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

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#721

Post by xp84 » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 3:43 PM UTC

dgoldstein0 wrote: post #460

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

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…

> SF - problem... is largely cost of housing

Are you talking about the homeless who are actually causing any problems (the chronic homeless)? Or the meaningless statistical group of "Everyone who doesn't have their own/rented home today"?

> Way easier to end up homeless after losing your job when paying 3k/month in rent than 1k/month

Any person without serious mental and/or substance problems can handle losing their job without sleeping in the streets. By virtue of not being mentally ill and addicted, everyone else has "friends" and "family" somewhere who would say "Oh, gee Fred, sorry you lost your job. Sleep on my couch for a few weeks while you're looking for work."

The only people who don't are those who have burned every bridge by repeatedly betraying the trust of those who love them (theft, bringing drugs into their home, sexual abuse, etc).

A lot of people also sleep in their cars and shower at the gym while putting their lives together. Now, those people DO count as homeless in the official counts, but they aren't the ones causing any problems, and they also consume only a tiny fraction of the public resources that "The Homeless" we see on the streets do.

So, while lower rents would help with the official numbers, you would see little improvement on the streets because that's not why they're there.

(All that said, I'm sure there's a small pipeline from the 'temp homeless' to the 'chronic homeless,' which is probably 99.9% made up of people who are in the "living in the car" or "couch surfing" phase who make the poor choices to take up an addiction to drown their sorrows.)

Separately, the other problem with the "just build more housing" plan is: These cities aren't surrounded by 50-foot walls. They're not closed systems. Say we build so much that the $3000 rent drops to $1000. Now, people from elsewhere, seeing that SF is now as cheap as Fresno, will decide to move there, as the weather is way better, and there are tons of cool things about living in a world-class city by the sea. The low prices pull people from elsewhere just as reliably as low air pressure causes wind to blow towards it. (This is also why these temperate coastal cities can't fix things with money: The more comfortable you make it to be homeless in your city, the more tweakers from the hinterland will gravitate to the city.)

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#722

Post by mstaoru » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 3:43 PM UTC

yipinwong wrote: post #658

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…

Sounds like you live in top 1% area in China. That's def not true that toilets are readily available in China. As non-chinese citizen, I veered off place I cannot go without the passport, I see crappy areas without toilets everywhere (though I was stopped by police from wondering around). You only see where you are allowed to see. Rest of those area has no toilet, and people crap/pee everywhere.

I dunno, I lived there for 12 years and we still visit often, my extended family is in the "rural" area (which by now also has better infra and roads than half of EU), and they have free public toilet "buildings" every 4-6 blocks.

I mean, sure, if you get into some weird factory blocks or developing area where nobody lives, they don't have it there. Any established residential or commercial area usually will.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#723

Post by Mezzie » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 3:45 PM UTC

frollogaston wrote: post #198

Mezzie wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just in Paris and I never had to pay for the public sidewalk toilets. Where did you see paid ones? I didn't get to all the arrondisements, so I'm curious.

I don't remember actually. I was staying in Montparnasse so the 14th. Was 1 Euro wherever it was. Might've been this one: https://maps.app.goo.gl/5vPoD7jM3ELyP6gL7 And it's not this other one on the same street, cause this was free https://maps.app.goo.gl/Firjcsabthu8DHtQ6

That makes sense; I didn't spend any time in the 14th. I did notice a big difference in public bathroom availability based on arrondisement, but all the ones I saw/used were free. (The ones that weren't closed or out of order, that is...)

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#724

Post by kelseyfrog » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 3:45 PM UTC

tempfile wrote: post #700

serf wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with your points, but have you ever considered it strange that you're unable to relate to why someone would want to do something for fun? you answer your own perplexity by yourself in the same sentence; they do it for fun. I know this because I was a shithead vandal teenager, and I did it for two reasons , 1) fun at the moment and 2) to impress my peers and sex partners. I think the frustrations of y…

> have you ever considered it strange that you're unable to relate to why someone would want to do something for fun? What a bizarre extrapolation. They just don't see why smashing up bus stops is fun. Maybe you can answer, what's fun about it? I don't get it either. I was a teenager once, I don't see why destroying things that are useful for everyone (including you) would be fun.

It's fair game. In short, it reads like, "I don't understand the motivations behind this behavior, and here's what needs to happen to stop it."

If you want to change something, understanding it is a very good first step. Usually it means you're on the path toward finding a cure rather than simply treating symptoms.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#725

Post by peterfirefly » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 3:46 PM UTC

oasisbob wrote: post #194

alexjplant wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked into this a while back (~6 years ago) and it basically broke down like this: diabetics outnumber injectable drug users two to one but not all diabetics use injectable insulin and the ones that do are more likely to do so at home. Drug users, however, have less compunction about sticking themselves in a public space, particular the homeless. Best guess based on these numbers is that it's a 50-50 split between…

> not all diabetics use injectable insulin and the ones that do are more likely to do so at home. I'd love to hear the citation for this one, as people using injectable insulin generally need to do in conjunction with eating, and I can't think of where you'd get the idea that T1 diabetics who use injectable insulin avoid eating outside the home as a general rule. Granted, nowadays plenty of people are using insulin p…

Novopens have existed for a long, long time (40 years). Syringe disposal units are not for the diabetics and they never were. Where I live, they are commonly found in public toilets with awful yellowish lights that make it really difficult to see blood vessels.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#726

Post by dragontamer » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 3:47 PM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #421

Exoristos wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fallacy in "the tragedy of the commons" is that there's something inherent in having a shared resource that dooms the shared resource. At least this is the popular understanding. And I'll add that if we look at shared resources both with more breadth -- e.g. across history and cultures -- and in more depth -- e.g. cross-analysis, they come out looking much more successful than you'd think.

That isn’t what the tragedy of the commons is. It isn’t about something inherent in having a shared resource that dooms it. It is about the idea that when there is a limited, shared public resource, individuals making rational self-interested decisions will often lead to a situation which no individual would choose. That doesn’t mean it always has to end in tragedy, though. It just means you can’t just go fully “lais…

More specifically, tragedy of the commons is inevitable in a purely capitalist society. It's a pro-regulation argument.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#727

Post by 100percentjake » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 3:47 PM UTC

My hometown of Wichita, Kansas recently installed two fully plumbed public restrooms in our downtown core and it was, predictably, met with incensed rage online at the cost of durable vandal-proof public utilities and tearing up concrete to run sewer and water lines to them, and used as an example of "government waste on stupid bathrooms", similar to a project starting next week that cuts down one of our asinine five-lane highway-sized surface streets to a more reasonable 3 lanes as a traffic calming measure, to a similarly predictable chorus of politically charged pejoratives and entitlement.

It's such a shame that somewhat objective, proven improvements to the general quality of life in an urban area are so quickly dismissed by selfish entitled idiots and used as political leverage by politicians because it's "Big Government".

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#728

Post by mstaoru » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 3:48 PM UTC

yipinwong wrote: post #664

rykelchen wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In China, you rarely see people defecating or urinating anywhere without proper sanitation facilities, except in the wild.

The "wild" makes up for the 99% of China. Even in cities, why do I have to take a dump without doors? Why do I see mom's letting kids take a dump and pee in the streets whiloe they are wearing pants that have no coverage in the bottom area? wtf is that. --- And out of 100s of comments, how did you spot my comment so quick? and it is the first comment right after you joined? You replied within minutes of my posting, @…

The "wild" doesn't make 99% of China. I mean, not demographically. Of course you don't have a toilet 100km deep in Himalayas forest, don't be ridiculous. Otherwise, 70% of Chinese people live in urban areas.

Little kids peeing is a bit of a special case.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#729

Post by xp84 » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 3:53 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #480

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…

What you say is completely true, but part of the problem is that people have very different ideas of what they are talking about when they talk about homeless people. People who tend to complain about the homeless are generally only complaining about the visibly homeless (i.e., the people living on the street). Meanwhile the people who advocate for helping the homeless are more likely to also care about the invisible…

Thank you for being one of the few to draw a distinction there! The thing is, that second group are arguably already being helped by the many, many taxpayer-funded services we already have. They use the resources as intended to get back on their feet. I know it's not a fun time to be in that boat, but as long as it's a temporary boat and not a permanent predicament, it's not a societal emergency. To be clear, I'd support any reasonable policy specifically targeted and proven to help people who are in this situation.

One more thing:

> something as simple as lowering rent prices

Suppose you solve that (by market means, constructing an incredible amount of homes, or by communist means, by draconian rent-control cutting all rents by 70%). A 2-bedroom apartment in SF is now $1,200 and there are 50,000 of them vacant. Would these apartments not be immediately rented by 50,000 households from elsewhere who have always wanted to live there but haven't been able to afford it? Either the rents would shoot right back up if we're letting markets function, or the apartments would be insta-filled by a few very lucky people, with a years-long waiting list for any housing that ever opens up. There will always be one more person who will be happy to move to a great climate, top-tier city, unless the rents are obnoxiously high.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#730

Post by mrguyorama » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 3:56 PM UTC

TonyStr wrote: post #594

justin66 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first thought is, I'm not certain their homeless are different in their behavior, but based on what little I know, I'm rather certain their non-homeless are. I'd expect disruption or damage to a public space of the kind that sparked this discussion to be dealt with swiftly as a high priority.

I don't know much about this, but when I visited Japan, I walked aimlessly in the outskirts of Tokyo (Sumida city) until I ended up in a homeless area. They had used old palettes and tarps to build square houses with functioning doors, and it was surprisingly clean. Their shoes were neatly lined up against the walls, they used trash bags and the ground was clean. It was quite a culture shock, because it was cleaner t…

You can't build that kind of shanty town in the US because the cops will come and steal all your shit. Otherwise it's exactly what homeless people in the US want to be able to do.

Often times, these "sweeps" just trash everything. Imagine if you were trying to put your life back together. You got an Obamaphone so you can call state assistance programs and email job prospects. You have some basic clothes, maybe some food, maybe some few possessions you have saved from your past life.

Then the cops come and take all of it and throw it away.

Gee, I wonder why it's so hard for people to escape homelessness in the US?

Imagine trying to live any life in a world that rejected your right to property?