Nergui Manalsuren
NEW YORK, Jan 3 2008 (IPS) – When New York City banned cigarette smoking in bars and restaurants several years ago, the sardonic television host Jon Stewart pointed out that forcing smokers into the streets outside would also help mask the city s ubiquitous urine smell.
With 2008 designated by the United Nations as the International Year of Sanitation , public toilet activists are stepping up their demands for expanded facilities in one of the richest metropolises on Earth.
According to the American Restroom Association, Singapore, with a population of 4.5 people, has 29,500 public toilets, while New York City, with some 8.2 million residents, has a relatively scant 1,178 public toilets.
Currently, the city s only public restrooms are located in outdoor parks and the subway system.
After years of complaints, local officials came up with a strategy to provide more public toilets through a street furniture contract given to private businesses by the City s Department of Transportation. However, the contract requires installation of only 20 automatic public toilets over a 20-year period, compared to 3,300 bus stop shelters and 330 newsstands.
The public toilets for the city of New York should be thousands of toilets, not a few toilets, said Steve Stollman, the founder and organiser of the Privy Council, a group of New Yorkers who see the need for a working system of public toilets in New York City.
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That s a joke, it s a pathetic joke putting a few toilets, for example, in Brooklyn, he told IPS. Brooklyn has two million people.
The World Toilet Association, based in South Korea, views public toilets as a basic human right and says that municipal governments all over the world, including New York City, should provide them free of cost to the public.
Robert Brubaker, the programme manager of the American Restroom Association, agrees that toilets are part of the so-called commons facilities that serve the basic needs of all people.
Streetlamps, sidewalks and roads are all public goods that are available without users fees, and public restrooms are no different, he said.
But New York City largely fails to provide public restrooms even at a fee.
Sometimes people offer a dollar to use our bathroom, said Olga, a hostess at a restaurant in midtown Manhattan.
Of course we don t charge them for using it, but our administration does not allow non-customers to use our restroom, so it s always hard to say no to someone who needs natural relief, she said.
She cannot even suggest an alternative, because there are no public bathrooms nearby. Visitors are apparently expected to map out a toilet itinerary beforehand, using websites like nyrestroom.com or bathroomdiaries.com.
More than 40 million tourists flock to New York City each year. But the absence of bathrooms can be daunting. Altanochir, a visitor from Mongolia, told IPS that he was limiting his liquid consumption while walking around, so as not to be left in dire straits.
It is a problem for New York, said Stollman of the Privy Council, especially for the elderly. The population is getting older, and old people may not go out because they re afraid that they wouldn t able to find a place to go to the bathroom.
And that they are not going out also causes them to be, unfortunately, more vulnerable to health conditions. So these are real health issues that go beyond the fact of sanitation, he said.
Particularly affected is the city s large homeless population, which numbers in the tens of thousands, including more than 16,000 children.
What do you expect people to do? They are not welcome in respectable establishments, and they have to go to the bathroom, Stollman said.
The city s half-hearted attempts to meet this basic human need have been criticised for years, and some advocates say the latest strategy is primarily aimed at making money from advertisements on the new bus shelters, newsstands and toilets.
Access to public restrooms should be done by better utilisation of the assets we already have, not very expensive new construction, Stollman said. For example, every store that has a bathroom should be willing to allow people to use their bathrooms.
The city should act as an agent between the public and all of those private entities. Then we will have thousands restrooms that will have universal access, he added. Instead, most deals are negotiated by politicians that are not under close scrutiny, and the press is not paying attention to these deals.
