Facilities that provide showers and clean clothes encourage the homeless to seek health services and permanent supportive housing.
At the center of the homeless crisis are filthy encampments where people eat, sleep and relieve themselves, all within the same few square yards. City and county governments are confronting the problem in creative ways.
A 2017 audit found that in Los Angeles, from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., there were only nine public toilets available for Skid Row’s estimated 1,777 unsheltered homeless people.