Need to go to the bathroom in Sacramento? Good luck! Unless you are close to home or happen to be somewhere where you have just been a customer (but what if you didn’t “have to go” then?) your chances of finding a toilet are slim. Even our parks are lacking. According to the Sacramento Bee, “…the city operates 205 parks, but most either have no bathrooms or have facilities with limited hours. In the central city…only 5 of 22 parks have restroom facilities.” Many times, park bathrooms are locked up without warning or notice of when they may reopen.

Many of the river access points closest to downtown Sacramento completely lack any bathrooms for beach-goers, such as Sutter’s Landing. Imagine taking your family to have a nice day at the beach, only to find that your kids or your aunt have no where to relieve themselves! That’s what Sacramento is like, and it’s time to change that.

Why? Diseases, for one thing! Now the river is full of bacterias that can make people really sick, like E. Coli.

The link to this SacBee article, published September 12, 2019, has been changed or removed and is no longer available.

Sacramento will continue to struggle with sanitation and risk of disease so long as the city refuses to provide an adequate number of public restrooms, on and off the river, for both people who are experiencing homelessness and those who are not.

Alexandra Reagan

Director of Operations, ECOS