Mark Lloyd parked his black sedan in the lot of Dr. Jose Rizal Park on Beacon Hill and began unloading supplies: three cases of kitty litter nested in three black buckets; three lids that looked right for sitting topped each off; an assortment of chemicals, hand sanitizer and trashbags filling a black bag. An army green pop-up tent came as well, its bag’s convenient straps giving the wearer the look of a low-rent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.
With the goods and some journalists in tow, Lloyd — a tall man with a shock of gray hair — walked down a trail under a steely gray sky, past the dog park and into a homeless encampment nestled between Interstate 5 and Interstate 90 to deliver toilets that he made for homeless people camping outdoors.
He struck up a conversation with two female residents to explain how the toilets worked.
What followed was a sales pitch that would have made OxiClean’s Billy Mays proud.
“The lids. Aren’t they nice?” he said, handing one over. You want a facility for your tent? “Say no more!”
Lloyd is a one-man army when it comes to the toilets. He doesn’t have a place for people to donate to support his work, and doesn’t really want one. He just wants to tackle the problem, and his portable potties are one way to make that happen.
Lacking the appropriate facilities to accomplish this basic task can lead to disease and death.
The issue of sanitation is real and extensive, touching people here in Seattle and across the world. Lacking the appropriate facilities to accomplish this basic task can lead to disease and death, but there are insufficient options in the city and county to meet the need, and efforts to expand are met with resistance. That’s left do-it-yourself solutions such as Lloyd’s to partially fill the gaps.
Nov. 19 marks World Toilet Day, an event meant to focus awareness on and inspire action to solve the sanitation crisis faced by countries across the globe. According to the United Nations, 4.5 billion people — more than half of the total population of the planet — live without the means to safely dispose of human waste.
That can feel abstract in an urban area where access to a modern flush toilet is only a coffee shop away, but the reality is that even in the United States, it’s estimated that more than 1 million people live in homes that are not fully plumbed. That means the home could lack a tub or shower, running water or a toilet.
And those are people who have a home.
MacGyvering a solution
When Lloyd first became involved in responding to the homelessness crisis in Seattle, he noticed the lack of hygiene facilities in the camps. City officials attempted to address this in some of the larger encampments by dropping off Honeybuckets, but they were expensive, easily vandalized and ultimately not appropriate for smaller, more secluded camps.
So Lloyd went online and started researching ways to alleviate the problem. What he devised was an easy-to-maintain toilet facility that, while imperfect, makes a difference in the lives of the homeless people who get their hands on one.
The final design is elegant in its simplicity. Lloyd buys a bucket, a lid shaped like a toilet seat and black trash bags. He lines the bucket with the trash bag and fills the bag with either a mix of chemicals (also available online) or kitty litter. He switched to kitty litter because the chemicals were more difficult for homeless people to replace and both substances achieved the same goal.
“You want the fluids to not be fluid,” Lloyd explained.
That set-up works well inside a tent, which he finds women camping outside prefer because they don’t have to leave their shelter in the middle of the night.
For shared facilities, a $25 pop-up tent without a floor completes the assembly.
Folks use the restroom, tie off the bag and throw it away.
Relief is necessary
People take access to toilets for granted. Even in modern, progressive Seattle, access can be hard to come by for many.
“My stance is that the U.S. is like a Third World country, but we have much better PR, and we somehow think that everybody has access to a house and everything they need,” said Ronni Gilboa, manager at Urban Rest Stop, a service of the Low Income Housing Institute that provides showers and toilet facilities to homeless and low-income people.
Gilboa knows that is far from the truth.
The best figures available show that 11,643 people were homeless in King County in January. Of those, 5,485 live unsheltered. That means that on top of other basic considerations like finding meals, accessing health care or working the systems to get into housing, people who live outdoors must find places to relieve themselves.
There are three Urban Rest Stops in Seattle, located in downtown, Ballard and University District. The sites offer access to showers, laundry and restrooms, among other services. Gilboa manages the locations in the downtown and University District.
The downtown location gave 9,569 people 29,274 showers and cleaned 17,488 loads of laundry in the first three quarters of 2017, Gilboa said. The University District location, which is smaller with more limited hours, helped more than 2,000 people.
Still, for every person served, Gilboa estimates she turns away three or four more.
“We can’t provide service to everybody that wants it and needs it,” Gilboa said.
Many of her clients are the working poor, who live in places without ready access to running water. Others may be in shelters, where many people compete for limited shower and restroom facilities. Others are living outside.
Toilets and showers are critical; without access to basic hygiene, it’s impossible to function, much less hold down a job, and Seattle simply doesn’t have many public restrooms, and almost none open at all hours. Private entities are loath to open their restrooms to non-paying customers.
“Not everybody can afford three or four bucks to buy a latte somewhere,” Gilboa said.
A public health crisis
An inability to find a commode does not eliminate the need for one, leaving people with few options but to relieve themselves in situations where their waste can pose a danger to themselves or others.
In San Diego County, a southern California county known for its beautiful beaches, bio-tech industry, daring brewers and now a deadly hepatitis A outbreak that has claimed 20 lives and infected almost 550 people, according to county data.
That point was made brutally clear in San Diego County, a southern California county known for its beautiful beaches, bio-tech industry, daring brewers and now a deadly hepatitis A outbreak that has claimed 20 lives and infected almost 550 people, according to county data.
The disease spread person-to-person and through contact with environments contaminated by fecal material. The majority of those impacted were homeless people, users of illicit drugs or both, according to the county.
“When I first heard about it I was nauseated and then I got angry and then the bookkeeper in me started adding it up,” Gilboa said. She estimates that the cost to respond to the crisis through vaccination, sanitation and education add up to millions.
“What could they have done upfront and redirected those millions of dollars?” Gilboa asked.
Without basic sanitation, disease can spread like wildfire, said Darrell Rodgers, assistant division director of the Community Toxics, Science and Policy of the Environmental Health Services Division of Seattle King County Public Health.
Diseases like hepatitis A and other gastrointestinal ailments are transmitted through the “fecal-oral” route. If someone goes to the bathroom and can’t thoroughly wash their hands, they may touch their mouth or face and transmit infectious material. People — and almost everything they excrete — become potential sources of infection 24 to 48 hours later.
If Patient Zero then shares a cigarette or a bag of potato chips with one or more others, the infection begins to grow in orders of magnitude.
“They don’t have the luxury to worry about ‘Oh, did you wash your hands?’” Rodgers said. “When you’re living on the street and you’re hungry, you just take it.”
In an ideal world, a person has access to warm running water that they can wash their hands in for a minimum of 20 seconds with soap.
The Public Health Department is developing a plan to immunize people living in shelters to ensure the crisis wracking San Diego doesn’t play out here as well. But serving people living unsheltered is more challenging.
Rodgers could not comment directly on Lloyd’s project, although he’s seen some of the toilets in the field. He did outline best practices to prevent the spread of disease.
In an ideal world, a person has access to warm running water that they can wash their hands in for a minimum of 20 seconds with soap.
“Then you scale down from that,” Rodgers said.
No warm running water? Maybe you have clean standing water from a bottle. After that, use hand sanitizer. Although it’s meant for touch-ups rather than a full clean, it’s still better than nothing, Rodgers said.
The problem of sanitation is huge, and it’s growing. There are no simple solutions. Official portable toilets are expensive and difficult to site, and businesses are not likely to open their doors to homeless, non-paying clients.
“Everybody is put in a bad situation by this emergent issue, and government and agencies need to get together and figure out how to serve a population that’s indigent and is in desperate need for basic sanitation,” Rodgers said.
Ashley Archibald is a Staff Reporter covering local government, policy and equity. Have a story idea? She can be can reached at ashleya (at) realchangenews (dot) org. Twitter @AshleyA_RC
RELATED ARTICLE:
Portland Loo could still come to Ballard and the University District
Wait, there's more. Check out the full November 15 issue.