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Comment by smadge | Hacker News Reader

Pooping is pretty high up on the hierarchy of needs. Higher than social norms. People are going to poop, sleep, eat, etc wether or not a dignified way to perform these functions is available. Solution: provide a dignified way to perform life necessities.

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Here's what I don't understand. I live in DC. There's plenty of homeless people. I see them every day. But there's very little pooping in the street. Likewise in NYC. Homeless people? Sure. Poop in the street? Not so much.

Neither place, in my experience, has an abundance of public bathrooms. There's almost none that are truly public, like a building specifically with a bathroom for the public to use. Most fast food places and coffee shops will have a lock on the door with a code so you have to buy something.

So why is it just San Francisco that has so many people pooping in the streets?

One theory is that the abundance of corner store plastic bags served street people as disposable poop receptacles. With the bag ban the street poop increased.

The graph in the article shows a pretty steady upward trend in the number of poop reports. There's no real spike corresponding to the bag ban.

Density of mental illness and a relaxed environment to do drugs and be weird.

Do some cities have more alleys, vacant lots, river banks etc. than others? Most of us wouldn't notice if people are pooping down by the river.

There used to be plenty, well... enough public toilets in SF. The junkie/homeless problem started in the 60s, and never stopped. With a push by the emptying of asylums in the 80s, and a current resurgance in opiate addiction, the problem just continues. Shelters, enforcement, all have practical limitations. The best option seems to be injection sites, and then a push for open bathrooms. But few actually want to mplement it, no matter how much they may agree in spirit. And we are back to NIMBYism. Bay area in a nutshell.

Having uncontained human poop in public places is also a huge public health issue, for the poopers and everyone else. I'd say that's more important than many social norms as well.

As bayareanative just said, just provide compostable bags, and dumpsters for collecting them. And simple public urinals.

Yup. Bio bags like for camping/pets at a minimum. Public urinals for numero uno. No million-dollar toilet that charges people like it's Europe.

Root cause analysis shows that pooping is caused by eating. By removing all sources of food, you will solve the problem entirely and indirectly!

Let's hurry up and start watering our plants with electrolytes

Please don't do this here.

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