Homelessness Proposals
Boulder does not have showers, toilets, water fountains, or handwashing stations that are accessible to our unhoused population. We also do not have enough trash bins, recycle bins, or needle receptacles for adequate maintenance.
Being homeless is a difficult, traumatizing, alienating, and often humiliating day-to-day existence. When we force human brings to defecate in public, don’t allow them access to safe, potable, running water, provide no facilities for them to engage in the basic hygiene activities of washing their hands and their bodies, and fail to offer them enough receptacles for them to dispose of their trash and their waste, we engage in retraumatizing them over and over again on a daily basis.
While we cannot solve homelessness overnight, we can dignify the experience of homelessness very quickly and simply, and in so doing we can also alleviate many of the visible signs of the homelessness epidemic that we know are most frustrating and impactful on our community.
What problem(s) does this proposal aim to solve?
When people can take care of their basic needs with dignity it allows them to be more able to engage with services, to interact with others in ways that returns that humanity, and to be more comfortable and welcome when sharing public spaces.
Both housed and unhoused city residents are dissatisfied with people urinating and defecating in the creek, in the parks, and in other public spaces. By offering portable toilets across the city, and especially in our downtown spaces, we can eliminate this issue.
Access to basic hygiene services is not only humanizing, it also cuts down on the spread of disease and decreases the burden on our public health system, as well as increased sleep deprivation, mental health problems, and risk of violence.
Access to clean drinking water is a basic human right, additionally people across our community would like to be able to access drinking fountains in our parks and paths across the city. Particularly in severe weather periods, dehydration can be life-threatening.
While we have made some strides towards increasing the availability of trash bins and other waste-disposal locations, we are still far from having met the needs in the city. When we increase these waste sites we serve all members of our community, many of whom face overflowing and unusable public waste bins on a daily basis.