Plumbing Poverty Is Worsening: Analysis
(Newsletter)
– When they need to go to the bathroom, more than 1 million people in the US must turn to chamber pots, school showers, and public toilets. Almost half a million households do not have basic indoor plumbing, new research has shown. The problem isn’t just in poor places, the Guardian reports; In fact, things have gotten worse in San Francisco and Portland, Oregon. People of color are most likely to suffer along with tenants, research has shown. The project was carried out by the Plumbing Poverty Project, an initiative of King’s College London and the University of Arizona. The work was based on the community surveys of the Census Bureau.
In San Francisco, nearly 15,000 families live in homes without adequate plumbing. That number has increased 12% since 2000, while the median price of a home has tripled. Data for 2017 showed that blacks made up 9% of the city’s population, although they made up 17% of households with no indoor plumbing. “The history of sanitation poverty in San Francisco is inextricably linked with priceless housing, falling incomes, changes in California’s post-recession rental sector and racial wealth gaps,” said Katie Meehan, professor and lead researcher on the project. Black people are being pushed into poorer housing conditions or from the area, she said.
The problem is national and also exists in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, researchers said. From 2000 to 2017, Milwaukee, San Antonio, Phoenix, Nashville, Seattle, and Cleveland made little to no progress in solving the problem, researchers found. In Phoenix, tenants make less money but pay more to live in places without running water than they did two decades ago, according to the Guardian. The project’s white paper aims to show governments what steps they need to take to end so-called sanitary poverty.
And the problem is global. When the pandemic started, public health officials recommended washing your hands frequently. But UN data shows that 2 billion people, a quarter of the world’s population, did not have clean running water. Experts say the lack of a safety net is a driving force everywhere. In San Francisco, until recently, a woman and her two daughters lived in a $ 2,300 studio apartment. Yellow water was coming from the tap on the sink and the toilet could not be used because it was not connected properly; her landlord wouldn’t fix it. Rosa Ramiréz and her daughters went to a nearby donut shop or cafe to use the toilet. When the pandemic started, the doors were closed to them. “It was unbearable,” said Ramiréz. (Read more stories about clean water.)
