You know, I came across something interesting the other day from CalMatters Housing that really got me thinking about the history of how we handle public services in this country. Turns out there was this whole movement back in the 1960s and 70s against pay toilets, which were these coin-operated stall locks that municipalities and businesses used to generate revenue. A California assemblywoman named March Fong Fu actually took a sledgehammer to one of these devices as a form of protest, arguing they amounted to an unfair tax on women who couldn't use free urinals the way men could. By 1975, California banned them, and most other states followed suit not long after.
According to CalMatters, the problem we're facing now is that banning pay toilets didn't actually solve the underlying issue of how to fund and maintain public bathrooms. What happened instead is that funding dried up, governments closed many public facilities, and private companies like Starbucks stepped in to fill the void. The cost of accessing a bathroom has skyrocketed since those old pay toilet days, and now you're essentially paying the price of a coffee just to use a restroom. This creates a real barrier for people without means, and we saw the consequences firsthand when San Diego experienced a Hepatitis A outbreak in 2016 that was linked to the lack of accessible public bathrooms and handwashing facilities.
Here's where it gets interesting and troubling at the same time. According to the reporting, some modern policymakers are actually revisiting the idea of pay toilets as a solution. A San Diego city council member proposed bringing them back, arguing that the revenue could actually improve maintenance and increase the total number of available facilities. On its surface, you might see the logic, but as CalMatters points out, this really shows how much our approach to solving public problems has shifted. Instead of viewing bathroom access as a basic public good that government should guarantee, we're defaulting to privatization as the answer.
What I am seeing locally here in the Bay Area is that this tension between public need and private solutions affects all of us. When people can't access clean, safe bathrooms, it impacts public health, it creates complications for unhoused populations, it affects transit riders and tourists, and honestly, it reflects on the quality of life in our communities. These aren't just abstract policy questions anymore. They're about whether our region remains livable and equitable for everyone, not just people with money to spare.
