Waste treatment system similar to many public systems. Charge by drain units, sewage pipe size, or maybe metered. Point is sewage treatment plant can be funded on individual apartment basis.
> works if you’re in a low density area benefiting from the taxes pulled from high density areas.
My area is far poorer than Manhattan but virtually everyone has a private septic system, and I've never seen poop in the street. You were previously paying for public poop now your just paying privately in lieu of publicly, and of course the homeless still probably shit in the street.
Also rural septic systems are almost never publicly funded.
>Something like 40% of Americans couldn’t field a $400 expense.
In practice in places like Manhattan you'd be paying for sewage monthly (when I lived in city that charged cost of sewage it was about 40 of my water bill). In rural areas septic is usually owned as part of mortgage or as debt services, if one cannot pay outright. All of which is amortized pretty close to real cost of sewage most anywhere.
>You’re in shock after discussing a place where it happens?
I'm in shock because having lived in areas that charge individually for sewage, the very few that don't spend the $1-$2 a day are either brutally poor or mentally ill, its just not a thing that people like you poop in the streets anyplace I've lived that charges near full rate for sewage treatment. As it were, the vast majority given the $1.40 a day to spare, will pay it to not have to poop outside or let it accumulate in their home, and if unable or unwilling to do so it is nearly always a symptom of something else that public sewers won't solve.