Mobile Restrooms Offer Solution for Lower Polk’s Homeless Community

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Portable toilets mounted to a trailer bed are moved throughout the Lower Polk neighborhood each night. Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small/KQED

By Libby Leyden, KQED News Fix

Two portable bathrooms stand surrounded by flower pots and a white picket fence in one of the dirty and run-down alleys in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood. A large van decorated with LED lights is parked nearby, stocked with clothes, home-cooked food and hot coffee.

This is the mobile City Resource Relief Center. Seven days a week it moves through the side streets in the Lower Polk section of the Tenderloin, assisting the homeless that live here, often because it’s close to services. Starting last week, the center evolved from being just a nocturnal operation to one that provides 24/7 access to a clean and safe public restroom — a basic need that has been hard to satisfy in this neighborhood.

Read the complete story at KQED News Fix. 

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