271–280 of 832 posts
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> 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 lab…
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?
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The destitute are merely more visible in "big dense blue cities" but statistically there are more of them in rural red places like Mississippi and Oklahoma. After all, in OK or MS you need a car, which is a $2000+ asset, just to even access any public space or resource or make yourself visible at all. There's much more poverty in those places, but it is hidden away. You can see a slight bit of it at gas stations that…
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. A $2k car is a lot less than higher average taxes and housing costs.
I was thinking of the rural South, where maintaining some degree of radical poverty even in the face of all kinds of modern development has been a strange national sport of sorts for hundreds of years. The OP seemed to be pitting southern red state rural vs northern cities based on their list.
$2000 is a lot for plenty of poor people. And it's not even that easy to get a reliable car at that price anymore, you know. I'm glad it's hard for you to imagine that, but having to constantly either deal with the lack of a car (which usually means being unable to get to work, and thus earn money to feed the car...) or struggle to keep a car (worrying about a surprise bill) is a huge, huge pain for the poor.
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Too many bureaucrats and construction profiteers, not enough good laborers.
Actually, the construction workers found multiple issues with the plans, and were on the hook for some of the repairs. The profiteers were the engineers that designed the system. Each time they screwed up, they got to bill us more hours. Also, the contract with them stipulates zero liability for their incompetence. The state licensing board should be fired for allowing that. Also, we wanted to put in a more environme…
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Honestly, I might fight a public toilet near my house too if I knew the end state was that it would mostly attract homeless people who want to shoot up heroin.
The Paris sanisettes were controversial when they went up. Using the same damn arguments against them. Everyone cares so much about what the homeless and drug users might do and care very little about the millions of others who also use them. And they were unfounded. The self-cleaning and maintenance schedule does not attract homeless. I've literally watched a drug user argue with one because the door forcefully open…
Yeah, because it's a huge problem when you have a homeless junkie causing problems where you live.
> And [the concerns] were unfounded. ... I've literally watched a drug user argue with one
You're not helping your argument here.
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.
> San Francisco, which is struggling with a troubling homelessness and public-defecation crisis, needs more public toilets. The irony in this statement, given the reasons why this toilet costs so much, is absolutely unreal. I had to check the date on this article to make sure it wasn't an old April's Fools skit or something, but it seems red tape and NIMBYism have escalated to such a degree in SF that (a) securing bu…
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> Public toilets aren't really for you, they're for the people who have nowhere else. This is an incredibly stockholm-syndrome take. If you live in a place that isn't a total failed state, normal people actually can use the public toilets!
honestly though, public toilets are usually so dirty in my area (unless there are entry fees) that I rather use a shop's toilet instead. This is not about failed states, but a large portion of the populace not giving a shit about others... or giving too much shit perhaps =)
> San Francisco, which is struggling with a troubling homelessness and public-defecation crisis, needs more public toilets. The irony in this statement, given the reasons why this toilet costs so much, is absolutely unreal. I had to check the date on this article to make sure it wasn't an old April's Fools skit or something, but it seems red tape and NIMBYism have escalated to such a degree in SF that (a) securing bu…
Society is strange. Last year a Canadian woodworker made cabins for the homeless which was destroyed (probably because of some regulation) by the city.