Thread by @doctorow

The homelessness epidemic in America predates the covid pandemic, but the latter is about to make the former much worse - and as horrifying and dehumanizing as homelessness was in The Before, it's a million times worse today.

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Start with the obvious. Everybody poops. Despite San Francisco's decades of insisting that the public human defecation problem was the result of humans, and not the absence of toilets, the solution to pooping is toilets. There is no other solution.

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New York City is notoriously short of public toilets, even for employed, homed people - it's the land of the "Bathrooms are for customers only" sign.

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At @PNH once told me, whatever demerits the explosion of Manhattan Starbuckses meant for the city, at the very least, it solved NYC's urgent "Nowhere to go" crisis.

But not anymore.

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New York's restaurants and cafes are no longer allow homeless people to use their facilities. Even Penn Station has excluded homeless people from its bathrooms.

thecity.nyc/2020/8/13/2136…

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With the loss of access to toilets comes a loss of access to water, too: the 3600 New Yorkers who live on the streets and in subways no longer have reliable access to drinking water, and are suffering severe dehydration.

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Writing in @thecityny, @ReuvenBlau interviews Jared Mitchell, a 24 year old homeless man who had the humiliating experience of "going on himself" when he couldn't locate a toilet. Richard Parry, a 51 year old homeless man, tells Blau, "You probably smell me now."

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Mayor de Blasio put 12 toilets out for public use early in the crisis, but withdrew them after the were vandalized. They were not replaced.

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Meanwhile, the tourists and office workers homeless people depend on when panhandling are gone, leaving homeless people with no money for food: Charmain Hamid, a 45 year old homeless person, is wasting away.

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Ashley Belcher, a 27 year old homeless woman with ulcerative colitis and irritable bowel syndrome asked to use the bathroom at the Lenox Health Greenwich Village medical facility, but was denied entry because she doesn't have a mental disorder.

10/

As soup kitchens move to outdoor service, homeless people can no longer use their toilets, either.

It's not clear what will solve this, apart from the proven Housing First approach of providing homes to homeless people.

endhomelessness.org/resource/housi…

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When a standalone "Portland Loo" can cost $200k to install merely to provide ONE toilet, it's easy to see how providing homes isn't just humane - it's cost effective, too.

Image:
Eden, Janine and Jim, modified
flickr.com/photos/edenpic…

CC BY
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.…

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