User:JustinePorto/Public toilets in Oregon

Public toilets in Oregon, commonly called washrooms, are found at a rate of around 22 per 100,000 people. Portland had 109 public toilets in 2021. The state's biggest city designed a vandalism proof street level public toilet, which was later adopted by other cities around the country. More toilets were installed starting around 2012 to help homeless people in Portland.

Public toilets
washroom is one of the most commonly used words for public toilet in the United States. Euphemisms are often used to avoid discussing the purpose of toilets. Words used include toilet, restroom, bathroom, lavatory and john.

A 2021 study found there were 22 public toilets per 100,000 people. Portland, Oregon had 109 public toilets in 2021. Portland has experimented with pay toilets, including street level European style toilets. Public toilets are often located in semi-private public accommodations like hotels, stores, restaurants and coffee shops instead of being street level municipal maintained facilities.

Cintas awards America’s Best Public Restroom. The ten 2020 finalists included the public toilets at Portland Japanese Garden. The bathrooms follow a Zen aesthetic.

History
In the 1900s and 1910s, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Toledo, Worcester, Salt Lake City, Providence, Binghamton, Hartford, Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, Portland and the District of Columbia all built underground public toilets, most located in the city center in the local business district. The prestige of building underground public comfort stations was so high that some towns and cities who were unable to afford underground public toilets opted for none instead.

Saloons were a common place for public toilets prior to Prohibition. When Prohibition came into effect in 1916 in Oregon, hotels and stores in Portland complained that a consequence of this was members of the general public asking to use their toilets. As a result, the Oregon State Hotel Association, with support of downtown Portland businesses, requested the city address the issue by building more public toilets so they would not be forced to absorb that expense. The city finally agreed.

Starting in the early 2000s, Portland, Oregon began a push to put user-friendly stand-alone public toilets on street corners. They were designed to be vandalism proof. Their designed proved popular, and the toilets were later installed in other cities including Denver, Cincinnati, San Antonio and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Portland All User Ordinance resulted in the conversion of 600 single-sex public toilet facilities being converted to multi-gender single public toilet facilities the first year it was in effect. Signage was used to indicate if those public toilets had urinals or sit toilets, as opposed to labeling a toilet facility as being for men or for women. The ordinance was created to make it easier for parents to accompany their children into public toilets, to give more options to people with disabilities and to be more welcoming to transgender people.

Around 2012, Portland City Commissioner Randy Leonard created a plan to install more public toilets in the city in order to try to reduce the frequency of open defecation, often on the part of homeless people, in the city. This resulted in the creation of the Portland Loo®, which has a number of features including being anti-graffiti, wheelchair accessible, and motion activated lighting. They also have blue lights to prevent intravenous drug users from using them as a place to shoot up.

The new water free public toilets installed in Portland in the early 2010s cost around $60,000 each and around $12,000 a year in maintenance.