By: HAILEY COGNETTI
On September 19, 2024 two pivotal bathroom bills were up for discussion inside City Hall. Outside, a coalition of activists and city officials – including two city council members and Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine – rallied in support of a measure to increase public bathrooms around NYC.
The rally highlighted what advocates describe as a growing public health crisis in NYC: the scarcity of public restrooms in a city of over 8 million people. The bills under consideration address two main issues, Council Member Rita Joseph’s bill, Int. No. 267, would require public buildings to open their bathrooms to the public, while Council Member Sandy Nurse’s bill, Int. No. 694, would create a long-term strategy for maintaining a citywide public bathroom network.
The two bathroom bills have garnered strong support from city council members. Council Member Joseph’s bill has 28 sponsors out of 51, while Council Member Nurse’s bill has 23 sponsors. A hearing followed the rally, but there was no vote. A spokesperson for Council member Nurse said the bills are likely to be passed.
“Right now there is about one public toilet for about every 75,000 New Yorkers. And there are two public toilets that are open 24 hours seven days a week,” Nurse told the rally. “In a city of millions and millions of people who have a variety of different needs, it makes being in public space, being in public life, very very difficult.”
For decades, homeless New Yorkers have faced significant challenges accessing public restrooms. Often, police officers ticket them. According to the coalition, in 1990, four homeless individuals sued the city and MTA, arguing that the lack of bathroom access led to decades of continuous harassment, humiliation, embarrassment, and physical injury.
“Last year the city issued almost four thousand criminal summonses just for urinating, just because you gotta go,” said Nurse. “We cannot be criminalizing people for a human function that every single person has,” Nurse told the rally.
Advocates argued that a robust public restroom network and free access to restrooms would improve the lives of all New Yorkers, especially the communities that suffer most, including homeless and elderly New Yorkers and people with disabilities. “No one should have to plan their day around whether or not they will be able to find a restroom,” Council Member Joseph told the rally.
Advocates said that the city has slightly improved on its restroom crisis, but that it’s not enough. They argued that current policies normalize the stigma around homelessness and allow people to blame individuals, instead of addressing the issue at hand. They say that in many cases public urination and defecation are due to the lack of alternatives.
The campaign’s backers include VOCAL New York, New Pride Agenda, and the Coalition for the Homeless. The cause has gained momentum through influencer Teddy Siegal, whose Got2GoNYC TikTok account went viral in 2021 when she shared her own bathroom story.
“In the middle of Times Square in July 2021, I sipped the last of my iced coffee and realized I had to go,” Siegal shared at the rally. “After several businesses turned me away I burst into a McDonald’s in tears, only to be told the bathroom was for customers only.”
What began as a personal experience quickly grew into a social media movement. Siegal now manages a widely used public bathroom map on Google Maps with millions of users who rely on it to locate public restrooms all around the city.
Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine expressed his support for the Free2Pee campaign and the urgent need to pass these bills. “What we are pushing for here is a clear definition of public bathrooms as essential infrastructure. This is not a luxury amenity. This is a question of public health, of quality of life, of equity, of the livable of this and any city,” Levine told the crowd. “We are so far behind where we need to be.”