It wasn’t too long ago that the City of Tucson shut down Veinte de Agosto park over public health concerns from the Pima County Health Department.
The park for years has been occupied on-and-off by many of Tucson’s homeless residents who congregate downtown. There aren’t any bathrooms outdoors, so naturally the area eventually flooded with human waste. (That, as well as allegations of drug sales and other offenses, resulted in the city to close the park.)
Although the issue of outdoor bathrooms is constantly brought up in discussions about homelessness, not much has been done to make portable restrooms available to people who don’t have a roof over their head. Until that’s done, they will continue to have no option but urinate and defecate on the streets and parks. What would you do?
Miami recently installed portable bathrooms for its homeless population to use free of charge, and incidents with “open defecation” have decreased by 57 percent in six months, according to The Huffington Post.
The Pit Stop program, which cost the city $500,000 has made a lot of residents happy. But Miami homeless rights advocacy group Miami-Dade Homeless Trust told the HuffPost that this is a temporary fix to the issue, and that could create excuses to keep people on the streets, particularly those who are chronically homeless, rather than focusing on housing.
“If I’m making it easier for them to be on the streets, then I’m making it more difficult for my outreach staff to coax chronic homeless people off of the streets,” Ron Book, chair of the Homeless Trust, told The Huffington Post in May. “It makes an excuse for them to stay on the streets. I’m not into excuses.”
The portable restrooms are available downtown from 2 p.m. to around 9 p.m., the HuffPost says. The program was influenced by concerns from local business owners—a very similar situation to what we have in Tucson between the homeless and the downtown merchants.
At the latest meeting the City of Tucson hosted to talk homelessness (these have been happening on a semi-monthly basis thanks to Councilman Richard Fimbres since October, and it brings together Pima County, business representatives, homeless outreach workers, and houseless people to discuss solutions), Deputy Tucson City Manager Martha Durkin said installing “state-of-the-art bathrooms” would cost the city roughly between $60.000 to $140,000.
It would be a good investment, and options to make it more affordable for the city should be explored.
There would be no more health woes over human waste, and it’s a step closer to restoring respect and dignity for our fellow community members.
This article appears in Dec 24-30, 2015.
Why not supply them with free beer and burgers as well so they have a need to use them?
Take over a foreclosed building or hotel. Set it up so there would be a church or churches to run it – have the city taxes pay for it. I’m sure you would get partial paid staff and volunteers to run it.
Then you have a cooling center in the heat, respite from the streets and a shower and bathroom facilities.
Sorry but the City does not tax itself. It never has, and it never will. It taxes you to pay for things it wants. Your plan sounds a lot like Section 8 housing. But what happens every time it’s tried? They destroy the facility.
Hungry? Homeless? Cold? I know a little used technique to over come such adversities , it helped my wife and I when we wanted to buy a home. GET A JOB!
Rat T, you have no idea how right you are. I used to repair elevators in N.Y.C. housing projects. The things I’ve seen would scare the Hell out of most people. Most of the repairs were needed because of vandalism as opposed to normal wear and tear.
Open letter to the 2 clueless morons who disliked what I had to say. Ever been in one of those places? Huh? At least have the cajones to tell me where I’m wrong. You 2 stooges wouldn’t know a N.Y.C. housing project from an amusement park. I truly weep for you idiots but at the same time it shows me just how right I am and how sadly wrong you are. Come back when you have something to say that you know about.
CW13, who’s going to pay for the heating and cooling while these bums get free shelter. Start housing, feeding and careing for them and thousands of “homeless,” will flock to Tucson for the freebees. Word gets around pretty quick in their community. First, you must determine wether they are really homeless or just transients moving from city to city. All of the city’s parks have restrooms these people can use, but they can’t panhandle there nor create a noteable disturbance to others. It’s not the taxpayers responsibility to care for the unemployable, let the churches and do gooders take them in. How many have the city councilmen brought home for a meal?
Nothing says the success of the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars that have been spent ‘downtown’ like Occupiers defecating on the streets.
5th poorest city in the country, and damn proud of it.
Jim, I guess you don’t understand sarcasm. I agree with you 100%. I can think of a million things I’d rather see my tax dollars spent on rather than supporting a bunch of shiftless bums with no desire to get a job. Please double read what I wrote.
“let the churches and do gooders take them in.”
If you’re going to quote Dickens’ character Ebenezer Scrooge, shouldn’t you give proper credit?
Homelessness is an unsolvable problem. All you can do is manage it.
It’s kind of sad Tucson voters voted to tax themselves for a new animal shelter but you can bet they won’t do the same for human beings.
Dogs and cats are helpless. People aren’t.
Boy oh boy: pick on people because they need to excrete their waste…what’s the Golden Rule???? would you want to be treated that way??? What great compassion you have! What would Jesus do??? I’m not Christian myself, but I bet many of you who complain are! ….and thus, hypocrites!
The ironic thing is that it costs less to house the homeless using public dollars than it does to provide all of the services and deal with the problems of them being on the street. This has been well studied for decades. Utah has a program to house every single homeless person in the state and other cities and states are catching up….
For me it is about management of public resources and we should do what is best for the tax payer. I do not want these people in my alley, sleeping in their car on my street, camping in a park, building a shanty town in the wash or desert and I’m sick of seeing them wandering around drunk downtown harassing people.
I don’t care if you are a humanist or a pragmatist, the only option is dealing with the reality and getting these people into publicly funded housing. It is cheaper than jail, prison, shitty shelters, hospitals, crime etc. where these people end up sucking up more of our tax dollars. Once you get them off the streets, then you can start to figure out the myriad of reasons they are there, etc.
Are businesses loosing up to $150,000 a year to justify spending that kind of money on a temporary fix for a larger problem? Even $60,000 is a lot of money that can be spent in rehabilitation programs or getting them off the streets for good. The larger questions are what are the secondary consequences of existing industry and tourism due to the homeless population living there, as well as going bathroom outside? If it is small is ins’t a financially wise investment for Tucson.
No.
No porta potties for the homeless.
The only way for a poor city like Tucson to deal with this problem is to harden the city and the borders.
If a man is desperate enough to go through the trash, he is desperate to try an unlocked car door.
I have empathy for their situation, but I am not going to ask fellow tax payers to fund their lifestyles.
The harder you make it for the homeless in Tucson, the sooner they either leave or accept the help that is out there from hundreds of charities.
Many of my fellow vets who are homeless are just waiting to die. It’s sad and soul-crushing, but many are beyond salvation.
Maybe Maria can tell us if they tax the citizens of Guatemala to provide porta-potties for the homeless there, since she hates everything about this country.
Believing anything from the Huffington Post.
What’s next, Salon articles?
Tucson is not Miami.
Money doesn’t come from the money tree comrade Maria.
But please, tell me how unlimited unskilled immigration will help the American homeless.
That is how I know the left are bipolar and live in communist fantasy-land.
HumanBean writes – “it costs less to house the homeless using public dollars”
What are “public” dollars? You mean ‘someone else’s money’?
There is no such thing as public dollars. They are simply dollars stolen from taxpayers. So I guess if you’re not an income tax payer then it may be cheaper because you’re simply spending someone else’s money.