Meetings to Date Service Organization Meetings We met with several nonprofit organizations in the Tenderloin, including representatives from Glide, the St. Anthony Foundation, Youth With a Mission (YWAM), Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation, and Trust for Public Land. The chart at right shows many of the outcomes and suggestions we received. Overall, these organizations will be critical to the functioning of the restroom for a number of reasons. The first three (Glide, St Anthony, and YWAM) can help us understand usage patterns of and potential problems associated with homeless persons who are likely to use the restroom regularly. We can base our restroom maintenance costs loosely on their experience. If these organizations are located near the restroom site, they can act as stewards for the toilet - reporting suspicious activity in and around the restroom, helping organize restroom maintenance, and just providing a positive influence on the area. The Trust for Public Land is working to install parklets in the neighborhood, and helped explore the idea of incorporating toilets into existing parklet plans. Twitter A meeting with a community outreach employee at Twitter established potential collaboration in the toilet design process and its operations and maintenance plan. It was determined that Twitter could play a role in organizing a hackathon that would challenge participants to explore the use of technology, including phone and web apps, in designing the toilet’s payment and fundraising strategy, using crowd-sourced maintenance notifications, keeping the toilet safe and well-monitored, and improving overall toilet user experience.
“All Muni stations, gas stations, grocery stores (even small ones), drugstores, post offices, etc.... need CLEAN public restrooms.”
Rebar Rebar meetings resulted in several innovative suggestions to further community participation, including having a gallery show rather than a one-time charrette to gather feedback and design ideas. This idea came to fruition as part of the Tenderloin National Forest / Luggage Store Gallery Artist-in-residence program.
- comment sourced from online press “Its Time to Raise a Stink Over Public Toilets,” SF Gate Sunday, December 11, 2011
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