“EVERYBODY POOS! That
is this year’s Real Change’s call for donations. The donations will go to
funding 5 mobile pit stops in the Seattle’s 2020 budget. Homelessness is more complicated than
toilets, or homes. The homeless are often degraded for defecating in public because
the public observes this around town. People
complain about it. But where do you
expect homeless people to go to the bathroom?Do we give $10 for the mobile pit stops to ease our consciousness?
Think about it, many civil rights
movements of disenfranchised populations have at some point made toilets an
issue during the struggle. Civil Rights
of the 1960’s; segregated bathrooms, Trans Gender of 2000’s; gender specific
bathrooms, International development; Sanitation particularly toilets, and a
recent movement for basic human rights, Immigrant detention centers with no descend
sanitation facilities. This list to me indicates that having a clean bathroom
with flushed toilet is a privilege of the few in this world. It is a privilege of everyone but the poor,
the mentally ill, and transgender people and any disenfranchised population.
Several years ago, when I commuted to work, I got obsessed
with how inaccessible bathrooms are in down town Seattle. I’d gotten in the habit
of going in early to slip into a coffee shop to write in my journal. Mostly I ended up frequenting the same café every
morning because I managed to get the access code to the bathroom without buying
coffee. I would walked in sit down put
my commuter coffee mug on the table even though it was empty, pulled out my
journal and start writing. No one
bothered me, I am white middle class and everyone assumed I had bought coffee
and was enjoying it as I wrote.
My regular coffee place came after trying several different ones. The first coffee place I went to I would go
up to the second floor, hideout in a corner and write but when I went downstairs
there were so few customers, they knew I hadn’t bought anything. Another one when I asked for the code, asked
me if I’d bought something, I didn’t lie and said no, they said they couldn’t
give me the code until I bought something.
I must have tried five coffee places before finding my regular
place. I would see coffee place after
coffee place refusing people bathroom access because they didn’t buy
something.
One morning I sat in a Starbucks, I needed to go to a café in
a different part of town because of an appointment. I’d finished writing in my journal and
started my other favorite past time watching people. A gentleman came in the place carrying a Starbucks
coffee cup with a lid on it. He walked
up to the counter holding his cup as he asked for the bathroom code. He went into the bathroom, came out and
left. I thought that was genius, I
wanted to save Starbuck cups and hand them out to anyone who needed a bathroom. I didn’t and this certainly wasn’t “The,”
solution.” But I have to ask what is?
Recently Mark Lloyd, a software developer, came up with a safe
place for homeless people to use the bathroom. Lloyd’s toilet kit invention can
be easily assembled just about anywhere. Each kit consists of a small pop-up
tent the size of a phone booth, a 5-gallon plastic bucket, cat litter, garbage
bags, toilet paper, sanitizer, and a toilet seat. One woman interviewed by NPR about Lloyd’s
kit said she gets fewer UTI’s now that she’s using it. She highlights another issue about access to
bathrooms, health.
The City of Seattle’s homeless budget for 2020 reflects the
debate over whether to spend on temporary strategies such as shelter or on more
permanent solutions such as housing.
Like Lloyd’s toilet kit that will give relief to some for now so will
Seattle’s homeless funding for 2020. As
Lloyd did, seeing a problem and not taking punitive action but found a temporary
solution to reach out to those people in need in his neighborhood so should
communities across Seattle and King County.
Homelessness is not solved by public policy alone, homelessness needs a
community to stand up, reach out, and do something.
