San Diego is launching several new efforts to solve a shortage of public restrooms downtown, including plans to create minimum city standards for the number of such bathrooms required in urban neighborhoods.
Similar to its existing standards for how many libraries, fire stations and acres of parkland each part of the city must have, San Diego plans to set a bar for public restrooms as the city becomes more densely populated.
Other efforts include creating new incentives for downtown housing developers, which will be allowed to build larger projects than the zoning allows if they agree to include at least two public restrooms.
To solve the problem of people being unable to find the roughly 40 public restrooms already located downtown, the city has also created an online map and added directional signs to help people find them.
In addition, the city approved last spring 50 new informational kiosks for downtown that will help people find public restrooms — especially the 15 that are open 24 hours a day.
The new efforts come in the wake of a May report from the county grand jury criticizing city officials for failing to quickly address the problem, which had already been the subject of three previous grand jury reports.
The shortage of downtown public restrooms has been blamed for the 2017 Hepatitis A outbreak and for repelling tourists shocked by the frequent presence of feces and urine on downtown sidewalks.
The San Diego Downtown Partnership says it received nearly 20,000 reports of feces and urine during just the month of August, the last month for which data were available.
In an official response to the grand jury report the City Council approved Oct. 30, San Diego agreed to make several changes that the 22-page report recommends.
But city officials rejected a key recommendation to lead a comprehensive effort to plan and secure funding for many new public restrooms downtown. City officials said they will participate in such an effort, but that county officials should lead it because the county oversees public health.
City officials say it now costs about $30,000 a month to operate each portable toilet when security and lighting are included.
While costs vary for permanent toilets based on location, amenities and other factors, city officials say they typically cost about $250,000 to install and require maintenance and security costs similar to portable toilets.
City officials have agreed to a grand jury recommendation that they study what other cities around the world have done to provide public restrooms and cope with shortages of them.
That information will help determine the standards San Diego will set for individual neighborhoods, officials said. Those new standards will be part of an update to the city’s general plan, which is a blueprint for future growth.
City officials say those general plan changes will be proposed by Mayor Todd Gloria early next year and then considered by the City Council.
Another grand jury recommendation the city rejected was paying for public restrooms with impact fees contributed by developers. Officials said that wouldn’t be legal.
Developer impact fees must be spent on problems or deficiencies created by a new development, such as the need for more park space or libraries. But officials said the need for public restrooms is largely an existing deficiency that new development in that area doesn’t exacerbate.
City officials said they expect recent increases in shelter beds and a camping ban approved last summer to help reduce the number of homeless people living on the streets downtown, which will also shrink the need for public restrooms.
But Council President Sean Elo-Rivera said the shortage of public restrooms affects more than the city’s homeless population, calling it a class issue that must be addressed.
“Many of us on this dais who are dressed a certain way, we can walk into many businesses downtown and across the city and not worry about being harassed,” he said during the council’s Oct. 30 hearing. “But if you’re a blue-collar worker, if you’re somebody getting off a shift at a hotel, or if you’re a mom with a few kids in tow, it might not be so easy to access those restrooms.”
Elo-Rivera suggested last January that San Diego lobby the state to lift a 50-year-old ban on pay toilets so the city could generate revenue to pay for more downtown public restrooms.
The city official who oversees lobbying efforts, Adrian Granda, didn’t respond this week to requests for an update on the city’s pay-toilet efforts.
City officials noted that new public restrooms are being built in the East Village Green project and that construction is slated to begin soon on a new public restroom in Horton Plaza Park.
The online map of downtown restrooms can be found at sandiego.gov/restroom or sandiego.gov/bano.
