Public Bathrooms: Why are They Disappearing in America?

Finding a public bathroom is a really crappy experience, but recently, it’s gone further down the tubes.

OK  — using a public bathroom has never exactly been fun, but you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. Over the past few years, it seems like finding a public restroom has been increasingly difficult. Access has been getting restricted, and if you do get inside, they’re often poorly maintained.

This experience recently reached a tipping point Starbucks when revoked public access to its restrooms, restricting this luxury for its paying customers. While reserving bathrooms for patrons isn’t a shocking concept, it is surprising that the chain reversed the open-door policy it implemented in 2018.

Starbucks’ decision points to a bigger issue that has turned public bathrooms into political hotspots. A small number of people abuse their access to these restrooms, and as a result, millions of people are losing their ability to pee in peace.

It starts with the cities

If you find yourself in need of a public bathroom in the US, good luck finding one. In the country, there’s an average of 8 public bathrooms per 100,000 people — and that data is from 2021. These numbers have likely changed since then, and not in favor of the average bathroom user.

Operating a public bathroom in a city is not a cheap endeavor, it can range from $80,000 to $500,000 per year. There are expected expenses — water, supplies, cleaning, and plumbing — but cities know to anticipate other costs. If left unattended, people will vandalize the facilities and use the space for illegal activities. This results in repairs (or closures).

Some cities have resorted to hiring security for their public bathrooms, but that’s a significant additional expense. Other cities opt to limit hours of operation or close the facilities altogether. This is a problem because bathrooms are generally located in areas with high foot traffic, like parks, walking trails, or by transit stations. In New York, the subway systemhad over 700 bathrooms in the 1970s, which was reduced to under 100 in the 1990s. Of course, money was the motive, and it doesn’t seem the situation has gotten any better.

In 2002, former Mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg joked that there was no need for more public bathrooms in the city because people could just use Starbucks’. And he might have been right for a time, but now those toilets aren’t open to the general public. You need to pay if you want to pee.

Then, the businesses follow

Just like city-owned restrooms, it costs money for businesses to operate bathrooms. This can range from a couple hundred dollars a month to $2,000, depending on the size of the facility.

Businesses need customers to come in, so having public restrooms can be beneficial. In an ideal world, people would come into the shop, use the toilet, and make a purchase. If not, they’d use the bathroom and scurry out, trying to go unnoticed. But that hasn’t been the case recently, and Starbucks knows it.

In the company’s official statement, it didn’t just limit bathroom usage to customers; it also revised its code of conduct. This includes bans on disruptive behavior, outside alcohol, smoking and drugs, and panhandling. Most people know these activities are prohibited, but there’s a reason all of these rules were introduced in one statement.

In other words: Homeless people are not welcome in Starbucks.

Most businesses can resonate with Starbucks’ code of conduct on some level, but it’s not like they can completely close the bathrooms. Every state has its own laws dictating restaurant restroom requirements (commercial businesses only need to provide them for employees), but there is one consistent: The bathrooms are for customers. If the business permits public use, it’s a courtesy.

Did COVID cause this?

Many people have that one place, the place that they know has a public restroom they can use in a pinch. In many cases, those doors were sealed during the COVID pandemic, and they may not have reopened in the same way.

The pandemic heightened concerns about bathroom cleanliness, and it made customers value well-maintained restrooms. This mentality may still be lingering, but who are we really kidding? When you gotta go, you gotta go, and an overflowing trash can or stall graffiti isn’t going to stop you.

In actuality, early COVID protocols allowed public bathrooms to be shut down, and businesses likely saw a difference. Supply and maintenance costs went down, people weren’t destroying structures, and businesses saved money. Now that they’ve seen the difference, there’s a good shot that they won’t return to their loose restroom policies.

Who’s actually impacted?

Of all of the human rights, you’d think using the bathroom is one of the most basic and necessary. But many cities and businesses prioritize certain things over your right to use the bathroom; specifically, they’d rather have money.

In cities where public bathrooms have shut down, unhoused people (or those without stable housing) are often left without the facilities they need. There are certainly instances of dangerous and illegal activities in bathrooms, but the number of people using them for their intended purposes is drastically higher. While it only takes a few people to ruin city-run facilities for everyone, the people who need them most are left without any alternative.

OK, there is one alternative, but it’s downright unhygienic for everyone. This has been the case in Los Angeles, a city that’s become a case study for its lack of public restrooms. As it turns out, when there’s no designated bathroom, any place will become a bathroom.

This issue is only amplified when businesses like Starbucks make their bathroom policies stricter. To be fair, the coffee chain never intended to be the country’s public restroom — but it did want to capitalize on foot traffic in busy areas. So it shouldn’t be shocking when people enter the cafes trying to use the bathroom, especially when cities aren’t offering a better solution.

As cities keep reducing their number of bathrooms and businesses adopt pay-to-use policies, the lack of toilets is causing problems. For some people, this is an inconvenience, but other people rely on public toilets. Even if you don’t use public bathrooms, the shortage has indirect impacts that are becoming impossible to ignore, and they’re making cities look really crappy.