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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

#351

Post by jgerrish »

jgerrish wrote: post #234
insanitybit wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is saying it should be covered in shit. I'm just explaining that projects like this in SF are targeting a very specific issue - a large homeless population.

Yes, but San Francisco also has a large tourist population. Speaking of targeted, this public project almost feels like it was designed to piss off conservatives. Which is a shame, because older tourists are a big segment of the market there. And foreign toursts. And just like climate change and summer homes on the coast, I hate that there will be ironic endings to this for conservatives. Obviously, the homeless popu…

It just makes life more difficult. It's work in a way, dodging all this.

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

#352

Post by [deleted] »

mrits wrote: post #272
lr4444lr wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think I'd take my chances with the sidewalk than risk a startups new self cleaning censor. Literally a shit storm

[deleted]

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

#353

Post by whimsicalism »

michaelscott wrote: post #49

> 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…

> a far better option than actually trying to provide housing or attack more of the root causes.

I see a lot of discussion among urbanists of "induced demand" when adding extra lanes to highways. Are we sure there wouldn't be induced demand from providing free housing to the homeless?

Already, the Bay Area & LA are major draws to homeless populations throughout the country. [0]

[0]: Yes, there are some studies that show "70% of homeless people in the Bay Area list most recently becoming homeless in the Bay Area" but many of those people came to the Bay in the first place to access homeless services and that study also relies on a very expansive definition of homeless). These studies are also incentivized to show this as a local issue from an ideological perspective. If you actually ask visible homeless people on the street where they are born, most will not say the Bay Area.

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

#354

Post by BobbyJo »

hotpotamus wrote: post #237
melony wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Does San Fransisco owe anything to anyone?

San Francisco, the government, owes the constituents it's meant to serve, and whom pay its taxes, literally everything.

San Francisco, the city and community, as a society, owes what anyone in the world owes everyone else: an ethical existence.

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

#356

Post by toomanyrichies »

sys32768 wrote: post #51

I thought San Francisco was a public toilet?

Rule #1 on the comments section of the Guidelines page: "Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community."

Your comment goes against several of these requirements. Be better than this.

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

#357

Post by whimsicalism »

anon291 wrote: post #303
s0rce wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The bay area is 'conservative' on issues that actual American conservatives are not very conservative on. For example, bay area people seem to hate building housing, whereas most red states are building like crazy.

I'm definitely a YIMBY but red states are coming from a place of much lower density. They will certainly get these problems as they get more density.

Which red state area is more dense than SF?

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

#358

Post by everybodyknows »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #120
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.

Whats the incentive to get it done fast or cheap when you don't have to answer for what you spend and the general public is threatened with incarceration if they don't pay you.

It's not their money, it's California's money -- so how much would a SF politician care?

> Matt Haney, who secured the $1.7 million funding from the state to install the toilet ...

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

#359

Post by ericmay »

didibus wrote: post #331
aliqot wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the explanation. I'm a simple kind of person in a small town, so to us here this is all kind of crazy. Is a city as big as SFO still governed by politicians who live in it, or at that size does local government take people from other areas? I always read a lot about SFO as being on the cutting edge of progressive initiatives usually toward humane goals. Is this common? This gives everything I've been told…

I've only visited San Francisco, but I think one thing to consider is actually that it's a really small city with just too much going for its size. It's only 46 square mile and has over 800k inhabitants. It's the second densest city after New York. The surrounding Bay area adds 6.7 million more people, a large amount of who regularly go into the city for entertainment or work. I think it's an estimated 160k additiona…

Be careful as the city square mileage can be misleading.

The other problem facing cities such as San Francisco is that despite its density it does a piss poor job at public transit and is still focused on car-first infrastructure. To your point, the surrounding area is ~7 million. It’s physically impossible for all of them or even most of them to drive everywhere without gigantic infrastructure problems. It will simply not work. Ever. It is physically impossible.

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

#360

Post by cornel_io »

itake wrote: post #266
lr4444lr wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the OP wanted you to consider the benefit that 1.7 million could have had in providing direct aid to preventing homelessness, e.g. rental assistance or job training.

I'd think increasing demand would hurt everyone's bottom line, since non-assisted renters have competition with assisted renters for the same set of properties. Is there any data on how rental assistance impacts market rental prices?

Funneling free money into rent, any way you structure it, will indeed raise prices unless you also build more housing.

Ironically the people fighting the hardest to funnel free money into rent are the same ones fighting the hardest to prevent new housing at all costs, under the delusional theory that "induced demand" means that the law of supply and demand is wrong and the inverse applies.

SF's NIMBY progressives are a weird lot.

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