You gotta fight for your “right” to potty. Some city-owned buildings could be forced to open their bathrooms to the public during regular hours under a pair of bills looking to offer relief to New Yorkers who have really got to go. “Access to clean and accessible bathrooms in New York City should not be a luxury,” City Council member Rita Joseph said during a hearing Thursday.
She is sponsoring a bill which would require certain “public-facing” city buildings to open up their bathrooms, create clear signage and hours of operation, and make sure they’re accessible to people with disabilities. “Too often residents of this city have to concede to business owners for bathroom access, sometimes making unnecessary purchases just to use the facilities,” she added, calling the right to relieve oneself in a decent bathroom a “basic human right.” The struggle to find a safe — and clean — place to do one’s business while away from home is something New Yorkers know all too well.
The Big Apple has more than 1,000 public restrooms spread across the five boroughs, but sometimes vast tracts of blocks separate them, or unclear signage and poor maintenance keep people from utilizing them. The push for more toilet access comes as summonses for public urination are up about 46% year over year from 2023, rising from 6,772 to 9,904 in 2024, according to recent figures from City Hall. But some say opening public buildings isn’t necessary.
Chief public realm officer Ya-Ting Liu said while she agreed with the “intent” of the bill, municipal toilets are already open to the public — just to members of the public with proper “business” there. “For means of security and other considerations it’s for people with business inside the building,” she said, arguing against people on the street coming inside for mere bodily business. Liu also insisted New Yorkers would benefit from downloading a Google Maps layer her office put out which pinpoints the locations of public bathrooms across the city.
But council member Sandy Nurse — who is proposing a separate bill aimed at creating one public bathroom for every 2,000 New Yorkers within 10 years — said she has had trouble accessing that map, suggesting other New Yorkers may have struggled with it too. The city is currently in the process of adding 151 new public bathrooms which were approved in 2022, while Mayor Adams’ office has pledged renovations of 36 already in place. Nurse said that process is cumbersome — explaining the city generally takes between 10 and 16 months to approve a bathroom.
“New York city has not meaningfully increased its number of public bathrooms since the 1970s,” Nurse said, suggesting the city should look into converting vacant storefronts in commercial areas into public bathrooms. “It’s so challenging, but we’ve got to make it work because we all gotta go,” she added..
