Do middle class people regularly bathe in public in, say, Europe? I can’t imagine this is a uniquely American phenomenon.
There are still places with popular hot springs and baths - Budapest comes to mind, and of course Japan. I doubt that’s anybody’s actual bath (as in what you do to get clean) though.
There are more public laundries than public showers, so the homeless have more opportunity to wash their clothes.
And on that point, many laundromats in tourist towns that cater to the outdoorsy vacations have showers for a small fee which includes a towel and soap.
In Berlin, there are many public indoor pools, but also public baths! Many of the older, smaller apartments don’t have bathtubs/showers, so Berliners would go to these locations for their bath/shower needs. I loved it! Dozens of private rooms with nothing but a huge bathtub and steaming hot water. You “rented” the room by the half hour (I think it was about 50 cents per half hour then) and I would go there, get in the tub and read my book. These were the large, claw foot bathtubs that were big enough to fully stretch out and lean back and relax. Wonderful!
I always said if I became a billionaire, I would buy storefronts in poorer urban areas and create something similar - perhaps a type of shower/car wash for humans. Go in, private room, take a nice 10 minute hot shower and then get dressed and get out. I even thought it would be cool to offer clean, new(er) clothes from Goodwill, so the homeless could swap out what they were wearing. Seriously - I came up with this idea decades ago - but sadly have not come up with the billions to back up the plan.
Public baths still existed in NYC when I was a kid.
I worked at a Flying J about a year ago, and the going rate for a shower, used as long as you’d like, was 10 dollars.
You really don’t know that homeless shelters generally prohibit recreational drugs? And that a large number of homeless people are that way because of addiction to said drugs? And that the shelters usually don’t provide any help to these people? And that, if these homeless people could do it without help, they already would have?
And that converting statements into rhetorical questions gets really annoying after a while?
I assume it is because the demand isn’t there. Unlike a public toilet, who is going to need to use a public shower aside from the homeless? And if you create something that is a magnet for the homeless, you also run into the fact that some of the homeless have serious psychiatric or substance abuse problems, and people don’t want them congregating.
Not that I’m prejudiced against psychiatric problems (I’ve had my own) or substance abuse issues, but you get the point.
There is no demand to create showers. Nobody would use them except people who may bring various legal and social problems with them.
You can always shower at a gym though. But those are $20 a month minimum.
Then again, if we did have public (or at the very least, work) showers I think more people would be willing to exercise.
There are also various ‘water free’ bathing products one can buy. But they are expensive, and if you are homeless I’m assuming money is tight.
Homeless bathing options:
Sneak into the park district/ymca.
Go to the shelter. Yeah, they completely suck balls in every way most of the time. Chicago had one for ages 25 and under I’d occasionally sleep at, and it was not terrible unless you hate transgender prostitutes, and they took random walk-ins.
Motel rooms. They are a luxury but sooooooo nice when you’re filthy.
Friend/acquaintance apartments, if you’re lucky enough to have them. Do their dishes, clean the house or buy them something on food stamps out of gratitude.
Go to the lake, beach, river etc and go swimming if it’s nice out. You won’t get super clean, but it’s better than nothing.
Screw this, go without. If you’re not actively looking for work, there’s no point to it, you’re just gonna get dirty again anyway!
I’ve thought about doing this, too. Would anybody actually be interested? I tend to think this is banal shit that nobody wants to hear about, but I guess some people are fascinated. I was only homeless for a few years, kind of on and off, but I’ve had a wide variety of homeless experiences (car/no car, traveling/not traveling, dope fiend/not a dope fiend, etc.)
Wow, that’s way higher than I would have guessed!
I’m sorry. At what point did we start talking about drugs?
Me too. I’m shocked it costs as much as a carwash.
There you go: carwash. Just turn the hose on yourself. Hell, get the clothes clean, too!
And I, for one, would be interested in a homeless thread.
You’d be sticking your head in the sand to deny some homeless use or are addicted to drugs or alcohol, and something as simple as showing up visibly intoxicated can get you kicked out of a shelter. So you have some homeless who are basically pushed out of assistance because of their addiction.
Usually truck stops give away free showers with the purchase of some large quantity of fuel, so truckers don’t actually pay for them most of the time. I think part of the idea of the largeish charge for showers without a large fuel purchase is to discourage regular old run-off-the-mill transients from hanging around instead of the gainfully-employed transients they’re trying to attract.
In Seattle, near the Greyhound station there is the Urban Rest Stop. Does something like this exist elsewhere or is this something pretty unique? I’ve camped at state parks and in hindsight, their bathrooms are pretty accessable to just about anybody (unlike KOA campsites that have keypad locks on their bathrooms). From a few testimonials on this website, it seems some bathrooms in colleges and universities are also quite accessable if you aren’t too conspicuous.