If you soon see plaid- and PDX-carpet patterned portable toilets around the city, see, too, the promise of public health they represent.
Those portable toilets are one aspect of the “Hygiene Street Response” in Mayor Ted Wheeler’s proposed city budget, prepared by Katherine Lindsay, who works in the city’s Homelessness and Camping Impact Reduction Program. It is from this vantage that Lindsay sees clearly what is not working and what can be done better. Approximately 500 to 900 reports come in each week about camps, and nearly half of these complain of human waste.
It is absurd to spend all the money on clean-up, rather than providing places for people to go to the bathroom in the first place – for reasons of dignity, public health and, actually, cost. The budget of the Homelessness and Camping Impact Reduction Program is $3.5 million, and while the costs of responding to cleaning up human waste are not broken out, it is unquestionably plenty of money.
Tilting the effort toward providing hygiene services should, then, reroute money from the city clean-up of human waste on public property. That includes time and money spent by the Bureau of Environmental Services, Portland Parks and Recreation, Portland Fire and Rescue, Portland Police Bureau, Portland Water Bureau and the Portland Bureau of Transportation.
FURTHER READING: Portland spends millions responding to homelessness, researchers find
A system based only on enforcement does nothing for public health. Several years ago, Sisters of the Road and the School of Social Work at Portland State University conducted 550 surveys of unhoused individuals, and 40% reported medical problems because they couldn’t access hygiene resources. These included staph infections, scabies, endocarditis and urinary tract infections. Sometimes these become life-threatening illnesses that land people in the emergency room, or, in worst cases, kill them.
FURTHER READING: Life on the Streets: The parts of homelessness most people don’t talk about
None of this is to claim that the Hygiene Street Response is a panacea. It’s not; it’s a pilot. It looks at what is going so badly, and inverts it. Instead of camp sweeps, camp clean-ups. Instead of only camp clean-ups, garbage and hygiene services.
What does this pilot include? First, there will be at least six toilets staffed with bathroom attendants. The plan is to set these portable toilets out in pairs, with one in each pair accessible to people living with disabilities.
“I’ve been braining on toilets for a long time,” Lindsay told me. “I have been trying to figure out how to make them wanted. No one wants them. What can I do to make them appealing?”
So Lindsay came up with playful designs, the plaid she describes as “logger chic” and the PDX carpet. The hope is that rather than write scathing letters to the editor, passersby can snap Instagram photos and support toilets in neighborhoods.
FURTHER READING: Potty oppression: How city planners neglect public restrooms (Book Review)
Particularly innovative is the low-barrier jobs program. Bathroom attendants will staff the toilets seven days a week, 12 hours a day, watching over the use of the toilets, cleaning trash and syringes, and collecting data. Needless to say, I’m enthusiastic about this. Street Roots is all about low-barrier employment for people living on the streets.
In additions to those staffed toilets, the Hygiene Street Response includes four trailers that the city will set up and service for nonprofits, faith communities or businesses who apply. Three trailers have two portable toilets; the other will have one toilet. Each is equipped with garbage disposal bins, sharps containers, charging stations, lockers.
It’s important to note that this is not a half-baked idea; it’s deeply connected to a history of work, including that research by Sisters of the Road and PSU, as well as lessons from portable toilet programs in San Diego, San Francisco and Sacramento. A Hygiene and Sanitation Working Group at Portland State University is tracking a larger movement for publicly accessible hygiene services, which could include businesses, faith communities and community centers that open their doors, or even eventually a hygiene center.
FURTHER READING: Portland-area communities address hygiene needs on the streets
If you are picking up that I’m enthusiastic — well, I am. I have spoken and written critically about how the city’s One Point of Contact system structures antagonism, a place for people to complain. Let’s flip it into a system of constructive solutions.
Let the city know that you’d like one of these portable toilets in your neighborhood. Let the city know that your business or faith community would like to have a trailer parked there. Let the response be so big that the city has to prioritize the demand. Let this pilot grow wildly successful.
Think about the public bathhouses of yesteryear that were, in fact, built to serve hygiene and sanitation needs. Now we mostly have privatized spaces, such as spas for privatized leisure. This is about demanding public services for people who are boxed out of a privatized world. Why not have more shared spaces? So yes, I’ll plan on popping up a photo or two of a #plaidtoilet on Instagram. I want this to succeed.
Kaia Sand is the executive director of Street Roots. You can reach her at kaia@streetroots.org. Follow her on Twitter @mkaiasand.
© 2019 Street Roots. All rights reserved. | To request permission to reuse content, email editor@streetroots.org or call 503-228-5657, ext. 404.
Street Roots is an award-winning, nonprofit, weekly newspaper focusing on economic, environmental and social justice issues. Our newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity.