It all began in July of 2014 when, at one or our weekly PFC meetings, a member raised the issue. Although it was not central to our objective of finding housing for everyone who needs it in DC, we decide it was important for us to take it on: everyone, including those without housing, need to have safe, clean, restrooms available any time of day or night.
We started by learning from the experiences of other cities in the US and Canada that have had recently been successful in installing and maintaining public restrooms that are clean, safe, and available 24/7. With models and lessons in hand, in November 2014 we established our Downtown Washington DC Public Restroom Initiative. We formed a committee composed of five passionate members of PFC who are determined to stay the course until clean, safe restrooms available 24/7 are installed in needed areas of downtown DC. We have been meeting weekly since November 2014 and carrying out activities in between.