> Compared to other big cities, public bathrooms in New York City are rare, as the 1,100 public restrooms result in a rate of 16 per 100,000 residents. Most public restrooms are located in parks; comparatively few other public spaces, including New York City Subway stations, have public restrooms.
> As of 2022, the New York City Subway has 472 stations, 69 of which have public bathrooms. Several homeless people sued the New York City government and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) in 1990, claiming that the city and MTA created a "public nuisance" by failing to provide public toilets. A report by the Legal Action Center for the Homeless, who represented the plaintiffs, noted that of 526 public comfort stations surveyed in parks, almost three-quarters were "either closed, filthy, foul-smelling or without toilet paper and soap." In 2010, there were 133 open restrooms in 81 of the system's 468 stations.
There's a great quote on this: "A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation."
'Society' doesn't make people shoot up, turn tricks, or attempt to set up permanent shop in public toilets inside train stations. Also, they're great places to put bombs (in theory at least).
I admit I don't have an answer for this. San Francisco's experiments with nifty self-cleaning public toilets have been expensive failures for the most part. I'm not sure where we go from here, given that the problem seems to be cultural/user-based.
Housing, healthcare, mental health, public transit, unemployment, lead abatement, education - all of these policy levers impact the prevalence of the behaviors you describe.
The kind of people who destroy public spaces and public toilets will also destroy any free housing you give them. If by "mental health" you mean involuntary commitment, then yes, that will do the job
"Cities like Helsinki and Vienna in Europe have seen dramatic reductions in homelessness due to the adaptation of Housing First policies, as have the North American cities Columbus, Ohio, Salt Lake City, Utah, and Medicine Hat, Alberta."
"A decade ago, Utah set itself an ambitious goal: end chronic homelessness. As of 2015, the state can just about declare victory: The population of chronically homeless people has dropped by 91 percent."
"Finland has adopted a Housing First policy, whereby social services assign homeless individuals homes first, and issues like mental health and substance abuse are treated second. Since its launch in 2008, the number of homeless people in Finland has decreased by roughly 30%,[1] though other reports indicate it could be up to 50%. The number of long-term homeless people has fallen by more than 35%. "Sleeping rough", the practice of sleeping outside, has been largely eradicated in Helsinki, where only one 50-bed night shelter remains."
Having a stable housing situation turns out to make a whole bunch of other related social changes more feasible.
> If by 'mental health' you mean involuntary commitment, then yes, that will do the job
I mean, I'd start with therapy, addiction services, social supports, and the like. But I do think the complete removal of long-term inpatient mental health in the 50s/60s was an overshoot. Some people need that much help.
(I also believe there's a lot more we can do to prevent people from becoming that "kind of people" in the first place.)
I think it does, which is why this is a problem in some societies but not others.
I think the explanation of "some people are bad people" is a lazy explanation. The proportion of bad people to everyone else should be about the same everywhere. We have to take a closer look at incentives and systems in place.
IANAB, but I'd imagine the privacy inherent in a toilet makes it easier to assemble a dangerous bomb from transported-safe components than doing so in a full train car would, and to leave it long enough that the bomber can get away without getting caught.
The bathrooms become too expensive to maintain because they are being used by people who need to be institutionalized. When this is suggested the Civil Liberties people get into an uproar. You could build one wall and keep people who suffer from psychosis inside of it, or you can put them on the street and watch as everyone else finds ways to build walls of their own.
The institutions of the past were so bad that it is more human to let those people fend for themselves than put them in one. Yes some people freeze to death now but that is better than before.
if you can reform the system fine but I don't have conidence. Human nature doesn't deal well with the needed power imbalance.
thats changing the topic. The topic is public transit, and I'm giving a practical example of why a rational person would choose not to use it. It's disingenuous to make it sound like people avoid the bus because "only those people ride the bus" and then refute it with "well, yeah, we gotta fix homelessness first, of course!". No we dont have to fix homelessness, I can ride my car and lock the doors, preventing it from being defiled by homeless people.
For better or for worse a lot of US progressives view transit as a "solution of last resort" which is why so many progressives are okay with transit also acting as a homeless shelter and being tolerant of some drug use. One way to think of this is that progressives view government's role as a champion of the disenfranchised. Another is to think that the US is a class based society where transit is considered the domain of the disenfranchised, the lowest class. Which framing you choose is probably based on your experience and frustrations with your local US transit system.
(I'm not trying to weigh in one way or the other in my comment, but as someone who rides local US transit regularly and has for over 10 years, my patience for using transit as a "solution of last resort" is wearing thin but still remains.)
I agree with you. This is why in newer public transit systems they will use honor-systems that don't actually prevent people from entering without paying. This encourages them to ride because its a "non-violent offense" so they won't be arrested, but if you or I rode without paying, we would have a criminal charge and possibly be arrested since they can claim they solved a crime without harming "disparaged groups" or whatever. So we have 2 classes of people: those who can ride for free and those who can't.
The system I'm referring to is San Diego's light rail. The 2nd (and last) time I rode it I saw someone get assaulted on the train (and what appeared to be homeless people riding it). The first (and last) time I rode the MARTA train in Atlanta last year, I saw a homeless man passed out sitting in a puddle of his own urine. I will never use public transit again unless there are exigent circumstances. Liberals have completely ruined yet another thing that used to be great.
