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San Francisco Tried to Build a $1.7M Toilet. It's Still Not Done
- labrador 3y agoThis is actually an interesting problem if people gave it a minute. Here's the initial conditions: We don't lock up mentally ill people anymore in California because "patient rights" including the right to non-neurotypical. This results in mentally ill people wandering the streets. They are too sick to respectfully use commerical establishment bathrooms, so they rely on public bathrooms. Since there is a shortage of those, they end up using the street. So SF wants to build an indesctructible public toilet for them so they don't use the street, which turns out to be hard because the mentally ill are often clever and find ways to make it a nightmare for everyone, so it ends up costing 1.7 million dollars and take a long time. What would you do?
- notRobot 3y agoTackle the social conditions that lead to mentally unwell people being helpless and homeless and foodless on the streets. There are enough resources in this world to take care of everyone. We should not tolerate the fact that so many people struggle all their lives at no fault of their own, simply because of the conditions they're born into. You can help mentally unwell people without locking them up, what are you on about?
- labrador 3y agoI don't know where you're from but it wasn't just Governors Brown and Reagan who created the problem, it was the Psychiatric survivors movement which was against forced treatment and forced medication. I voluntarily take my medication and look upon those poor schizophrenics on the street screaming at birds with pity and sadness because well meaning do gooders don't believe they should be forced to take meds or accept treatment of any kind (because freedom) so they are left to suffer like wounded animals on the street. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychiatric_survivors_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychiatric_survivors_movement
- pydry 3y agoHomelessness isnt a side effect of a mental illness epidemic. Mental illness is a side effect of a homelessness epidemic. The reason for the focus on mental illness as a cause is that it stops people from drawing a direct line between a cult of landlord greed and drug addicts defecating outside of your local drugstore.
- labrador 3y agoThe non-mentally ill homeless aren't shitting on the sidewalk requiring 1.7 million dollar toilets. You should give functional homeless, which I've been, more credit than that.
- pydry 3y agoThey tend to be the ones who have been homeless the longest. Homeless -> drugs -> crippling mental illness -> shitting on the street. It can take years. It's not coincidence that there are armies of them where the rents are highest. We're told is is though.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago> It's not coincidence that there are armies of them where the rents are highest. I believe you are neither wrong nor right. I lived adjacent to a massive homeless community, in a (then) low-cost rural county. It's been there for decades. It's still there but is larger since housing costs are >2x what they were in 2020.
- EdwardDiego 3y agoIt's kinda both. In NZ in the 90s, residential care for people with severe mental illness was replaced with "community care" where all those patients be helped to go flatting the community, and have their condition treated so well that there was no need for residential care facilities. It's far better! It's more respectful! It's also incidentally going to let us trim millions from the Health budget so we can pay for the tax cuts for high earners! The care provided in the community was wisely delegated to the Almighty Invisible Hand of the Free Market, so a bunch of fly-by-night sub-par contractors sprung up to get the government cash and then provide very little care at all, and so large numbers of former patients ended up homeless due to their poorly controlled illness, and well gosh, hard to care for them in the community when you don't know where they live right? It's an absolute debacle, and a great demonstration that neoliberalism is nothing more a belief set for business people who don't like paying tax. But I fully agree that homelessness is a great medium for developing mental illness and drug dependencies.
- proc0 3y agoHmm, it's almost like treating the symptom instead of the cause.
- cpursley 3y agoIt’s the American way.
- aeturnum 3y agoSensible people treat both!
- iwontberude 3y agoIt's almost like treating symptoms is better than doing nothing about the cause, which is all you can do, because we don't have control over what causes human brains to malfunction like this.
- Whoppertime 3y agoI think we do have control over what causes human brains to malfunction like this and that's why there is a heterogeneous rather then homogenous distribution of mental illness or social pathogens. The rate of homelessness, drug addiction, petty crime like fare evasion or more serious violent crime are not equal across all places and all groups. Instead it seems like humans respond to incentives and those incentives are what is different across places and groups.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- iwontberude 3y agoSounds great, why do you think your opinion isn't shared by more people? On the surface everything you are saying makes sense, but its almost like there is some deeper reality that keeps it from being true.
- xeromal 3y agoDoesn't this thought assume all ailments are treatable? Sometimes the best treatment is forced care in a facility.
- iamleppert 3y ago[flagged]
- fshbbdssbbgdd 3y agoIf we have a $1.7M budget, we could hire people to handle each of those twelve points for $100k a pop. I got dibs on “crisis information”. This toilet is going to have the most informative signage you’ve ever seen.
- mvdtnz 3y agoDon't do this here.
- iamleppert 3y ago[flagged]
- pvg 3y agoThat's all fine but generated comments are not allowed on HN.
- iamleppert 3y agoNothing in the guidelines state that AI isn’t allowed.
- pvg 3y agoThere are many moderator comments about it. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22generated%20comments%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- iamleppert 3y ago[flagged]
- matteoraso 3y ago[flagged]
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago> We don't lock up mentally ill people anymore in California because "patient rights" Sure we do. That's what prisons are for. Because that's the only reliable offering for folks with chronic mental health needs. Going past that: If patient rights weren't a factor, nothing would change. Long-term, inpatient mental healthcare is an impossibility for most folks who need it. source: 25 years of marriage to spouse who needed long-term, inpatient treatment but is now homeless instead.
- hotpotamus 3y ago> Long-term, inpatient mental healthcare is an impossibility for most folks who need it. It's like free housing and free healthcare combined; neither of which are possible in the US.
- ImJamal 3y agoCalifornia could implement both of them without the federal government if they wanted.
- abeppu 3y agoIt's Noe Valley. The article doesn't mention anything about the homeless population, but does mention it's known as "stroller valley". It's _not_ a hard problem to provide a small number of toilets for the homeless population. SF does have a "pit stop" program of public toilets, which in some cases are just chemical toilets, set up on the sidewalk, with a person that cleans them and logs their use. I walk by one on 14th regularly. It doesn't need to be "indestructible". It doesn't need to be a hard problem. http://sfpublicworks.org/pitstop http://sfpublicworks.org/pitstop
- delichon 3y agoThis was not an extraordinary toilet. It wasn't a pilot for a super duper new kind of public toilet. It wasn't an art project. It was just a toilet. This isn't an extreme case, it's normal. It just got attention because of our scatological fetish.
- google234123 3y agoWhat? It got attention because it’s an egregious example of SFs completely dysfunctional gov
- et-al 3y agoYeah, don't forget the $500k on a trash can redesign: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/sf-may-halt-rollout-of-new-trash-cans-18621606.php https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/sf-may-halt-rollout-o...
- dilyevsky 3y agoAlso don't forget dumping $30M on a school district payroll system (has like 5000 users total) and having to scrap it afterwards https://sfstandard.com/2023/09/12/san-francisco-may-dump-troubled-school-payroll-system/ https://sfstandard.com/2023/09/12/san-francisco-may-dump-tro...
- InCityDreams 3y agoPiss is now scat?
- huytersd 3y agoNever. Love watching piss porn, would never watch scat porn.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- TacticalCoder 3y ago> An expensive public bathroom project has come to symbolize the city’s bureaucratic inefficiencies. There are too many words in that sentence, here's a fixed version: "An expensive public project has come to symbolize bureaucratic inefficiencies." It applies worldwide.
- mista2nith 3y ago[dead]
- dventimi 3y agoEvery single time https://archive.ph/2024.01.24-205525/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/24/us/san-francisco-toilet.html https://archive.ph/2024.01.24-205525/https://www.nytimes.com...
- jlmorton 3y agoIs $1.7 million actually that bad? I'm not sure this is unusual to San Francisco. Just a couple days ago, I saw Honolulu suggest a new public toilet would cost $1-2 million, along with $400,000 annually in maintenance and damage from vandalism.
- x0x0 3y agoIf you spent $500/day/toilet cleaning a conventional toilet that costs $30k, it would take you 3400 days to break even. And you could have that conventional toilet installed in under a month.
- opwieurposiu 3y agoI would so love to be the caretaker of a toilet in Honolulu for $400,000. Where do I apply for this job?
- beastman82 3y ago[flagged]
- beaeglebeached 3y ago[flagged]
- RobRivera 3y agoId much prefer you not spread falsities about the islands, thank you.
- beaeglebeached 3y ago[dead]
- huytersd 3y agoI just set up a new business and it cost me to $27,000 to put in two male and female toilets. $1.7 mill to too much.
- jerrysievert 3y agoI still wonder why they didn't just purchase some Portland loo's: https://portlandloo.com/faq/ https://portlandloo.com/faq/ they work well, are actually pleasant to use, and are nigh indestructible. editing to add that they are for sale for $95000 each.
- throwup238 3y ago> The Portland Loo® also uses blue lights to prevent drug users from locating veins. This was probably a deal breaker in San Francisco.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoI didn't know about these, but they really seem like they are extremely well designed: 1. First, they look pretty nice from the outside. 2. Stainless steel, so easy to clean. 3. It's really hard to balance privacy with keeping things from being a haven from drug use and prostitution in urban areas, they seem like they did a great job with that. 4. Price seems reasonable.
- beaeglebeached 3y agoCall me old school but id build a block hut with a drain at the bottom and run a sprinkler at the top of every hour to flush out any lingering addicts who haven't passed out and put a time limit on the continuity of the prostitution.
- jerrysievert 3y ago> run a sprinkler at the top of every hour to flush out any lingering addicts who haven't passed out and put a time limit on the continuity of the prostitution a good public restroom needs to be able to be used by the public. i'm guessing that if you were visiting a foreign city/country and needed to use the restroom and found a nice, clean public restroom to use, you'd probably not want to be rained on while relieving yourself.
- hedora 3y agoIf you think this is bad, consider how much extra private citizens pay when trying to build or repair a house. The planning process for this toilet has been expedited by city officials.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jimrandomh 3y ago"Inefficiency" is a dishonest euphemism. This is the result of corruption. The former SF public works director is in prison (https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-san-francisco-public-works-director-sentenced-seven-years-federal-prison https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-san-francisco-pu...), but SF city government is structured in a way that there are many agencies that each get a chance to create a delay if not bribed. From the article: > Under city law, for example, installing the Noe Valley toilet — even the free one — requires that the Recreation and Parks Department coordinate with or seek approval from San Francisco Public Works, the Planning Department, the Department of Building Inspection, the Arts Commission, the Public Utilities Commission, the Mayor’s Office on Disability, and Pacific Gas and Electric. Bribes are expensive. The structures created these organizations created in order to make it possible for them to extract bribes are also expensive, even to those who do not pay.
- rahimnathwani 3y agoSan Francisco government suffers from NIH syndrome. This is just one example. The school district is trying to invent a way to teach algebra to 8th graders. Like it's never been done before, and no other district is doing it successfully: https://sfeducation.substack.com/p/trash-cans-and-math-policy https://sfeducation.substack.com/p/trash-cans-and-math-polic...
- readthenotes1 3y agoIt's probably never been done in such a way that has equitable outcomes regardless of student
- rahimnathwani 3y agoI can't tell whether this is a serious comment :(
- readthenotes1 3y agoI thought the half a million dollars for a new garbage can design was the symbol for San Franciscan government efficiency? https://www.ktvu.com/news/san-francisco-pilots-6-competing-trash-can-prototypes-including-20000-can https://www.ktvu.com/news/san-francisco-pilots-6-competing-t...
- Whoppertime 3y agohttps://youtu.be/qKRuhiMDOjo https://youtu.be/qKRuhiMDOjo? Reminds me of a Stossel segment.