Middle Class Solutions: Showers

When I was a teen, my mother cleaned apartments for pay. She worked at an "adults only" fairly upper class complex and I sometimes went with her to spray the oven the night before so it had time to soak.

The giant mess made at homeless encampments? First, #NotAllHomeless and, second, housed people aren't necessarily any better. They just get to hide their mess behind closed doors when that's how they live.

Some of those apartments were HORRIFYING. But the general view that homeless people are so much worse than anyone else about things like hygiene persists, in part because it happens to be the worst examples of homeless individuals that the world NOTICES and then assumes to be representative.

"Homes for the Homeless" is always a bad idea. Meals for the homeless, showers for the homeless, etc. tend to be equally awful in most cases.

I was on the street about a year before it dawned on me how upper class my mother's expectations were. It took even longer for me to begin to comprehend how well off my parents had actually been at one time.

People start trying to figure out how to help the homeless and some bizarre form of poverty mentality takes over and they justify their shockingly bad answers with "Beggars can't be choosers" and "It's better than NOTHING."

My mother is European and was born in the 1930s. While I grew up in Georgia with modern plumbing etc. and spent my childhood baffled by her tendency to take a sponge bath at the sink rather than jump in the shower on a hot summer night after working hard all day, it was something she was perfectly happy to do and I was her child so she owed me no explanations for her "weirdo" behavior.

Thank goodness for that because it gave me a viable alternative to unclean, moldy showers for the homeless that lacked any ability to secure your belongings, lacked privacy and lacked anything remotely resembling dignity.

Swimming was a big part of my childhood. I used public showers at so many pools, beaches and lakes as a kid that I just thought public showers were commonly available in the US.

I've thought about it a lot and I think building more public showers at beaches and other waterfronts would help with a variety of issues in the US, from truck drivers lacking adequate access to showers to cyclists doing a tour and camping lacking adequate access to showers to locals redoing their only bathroom not having an alternative means to shower.

And it would potentially be a means to give homeless people access to middle class hygiene facilities in a sustainable fashion because it wouldn't be a program for the homeless. It would be a program for the general public that incidentally could be used by homeless individuals.

I spent a month camped legally at a beach with access to beach showers. Part of the time, I had access to the public showers for a dollar apiece, cold water only. Part of the time, I had access to the nicer bathrooms on the campgrounds using a key card. These had hot water.

However, that's likely to be a long ways off, even if it ever gets implemented, which, you know, I'm not holding my breath. In the meantime, Aberdeen, Washington has a big homeless problem and maybe they could start a van pool or something and help facilitate SOME homeless getting off the street SOME nights during the winter rainy season and also fill some empty rooms at establishments at public parks, thereby beefing up their bottom line.

The winter storms occur during their off season. Rooms at such places seem to go for as little as $50 per night in the off season for a weekday night (no doubt with hotel tax -- it's probably closer to $60 in reality).

Proviso: Details to be worked out by whatever naive fool thinks this is a good idea. NOTE: This comes down to as little as $10-$12 per person, per night assuming you put five people in a room.

That's where you will run into trouble: Housing five unrelated strangers together without supervision will have a lot of pain points and housing ONE person per room to sidestep those issues will get spendy really quickly.

But it is a resource that CURRENTLY exists in the area and is underutilized EXACTLY when homeless people need some relief the most: During the rainy winter season.

Footnote 

Originally published elsewhere on August 09, 2023.