NO PLACE TO PEE IN CLEARWATER

How cities should handle homeless people camping in public restrooms is an enduring urban question. In Clearwater, Florida, officials think they’ve found a solution: Just weld the all the bathroom doors shut. Faced with vagrants loitering around Crest Lake Park, the city sent crews out to seal off all the restrooms in a strike mission that’s baffled even non-homeless park-goers. One father told ABC News that he now had no place to potty-train his child, and wondered ominously where the loiterers were peeing now. A homeless man complained, “They’re trying to make it as inconvenient as possible, to get you out of town.”

But the authorities are sticking to their guns, reasoning that the parks restrooms were perpetuating the problem of homelessness. For that reason, they also cut off the power to a park in downtown Clearwater, because disheveled-looking people were charging their phones there.

From The Atlantic Cities