Where did all the public bathrooms go? • Hacker News Board

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#621

Post by mx7zysuj4xew » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 12:27 PM UTC

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.

In Bangladesh someone can put up a plywood shack somewhere and call it their home

Anyone living in a tent city would most likely not only survive but thrive there

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#622

Post by mx7zysuj4xew » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 12:30 PM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #445

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?

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

They haven't "handled" the problem. Drugs are still as plentiful and cheap as ever there

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#623

Post by gambiting » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 12:32 PM UTC

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.

>>And if there is a life sentence on hard drugs who would possibly have them on them?

Well by that logic there's no thieves in countries that cut your arm off for stealing. It doesn't work this way.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#624

Post by mx7zysuj4xew » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 12:32 PM UTC

OroPla wrote: post #574

cortesoft wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US “locks people up” at a much higher rate, and for longer, than Japan does. About 1% of the adult population is in jail in the United States, and it’s about 0.03% of the population in Japan. The US puts people in jail at 30x the rate Japan does. It is not because the US doesn’t lock people up enough.

We are not talking jail, we are talking closed institution. The kind of hospital you check in but do not check out from, as many mental illnesses are incurable.

Buddy, I can deprive you of several days of sleep, put you under severe emotional duress and have you experience a psychotic breakdown. Are you seriously saying you yourself should then be locked up for life?

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#625

Post by varispeed » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 12:32 PM UTC

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 problem is lack of enforcement and the fact that politicians are disconnected from working class and most simply hate them and don't care.

Let the pleb piss in the hedges like animals they are, meanwhile spaff the taxes on some vanity projects so the mates can buy new yachts.

I wish we had capital punishment for corruption like in China.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#626

Post by timmg » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 12:36 PM UTC

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.

I don’t think it’s productive to complain about the ignorance of the community without attempting to engage in educating it.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#627

Post by defrost » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 12:38 PM UTC

jimnotgym wrote: post #572

defrost wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason red-backs have the publicly visible red stripe is so others can identify them for what they are. You're advocating for making red-backs less visible? Consider Meta-borg, it's their own comment history that may damn them in the multiplying deliberate child manipulation trials as common people clearly see how they think.

I don't get the references, sorry, but I do see your underlying point. I just wish the people who value critical thinking so highly when we are talking about the js ecosystem or llms, didn't turn into Victorians when we talk about poverty

Apologies, busy times IRL.

Red backs are an Australian spider that has a painful, potentially fatal, bite - you want to know what they are when dealing with them (often just moving them away from people you love, sometimes straight up the vacuum tube).

Meta - formerly Facebook, is facing an increasing number of trials across the US and other countries related to their internally discussed in emails handling of children. attracting them, hooking them, and grooming them to be adult units of income, etc - regardless of detrimental effects.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#628

Post by detourdog » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 12:40 PM UTC

socalgal2 wrote: post #348

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…

> 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

I think around 1986 Reagan cut the federal funding to the facilities that would house the mentally ill. This created the homeless situation in the USA. I remember the term homeless as newly formed at that time and remember the population exploding as I went through college in center city Philadelphia.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#629

Post by VCFundedGenYer » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 12:46 PM UTC

When I visited Europe it was even worse. Everywhere was a pay toilet, and most of the time, they were very far apart, or weren't around at all. In some walkways and tunnels where the toilets closed for the evening, there was excrement right outside the door.

It's such a disrespect to basic humanity.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#630

Post by doom2 » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 12:51 PM UTC

999900000999 wrote: post #377

For everyone blaming homeless people, I had a highly educated white professor who explained how he became homeless for a bit. Divorce. The wife can just say she doesn’t feel comfortable with you in the house. Now you can’t find another place to live because the divorce has ruined your credit while still stuck paying the mortgage. Most of us are much closer to living in a porta potty than we’d like to think

> Most of us are much closer to living in a porta potty than we’d like to think

Because of women and no-fault divorce? Didn't expect to see that conclusion in the comments. Maybe if we make it illegal it might slightly lower rates of homelessness, but let's see what it does to domestic violence, suicide, and spousal homicide statistics.