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Where did all the public bathrooms go?

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Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#581

Post by latexr »

snvzz wrote: post #413
xyzelement wrote: post #85

Lack of bathrooms has been called tragedy of the commons in this thread, but it's not the "commons" that are the problem. The worst 10% of society determine what we can and can't have. The "commons" aren't having public sex, shooting up drugs, or destroying the bathrooms with lack of... etiquette. The commons are victimized when these things happen and then there's eventually no choice but to shut them down unless th…

>The worst 10% In reality, about 2% or even less. We could live in paradise if we just removed them from society. Put them in a box.

You’re suggesting imprisoning over 160 million people. That’s orders of magnitude higher than even the largest Holocaust estimates. It’s more than the population of Russia.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#582

Post by carlosjobim »

pjerem wrote: post #579
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…

> And EU is a freaking horror show. In many public toilets there's a used syringe compartment as well. Truly a 5-star service. What does that mean ? There are massive differences in EU between not only countries but even also regions of one country. How can you say that toilets are horrendous in 27 different countries with 27 different cultures ? edit : and disclaimer, I live in France and I'm not proud of our public…

He meant Brussels, that's where he visited.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#583

Post by freehorse »

embedding-shape wrote: post #552
ericmay wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the keyword customers though? In other words you’ve got to spend money to use the toilet? In America I can walk in to a restaurant, even a nicer one and ask to use the bathroom and very likely would be shown strait to it. It’s not 100% of the time everywhere, especially places like Times Square, but I’d say that the norm is no spend required.

> but I’d say that the norm is no spend required. Obviously can't speak for the entire country of Spain, but that tends to be true here too. The more touristic places, especially closer to the beaches, tend to have "Toilets for customers only" signs though, which is kind of understandable as people start using them as changing rooms otherwise, and get overrun with tourists not really caring about how they leave thing…

This is my impression also, there is usually explicit "only customers" where there are genuine problems (overtouristic etc) or where the boss is just weird (even though you may be still told off even without a only-customers sign in some cases). I would say most of the time, under normal circumstances, there is no issue.

Even then, I cannot imagine somebody saying no when telling them "I have a health issue and need to use a toilet", in most cases.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#584

Post by alt227 »

kakacik wrote: post #577
jimnotgym wrote: post #519

I feel like HN should ban discussion of homelessness, due to the extreme ignorance and prejudice of the comments. A bunch of people who don't know the first thing about it jumping to conclusions. The quality of the comments here is so so poor.

Nah problem doesn't go away if you hide it, it just festers in echo chambers and then bites back when you least expect it, with unexpected ferocity (cue last elections). This is open forum, let people voice their ideas even if you strongly oppose them. At least then folks don't live in illusion how rest of society has similar opinions on it as they do. I strongly oppose apple or meta for example, but asking for bans…

> You don't like the discussion?

Its nothing to do with not liking the discussion. People who have no idea about the research done in to homelessness, have not spoken to hundreds of homeless people or worked in support services to actually genuinely know about the situation are just causing more issues and hindering progress. Rough sleeping has been a thing as long as humans have been on the earth, and uninformed people just seem to think its a money issue or there is some other simple solution that lazy governments aren't doing. If the solution was a simple one of money in the right place it would have been solved years ago. The situation is infinitely more complex than that. Every persons story, reasons, and attitude to help are completely different.

Feel free to have your open forum discussion, but as proven thousands of times before this uninformed discussion does nothing other than to cause arguments through unnecessary tension and hostility. This is a problem for very experienced people to work on, not for common people with no real life experience to throw comments on a public forum about.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#585

Post by baublet »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #301
xyzelement wrote: post #85

Lack of bathrooms has been called tragedy of the commons in this thread, but it's not the "commons" that are the problem. The worst 10% of society determine what we can and can't have. The "commons" aren't having public sex, shooting up drugs, or destroying the bathrooms with lack of... etiquette. The commons are victimized when these things happen and then there's eventually no choice but to shut them down unless th…

The replies here really exemplify the core reason we have this problem - about 50% of the population (on HN, probably more outside of HN) doesn't understand that everything has an economic cost, and cleaning hepititis-infected needles and excrement smears up all day is an extremely costly activity, not just because no one wants to do it, but because if someone gets sick they'll sue the city for tens millions of dolla…

This thread is more a reminder of how easy it will be to find people to man the gas chambers when Republicans turn their sights on the homeless. Some wretched dehumanizing of people here.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#586

Post by baublet »

jimnotgym wrote: post #519

I feel like HN should ban discussion of homelessness, due to the extreme ignorance and prejudice of the comments. A bunch of people who don't know the first thing about it jumping to conclusions. The quality of the comments here is so so poor.

[flagged]

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#587

Post by soco »

crote wrote: post #498
mvdtnz wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We in the west have surrendered with weak punishments and lax enforcement for anti social behaviour. In many cases even abolishing laws or putting in place public policy that prevents the imprisonment of people who commit "low level" crimes. There's a certain segment of the population who will (largely unsuccessfully) try to shame you if you promote a tough on crime approach. In my country the entire justice system h…

So how come the weak-on-crime Western European countries are not drowning in homeless drug addicts?

It's probably the difference you can also notice between Switzerland and Germany for example. Take rough sleeping: in Germany it's there (no, not LA-style but still noticeable). In Switzerland they get immediately rounded up and taken to a shelter, no "muh freedom" discussion just housed. Add warm meals and a community and the light at the end of the tunnel starts to be be noticed. Of course mentally ill will come out again, so at some point they will have to be institutionalized. Nobody belongs on the streets, no matter what the gop is telling.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#588

Post by soco »

defrost wrote: post #569
Gud wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point.

Questions for Sweden might be "How did the US integrate all the illiterate Irish?" (and should they do the same), "How did Australia integrate many non English speaking / writing Vietnamese 'boat people'?", etc. Unless Sweden in majority is prepared to broom out all that they have accepted in, then this how it is, a mix of cultures having to find common directions and minimise friction over the next generation and a…

These are valid questions the western Europe dodged for far too long. Looking the other way created the rightwing monster of today.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#589

Post by simiones »

EduardoBautista wrote: post #530
dgoldstein0 wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SF - and probably much of the US homeless problem elsewhere - is largely cost of housing; rent and home prices are ridiculous enough that if you don't make big bucks, you are likely barely scraping by. Rents here are rising way faster than inflation, and it makes everything more expensive and means a lot more people are living that much closer to not being able to pay their rent. Way easier to end up homeless after l…

Many of the homeless don’t have jobs. They wouldn’t be able to afford rent in Bangladesh.

Becoming and then staying homeless for a significant time is often almost irreversible. The key is to prevent people from ever getting there, as much as you can - and that is the point the poster above was making. The fall from house + job > house > no house makes it very hard to ever get another job that actually pays enough to go back to having a house.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#590

Post by LoganDark »

nradov wrote: post #270
LoganDark wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Antisocial people who destroy the public facility don't just come out of nowhere. People get driven to this. Not to say that you can simply ignore them when they're already everywhere, though.

People aren't driven to this, they escalate to this when there are no consequences attached to lesser antisocial behavior.

"People" are not some evil force that fundamentally grows antisocial when not kept in check. There's overwhelming evidence that people want to be good. There are entire countries of good people that treat their people well, where even criminals don't become antisocial like this. (Example: Norway)

People act bad like this not because they're any more particularly free to, but because they're given incentives to. People get slighted by their county, state or the federal government, and everybody else shuns them. It's normal and practically expected to ignore homeless people, for example, and even blame them for their condition. The rich and the lucky are hostile and entitled, while the poor and mentally ill are harassed and taken advantage of. People get radicalized, even trained to commit worse crimes by what's expected of them. Nothing else gets attention or achieves anything.

It's never been about consequences, people do this whether it'll get them 25 years or not. People do this whether they'll get caught or not. They do it because they think it needs to be done, they think it's deserved and they want to get back for everything that's been taken from them and caused to them. And for that, everybody hates them and treats them like everything that's wrong with the country. When in reality, what's wrong with the country is what's creating people like this. Seeing violent criminals makes me sad for what they suffered, not angry at them for being the problem.

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