User:JustinePorto/Public toilets in Vermont

Public toilets in Vermont, commonly called washrooms, are found at a rate of around eight public toilets per 100,000 people.

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 eight public toilets per 100,000 people.

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.

History
As the Prohibition effort began to take more shape in the 1910s, large cities in the Northeast and Midwest had women's groups advocating for the creation of large numbers of comfort stations as a way of discouraging men from entering drinking establishments in search of public toilets. This was successful in many places in getting cities to build comfort stations, but the volume of new public toilets built was rarely enough to meet public needs.

Because Prohibition saw an increase in the construction of public toilets to address the new found demand, many municipalities located outside the South built sex-segregated public toilets that were essentially the same construction inside, with the same number of stalls and layout for each.

Brattleboro largely lacked public toilets until 2019, when the city decided to address the lack of toilet facilities in the downtown area by renting portable restrooms. Prior to this, homeless people engaged in open defecation and public urination in parks. The areas near the toilets soon became places where criminal activity took place and the government decided to remove them in 2022, which saved the city around USD$1,000 a month. In the interim, the city returned to a situation where they had no public toilets.