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Where did all the public bathrooms go?

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Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#541

Post by kakacik »

pelagicAustral wrote: post #487
dgoldstein0 wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prison isn't the right idea. But getting them into some sort of treatment would make sense. And that could be court mandated for repeat offenders for some crimes.

I kind of read the suggestion as a deterrent for dealers and people engaged in drug trafficking, which could lead to less addicts... Not as "jail the junkies!"

Ah, the age old 'if we jail all the dealers drugs will go away' fantasy. If we ban all the alcohol all the issues stemming from it will go away. If...

Fools that don't learn from their own mistakes are bound to never-ending cycle of repetition. Individuals or whole societies, doesn't matter.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#542

Post by singsingsing323 »

ajmurmann wrote: post #406
socalgal2 wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We did as little as possible to deal with homelessness and mental illness SF would beg to differ. They have a budget of $100k per homeless person. They can't solve the problem because the problem is not money

What do you suggest the solution is?

[dead]

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#543

Post by fallingbananna »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #55
strbean wrote: post #20

I was in France recently and used a public restroom. It had an attendant, and a fee of €0.50. Charging for the restroom is unfortunate, but this setup is certainly better than eliminating public restrooms entirely.

The 50 cents is dual purpose, the one is obvious in that it pays for the attendant and them keeping it clean, but the other is like using a coin to unlock a trolley, it cuts back misuse by a lot. Once you've been to free vs 50 cent toilets a few times you'll see (and smell) the difference.

In theory, yes.

In practice, no.

In my experience there is no correlation between payment and state of bathroom. I've been to paid ones in terrible state and free ones in amazing state. And I also don't see any trend or correlation there.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#544

Post by s1artibartfast »

crote wrote: post #492
s1artibartfast wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that is actually how a lot of countries in Asia have handled the problem

So how come incarceration in Asia is orders of magnitude lower than in the US?

The laws are enforced harshly and consistently, so people follow them. As a result, you have low crime and low total incarceration.

Take auto theft. In California, we have 1 auto theft arrest per 15 stolen cars. Incarceration rate is 1 in 5 of those arrested, so 1 per 75 stolen cars.

Japan has 1 arrest for every 2 stolen cars - A much higher rate of getting caught.

Japan has about 5,000 stolen vehicles nationally per year. California has about 200,000 per year.

As a result, there are very few in prison for it, despite the 10 year sentence.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#545

Post by singsingsing323 »

b0rtb0rt wrote: post #304
justin66 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess if you don’t have a massive population of antisocial people who destroy the public facility, you can provide them. It’s a shame we in the west surrendered that. What a weird way of stating the problem. There is too large a population of homeless, mentally ill, and drug addicts wandering the streets. We didn't surrender anything, at least not during the last half century in the United States. We did as littl…

in japan the homeless people clean up after themselves and don’t destroy everything what’s the difference here?

[dead]

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#546

Post by kakacik »

anon48293 wrote: post #454
ajmurmann wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So anyone who has LSD on them gets life in prison? Sounds expensive. Is that how other countries have avoided having this many visible homeless? Any concerns about police placing drugs on someone if punishment is this harsh?

Why is it expensive? Forced labor and for profit prisons exist. And if there is a life sentence on hard drugs who would possibly have them on them? You could also make it the 3rd offense or something, not that difficult.

Dealers can deal with that easily, this is often how they operate now, they don't carry big bags of stuff in their pockets usually they have nothing if police will do quick search. With that approach you will mostly catch users.

If I would be getting these naive suggestions of yours in this thread from my 6 year old son, I could respect them. But adults in 2026 should definitely know better and know a bit of history to reflect on.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#547

Post by [deleted] »

crote wrote: post #486
dyauspitr wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is you can’t get people off the street if they don’t want to get off the street unless you do it forcibly . You can end the homeless problem overnight but SF is too empathetic. I’m not even saying this is a fault, I’d rather they fail on the side of empathy than succeed violently.

Very few people want to be homeless. The alternatives offered to them just somehow manage to be even worse than homelessness.

[deleted]

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#548

Post by embedding-shape »

mns wrote: post #535
mstaoru wrote: post #94

This really hits home. As a person with IBS I basically cannot peacefully go outside in EU. I lived for many years in China and Thailand, and toilets are free, clean, and plentiful there, and you can easily ask any place to use their toilet - there's no stigma. I even had to run into a police station in rural China once. They were 100% chill about it, though they had to unlock a gate for me. Xi Jinping really will be…

Is this some sort of psy-op here against EU, this isn't the first message like this where someone is praising China and accusing EU, as if it's a unitary entity, about being a "horror show". If only we would have some dictators or extremist parties back in power to break up the EU and take our countries back to the good old days. I'm finding it harder and harder to come back to Hn with all of this stuff.

> Is this some sort of psy-op here against EU

No, commonly here on HN it is American commentators who've visited like Italy or Greece or France once, then they extrapolate their experience in a tourist-heavy city, looking/behaving as an American, over the entire continent. Happens almost every day here.

Any comment mentioning EU/Europe here has to be taken with a huge grain of salt. Usually it turns out they've visited some countries and the experience is unique for where they visit.

To be fair, the same happens towards the US too, someone visits Montana then assumes a bunch about the entire country. I guess "American visiting country in Europe" is just more common here, given the US bias on this forum usually.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#549

Post by mschuster91 »

crote wrote: post #490
pelagicAustral wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of read the suggestion as a deterrent for dealers and people engaged in drug trafficking, which could lead to less addicts... Not as "jail the junkies!"

The biggest drug dealers are legitimate doctors. You can't solve the problem without first adressing the pipeline to addiction. Want to get rid of drug addicts? Start by banning all pharma ads and stopping over-prescription.

> Want to get rid of drug addicts? Start by banning all pharma ads and stopping over-prescription.

People don't go to their doctor and complain about pain for no reason.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#550

Post by markdown »

0x696C6961 wrote: post #444
markdown wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just charge for it. A dollar per entry should be enough for someone to come by and clean it twice a day, such that it doesn't matter what shenanigans antisocial people get up to in there. No mess will last longer than a few hours.

Not sure why you're getting downvoted. This approach has been shown to work. The money isn't for funding the maintenance though, it's strictly to keep the riff-raff out.

Well hopefully not, because you don't want them pissing and shitting in alleys.
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