Downtown Portable Toilets Plan Being Considered

DOWNTOWN AUSTIN-UT, TX -- A city council member is pushing for a plan to install portable toilets downtown for use by homeless people living on the streets.

“Many of those individuals sleep every night on the streets of our downtown, and they are forced to go to the bathroom outside,” council member Kathie Tovo said, according to Fox 7 News.

The prevalence of homeless people downtown led the council woman to propose the idea of portable toilets as a member of the city’s Health and Human Services Committee.

The council woman said the idea already has garnered wide support.

“Members of our community have cited a need for it,” Tovo said. Organizations like the downtown Austin alliance have been exploring it for some time,” Tovo said.

But Tovo’s felllow council member, Ellen Troxclair, wants more time to study the idea before acting on it. She’s worried the toilets could be overrun by unsavory elements of society as has happened in Seattle.

“They had become so filthy and overrun with drug abusers and prostitutes,” Troxclair said of the failed attempt to install such toilets in the Washington city.

Tovo countered that the likely benefits to the plan outweigh potential drawbacks.

“Other cities have certainly confronted some challenges in their public restrooms, but there are some real success stories out there,” Tovo said. “And those are the ones we are going to look to for guidance.”

The four-council-member Health and Human Services Committee recently voted three to one in favor of the proposal. It will next be considered by the full council at a future meeting.