Whyte, Boyle washrooms coming

Homeless welcome new facilities set to open this summer

New permanent public washrooms opening this summer can’t come soon enough for some of Edmonton’s homeless.

A new facility at Whyte Avenue and Gateway Boulevard is slated to open in early summer, and two outdoor washrooms are to open in August at the new Boyle Street Community Centre at 103A Avenue and 96th Street.

“It’s a very serious thing, finding a place to go to the washroom,” Wade Simm, who has a history on the street, said Thursday at the Bissell Centre drop-in.

Health issues can make such things urgent, and most restaurants only let clients use their facilities, Simm said. “When I need to go, I need to go now.”

Even getting water to drink can be difficult, added Sarah Blabey, who has been living in a hotel room with family since their home was condemned because of mould.

“There’s the library where you can get water, but that’s open 1 to 5 (p.m.) on Sundays,” Blabey said.

A portable toilet was provided outside the Bissell Centre, but the safe disposal system for needles overflows sometimes and the toilet is often dirty.

City council debated the issue of public washrooms at length in 2008 and 2009, finally approving $536,000 for a facility at the Old Strathcona site. The Boyle Street site is being built as part of the Boyle Renaissance project.

“Hopefully, we’re beginning to make progress on this,” said Coun. Ben Henderson, whose ward includes Old Strathcona.

“We coasted for years on the good nature of the private sector to make their washrooms available, and they, for various different reasons, were finding that problematic,” Henderson said.

“As a result, the city hadn’t put in any public washrooms, but I think it’s one of those elemental things you need to do. If the merchants said no, people were using the alleys.”

The washrooms in Old Strathcona are currently under construction. Contractors aim to open the facility early this summer, but some of the work, such as pouring concrete, is weather dependent, said Denise Gee, City of Edmonton communications specialist.

When it’s done, the freestanding building will have three women’s stalls, two men’s stalls and a changing table on each side. There will also be two public urinals attached to the outside of the building.

Boyle Street Community League president Thim Choy said he hopes the two stalls being built on the outside of the new community league building will be open 24 hours a day.

“We’ll see how it works,” Choy said. “If it works good — no drug use and no fights — then we’ll keep it open.” The facility comes with an automated locking system, so the league can program a time to shut the washrooms if it needs to.

It will have security cameras trained on the doors, said vicepresident Candas Jane Dorsey, and there needs to be a schedule for staff or other security to check the washrooms regularly. Dorsey hopes the washrooms will help fill a need in the inner city and be open for anyone who uses the nearby park.

But Rev. Jim Holland, who tries to keep the children’s hockey rink clean near Sacred Heart Church of the First Peoples, said washrooms are not the only need.

Even when washrooms are available, chronic drinkers still go where they are. Holland watches them drink in the park beside the church and finds what they leave in the alley.

“If they are drunk, they don’t care and no one cleans it up,” he said. “The problem is tolerance for public drinking in the inner city. If the police would swing by once or twice a day and pour out the beer, they would stop.”