User:JustinePorto/Public toilets in the District of Columbia

Public toilets in the District of Columbia, commonly called washrooms, have a long history from not being built to avoid deal with racial segregation policies, to installing pay toilets only to remove them again. Laws were enacted in the late 2010s to improve access in under served areas, but few were built and it proved an acute issue during the covid-19 pandemic.

Public toilets
washroom is one of the most commonly used words for public toilet in the United States.

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
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.

In 1907 at two of the public toilet facilities, there were about 4,000 average daily users of which 12% were women. By 1920, this percentage had only climbed to 16% despite two new public toilet facilities opening and the daily average visitor rate being 36,000. Because women were less likely than men to use public toilets in the 1910s and 1920s, many towns and cities made women's comfort stations smaller than men's toilets. Women's toilets also often had shorter hours because women at that time felt less comfortable being out on the streets at night.

During the 1920s, Washington D.C. implemented limited public pay toilets, with some being free and nicer stalls, and better washing facilities costing money to use.

As the 1920s waned and fears around lack of public toilets began to lessen as Prohibition became more the norm, the demand from citizens for more public toilets reduced as people grew used to making do and using private community toilets at places like hotels, restaurants, theaters and department stores instead. Women had also been very interested in this topic as part of their activism inside the Suffrage movement. As that goal was achieved, these groups often also lost interest in issues around public toilet access.

There were two laborers who were in charge of the toilets for the House of Representatives and the terrace in 1922. They were paid a salary of USD$720.

Because of changes in attitudes and the country going in a more conservative direction, starting in the 1920s, public health officials began to advocate less for public toilets and improved sanitation as this was seen as primarily helping the less affluent. At the same time, these same public health officials were also often advocating for less privacy in public toilets, seeing it as counterproductive in their battle try to fight and track sexually transmitted diseases, especially among poor people and people of color. While maintaining privacy in public toilets had been a goal prior to that, it ceased to be by then.

There was a push back against building public toilets in Jim Crow states during the period between 1865 and 1960, because it meant that local governments were not just required to build two toilets, one for men and one for women, but four toilets, one each for men and women who were white and who were colored. Racially segregated public toilets were very common in the 1960s.

Washington D.C. was one of the largest cities in the United States in 1950. Most city operated public toilets in the 1950s and 1960s were pay toilets. The fee to access these toilets was around a nickel or a dime, with the money earned being invested back into toilet maintenance and upkeep. By 1980, coin-operated toilets had almost disappeared from the public landscape.

Several groups of disability rights activist organizations protested outside the Department of Housing, Education, and Welfare in April 1977. They also held protests at eight regional offices. They demanded that the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and its Section 504 be implemented, ending discrimination against people with disabilities in programs that received public funding. Part of their complaints involved the lack of access to public toilets.

A 1987 survey of secondary school students from California, Michigan, the District of Columbia and San Francisco found a by location range  41.8% to 64.8% knew that AIDS was not transmitted by using public toilets.

The Washington, D.C. City Council enacted the Public Restrooms Act in 2019. The law was designed to increase public toilet access in underserved parts of the city. Despite the law, by 2021, only two new standalone public toilets were in the planning stage.

During the covid-19 pandemic, the volume of complaints about public urination increased in Washington, D.C.