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A blue port-a-potty without soap, toilet paper or hand sanitizer stands in the sun near a South Dallas homeless camp with its door propped open. Next to it, a portable sink awaits use — its soap dispenser empty.
They sit on the corner of Gould Street and Al Lipscomb Way in the Cedars area of South Dallas, in view of the Dallas skyline. The camp they are meant to service starts at the tree line about 100 feet away, where people stay cool beneath the shade.
The toilet and sink are part of a pilot initiative launched in February that aims to provide homeless people with access to basic hygiene. The city is particularly targeting people living in encampments that the homeless solutions office is trying to move into shelters or housing.
Currently the toilets service six locations, including by the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library downtown. The program costs the city $23,000 annually, part of $1.14 million it has set aside for encampment cleanups and outreach to the unsheltered population.
But many homeless people interviewed by said they found them often too dirty or understocked to use. Some living near them weren’t even aware they were there.
Flavio Gonzales, who often visits his friend Gloria who lives in a tent on Chestnut Street, said they noticed a port-a-potty placed near them a couple months ago. But he said they rarely use it — it’s dirty most of the time.
“I clean it!” he said when asked if they ever see workers refreshing it.
Thomas Earl Castle, who lives in a tent nearby, said he and others try to service it with whatever cleaning supplies they can round up, though it’s difficult for anybody to keep it in perfect condition all the time.
“About an hour ago that wasn’t there,” he said, pointing to excrement on the floor of the port-a-potty.
The condition of the portable toilet at Gould Street is hit or miss, said Cedric Hubbard, who stays at the camp there, but added that it’s great when it’s clean.
In addition to the toilet, Hubbard said homeless solutions staff come around trying to offer shelter and other resources every now and then. He doesn’t know of anybody in the immediate area who has gotten housing recently.
“Somebody might, nobody I know personally,” he said.
He then pulled out a cleaning notice from the city, given to him and others at the camp. Everyone needed to leave the area with their belongings because it was scheduled for a sweep. He said city staff told them they had just a few days.
Maintenance issues
City officials indicated the toilets should be cleaned at least three times per week when the program was rolled out, but records in the port-a-potties show that might not be happening.
The port-a-potty vendors — United Site Services and United Rentals — are in charge of maintenance, according to Office of Homeless Solutions director Christine Crossley, and city staff checks the toilets randomly to see if they’re doing their job. Neither vendor responded to repeated calls about the state of the toilets.
Not all of the port-a-potties are receiving the same amount of attention — the ones by the library are getting priority.
According to the Chestnut Street port-a-potty’s log, it had only been cleaned twice in the last two weeks. The one at Gould Street has been getting attention, at most, twice every week.
“I’m not sure if they’ve been cleaning and not filling out the logs, I can’t speak for them, but our street outreach manager is working with both vendors now to make sure that they understand, not only do you need to do the cleanings, you need to fill out the logs,” said Crossley.
But even three cleanings per week might not be enough to keep the toilets sanitary.
The port-a-potties at the library were originally on that schedule but library staff told homeless solutions it wasn’t enough — now they are serviced at least three times weekly.
United Rental owns and services the ones by the library and United Site Services owns the others. Originally United Rental was going to provide toilets for all the sites but declined to put them at camps because of security concerns.
This delayed the program and increased costs, forcing the city to hire United Site Services and to remove one of the sites that was originally part of the plan. The library got its port-a-potties in early March but the camps waited until the end of May, two months later than expected.
Willie “Trey” Seals, who has been homeless for about a year and spends a lot of his time in front of the library, said he uses the ones there and that they’re usually fairly clean.
“Honestly, that was a great thing,” he said. “I’ve been seeing quite a few around.”
Anita Hutten, who sleeps at the entrance of the library on a regular basis, also uses the toilets when the library is closed but sanitizes its surfaces with her own wipes beforehand.
“I don’t care if they clean it 24 hours,” she said, adding she often finds clothes and other miscellaneous items scattered around in them.
The need for public restrooms
Hubbard likes the port-a-potty because it’s better than going “over in those trees,” he said, pointing behind him to the greenery shading the camp.
Sites for the port-a-potties were chosen partly to give people another option when nature calls — there are no 24-hour public restrooms near the camps.
The lack of bathrooms has led to a large number of reports of public indecency near the camps, said Crossley, something the city hopes to reduce with the program. This will also help people avoid getting cited for relieving themselves in public, increasing the likelihood they will get into housing, eventually.
“Being arrested for public indecency … frankly doesn’t solve your homelessness,” she said.
Michael Kabtimer, an activist with Say It With Your Chest and Dallas Liberation Movement, comes to the Gould Street camp twice per week to help people with laundry and distribute water and ice. Most people, he said, have no other choice but to find a place outdoors when it’s time to go.
“Realistically, most people are using whatever their own type of creative solutions for this may be, outside that port-a-potty,” he said.
Some shelters in the area, such as Austin Street Center, have opened up their restrooms to the public during working hours to help those living in nearby camps.
Daniel Roby, the shelter’s CEO, said he views having access to a restroom as a human right.
“It’s incumbent upon us as the community to say, if we don’t want things that are unsanitary, if we don’t want people to be cited for something that’s a human bodily function, then it’s our obligation to make sure that we provide something that’s safe for people to do,” he said.
Potentially erecting more permanent public bathrooms came up during a presentation of the program to the City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Solutions Committee, something Crossley said they would consider in the future but that isn’t feasible at the moment.
“I do think we need to have a broader discussion about publicly available restrooms across the city for people, everybody needs them, and sometimes it’s hard for homeless people to find them,” council member Cara Mendelsohn said at the meeting.
Mendelsohn and council member Paula Blackmon also expressed concerns about whether the port-a-potties encourage people to stay in the camps and not seek shelter.
“I just don’t want to create a system that encourages a more permanent establishment of these sites, that’s just my concern,” Blackmon said.
A temporary solution
Tonya Mack, who stays in a tent a couple blocks from the Gould Street port-a-potty and sink, perked up when she heard about them. “They put it up for us?” she said.
She is only just hearing about the facilities, but may not get a chance to try them out.
The Gould Street camp will be forced to move soon — the site’s property owner, real estate agency Topletz Investments, told the city a week ago it’s time for them to go, said Crossley.
Dennis Topletz, the agency’s owner, said he’s in a “Catch-22″ with the city, which is reluctant to move the camp forcibly but also tells his company to keep the lot clean. Finally, he reached out to Dallas Code Compliance to issue a notice to those in the camp to move, he said.
“My problem is, the city is on me, and people are on my property causing the problem,” he said.
The toilet placements are only supposed to be temporary, Crossley said, part of a broader effort to get people living at the encampments into shelters or housing through the Dallas R.E.A.L. Time Rehousing Program.
In this case, they had not started getting people at Gould Street into the program yet and won’t be able to help them all before the sweep. Getting people onto a list for housing at other locations usually takes about four to six weeks, she said.
“There hasn’t been enough time, that would’ve needed to happen a month ago,” she said. “This was certainly on the radar, but not yet, because we’re somewhere else right now.”
Crossley said they haven’t decided whether to move the port-a-potty from Gould Street quite yet, understanding some in the area might use it even after the property is reclaimed. They were able to delay the camp’s removal by three days.
Mack is excited about the toilet and sink, but most concerned with the sweep.
“Where am I going?,” she asked.