the way Seattle/King county mis identify or lie about the problem and then give a fake shocked pikachu face when their fixes for the wrong problem don’t work.

A quid pro poo situation, if you will ...

I like it, but quo and poo are a bit too different to work.

Maybe "Quid Poo Quo"?

Yes .. better!

This was the argument that let NYC to ban coin based toilets in decades past, with the assumption that people should not need to pay and businesses/govt should provide restrooms for free. But no replacement was ever provided.

Come to NYC, walk around busy areas for a while you will not infrequently see less fortunate people urinating in the subway stations, on the sidewalk, on walls and buildings, by trash cans, and sometimes (if the mood strikes them) right in the middle of the street.

People are always going to need to do a number two though.

Although it pains me to sat this .. maybe there's a need for a disposable potty, with sanatary wipes, that can go in the trash.

Maybe these should be given free to street sleepers?

What a wonderful world we live in.

Some place in Switzerland offered two classes of bathroom. Paid clean ones that are maintained and a very simple free one with squats, not maintained hourly and only sprayed down a few times a day. Still much cleaner than I expected.

And you don't even have to be poor, what if you just aren't carrying your wallet/phone?

My wallet feels as essential as my keys when leaving my home. Are you just making the point for people who forget their wallet, or do you think there is good reason to intentionally not carry your wallet?

No, I just think we should resist the notion we need to carry things on us at all times to exist as a human being.

I can exist without carrying things. Practically, if I'm walking around a city, I probably want to have ID and some way of paying for things (and to get back into my home which is presumably locked). If I just take a stroll on the river path from my house I often don't carry anything but mostly I do.

Some people these days just carry a couple cards with their phone but that's still functionally a wallet. And a lot of things are headed towards contactless payment with phones or smart watches though I'd have trouble wanting to depend on that.

How would you pay if you only have a twenty? Do they take credit cards?

Many do take credit cards. In The Netherlands and Belgium, the pay toilets in train stations allow tap to pay with a NFC card or your phone. Toilets in the airports are always free, though.

I think you meant to reply to a different comment.

I don't ever carry my wallet or keys when I go for a walk, which is usually once a week when it's nice out. I do carry my phone, for podcasts. My door has a keypad to get in.

It's not uncommon to give subsidies for folks that can't afford modern conveniences (free phones, food, housing). I could imagine one could give out tokens, or pay cards that are only usable for bathrooms to those who can't afford to pay for it themselves.

Not to mention a lot of us "pay it forward". I used to pay for the people behind me when crossing the Bay Bridge, or for the next person that was buying a coffee.

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