I explained my reasoning here. Also note that most people who have demand for using the bathroom are not penniless homeless people.
Here is my reasoning. On one hand, obviously going to the bathroom, sometimes in random circumstances, is an obvious universal necessity. It is all the more pressing for people with certain conditions that make it harder for them to control themselves for long. So it’s important that bathrooms are available, quickly accessible, and distributed reasonably well everywhere. I would also argue it’s important that they have no barrier to access because sometimes time is critical when using it. In certain train stations I’ve seen bathrooms that can only be used by paying a small price, which often meant you needed to have and find precise amounts of change to go. Absolutely impractical stuff for bathrooms.
On the other, obviously maintaining bathrooms is expensive as it requires labour. You don’t want your bathrooms to be completely fouled on the regular, or worse, damaged, and if they happen to be, you need money to fix them. So bathrooms aren’t literally “free”.
Now one possible solution would be to have “public bathroom” as a business. Nowadays you could allow entrance with a credit card (note that this doesn’t solve the homeless thing, but it addresses most people’s need). But IMO this isn’t a particularly high value business, and on its own certainly not a good use of valuable city centre land, which goes directly against the fact that you need bathrooms to be the most where the most people are. So this never really happens.
Another solution is to have bathrooms as part of private businesses doing other stuff (serving food/drinks) and have them charge for their use. Which is how it works now. The inadequacy lies into how for some reason these businesses charge you indirectly by asking you to buy something. This is inefficient in a number of ways: it forces you to buy something you don’t really want, paying more than you would otherwise, and the provider probably still doesn’t get as much as they could if they just asked a bathroom fee since they also need the labour and ingredients to make the coffee or whatever. So why are things like this? I’m not sure—I think part of it may be that they don’t just want money, they want a filter that will discourage people from using the bathroom too much to avoid having too many bathroom goers. If that’s the case, that’s bad, because it means some needs will remain unfulfilled (and some people might forgo going out for too long entirely rather than risking being left without options). Part of it may be that they just identify their business as cafes and would find it deleterious to their image to explicitly provide a bathroom service. But that’s a silly hangup and one we should overcome, if it causes this much trouble. Consider also that the way things are now, it’s pretty hard of the cafes to enforce their rules anyway, and lots of people will just use the bathroom without asking or buying anything anyway. Everyone loses.
Or you could simply build and maintain public bathrooms with tax money. There are solutions to the land value problem (e.g. build them as provisionary structures on the sidewalk) and this removes all issues and quite a lot of unpleasantness. You could probably use even just some of the sales tax and house taxes income from the neighbourhood and the payers would in practice see returns out of this. Alternatively, you could publicly subsidize private businesses offering their bathrooms for free. Though I reckon that real public bathrooms would be better for the homeless issue since businesses probably don’t want those in their august establishments.
Thanks for providing this detailed account of your reasoning. I understand most of what you are saying, but I’m a little confused about the first two paragraphs.
On one hand, obviously going to the bathroom, sometimes in random circumstances, is an obvious universal necessity. It is all the more pressing for people with certain conditions that make it harder for them to control themselves for long. So it’s important that bathrooms are available, quickly accessible, and distributed reasonably well everywhere. I would also argue it’s important that they have no barrier to access because sometimes time is critical when using it. In certain train stations I’ve seen bathrooms that can only be used by paying a small price, which often meant you needed to have and find precise amounts of change to go. Absolutely impractical stuff for bathrooms.
On the other, obviously maintaining bathrooms is expensive as it requires labour. You don’t want your bathrooms to be completely fouled on the regular, or worse, damaged, and if they happen to be, you need money to fix them. So bathrooms aren’t literally “free”.
Here I take you to be laying out the problem/goal that the rest of your comment addresses with various candidate solutions. But what exactly is the goal?
Bathrooms are available, quickly accessible, well distributed and with no barrier to access (while taking into account the fact that bathrooms are expensive to maintain).
Literally every potential visitor to a given geographical region (regardless of the person’s medical, biological or economic idiosyncrasies) has unencumbered access to clean and functioning bathroom facilities.
<something else>
My confusion is being prompted by the suspicion that different neighborhoods have different optimal bathroom regimes (unless the goal is trying to make every neighborhood accommodate the same set of people (eg, all people, or all Americans, or middle class residents of the city, etc)). For example:
Neighborhood A is mostly a bunch of expensive boutique clothiers and almost all of their customers are wealthy women. It turns out (and I might be totally wrong about this specific case) that nearly all wealthy American women do not suffer from conditions that would require them to ever need short notice immediate access to a bathroom (eg, IBS). But this is not true of the wider American population. How many bathrooms should be in neighborhood A?
Then suppose that over time neighborhood A shifts from being mostly boutique clothiers to restaurants frequented by middle class tourists. Now how many bathrooms should be in neighborhood A?
So, I’m just looking for clarification on precisely what problem/goal the comment is addressing.
Or you could simply build and maintain public bathrooms with tax money. There are solutions to the land value problem (e.g. build them as provisionary structures on the sidewalk) and this removes all issues and quite a lot of unpleasantness.
And so that my comment isn’t just harassing you for clarification, I like the idea of building bathrooms in places that would not crowd out other businesses, but what about re-zoning (maybe “re-zoning” isn’t the right term) parts of the sidewalk so that entrepreneurs could setup bathroom businesses on it?
I think in general it’s mostly 1); obviously “infinite perfect bathroom availability everywhere” isn’t a realistic goal, so this is about striking a compromise that is however more practical than the current situation. For things like these honestly I am disinclined to trust private enterprise too much—especially if left completely unregulated—but am willing to concede that it’s not my main value. Obviously I wouldn’t want the sidewalk to be entirely crowded out by competing paid chemical toilets though, that solves one problem but creates another.
Since the discussion here started around homelessness, and homeless people obviously wouldn’t be able to pay for private bathrooms (especially if these did the obvious thing for convenience and forgo coins in exchange for some kind of subscription service, payment via app, or such), I think the best solution would be free public bathrooms, and I think they would “pay themselves” in terms of gains in comfort and cleanliness for the people living in the neighborhood. They should be funded locally of course. Absent that though, sure, I think removing some barriers to private suppliers of paid for bathroom services would still be better than this.
I think in general it’s mostly 1); obviously “infinite perfect bathroom availability everywhere” isn’t a realistic goal, so this is about striking a compromise that is however more practical than the current situation.
Then I believe that I understand your previous comment, so I’m going to respond to your proposed solutions.
Now one possible solution would be to have “public bathroom” as a business. Nowadays you could allow entrance with a credit card (note that this doesn’t solve the homeless thing, but it addresses most people’s need). But IMO this isn’t a particularly high value business, and on its own certainly not a good use of valuable city centre land, which goes directly against the fact that you need bathrooms to be the most where the most people are. So this never really happens.
I’m not sure where you live, but as others have pointed out (and as you are aware of), some cities and states (including California according to Wikipedia) ban pay toilets. If this ban was lifted, then would you expect the public bathroom situation to meaningfully improve?
(And I grant that this doesn’t address your concerns about people who cannot afford to use paid toilets.)
Another solution is to have bathrooms as part of private businesses doing other stuff (serving food/drinks) and have them charge for their use. Which is how it works now. The inadequacy lies into how for some reason these businesses charge you indirectly by asking you to buy something. This is inefficient in a number of ways: it forces you to buy something you don’t really want, paying more than you would otherwise, and the provider probably still doesn’t get as much as they could if they just asked a bathroom fee since they also need the labour and ingredients to make the coffee or whatever. So why are things like this?
I agree that these are important questions (also, is it illegal for a cafe to charge someone just to use the bathroom? and, have any cafes tried to offer this service?). Before anyone takes any public policy action I would want them to get to the bottom of these matters.
I’m not sure—I think part of it may be that they don’t just want money, they want a filter that will discourage people from using the bathroom too much to avoid having too many bathroom goers. If that’s the case, that’s bad, because it means some needs will remain unfulfilled (and some people might forgo going out for too long entirely rather than risking being left without options). Part of it may be that they just identify their business as cafes and would find it deleterious to their image to explicitly provide a bathroom service. But that’s a silly hangup and one we should overcome, if it causes this much trouble. Consider also that the way things are now, it’s pretty hard of the cafes to enforce their rules anyway, and lots of people will just use the bathroom without asking or buying anything anyway. Everyone loses.
These seem to be plausible hypotheses to me. Also, cafe entrepreneurs may just not have had the idea to offer a ‘Use Bathroom’ service. And insofar that they are interested in making money, that may overcome a desire to not do something weird.
Or you could simply build and maintain public bathrooms with tax money. There are solutions to the land value problem (e.g. build them as provisionary structures on the sidewalk) and this removes all issues and quite a lot of unpleasantness. You could probably use even just some of the sales tax and house taxes income from the neighbourhood and the payers would in practice see returns out of this. Alternatively, you could publicly subsidize private businesses offering their bathrooms for free. Though I reckon that real public bathrooms would be better for the homeless issue since businesses probably don’t want those in their august establishments.
I agree that this might be the best solution. I’m generally skeptical of government services (although many municipalities do IMO an okay-ish job of delivering police, fire and water services) because they are not enmeshed in the market pricing mechanism (ie, they aren’t threatened by bankruptcy and they aren’t trying to make profit). But othercommentershave argued that bathrooms are public goods and that free markets don’t do public goods well, so maybe I’m mistaken. I still haven’t thought about their argument.
Since the discussion here started around homelessness, and homeless people obviously wouldn’t be able to pay for private bathrooms (especially if these did the obvious thing for convenience and forgo coins in exchange for some kind of subscription service, payment via app, or such)
Why can homeless people obviously not pay for private bathrooms? I’ve seen homeless people use phones, but maybe most of them don’t have phones. And I’ve seen homeless people have money (eg, panhandling then buying food), but maybe they don’t have enough, or maybe they don’t have credit or debit cards.
But maybe I’m missing the point and the real question is just, what about the people (regardless of what percentage of the homeless they are) who cannot afford to use private bathrooms? If the number is tiny, then just putting them in jail for shitting in the streets seems good enough to me. If it’s larger, then maybe more public bathrooms are necessary, or maybe the destitute should be (de facto) banned from certain areas of cities, or maybe something else, I’m not sure.
Here is my reasoning. On one hand, obviously going to the bathroom, sometimes in random circumstances, is an obvious universal necessity. It is all the more pressing for people with certain conditions that make it harder for them to control themselves for long. So it’s important that bathrooms are available, quickly accessible, and distributed reasonably well everywhere. I would also argue it’s important that they have no barrier to access because sometimes time is critical when using it. In certain train stations I’ve seen bathrooms that can only be used by paying a small price, which often meant you needed to have and find precise amounts of change to go. Absolutely impractical stuff for bathrooms.
On the other, obviously maintaining bathrooms is expensive as it requires labour. You don’t want your bathrooms to be completely fouled on the regular, or worse, damaged, and if they happen to be, you need money to fix them. So bathrooms aren’t literally “free”.
Now one possible solution would be to have “public bathroom” as a business. Nowadays you could allow entrance with a credit card (note that this doesn’t solve the homeless thing, but it addresses most people’s need). But IMO this isn’t a particularly high value business, and on its own certainly not a good use of valuable city centre land, which goes directly against the fact that you need bathrooms to be the most where the most people are. So this never really happens.
Another solution is to have bathrooms as part of private businesses doing other stuff (serving food/drinks) and have them charge for their use. Which is how it works now. The inadequacy lies into how for some reason these businesses charge you indirectly by asking you to buy something. This is inefficient in a number of ways: it forces you to buy something you don’t really want, paying more than you would otherwise, and the provider probably still doesn’t get as much as they could if they just asked a bathroom fee since they also need the labour and ingredients to make the coffee or whatever. So why are things like this? I’m not sure—I think part of it may be that they don’t just want money, they want a filter that will discourage people from using the bathroom too much to avoid having too many bathroom goers. If that’s the case, that’s bad, because it means some needs will remain unfulfilled (and some people might forgo going out for too long entirely rather than risking being left without options). Part of it may be that they just identify their business as cafes and would find it deleterious to their image to explicitly provide a bathroom service. But that’s a silly hangup and one we should overcome, if it causes this much trouble. Consider also that the way things are now, it’s pretty hard of the cafes to enforce their rules anyway, and lots of people will just use the bathroom without asking or buying anything anyway. Everyone loses.
Or you could simply build and maintain public bathrooms with tax money. There are solutions to the land value problem (e.g. build them as provisionary structures on the sidewalk) and this removes all issues and quite a lot of unpleasantness. You could probably use even just some of the sales tax and house taxes income from the neighbourhood and the payers would in practice see returns out of this. Alternatively, you could publicly subsidize private businesses offering their bathrooms for free. Though I reckon that real public bathrooms would be better for the homeless issue since businesses probably don’t want those in their august establishments.
Thanks for providing this detailed account of your reasoning. I understand most of what you are saying, but I’m a little confused about the first two paragraphs.
Here I take you to be laying out the problem/goal that the rest of your comment addresses with various candidate solutions. But what exactly is the goal?
Bathrooms are available, quickly accessible, well distributed and with no barrier to access (while taking into account the fact that bathrooms are expensive to maintain).
Literally every potential visitor to a given geographical region (regardless of the person’s medical, biological or economic idiosyncrasies) has unencumbered access to clean and functioning bathroom facilities.
<something else>
My confusion is being prompted by the suspicion that different neighborhoods have different optimal bathroom regimes (unless the goal is trying to make every neighborhood accommodate the same set of people (eg, all people, or all Americans, or middle class residents of the city, etc)). For example:
Neighborhood A is mostly a bunch of expensive boutique clothiers and almost all of their customers are wealthy women. It turns out (and I might be totally wrong about this specific case) that nearly all wealthy American women do not suffer from conditions that would require them to ever need short notice immediate access to a bathroom (eg, IBS). But this is not true of the wider American population. How many bathrooms should be in neighborhood A?
Then suppose that over time neighborhood A shifts from being mostly boutique clothiers to restaurants frequented by middle class tourists. Now how many bathrooms should be in neighborhood A?
So, I’m just looking for clarification on precisely what problem/goal the comment is addressing.
And so that my comment isn’t just harassing you for clarification, I like the idea of building bathrooms in places that would not crowd out other businesses, but what about re-zoning (maybe “re-zoning” isn’t the right term) parts of the sidewalk so that entrepreneurs could setup bathroom businesses on it?
I think in general it’s mostly 1); obviously “infinite perfect bathroom availability everywhere” isn’t a realistic goal, so this is about striking a compromise that is however more practical than the current situation. For things like these honestly I am disinclined to trust private enterprise too much—especially if left completely unregulated—but am willing to concede that it’s not my main value. Obviously I wouldn’t want the sidewalk to be entirely crowded out by competing paid chemical toilets though, that solves one problem but creates another.
Since the discussion here started around homelessness, and homeless people obviously wouldn’t be able to pay for private bathrooms (especially if these did the obvious thing for convenience and forgo coins in exchange for some kind of subscription service, payment via app, or such), I think the best solution would be free public bathrooms, and I think they would “pay themselves” in terms of gains in comfort and cleanliness for the people living in the neighborhood. They should be funded locally of course. Absent that though, sure, I think removing some barriers to private suppliers of paid for bathroom services would still be better than this.
Then I believe that I understand your previous comment, so I’m going to respond to your proposed solutions.
I’m not sure where you live, but as others have pointed out (and as you are aware of), some cities and states (including California according to Wikipedia) ban pay toilets. If this ban was lifted, then would you expect the public bathroom situation to meaningfully improve?
(And I grant that this doesn’t address your concerns about people who cannot afford to use paid toilets.)
I agree that these are important questions (also, is it illegal for a cafe to charge someone just to use the bathroom? and, have any cafes tried to offer this service?). Before anyone takes any public policy action I would want them to get to the bottom of these matters.
These seem to be plausible hypotheses to me. Also, cafe entrepreneurs may just not have had the idea to offer a ‘Use Bathroom’ service. And insofar that they are interested in making money, that may overcome a desire to not do something weird.
I agree that this might be the best solution. I’m generally skeptical of government services (although many municipalities do IMO an okay-ish job of delivering police, fire and water services) because they are not enmeshed in the market pricing mechanism (ie, they aren’t threatened by bankruptcy and they aren’t trying to make profit). But other commenters have argued that bathrooms are public goods and that free markets don’t do public goods well, so maybe I’m mistaken. I still haven’t thought about their argument.
Why can homeless people obviously not pay for private bathrooms? I’ve seen homeless people use phones, but maybe most of them don’t have phones. And I’ve seen homeless people have money (eg, panhandling then buying food), but maybe they don’t have enough, or maybe they don’t have credit or debit cards.
But maybe I’m missing the point and the real question is just, what about the people (regardless of what percentage of the homeless they are) who cannot afford to use private bathrooms? If the number is tiny, then just putting them in jail for shitting in the streets seems good enough to me. If it’s larger, then maybe more public bathrooms are necessary, or maybe the destitute should be (de facto) banned from certain areas of cities, or maybe something else, I’m not sure.