Robert Turner used to use the bathroom at Starbucks locations and public libraries in the heart of D.C. But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Turner, who is 41 and has lived on the street for five years, was shut out of his usual spots.
“It’s been harder, and you ain’t got no resources during this,” he said while standing outside of Union Station on a recent day, holding his tent in one hand and his sleeping bag in the other. Turner sleeps in different places around the city on different days. He pitches his tent in parks, near office buildings, and outside Metro stations.
For Washingtonians experiencing homelessness like him, the pandemic has made it even more difficult than normal to find public restrooms and places to wash oneself — at the very moment these residents need them most. In the spring, the public health emergency forced private businesses and government buildings to close for more than two months, limiting bathroom access for everyone. But the shutdown especially affected unsheltered residents, who rely on publicly accessible spaces like restaurants, coffee shops, museums, and libraries for toilets and sinks.
“These are folks who used to be able to go to Union Station, the grocery store, [and elsewhere] to use the bathroom,” says Ann Marie Staudenmaier, an attorney at the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless. “When COVID shut everything down, people literally had nowhere to go use the bathroom or wash their hands.”
The District has taken steps to make handwashing stations and port-o-potties available for residents living on the streets. It’s also rented out hotel rooms — at a cost of $2 million per month — for those at high risk of getting sick from the coronavirus. D.C. pays more than $73,000 per month to maintain the handwashing stations, according to a spokesperson for the D.C. Department of General Services.
Still, homeless advocates say the sanitary facilities haven’t been well maintained, and the hotels are just temporary locations where residents can isolate themselves after being exposed to the virus. Neither intervention solves the underlying issue for the hundreds of single adults in D.C. who lack permanent homes: a dearth of public restrooms that don’t come with a price of admission.
Not Enough Places to Go
Debbie Weinstein, the executive director of the Coalition on Human Needs, a D.C.-based advocacy group focused on people experiencing homelessness, says the pandemic has added another layer of difficulty for them. She says city libraries are a common place for these residents to get warm in the winter and use the bathroom year-round.
D.C.’s library buildings were closed to the public from March 11 to June 29. While branches have begun welcoming back customers as part of the city’s phase two reopening, they’re currently restricting the length of customer visits and the number of people who can occupy the buildings at once.
Customers can use branch restrooms but can only spend additional time in the libraries to exchange items or use the computers, says George Williams, a spokesperson for D.C. Public Library. DCPL runs more than two dozen libraries across the District, though many are located outside of the city center.
Since April, the D.C. Department of Human Services has installed more than 30 handwashing stations near homeless encampments to help curb the spread of the coronavirus. But homeless advocates say the stations haven’t provided sufficient sanitation services for people living on the streets.
More than 650 single adults were counted as unsheltered during an annual homeless census last January. That represented an increase of about 7.5 percent from 2019 and more than double the number in 2016.
Staudenmaier of the Legal Clinic says there weren’t enough handwashing stations to serve this unsheltered population, and that the locations were far from two of the city’s largest homeless encampments in NoMa and Foggy Bottom. She says her clients found that the stations ran out of water quickly and weren’t well maintained.
The city also installed nine port-o-potties near encampments, but ran into trouble when the toilets weren’t cleaned regularly, according to Staudenmaier. “Many times, the port-o-potties have become overflowing with waste, or they’re just unusable,” she says.
In response to such concerns, DHS plans to install five new port-o-potties across the city this month, says agency director Laura Zeilinger. The port-o-potties will be located in Truxton Circle, NoMa, Georgetown, and Adams Morgan, as well as outside of Union Station.
Zeilinger says the city has resolved the issue of the maintenance delays, noting that the port-o-potties are now being cleaned five times a week. But there aren’t any plans to add more handwashing stations at this time, according to a spokesperson for DHS.
For his part, Robert Turner says he’s used the stations and port-o-potties throughout the pandemic. Recently, he’s also visited the city’s downtown day center, on New York Avenue NW, to obtain face masks and other sanitary supplies.
DHS is providing masks, sanitations kits, and meals to unsheltered residents, Zeilinger says. In addition, they can make appointments at the downtown day center to use its bathrooms, showers, and laundry services.
Plans For More Public Restrooms
The pandemic has highlighted a longstanding problem for unsheltered residents: the lack of publicly accessible bathrooms in the District.
Marcia Bernbaum, a mentor and an advisor to the Downtown DC Public Restroom Initiative, which advocates for increasing restroom access, says this issue “faces everybody, not just the homeless.” What’s more, it’s gotten worse with the closure of downtown businesses and restaurants.
“If you don’t have a place to go, you’re going to be stuck with urinating and defecating in public, which is both embarrassing and is a misdemeanor,” says Bernbaum. In D.C., those acts carry fines of up to $500, 90 days in jail, or both. (Some advocacy groups, including the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, have urged the city to decriminalize public urination and defecation by people who lack private toilets.)
Bernbaum helped conduct a 2018 study on public restroom availability in downtown Washington. It found there were only two public restrooms open 24/7: those at the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials. Another five apart from the National Mall were open during the day: the National Portrait Gallery, the National Building Museum, the White House Visitor Center, Union Station, and Lafayette Park.
That year, supporters of the Public Restroom Initiative lobbied the D.C. Council to adopt legislation that established pilot programs encouraging more public bathrooms. The council later funded the programs in the District’s 2020 budget.
Last month, the Department of General Services asked Advisory Neighborhood Commissions and Business Improvement Districts if they wanted to participate in the effort, according to Bernbaum. One pilot will initially set up stand-alone restrooms at two sites, following the example of other cities such as Portland, Oregon, and Paris. DGS will then evaluate the program to see if it should be expanded.
As the planning continues, Bernbaum says the temporary port-o-potties near encampments, while not perfect, are valuable: Unsheltered residents now have access to toilets they don’t normally have at their disposal. “I’m not saying they are the best option, but it is an option they did not have before,” she says.
Where To Stay During A Pandemic?
Meanwhile, concerns over the density of city shelters have left people without homes facing a tough choice: spend the night indoors in a congregate setting or stay on the streets and risk losing access to bathrooms.
Sean Read, the chief community solutions officer at Friendship Place, a nonprofit homeless services organization based in Northwest, says many people are choosing to go unsheltered out of fear about COVID-19.
“There’s been an uptick overall with unsheltered homelessness,” says Read, who estimated a 50% spike in some parts of the city. “And a lot of that was just people [who] said ‘yeah, I usually go to shelters, but I feel unsafe because of the close quarters.’”
Mayor Muriel Bowser has received praise for reforming the city’s family shelters during her tenure, but has also been criticized over the state of shelters for single men and women. The conditions at the latter shelters have reportedly included fighting, theft, and — this year — the spread of illness.
Roughly 350 people in city shelters have tested positive for COVID-19, official data show; 21 have died. Coronavirus cases in shelters have stayed low after an initial surge in May, according to the data.
The District has sought to ensure that those living in shelters maintain social distance and follow other public health guidance to avoid transmitting COVID-19. DHS requires daily medical screenings involving temperature checks and asking people if they’re experiencing COVID symptoms like fever and coughing.
If someone fails a screening, they’re relocated to an isolation quarantine site. There, they undergo a coronavirus test and are subject to contact tracing to determine if others they’ve been in proximity to also must be isolated.
Additionally, DHS has rented hundreds of hotel rooms to provide safe, isolated living space for people experiencing homelessness. People 65 and older, as well as those with underlying conditions that put them at elevated risk for the disease, can also request a room.
Winter Adversity Lies Ahead
But the hotel rooms have offered only a short-term solution for a larger problem, according to homeless advocates. “As soon as those folks recovered, they were kicked out of those hotels and had to go back into the shelter system or find another place to stay,” says the Legal Clinic’s Staudenmaier.
That’s in part why advocates are concerned about how people experiencing homelessness will fare with the pandemic this winter. They fear many will face the same choice as before: go into crowded shelters — albeit ones now taking COVID precautions — or live on the streets in dangerously cold temperatures.
Still, DHS says it plans to open additional spaces within shelters to accommodate social distancing during hypothermia season, and to rent rooms at another hotel. The department will also continue with regular medical screenings.
“It becomes more urgent now that we’re in October,” says Weinstein of the Coalition on Human Needs. “It’s going to get colder and we can’t do nothing.”
This article is part of our 2020 contribution to the DC Homeless Crisis Reporting Project, in collaboration with other local newsrooms. The collective works will be published throughout the day at DCHomelessCrisis.press. You can also join the public Facebook group or follow #DCHomelessCrisis on Twitter to discuss further.
