“It's not something that can wait”: Defining and promoting gender-inclusive standards for WaSH access for Californians without housing.
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This paper stems from a first known attempt to specify basic standards of care for water, sanitation, and hygiene resources (“WaSH”) for people who lack permanent, stable housing. The project's scope was the U.S. state of California, which is home to half of all people in the U.S. who are living outdoors without housing.
Recommendations presented here focus on: 1) defining and specifying gender-inclusive minimum standards for WaSH access and 2) identifying effective ways to promote the urgent importance of WaSH access within a current social-political context that is increasingly hostile toward unhoused people across the United States and in California specifically.
1. Introduction
A homeless1 teenager is forced to steal tampons. A disabled woman can't access a nearby public toilet because the door to the restroom is too heavy for her to open. A trans man is perpetually late to class because the only restroom he feels safe using, especially when menstruating, is a 15-min walk across his college campus. These scenarios play out daily, but because these are deeply personal issues, further masked by misogyny and shame, they rarely get discussed in public.
Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (collectively, “WaSH”) services include access to drinking water, toilets, handwashing facilities, trash disposal, menstrual hygiene, showers/bathing facilities, and laundry. WaSH services are necessary to protect and maintain individual and public health and basic dignity. Global research, advocacy, and public health groups have long recognized that all human bodies require WaSH services on a daily or even hourly basis. In 2002, the United Nations declared safe and affordable access to water to be a human right that is “indispensable for leading a life in human dignity” and “a prerequisite for the realization of other human rights” (UN-Water Decade Programme on Advocacy and Communication, n.d). In 2015, the UN established the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which includes Goal 6: “to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all” by the year 2030 (United Nations, 2015).
Despite these international declarations, in the United States, public WaSH services – especially public restrooms – have disappeared over the past several decades (Banks, 2020). This trend was further accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which prompted closures of public spaces to prevent disease spread. Once public health restrictions were lifted, some facilities re-opened with limited hours, while many remain permanently closed (Teizazu et al., 2021; Brown, 2020; Carroll et al., 2022). People without permanent, stable housing are especially reliant on public WaSH facilities (Sommer et al., 2020; Maroko et al., 2021) and the most at risk of infectious disease spread, skin infection, stigma, criminalization, and lack of basic dignity when public facilities are unavailable (Portillo et al., 2023; Calderón-Villarreal et al., 2022; Carroll et al., 2024; Calzo et al., 2024; Anthonj et al., 2024).
Gender-specific WaSH needs are often ignored by cities (Nguyen et al., 2025), and the gendered needs of unhoused people are especially unrecognized (Sommer et al., 2020; Maroko et al., 2021). This matters for many reasons. Racial/ethnic, sexual, and gender minorities are disproportionately impacted by both homelessness (Fusaro et al., 2018; Morton et al., 2018; Willison et al., 2024) and lack of WaSH access (Calzo et al., 2024; Carroll et al., 2024; Portillo et al., 2023). People with physical disabilities have specific needs that often go unrecognized in WaSH services (UNICEF, n.d.). Older adults are a large and growing segment of unhoused Americans, and often have specific WaSH needs related to aging (Espinoza et al., 2024; Kushel et al., 2023). Transgender youth and adults are at higher risk of homelessness than the general population (Fraser et al., 2019) and have significant safety and comfort concerns related to restroom access, pointing to the urgent need for gender-inclusive restrooms (McGuire et al., 2022). People who menstruate while unhoused need safe, free, and dignified places to change menstrual products and wash hands (Sommer et al., 2020; Maroko et al., 2021; Portillo et al., 2023; Anthonj et al., 2024). Such places are few and difficult to locate in U.S. cities, where sanitation deprivation in urban environments functions as an extension of a punishment regime – along with citations, arrests, and displacive encampment sweeps – inflicted daily upon unhoused residents (Barocas et al., 2023; Carroll et al., 2024; Gutierrez, 2023; Talbot et al., 2024).
How did this come to be the status quo in the U.S.? Historian Bryant Simon's (2021) analysis of restroom access as a focal point of racial tensions in 1940s U.S. shows how restrooms in modern societies became “the essential entry point to the public” (p. 201) – and therefore a tool for demarcating who gets to participate in society versus those who do not. For this reason, public restroom access has long played a critical role in movements for equality across racial, gender, class, and physical ability lines.
In reviewing the “unfinished work of realizing the human rights to water and sanitation,” Brown et al. (2023, p. e606) remind us that high-income countries like the U.S. have invested in WaSH infrastructure and the professionalization of WaSH services for centuries. This investment has yielded great dividends in the reduction of infectious disease spread as well as greater economic mobility. Yet as Brown et al. observe, “even in countries with ample resources to address these problems,” marginalized populations are systematically excluded from WaSH access (p. e606). In the U.S. and other high-income countries, residents’ access to WaSH is largely determined by property ownership (Brown et al., 2023).
Additionally, as Simon's historical analysis shows, public restroom access was on the front lines of the fight over racial (de)segregation of public spaces (2021). Today, WaSH service gaps are allowed to persist with the support of housed residents, enabled and misinformed by news media, via a framing of unhoused people – many of whom are Black and/or other people of color – as environmental contaminants rather than humans with bodily needs (Bonds and Martin, 2016; Calderón-Villarreal et al., 2022; Carroll et al., 2024). This framing leaves the U.S. today ensnared in criminal-legal responses to what are really health, social, and economic issues.
Moreover, Sommer et al. (2021) note that although the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) emphasize a need “to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls,” there is no explicit mention in the SDGs themselves regarding how to prioritize and ensure universal menstrual health and hygiene. Official U.S. national statistics obscure such gaps in WaSH services and also do not detail important service quality features like water safety, reliability, wastewater management, and affordability (Brown et al., 2023). Researchers have worked to fill these gaps (Feinstein, 2018; Feinstein and Daiess, 2019; Sommer et al., 2021) but more information - and especially concrete guidelines for minimum standards of access - are needed.
This paper stems from a first known attempt to specify basic standards of care for water, sanitation, and hygiene resources (“WaSH”) for people who lack permanent, stable housing in the U.S. state of California, with a focus on what universal access to gender-inclusive WaSH facilities could look like for two key scenarios: people living in emergency congregate shelters (“sheltered” homelessness) and people forced to live outdoors (“unsheltered” homelessness). Because opposition to facilities perceived to be serving unhoused people is so fierce in many locations across the U.S. (e.g., Adams et al., 2023; Halverstadt, 2024), this paper also offers ideas for messaging to encourage community acceptance of public WaSH services.
1.1. Project context: California in a state of contradiction
California is home to nearly one-third (28 %, or 181,399 people) of all unhoused people in the U.S, and more than two-thirds (68 %) of these Californians are forced to live outdoors – this status is formally defined as “experiencing unsheltered homelessness” (de Sousa et al., 2023). To understand homelessness in California in 2025 is to reckon with extreme contradictions. “Liberal” West Coast cities, many of which are again positioning themselves as “sanctuary” cities and sites of “resistance” to a new conservative federal administration, are oddly aligned in this moment that the “solution” to homelessness is criminalization, displacement, and invisibilization of a growing number of humans. Since the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson et al. in June 2024, a growing list of cities across the U.S. – including more than two dozen California cities – have passed, strengthened or considered enacting 24/7 bans on sleeping outdoors, even when adequate shelter is unavailable (National Homelessness Law Center, 2025; Kendall, 2024).
The research evidence is clear and consistent: anti-camping ordinances and displacive sweeps do not solve homelessness - these tactics are expensive, ineffective, unjust, and sometimes even deadly (Barocas et al., 2023),2, 3 and they do not improve public safety (Padmanabhan et al., 2024). Yet the prevailing attitude in California cities is that encampments are no longer to be tolerated in public and that unsheltered people should accept any “help” offered to them, even if the help offered is not trusted and even if acceptance of the help is coerced by threat of law enforcement. Unsheltered people who decline offers of shelter are “service resistant” - they “want” to be homeless. Housed people have diminishing compassion for their homeless neighbors. Municipalities trying to cite and build affordable housing are thwarted at every turn by community opposition (Adams et al., 2023; Halverstadt, 2024). Where does this leave efforts to ensure that all residents have access to the most basic of needs?
The state of California has specifically recognized the human right to water, becoming the first state in the nation to legislatively do so in 2012. California Water Code Section 106.3(a) acknowledges that “every human being has the right to safe, clean, affordable, and accessible water adequate for human consumption, cooking, and sanitary purposes” (“Human Right to Water,” 2012). California has not yet declared access to sanitation or hygiene as human rights, and there are no established basic standards to ensure WaSH access for the state's most vulnerable residents (Loughnan et al., 2020). However, California has made some progress on the integration of menstrual hygiene as a human right: in 2021, the Menstrual Equity for All Act was signed into law (California Legislative Information, 2021). The law, the first of its kind in the U.S., requires the provision of free menstrual products in public schools at all levels. Questions remain, however, regarding implementation of the law (Luna, 2024).
Public WaSH facilities like restrooms are often perceived as homeless-serving facilities (example: University Heights Community Association, 2022). This perception facilitates the closure of public restrooms and the rejection of new proposed restroom facilities, often in communities where they are most needed. The perception of restrooms as “magnets” for unhoused people is partially driven by the fact that there are not enough restrooms pretty much anywhere in urban U.S. environments, so of course those that do exist are heavily relied upon by those who have no other options.
Another significant driver of negative perceptions of unhoused urban residents and thereby the restrooms they use is the environmental contamination or pollution frame (Bonds and Martin, 2016) in which unhoused people, pushed by law enforcement from urban areas to environmentally fragile spaces like creek- and riverbeds where WaSH services are unavailable, are forced to practice open defecation or minimally contained defecation (Hinds et al., 2024). This forced activity reinforces the view of unhoused people as a contaminant to be removed in order to “clean up” the urban environment. Open defecation then threatens water quality in nearby watersheds, triggering government intervention to address the pollution. Intervention comes in the form of sudden, large-scale encampment sweeps in which people are required to leave quickly, often losing irreplaceable personal items in the process (Gutierrez, 2023; Talbot et al., 2024). As Brown et al., 2023 note, this cycle is a policy choice (p. e609), and as such, different choices are possible.
1.2. The project for Sanitation Justice @ San Diego State university: documenting current WaSH infrastructure and the needs of public WaSH-reliant populations
Founded in 2020, the Project for Sanitation Justice (“PSJ”) at San Diego State University (“SDSU”) is a transdisciplinary action research collective working to document and advocate for universal access to WaSH resources. San Diego has repeatedly been an epicenter of infectious disease outbreaks related to inadequate WaSH access, with unhoused residents most affected (Peak et al., 2020; Ohlsen et al., 2023). PSJ developed out of a partnership between academic researchers and grassroots homelessness services provider Think Dignity, who has been a vocal advocate for expanding WaSH access locally for nearly two decades. Among other activities, PSJ created and maintains a public web map and inventory of all public restrooms across San Diego County and its 18 municipalities (Project for Sanitation Justice website) – the second-most populous county in California and among the top five most populous counties nationally. PSJ works to get this information into the hands of organizations and county residents who can benefit from and leverage this knowledge to improve WaSH access in their communities.
In 2023 the PSJ team entered into a contract with a California state agency to develop statewide policy guidance for the provision of WaSH services for unhoused Californians.3 WaSH services addressed in the project included: water for drinking and other survival purposes; toilets; trash and bio waste disposal; handwashing; showers/bathing; menstrual hygiene; and laundry. For each WaSH component, the final report outlines: basic human needs around quantity, quality, and accessibility; known individual and public health impacts when WaSH services are unavailable or inadequate; and basic standards for the provision of WaSH services. Recommendations were developed with an eye toward both fixed-location and mobile services adaptable to a wide range of urban, suburban, and rural contexts. In keeping with the theme of this special issue of Health & Place, this paper focuses on WaSH considerations for urban environments and the importance of gender inclusivity in all WaSH services.
Between August 2023 and June 2024, the project team gathered information in several ways, including a systematic review and synthesis of relevant peer-reviewed and professional “grey” literature (in total, 280 articles and reports) and formal and informal conversations with over 300 Californians.
These conversations included site visits across California to observe diverse contexts, needs, and WaSH services (n = 5); virtual and in-person interviews and focus groups with key stakeholders across California (n = 70), including: youth and adults with past or current experiences of homelessness (n = 32); individuals with professional expertise in direct service provision with unhoused communities (n = 21) or WaSH services provision (n = 14); and other individuals with relevant personal and/or professional knowledge (n = 7). These categories are not mutually exclusive – many interviewees had both personal and professional experiences to share. Examples of interviewees’ relevant expertise include: lived experience of chronic sheltered and/or unsheltered homelessness; public health, biological, and medical science; city management and public administration; law enforcement; homeless outreach and other homeless services provision; emergency/disaster services provision; WaSH facility attendance, maintenance, and security; and legal, public policy, and legislative advocacy.
Lastly, the research team held virtual and in-person presentations, meetings, and other outreach activities before, during, and after completion of the final draft of the project report to gather additional input from approximately 230 individuals. These sessions were conducted virtually and in-person and offered interviewees and new project participants to review and give feedback on all aspects of the report and its recommendations. Examples of these key stakeholder groups included: a homelessness lived experience advisory board (“LEAB”) convened by the project funding agency; infectious disease and environmental health experts; and homelessness and housing working groups composed of various professionals from front-line staff to upper management and administration working at city, regional, and statewide levels. All research procedures described here were reviewed and approved as public health assessment activities by the author's university Institutional Review Board.
1.3. Integrating menstrual hygiene into basic WaSH principles
“I had to do what I had to do to survive [when menstruating while homeless]. Most of the times it would be either I would have to steal, I would have to go ask people. Or go to school, to request, but, they don’t have the best ones. They have this big maxi pad that’s not built for everybody. It’s literally a Pamper. Or they have these tampons that have the cardboard insert, which is so terrible, so sensitive. That’s a no no.”
- California youth staying in a shelter
This section outlines specific recommendations for integrating menstrual hygiene into WaSH infrastructure and services, especially for unhoused and displaced people.
People who menstruate need access to menstrual hygiene resources for 3–7 days each month on average (Lancet Regional Health - Americas, 2022). Because public assistance programs like CalFresh do not cover menstrual products, obtaining these products can pose a significant economic burden for unhoused Californians. People are forced to steal menstrual products and/or forgo meals or other necessities to pay for them. To better support the health of all individuals – and especially those who rely on public facilities to meet basic needs – toilets, handwashing facilities with soap, trash cans, and private areas to change menstrual products can be co-located wherever menstrual hygiene is offered. People who menstruate also need consistent access to laundry services.
The inability to hygienically manage one's menstruation has multiple negative health consequences. Lack of access to menstrual products and handwashing before and after changing products increases risk for reproductive and urinary tract infections, as well as Toxic Shock Syndrome (Gillespie and Sarles, 2020; Raney, 2024). Using products not meant for menstruation, such as clothing, rags, tissue, or leaves can increase risk of health-threatening infection. In addition, a lack of access to menstrual products and hygiene has negative psychological impacts, including stress, shame, and depression (Sommer et al., 2021; Teizazu et al., 2021). Overall, interviews with unhoused people highlighted that lack of access to hygiene contributes to stigmatization, marginalization, and mental health consequences, as well as hindering daily activities.
Table 1 summarizes standards for the provision of menstrual hygiene. In an ideal world, everyone has access to affordable and adequate menstrual hygiene products that align with their bodily needs and menstrual products are available at all hours of the day and night regardless of the person's housing status. Ideally, all public restroom facilities are stocked with free menstrual products and are near a functioning and stocked handwashing station or sink, functioning toilet, and trash disposal. Access to a range of menstrual products of varying type, size, and absorbency across the entire menstrual cycle is necessary. Thoughtful design of services can address stigma and biases through the incorporation of perspectives from people who menstruate - especially young people, who may have specific needs; further, not all individuals who menstruate identify as women, are feminine presenting, or feel comfortable using gendered female WaSH facilities. Gender-neutral or “family-friendly” restrooms are essential for this reason.
Table 1. Basic standards of care for menstrual hygiene by type of infrastructure typically available to unhoused peoplea.
Availability
Menstrual hygiene products are consistently and regularly stocked in all public restrooms regardless of facility gender labels; accessible 24/7/365
Supported Agency & Guided Choices
Offer a wide array of high-quality products: tampons and pads of different absorbency; menstrual cups of different size (Note: menstrual cup hygiene requires access to water, soap, and sink)
Allow people to choose what products they need
Allow people to take enough for at least one menstrual cycle
Privacy & Security
Privacy and security are essential for using/changing menstrual hygiene product: safe, secure access to a toilet stall or room that can be locked by user; context-specific design and/or staffing measures as appropriate
Toilets & Handwashing
Toilets, handwashing, and trash disposal facilities are necessary before and after using/changing menstrual hygiene products
Soap and water should be consistently available for hand washing; hand sanitizer should be provided in locations without running water
Maintenance
Shared restroom facilities are frequently cleaned and stocked
Additional Considerations
No questions asked: Menstrual products are distributed on the basis of need, and not the co-assumptions of gender and the ability to menstruate
Offer options that are environmentally sustainable when possible
Facilities meet Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) specifications
Single-occupancy all-gender options are available
WaSH access is necessary 24/7/365. Unhoused Californians live in a variety of settings (outdoors/“rough sleeping,” in tents alone or in groups, vehicles/RVs, congregate shelters, and more) and contexts (urban, suburban, rural, along waterways, in canyons, and in places experiencing extreme weather and its consequences) – where access to WaSH services often changes on a daily basis. For people forced to live outdoors, meeting basic needs is especially difficult outside of regular business hours, when most services are closed. People living in congregate shelters and other emergency situations also struggle with access, especially during the day when many shelters close for cleaning and maintenance. For all of these reasons, people need access to WaSH services at all hours of the day, every day of the year.
Fixed-location versus mobile WaSH services can address context-specific needs. Mobile WaSH services can be especially impactful when relationship-building is needed, as services can be brought to areas where people need them most, while addressing the commonly expressed concerns of housed residents that fixed-location WaSH services could be a “magnet” for homelessness in their community. A robust mobile WaSH infrastructure also means having these resources available when extreme weather or other natural disaster strikes and first responders and displaced residents need WaSH services in emergencies. Where fixed-location services are appropriate, short-term storage (secure lockers) and pet-friendly spaces can facilitate access, as unhoused Californians often have their personal belongings, as well as their animal companions, with them at all times.
Accessing WaSH services currently interferes with other essential expenditures. Currently, some people are forced to choose between WaSH and other necessities (e.g., eating, job seeking) – this point emerged repeatedly in interviews with Californians who have experienced homelessness. Existing public assistance programs (e.g., in California, WIC, CalFresh) can be expanded to support all WaSH access by increasing funds to allow for purchasing of drinking water as well as expanding what can be purchased using EBT to include soap/hand sanitizer, laundry detergent, and menstrual hygiene supplies (see also: Ballard et al., 2021; Feinstein, 2018; Maroko et al., 2021; Sommer et al., 2020).
WaSH access is trauma-informed healthcare and outreach. Trust in services is also a concern, especially in locations where anti-camping and other anti-homelessness laws are heavily enforced. Public health and social service experts interviewed for this project emphasized the untapped potential of WaSH services to be integrated into “whole person healthcare” models in which WaSH is provided alongside basic health services like vaccines and blood pressure checks. Onsite social services and referrals to programs from job training to behavioral health support to housing can further promote wellbeing and mobility.
Promising Practices. Fig. 1 offers visual examples of gender-inclusive WaSH services. A patchwork of local and state laws already make menstrual hygiene resources available for free to certain populations in California, such as the previously mentioned menstrual equity law requiring menstrual access at schools.
Image 1. Promising WaSH practices that center menstrual hygiene.
Clockwise from top left: Think Dignity's mobile showers trailer; the Haven of Hope on Wheels' truck and 1000 gallon-tank, which allows mobile shower and laundry services in places without piped water; the laundry room at the Refresh Spot in Los Angeles; and a free menstrual product dispenser in a County of San Diego building.
The County of San Diego also provides free menstrual products in County-run facilities via the Free 4 Menstrual Equity (Free4ME) pilot program. These efforts can be replicated and expanded to all public facilities nationwide at a nominal cost.
When menstrual hygiene resources are provided as part of other services, unhoused people may need support and structure in selecting products. As part of their Mobile Operations of Dignity (which include not only their Fresh Start Showers but also their Street Boutique and Street Café programs), San Diego service provider Think Dignity recognizes that some unhoused Californians are so marginalized and stigmatized that they avoid stores and can be overwhelmed by choices. In response, Think Dignity staff and volunteers offer support and guidance – not surveillance – while program guests select the menstrual hygiene items they need, alongside other resources (see also: Ballard et al., 2021).
The ReFresh Spot, run by Homeless Healthcare Los Angeles, is a fixed-location, “one-stop shop” for people staying in or near Skid Row in Los Angeles. Services include showers, toilets, laundry, menstrual hygiene, pet food, Wi-Fi and charging, case management, and space to relax and be in community. The ReFresh Spot maintains a robust events calendar featuring partnerships with local healthcare providers (e.g. vaccination clinics, STI testing), veterinarian services, and much more.
Lastly, the Haven of Hope on Wheels offers mobile shower and laundry services to Butte and Shasta County communities including Chico, Oroville, and Redding. This program hauls and stores its own water and does not require piped water, allowing for additional flexibility for serving guests in a variety of locations. Notably, this program gained broad community appreciation in 2018 during the deadliest wildfire in California history (the Camp Fire). Haven of Hope on Wheels was able to provide showers and laundry services to first responders and residents displaced by the fire, allowing the broader community to see the benefits of services that are often seen as exclusively for unhoused people.
1.4. “This is my left hand”: promoting gender-inclusive standards for WaSH access
“So those are top of the list … menstrual products, I think just embedding in the entire conversation always as a default matter, like, ‘this is my left hand.’ [Holds up hand] … I never talk about my body without talking about both hands. That's the way we should be talking about (this). This conversation should include menstrual products, not even a side question or conversation.” -Deputy City Manager, large California city
Key stakeholders engaged for this project very much recognized the facets of public resistance to this topic and offered a wide range of ideas for how to invite broad community acceptance of public WaSH services, from addressing concerns head-on to selling WaSH services as part of broader healthcare and poverty alleviation efforts. For example, one public health expert interviewed for this project, acknowledging public opposition to WaSH services perceived as homeless-serving, creatively suggested a “Trojan horse” approach in which WaSH services are included in part of broader community improvement projects (parks, recreation centers, community resource hubs) instead of standalone facilities that are often rejected. Similarly, as highlighted in the quote from a deputy city manager opening this section, gender inclusivity can be embedded throughout WaSH services - to use this interviewee's image, menstrual hygiene is like a body's left hand, and “I never talk about my body without talking about both hands.” Table 2 summarizes themes regarding how to address misinformation and positively promote gender-inclusive WaSH access for unhoused people. These themes were identified via thematic analysis of interview and focus group transcripts, handwritten notes from informal conversations with stakeholders, and review of the existing literature.
Table 2. Addressing misinformation and stereotypes about WaSH services & homelessness in order to promote gender-inclusive WaSH.
Misinformation/StereotypesPotential Reframes
“Giving people bathrooms makes it easier for them to stay homeless”
The average period of adult homelessness in California is 2 years long. While Californians wait for permanent housing, they require access to WaSH.
“People need homes, not bathrooms” OR “WaSH services are expensive & those dollars should go to housing.”
“How do you expect me to get a home or a job if I can't take a shower?” People need places to meet bodily needs while waiting for housing. WaSH is also an opportunity to connect with other services.“This problem is someone else's responsibility. These unhoused persons are not from my community.
”Data repeatedly show that unhoused people are typically locals, not “outsiders.”
We have a shared responsibility for residents of our community. When we ensure WaSH services for unhoused people, it is fellow Californians who benefit - during emergencies, this includes first responders and displaced residents.
“There's not enough data to prove that this is an issue.”
Recent hep A & shigella outbreaks indicate that there is an issue. Public health affects everyone.
“People will trash public WaSH facilities” OR “If you build it, they will come”
There are best practices for addressing these issues through staffing, design, and other solutions. Having more WaSH facilities available means less wear and tear on facilities. OR People are already here. If we treat them with dignity and include them in decision-making, they will behave better.
“I don't care about others' access to WaSH” OR “This issue doesn't affect me”
Communities are safer & healthier when everyone has access to WaSH, especially children. No one wants to see, smell, or clean up open defecation. When everyone has WaSH services, we all win! Public WaSH services promote healthier opportunities for all California residents and help to save on reactive costs. When natural disasters strike, first responders and displaced residents need WaSH services in emergencies
“Menstrual hygiene isn't a concern for me”
For people who menstruate, this difference between a good day and a bad one can depend on access to a pad or tampon - menstrual hygiene access means being able to go to work, school, and care for family
“Gendered facilities (men's and women's) are enough, we don't need more bathrooms”/“gender-inclusive restrooms don't benefit anyone”
Single-occupancy all-gender facilities benefit a lot of people: families with small children, people with caretakers, disabled people, and people who don't feel comfortable using congregate, gendered bathrooms