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San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

sfchronicle.com

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Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#221

Post by enragedcacti »

newsclues wrote: post #118
thfuran wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your proposed alternative?

For this, let private companies install public pay toilets. Let activists fund free pay toilet passes for the homeless/poor. Eventually there should be a couple brands of private public toilets where some are essentially free (lets say you own a business in an area with no public washrooms, it may be a financial benefit to you to sponsor a public toilet) and others are more luxury with higher prices to keep the riff…

There is a market solution for everything if we just imagine that the tragedy of the commons doesn't exist

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#222

Post by gtirloni »

insanitybit wrote: post #121
mcculley wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be true in San Francisco and certainly is in many other parts of the U.S. It is not true in places with functioning government.

Yes, obviously. We're talking about San Francisco where this toilet is being built with a very explicit purpose.

What's different between a traditional public toilet that anyone can use and a homeless toilet? You seem to imply there's a difference that affords extra explanation and justification.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#224

Post by lr4444lr »

mattnewton wrote: post #206

One of the reasons this toilet is so expensive no doubt, is that the new SF public toilets are self cleaning and will have attendants on duty to try to prevent this. The one on golden gate park and Haight closes after each visitor to spray the inside down like a dishwasher, and has an attendant on duty to make sure no one is inside while it does that (and to generally discourage people from shady stuff). It's not per…

They have to pay an attendant hourly just to be sure no one is in there while the self clean runs? Why can't it operate based on a weight sensor?

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#225

Post by melony »

hotpotamus wrote: post #180
jollyllama wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too many bureaucrats and construction profiteers, not enough good laborers.

Quoted post unavailable.

> The public toilet will be built by union workers who will “earn a living wage and benefits,”

San Francisco doesn't owe anything to the tradespeople. When you share a border with Mexico, there is absolutely no reason not to outsource.

Almost every city that can rapidly scale up infrastructure have access to some type of cheap labour. The rapid construction in the middle east and asia didn't happen by using union labor for everything. Nobody likes talking about the elephant in the room but that doesn't make it any less true.

Most of the red tape and bureaucracy come from having too much local rights and democracy.

If you can't build housing cheaply, then no amount of union rights and progressive policies would reduce the amount of homeless people.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#226

Post by abeppu »

I've seen multiple articles on this, but none really explain why the public toilets that are used at other locations in SF cannot be used in this instance. Another comment in this thread mentions Paris's sanisettes, and SF already has a similar product (though far fewer of them). Given the city has already put them several places, I would have thought the marginal bureaucratic effort for one more shouldn't be so large.

https://www.sfpublicworks.org/services/public-toilets

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#227

Post by s0rce »

screye wrote: post #148

Is the SF Bay Area the worst managed "successful" economic urban area in the world ? It performs pretty badly on public transport, safety, affordability & sanitation. All its pros seem to exist despite the management, and not because of it. (Universities, Jobs, Weather, Nature) I thought Greater Seattle was badly managed, but it has been funding light rail, missing middle-housing and recently started reversing the cr…

I moved from Canada to what I thought was progressive SF bay area, not so much, very conservative on many issues.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#229

Post by nsxwolf »

frereubu wrote: post #139
tristor wrote: post #53

Paris has automatically self-cleaning public toilets all around and they cost around $200k each to build and install. There’s no way this is a remotely reasonable cost and is clearly a grift.

"Clearly" is doing a lot of work in that sentence unless you've delved deeply into the approval process of this specific toilet. It's absolutely believable that this is just produced by sclerotic bureaucracy.

What's the difference between bureaucracy and grift? All those 1.7 million dollars go into pockets, no?

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#230

Post by asow92 »

mehphp wrote: post #212
asow92 wrote: post #160

Why is it that the deepest blue areas of the country have some of the most abject inequity and poverty? It seems that there's a fine line between compassion and enablement when it comes to the deep blue municipalities of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, etc. Sure the rustbelt, deep south, and Appalachia are areas with similar problems and mixed politics, but they also somehow feel different.

Do they though? I think the problem is just more visible in densely populated areas (which tend to lean blue). Red states are filled with poverty/inequity it’s just more spread out. Drive through the derelict areas in rural America and you will see similar issues.

In my personal experience of living in both rural New York and Pennsylvania and NYC for decades, the ratio seems to skew more towards the city. But I can't say as much for the west.
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