Editor’s note: The Development Set is devoting this week to stories of toilets and everything that happens in them. Because, as my favorite children’s book reminds us, everyone poops.
As the season’s first real cold front descended on Fort Collins, Colorado, a subset of the city’s most destitute readied to disappear for the night. Papa Doc, 44, knelt beside his bicycle, wrestling to attach the tow-behind cart that carries his belongings. His hands show the wear and grit of decades without a domicile or the basics it ensures. He had just eaten a hot meal provided by an outreach group, but the last time he’d thoroughly washed was unclear.
Papa Doc has been homeless for thirty years and serves as a father figure for youth who find themselves on the streets. Between chatting with friends and swigging his spiked energy drink, he reflected on how he completes the most basic of human functions. “The city cut toilets out, put padlocks on the port-a-johns,” he said. “I go behind dumpsters, mostly.”
His companion, Ricky, agreed emphatically. “I piss behind trees,” he said. “But I don’t know what women do.” In his 50s, Ricky has been homeless for twenty years. His face and shirt were red with fresh stains, a result of eating spaghetti without teeth. He wouldn’t have anywhere to wash his face or clothes before dark fell.
IIn recent years, efforts to sanitize cities have pushed those without reliable shelter further to the sidelines. A growing number of communities complement camping and panhandling bans with the removal of public restrooms and water sources. Central Denver has nearly 4,000 homeless people, but only 25 public toilets. The ratio is better in Fort Collins, a college town located 70 miles north, but most facilities are only open seasonally. Those with running water close during winter while some port-a-lets are only available November through March. No bathrooms in either city are accessible 24/7, sending a clear message about who is and isn’t welcome in common spaces.
According to Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Annual Homelessness Assessment Report, nearly 600,000 Americans lack appropriate shelter on any given night. This can mean sleeping in a car, scoring an emergency bunk, joining unofficial encampments, or hunkering down under bridges and along riverbanks.
The vast majority find themselves wanting not only for a safe place to sleep at night but also the “perks” afforded by stable housing. Left without toilets or running water, many homeless individuals must relieve themselves in the open, wear soiled clothes for days on end, and involuntarily forgo basic hygiene. These practices can be humiliating and further limit access to public resources.
“Homeless people lack the domestic sphere of the home as a site for daily private health maintenance practices,” said Ottilie Stolte, a psychology professor at the University of Waikato. “Instead, they must stitch together a daily strategy to ensure they can get these health needs met.”
Being visibly — and olfactorily — homeless prevents many people from entering a store to use the restroom, and contributes to their stigmatization. After enforcing a camping ban, trying a short-lived panhandling prohibition, and failing to pass a sit/lie ordinance, Fort Collins came out with a “disruptive behaviors” survey last August. Two of the ten named items, inadequate/unsanitary personal hygiene and public deposit of bodily waste, target behaviors that directly result from the town’s dearth of public restrooms.
The inability to use a toilet isn’t just embarrassing. According to the 2015 No Right to Rest Report, a collaborative study by scholars and homelessness advocates in Colorado, it represents a public health crisis. For example, Stolte explained, the dearth of toilets and places to wash exacerbates health problems like body lice, skin infections, gastric illnesses, prostate and bowel issues, and the spread of communicable infections.
A lack of public restrooms can also contribute to population-wide illness transmission. “From a public health perspective, the hand-washing station is a basic need that reduces disease,” said Meghan Hughes, Communications Director for Denver’s Department of Environmental Health. “[It decreases] incidence of food-born illness, reduces transmission of communicable diseases such as colds and flu.”
This isn’t to mention the legal consequences of defecating while homeless. When people relieve themselves in the open, they run the added risk of tickets, fines, and even jail time. In Fort Collins, ordinances exist against indecent exposure, depositing bodily waste, and misuse of public waters. Numerous Colorado cities and counties have similar laws that No Right to Rest claims restrict “survival in public spaces.”
Dusty Nagy, 38, has been homeless for nearly a decade. He came to Denver three years ago with the hope that legal marijuana would help his chronic pain and digestive troubles. But his unstable income from odd jobs means that he hasn’t been able to save enough to afford his own apartment. Instead, he rents a dorm bed by the week, which provides a storage locker, freedom from the shelter lottery, and nighttime access to toilets and showers. During the days that he works, he uses facilities on the job. But since his hostel is overnight only, he has to hustle to find a restroom on his days off.
Asked what his options are, Dusty quickly responded, “I run into Jesus Saves [Lawrence Street Shelter] or get a ticket for pissin’ behind a dumpster or something.”
A few feet away from Dusty’s spot on the chaotic downtown sidewalk, Heidi, 42, and a teen who goes by Pretty Boy relaxed in a makeshift living room. Along with dozens of other homeless people, they’ve cobbled together a camp outside one of Denver’s shelters. The city’s camping ban prohibits the use of “any form of cover or protection from the elements other than clothing.” Unable to sleep beneath blankets, proper rest slips away in the chilly November weather. Heidi dug through crates and boxes to pull out a variety of snacks. A smiley black dog curled into the mess of sleeping bags and bodies, finding warmth largely elusive to his human counterparts.
“They have toilets [here] but they don’t want no one to use them,” Heidi said.
“And the park bathrooms are locked,” Pretty Boy piped up.
“They wanna keep people from changing, washing, sleeping, getting out of the rain,” Heidi added.
Over in Fort Collins, Papa Doc blames the so-called “travelers” — homeless youth who move about the country — for the city’s dwindling access to public restrooms. “You get dumbasses come to town with no respect,” he said. “They’re just passing through but we’re stuck with it. Rippin’ out graffiti, pluggin’ up toilets, not taking care. I don’t blame the city. I blame the newcomers.”
Wherever the fault may lie, Colorado’s longterm homeless are the ones who bear the brunt. One woman in her mid-50s has been intermittently homeless for 20 years in Oregon and Fort Collins, Colorado. During this time, she’s shuttled between her car, friends’ couches, the streets and, most recently, subsidized housing. “When I lived out,” she said, “I just wore long skirts all the time and no underwear. That way I could squat, do what I had to do, and nobody knew.”
Men tend to require fewer tricks, often just urinating behind a tree or against a wall. But having to defecate in public isn’t exactly comfortable for anybody. “Them kind of stories you try to forget,” said Michael “Miguel” Wheeler. Now sober and housed, the 54-year-old reflected on his five years spent living on Fort Collins’ streets. “You do what you gotta do. You go behind a dumpster, try to be respectable about it…. I probably marked every dumpster around town [when I was homeless].”
Pretty Boy, perhaps because of his youth, adopts a more rebellious tack. Rather than trying to hide, he wants people to know he has to take his private business outside. “I shit in the dog park,” he said defiantly. “Then I wait to see how people react in the mornings. If they’re gonna treat us like dogs…” he trails off.
This accusation reflects a common sentiment among Denver’s homeless and their supporters. Many believe the city has more respect for its four-legged residents, even the strays, than down-and-out humans.
Largely in response to public concerns about feces in the streets, the City of Denver is researching a public toilet program. In addition to putting toilets in heavily trafficked parts of the city, said Megan Hughes, the health department hopes to “gather data on how much [the toilets] are used and how much it’s affecting those public health goals.”
Grassroots activist organization Denver Homeless Out Loud (DHOL) is also tackling the issue. “There is a need and a demand for public restrooms,” said Robert Hudson, a volunteer. “So what we’re doing is looking at possibly doing urban rest stops.” The group has adopted this idea from ongoing projects in Seattle and San Francisco. Still in the exploratory stages, the 100% volunteer-run organization has gotten as far as deciding that a mobile toilet model would work well for Denver.
In several Seattle neighborhoods, the nonprofit Urban Rest Stop (URS) hosts “hygiene centers” with free restrooms, showers, laundry facilities, and toiletries. In addition to helping homeless men, women, and children meet these basic needs, the centers offer clean overalls while people wash their clothes in a safe environment. As of February 2014, URS had provided over 700,000 showers, 1.3 million restroom visits and 300,000 loads of laundry to 36,361 individual clients.
In San Francisco, a new program called Lava Mae offers shower buses for homeless populations. They launched their first pilot bus in June 2014 and currently have two buses serving four main areas of the city. The non-profit aims to expand to four buses in the coming months with the goal of offering up to 50,000 showers annually. However, founder and CEO Doniece Sandoval stresses that even with this scale-up, San Francisco’s need greatly outstrips what Lava Mae can provide in the near future.
Similar to San Francisco, hope for a large-scale mobile hygiene solution in Colorado is likely to be years away — and in any case, would feel like an imperfect stopgap.
Ultimately, this public health issue is a symptom of a larger social problem. Nearly two years ago, the United Nations Human Rights Committee called America’s rampant criminalization of homelessness “cruel, inhuman, and degrading.” Yet the violations persist. The erasure of reasonable access to public restrooms coupled with laws against washing, urinating and defecating in the open disproportionately punish those without shelter. So while short-term solutions may include the provision of urban rest stops, the long haul will demand more comprehensive efforts to combat poverty and homelessness.
“Every day is a battle out here,” Papa Doc said. “We gotta deal with public opinion, the weather, the cops, society. Out here, you never know.”
Poop week logo by Mikey Burton.
