Many bathrooms have been closed during the pandemic. Who suffers?

This article was first published on March 17, 2021. As more people are going outside and using public spaces more often, we thought this article would be relevant.

Since the onset of the pandemic a year ago, many restrooms have been closed to the public. As I wrote before and at the start of the pandemic, public restroom access is important, because many people depend on them for elimination, hygiene, and other things.

And yet, in the past 12 months of the pandemic, we have seen many businesses, institutions, and parks shut their restrooms to anyone but employees and staff – and sometimes to anyone at all.

Many have noted this inconvenience. However, the brunt of these closures on our movements has not been equally dispersed. People who depend on public restrooms – including essential workers, people experiencing homelessness, and people with disabilities – have been especially impacted. And this lack of access can have long-term consequences.

Can essential workers have their essential needs met?

Essential workers have been heralded as heroes through the pandemic – but they often have trouble accessing restroom facilities. Businesses often do not allow delivery workers or even customers into their restrooms. Many workers, especially gig workers, also are not given time to take bathroom breaks during their shifts. Taking their time can affect their future work, which is linked to delivery time.

Meanwhile, bus drivers and other transport workers often have to drive different routes with less reliable bathroom access than before. And, of course, many restrooms have capacity limitations – which reduces the number of toilets and sinks available at all. What is a worker to do?

Many resort to memorizing where bathrooms can reliably be accessed. One delivery worker in Baltimore told me, through Reddit, that they have often rely on gas stations now, because other bathrooms in the area have been closed off.

A friend, who has worked in occasional gig work and asked to remain anonymous, regaled me with stories of urinating into a bottle during their work shift. “I felt super-duper gross,” they said. If Reddit threads, social media, and other stories readily available online are any indication, these issues and experiences are common, as they are around the country.

#Santafe has never been a good place to pee. But COVID has made it worse. Ran into a @USPS delivery man @Speedway who’s on his feet 9 hours a day. “All my regular bathrooms are closed: stores, schools, libraries. This is the only place I can go.”

— Monica Roman Gagnier (@beacongal) February 11, 2021

i’m almost done tweeting bullshit for the night but first I would like to complain: as a delivery driver there are not enough fucking bathrooms and because of covid most of the bathrooms that exist are closed. if you see your delivery driver peeing in your yard mind your business

— _(」∠ ､ﾝ､)_ (@themarmalade) November 22, 2020

This problem is not new – it has just grown during the pandemic. These issues are exacerbated by the fact that gig employers do not treat their workers as employees – which reduces workers’ ability to address these problems. Meanwhile, permanent employees like bus drivers, including drivers for WMATA contractors, often lack adequate restroom facilities or time to go to the bathroom.

Drivers for contracted companies oftentimes are not allowed to go when they need to, either. Beyond allowing people into restrooms, we should advocate for workers to have time to go to the bathroom, adequate breaks, and guarantees of access. In other fields, these things can – and often are – requested as workplace accommodations.

Some people cannot wait to go home – if they have a home

Many people who have needed a restroom have been told to “hold it in until they get home.” But what if you do not have a home? Many people in Greater Washington and beyond who rely on public restrooms are experiencing homelessness. When bathrooms closed, many lost access to basic sanitation – adding yet another trauma to the daily injustices people experiencing homelessness face. Despite efforts by DC government to provide facilities, the lack of access is still a challenge. Furthermore, many new public restrooms or restroom policies are designed to keep people experiencing homelessness out – be it through setups that do not allow for washing, customer-only policies, or police presence at places with restrooms.

The lack of access to restrooms for people experiencing homelessness is connected to various health impacts. The lack of restrooms also keeps many people with homes out of public space. Disabled people and older adults often avoid going out more than is necessary, because of the lack of usable restrooms or fear of not being able to find a bathroom. Many trans and non-binary people also avoid areas where the availability of safe bathrooms is unclear. Each usable, accessible bathroom closed during the pandemic is another barrier to access for someone who needs rapid access to a bathroom or someone who cannot safely use gendered restrooms. Phlush, a restroom availability organization, noted that for economic recovery and public space use to include people, bathrooms need to be accessible.

The impacts go beyond COVID-19

Repeatedly waiting to use a restroom for a long time is not just a temporary inconvenience: there are long-term health impacts that can result. Waiting to use the bathroom can weaken the bladder wall, leading to long-term incontinence and a higher risk of urinary tract infections. Similarly, holding feces in can lead to digestive tract problems and incontinence.

An inability to wash one’s hands puts one at greater risk not only of COVID-19, but for food-borne and water-borne illnesses and bacteria – which can be fatal. So too are the infections and complications that can result from inadequate elimination facilities. People experiencing homelessness often face those risks. And that is before the trauma caused by accidents, the anxiety of waiting to go, and repeated pain and denials of access – not to mention the trauma of bad sanitary conditions for people experiencing homelessness. Recent research has linked a lack of restroom access to risks for suicide for trans and non-binary youth, for example.

One could argue that preventing COVID-19, at all costs, is a noble goal. But as the epidemiologist Dr. Julia Marcus noted, “health is not just the absence of disease.” A society in which people are unable to meet basic needs of elimination safely and with dignity is not a healthy society. And many of the impacts of restroom access affect health badly – as I just mentioned. The distribution of this impact is not equal.

As Dr. Stefan Baral and Dr. Joshua Barocas noted in an op-ed in USA Today, media coverage and our responses have been through the perspective of people of means. When we as a society discuss what is risky and what is good behavior, we are doing so from the point of view of well-off, abled white people. This problem extends to restrooms. Who has access to restrooms? Who cannot wait to go home? And whose work enables the people who can stay home and use a bathroom there to do so? Most of the people most impacted by restroom closures are not the people whose coronavirus stories are getting told.

So what can be done?

We need to have stronger support for restroom access – and while this certainly means building more restrooms, we also need to think about the restrooms we do have, and policies too. Who should be able to access restrooms, be they at parks, businesses, or facilities? And if bathrooms become public, how do we fairly pay and support those who maintain restrooms – be they at restaurants, schools, stations, or anything in between? Perhaps a coalition can work alone, but as many have pointed out, these questions require attention to funding, building, and impact. If we mandate restroom access, we need to think about the people maintaining them too.

A few things we can call for right now, though. We can push for WMATA to fully reopen its station restrooms, which have been limited in access since at least 2004. We can also ask local businesses if they allow delivery workers and other essential workers – especially gig workers – to use their restrooms. We can find ways to incentivize businesses to do so.

We can call on our state legislatures, County and City councils, and our Congresspeople to mandate restroom provisions for essential workers, expand sanitation access for people experiencing homelessness, and expand facilities that are accessible for everyone.

We can advocate for parks and other public facilities to reopen their restrooms, as parks in Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties have already done. And, of course, we should educate our neighbors about why public restrooms are so important. Everyone needs to go sometime, after all.