How America’s Restroom Shortage Fuels Humiliation, Poor Health, and Criminalization Instead of Dignity and Solutions
We’ve all had that time in our lives when we really had to use the bathroom, and we had no place to go. Perhaps you were stuck in traffic somewhere off the beaten path when nature called, and a long stretch of highway stood between you and emptying your full bladder. It’s an uncomfortable feeling to say the least, the kind of pain where passing minutes can feel like hours.
Imagine if every time you needed to use the lavatory, you had no place to go. That’s a common experience for unsheltered homeless people. Public spaces like coffee shops, restaurants, and chain stores often have policies that prevent unsheltered individuals from using the lavatories.
Meanwhile, city leaders are putting their heads together to create a special kind of paint that makes urinating outside the most uncomfortable and horrifying experience possible by having the urine spray back into faces on contact. Horrifyingly enough, they are calling it the “paint that pees back”, and it is currently in use in San Francisco, one of the highest homeless regions in the country.
The concept of humiliating homeless people rather than rectifying structural issues that cause homelessness should not be overlooked here, even if it’s an embarrassing subject to speak about. Imagine how much more embarrassing it is for homeless people to know that communities are prioritizing urine-repelling paint over their health and humanity.
What these leaders and innovators are not doing is looking for solutions — be they temporary, such as providing sanitation facilities, or permanent, such as increasing the national supply of affordable homes.
The Shortage of Available Public Restrooms Creates Barriers to Wellness, Social Acceptance, and Employment
According to Hospitality Hub, the number of public toilets has been in decline for years, and the current national average is a paltry eight public restrooms per 100,000 residents. This puts unsheltered homeless people at a severe hygienic disadvantage, making it difficult for them to find places to:
- Urinate
- Defecate
- Tend to menstrual needs
- Wash their hands
- Clean themselves and more
“Everybody needs a safe place to use the restroom, just like everybody needs a safe place to live,” said Jesse Rabinowitz, Campaign and Communications Director for the National Homelessness Law Center, in an email exchange with Invisible People.
Rabinowitz leads the Housing, Not Handcuffs Campaign, which zeroes in on prioritizing data-driven solutions to the homeless crisis. “Nobody sleeps outside or uses the restroom outside because they want to. They do so because they have no other choice,” he added.
Professionals at the Hospitality Hub concur, stating, “People experiencing homelessness are often barred from using washrooms in businesses, facing blatant discrimination and humiliation for seeking essential resources for bodily wellness.”
The lack of available public restrooms for homeless people is a communal health concern. It can give way to the spread of communicable diseases and an overabundance of unwanted waste on city streets. These barriers to basic sanitation have led to an uptick in MRSA and other infections among unsheltered homeless people, according to the National Library of Medicine.
But that’s not all. These barriers can also help perpetuate the negative stigma that homeless people are “dirty” or “unhygienic”, causing them to be further isolated from society and rejected for employment positions. Working homeless people teeter on the brink of losing their low-paying wages because they might not have a place to wash their bodies or their clothes. This can lead to even more loss and disparity.
In 2023, a homeless pregnant woman shared the difficulty she had in finding safe showers with Invisible People reporters. During the interview, she expressed relief and gratitude for the local day shelter providing some sanitary services.
Homeless Females Face Unique Challenges Due to the Public Restroom Shortage
Pregnancy and menstruation further exacerbate the emergency need for more public restrooms. An investigation examining Manhattan’s supply of public restrooms for menstruating homeless women yielded shocking results. Among other disparities, the study showed a lack of menstrual hygiene management (MHM) resources for people enduring homelessness. Tragically, high-need areas within the city had the fewest sanitation-related resources.
The study’s authors lamented this, calling it an environmental injustice. To quote the study directly, researchers said, “Neighborhood-level characteristics showed a potential environmental injustice, as areas characterized by higher socioeconomic status are associated with more access to MHM-specific resources in public restrooms, as well as better overall quality.”
Criminalizing Health and Hygiene: How Politicians Get the Restroom Shortage Wrong
“Politicians should focus on creating public restrooms and ensuring that everybody has a safe place to live,” Rabinowitz concluded.
Yet city leaders appear to be doing the opposite, criminalizing the need rather than filling it.
We often discuss the fact that homeless people are severely punished for engaging in life-sustaining activities like sitting, sleeping, standing, and lying down. But the same is true for using the bathroom.
It is a crime for homeless people to engage in life-sustaining activities in virtually every state. Each time a homeless person has to sleep, sit, stand, or even rest, they risk being arrested under so-called “quality-of-life laws”. These laws promote severe punishments such as prison time and permanent criminal records, and by doing so, they reinforce harmful myths and beliefs about our unhoused neighbors.
But the activities listed above are merely scratching the surface. Homeless people are also denied the right to use the bathroom. Countless incidents show law enforcement arresting people for simply using public restrooms. In some cases, this is true even for paying customers.
According to Healthline, the bladder is an expandable organ that boasts an invisible fill line. The average adult must urinate at least every 9 to 10 hours because that’s how long it typically takes to fill up.
Failure to do so can cause more than just cold sweats and feelings of discomfort. It can cause complications like permanent organ damage, incontinence, urine retention, and urinary tract infections, for starters. Failure to regularly alleviate the bladder can also cause life-threatening problems, such as this essential organ bursting unexpectedly.
Talk to Your Legislators About Rectifying the Shortage of Restrooms and Affordable Homes
People in positions of power are funneling millions of dollars into criminalizing homeless people for using the bathroom. This is cruel and counterproductive. Tell your legislators you prefer legislation that prioritizes filling the shortages for public restrooms and affordable housing options today.