Out in the open, Sacramento’s homeless face a hidden public health crisis

Finding a toilet became more difficult for Sacramento’s homeless population during the coronavirus pandemic, as gas stations and fast food joints closed their restrooms and public facilities periodically shuttered in an effort to rein in the outbreak. The pandemic compounded existing issues for Sacramento’s homeless population, which has long struggled to access toilets and sinks.

Bathroom closures occurred in the name of public health. But in the absence of restroom facilities and with no biological way to avoid going to the bathroom, people relieve themselves outside if they have no other choice. That fallback option poses a public health risk and, homeless advocates said, a human rights violation.

“For everybody now, finding a bathroom when you need one is challenging,” said Bob Erlenbusch, executive director of the Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness. “[Bathrooms at] gas stations, 7-Eleven, McDonald’s are closed. So especially for homeless people, if you’re not in an encampment, which most people aren’t, access to sanitation is even more challenging than it already was.”

Bonnie Sue Eisner, who lives in her car in Sacramento, said it has become much harder to find an open bathroom since the start of the pandemic.

“It’s worse,” she said. “The stores won’t let you, or the restaurants. You can’t use the bathroom at Starbucks.” Eisner added she thought this would inconvenience anyone who wanted to find a restroom in the city. “It’s not just a homeless problem,” she said.

For Eisner and others experiencing homelessness, public restrooms and bathrooms in stores used to be the main options. But as businesses closed their bathrooms due to the pandemic, some public buildings did the same.

Library restrooms are closed, as are city community centers, which are being used for modified summer camps. Public restrooms at City Hall and the Sacramento Valley Station, however, remain open.

“The city and county are following all State public health orders which have mandated the closures of public buildings during the pandemic,” wrote Grace Nunez, a spokeswoman with the city of Sacramento, in an email to The Sacramento Bee.

Disputes over public bathrooms

Homeless advocates have feuded with the city over public park bathrooms and portable bathrooms for years.

Homeless advocates said it helps to have the 51 portable bathrooms and 56 hand-washing stations put out by the Sacramento COVID-19 Homelessness Response Team, but they cannot accommodate Sacramento’s homeless population of approximately 5,570 people.

“We need more open public bathrooms,” said Sister Libby Fernandez, founder of the Mercy Pedalers, a Sacramento nonprofit that serves people on the streets.

The problem isn’t just the number of toilets; it’s also the hours which they are available. According to homeless advocates, city buildings and park bathrooms close at night, meaning people have to go long stretches without an open restroom.

Nunez said in an email there are 22 park bathrooms in the city that are open 24 hours a day.

“Public restrooms are open and operating during park hours—sunrise to sunset — that has always been the case,” wrote Sacramento County public information officer Janna Haynes in an email to The Sacramento Bee. “This is a maintenance and safety issue.”

But Fernandez said she has heard of and observed more limited operating hours in many cases.

“If you’re sleeping all night and have no place to go and have to wait until 10 a.m., you have to go somewhere,” Fernandez said. “It’s a real issue. I mean, first thing I do when I wake up is go to the restroom. It’s a natural thing that everyone needs to do.”

Eisner said it is nearly impossible for her to find an open bathroom between dusk and dawn. Being unable to enter public restrooms in the early morning hours, she said, leaves her and others in a highly uncomfortable situation.

“It’s really a violation of your human rights,” Eisner said, citing Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. “It’s very degrading and humiliating. And more so for women.”

Parks and their associated bathrooms also closed over recent holiday weekends — to discourage family gatherings, Haynes wrote. Over such pandemic weekends, Sacramento’s homeless population had very few toilets or sinks available to them.

With bathrooms closed a problem emerges for everybody who might need a chance to relieve themselves: Whether or not restrooms are available, people need to go.

Unresolved toilet troubles

In May, scientists found alarmingly high levels of E. coli bacteria in the American River, which may be due in part to dog and goose feces, but may also connect to homeless encampments upstream that lack bathrooms.

County officials have said they do not keep public toilets near the river because facilities have been vandalized in the past.

Sacramento homeless advocates have pushed for the construction of more public restrooms for years. A May 2018 report by the Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness found that most of Sacramento’s 205 parks either have no bathrooms or have restroom facilities with limited hours. In the central city, which has a higher concentration of homeless people, only five of 22 parks have restrooms.

Four more park bathrooms are currently under construction including a Portland Loo restroom set to open in September in Cesar Chavez Plaza, Nunez wrote.

Other creative restroom solutions have been abandoned. In 2016, Sacramento prototyped a mobile bathroom called Pit Stop modeled after a San Francisco program. Pit Stop was staffed by two attendants and had three stalls and a trash receptacle, but the city abandoned it after six months largely because it would have cost $347,198 to operate per year.

Erlensbusch told The Bee at the time the program might have been cost-effective given that the city already spends $350,000 per year cleaning up human waste.

Others have proposed increasing the number of porta-potties available, pandemic aside. Sacramento civil rights attorney Mark Merin filed a class action lawsuit against the city of Sacramento in February, aiming to keep in place a portable toilet that a number of homeless people used. The lawsuit stated that “a compassionate private citizen” hired a company to place a port-a-potty near a homeless encampment, but that the city removed it just nine days later without notice.

Merin dropped the lawsuit later that month, but said he anticipated more portable toilets to crop up on public land in the wake of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s call for action on homelessness in California.

Newsom outlined a plan to reduce street homelessness, provide mental health services and finance affordable housing.

“You know, that’s like number one,” Eisner said. “Water, a bathroom, food, safety.”

“You can get people in that kind of frame of mind,” she added, “Where you start talking about making plans for their life, and they’re just like, ‘Oh my God, I just need to find a bathroom.’”

This story was updated at 9:41 a.m. on July 21 to include the number of park bathrooms open 24 hours a day and clarify the number under construction.

This story was originally published July 20, 2020 at 4:00 AM.