epistemic status: I am a public policy and economics amateur. I do not have extreme cognitive ability and I thought about the question for < 1 hour.
I’m going to suggest some other possible ways to stop homeless people from shitting in the streets and then I will nominate my current preferred solution.
Reduce the number of homeless people (by, for example, giving them homes and/or letting developers build more homes).
Start a charity that operates bathrooms for the homeless.
My current preference is a mix of (a) punishing people who shit in the streets with jail time, (b) reducing the number of homeless by facilitating more housing development, (c) and removing legal restrictions on running just-bathroom businesses.
AFAICT I prefer my solution to yours because I am wary of the San Francisco Division of Public Bathrooms turning into a permanent boondoggle (I’m generally suspicious of government activity, although I do accept that, for example, the Apollo Program and Manhattan Project are very impressive, and IMO most American police departments do an okay job.) and because I suspect the situation is being heavily influenced by anti-housing-development policies and anti-just-bathroom-businesses policies.
If you have a good critique of my solution, please offer it. As I said, I’m a public policy noob.
From your response it seems to me that I’ve understood your question and position, so I’m responding to it here.
epistemic status: I am a public policy and economics amateur. I do not have extreme cognitive ability and I thought about the question for < 1 hour.
I’m going to suggest some other possible ways to stop homeless people from shitting in the streets and then I will nominate my current preferred solution.
Remove legal restrictions to running just-bathroom businesses.
Reduce the number of homeless people (by, for example, giving them homes and/or letting developers build more homes).
Start a charity that operates bathrooms for the homeless.
My current preference is a mix of (a) punishing people who shit in the streets with jail time, (b) reducing the number of homeless by facilitating more housing development, (c) and removing legal restrictions on running just-bathroom businesses.
AFAICT I prefer my solution to yours because I am wary of the San Francisco Division of Public Bathrooms turning into a permanent boondoggle (I’m generally suspicious of government activity, although I do accept that, for example, the Apollo Program and Manhattan Project are very impressive, and IMO most American police departments do an okay job.) and because I suspect the situation is being heavily influenced by anti-housing-development policies and anti-just-bathroom-businesses policies.
If you have a good critique of my solution, please offer it. As I said, I’m a public policy noob.
its a public externality, you don’t need a government division to run bathrooms, you just need to do 1. + provide a subsidy