Of Public Health and Waste Elimination. Proposal to address an urgent need.

The issue of public urination is a different kind of problem. It, and its sibling defecation, are biological necessities. The problem with prohibiting public elimination is that nearly every bathroom has been closed for public use. The homeless and those away from home have few choices, and those choices impose severe costs on those who do keep their restrooms open.

Because waste elimination is a biological necessity, unlike drunkenness and lewd speech, the City, indeed the community, has a responsibility to respond proactively to the need. The obligation is to provide facilities, easily accessed and abundant. Interestingly, these facilities already exist, and the City needs only to demand of the owners of those facilities, that they remain open, to remedy the problem.

When the man who was refused access to the bathroom urinated on the floor at Junior’s, he was not merely engaged in an illegal assault on the owner, it was an act of protest and civil disobedience. His act said “I am a human and I need a place to eliminate. Bathrooms must be provided.”

These issues have been part of the urban landscape for millennia. There is simply no escape from the imperative to provide a real solution. In San Diego this year, there was an outbreak of hepatitis A due to unsanitary conditions on the streets. The solution of the city, after cleaning up the mess, was to provide toilet facilities to the homeless who were living on the street. Burlington can provide porta-johns on every corner, or demand that its establishments of public accommodation allow any person to use them. Or continue to inspire the animosity of its homeless and away from home, who will naturally vent their anger in passive-aggressive use of the streets to eliminate their waste. 

It would be a tough debate to win. Support for individual rights is strong. But when individual rights are prioritized over the well-being of the community, it is only logical the individual would seek their private gain. No one person can justify the expense of this public health burden, when no one else is expected to. But when everyone is required to allow access to bathrooms, the expense can be distributed across all providers, and then the minimal cost can be justified. And when the community declares that all must act together for a common good, all can be better off, including those individuals. Because toileting is a public health issue, everyone must cooperate.

I have several suggestions to make it work. To distribute the costs where they come to rest, I propose a subscription cleaning service, contracted by the city to replace the cleaning that is already done by merchants, paid for partly by the merchants (they need clean bathrooms), and partly by the City (not every user of a facility is a customer). Every facility open to the public contributes to the service equally, but the service is delivered according to the cost of cleaning. Heavily used bathrooms that require more attention will get more attention. Those who allow bathrooms to be open will be rewarded for serving the public good by getting more attention for their bathrooms. Included in this service is regular pick up of syringes. People will be happier, no one will have cause to urinate on the street, and the merchants will find this an agreeable solution. Any place of public accommodation which wishes to opt out of the cleaning service may, but they may not opt out of allowing the public to use their restrooms.

Moreover, because vandalism is known to happen, and other plumbing problems can occur, an insurance policy would be made available, to insure against the expenses of damage to the facility.

Human hygiene facilities are a public health necessity. We cannot simultaneously prohibit people from eliminating waste in public places and also not provide publicly acceptable locations for doing so. We long ago put a stop to disposing the contents of bed-pans on the streets. We need to finish the public health job by making public waste elimination unnecessary. We must provide facilities. We have facilities, which are now closed to the public. We must make them open. We must mitigate the cost and risk for those who provide those facilities.

Whatever the opinion of the Committee on this proposal, public urination and defecation is not a behavior problem to be addressed by prohibitions. It is a public health issue to be addressed by providing facilities. I ask that this committee put in its proposal that all punishments for public urination and defecation shall be waived in any case where the city cannot show that facilities were available for the defendant to use.

`
`