He’s already being accused by critics of turning the Big Apple into a toilet, and now Mayor Zohran Mamdani plans to roll out new public restrooms for “desperate” New Yorkers to relieve themselves.
The socialist pol was joined by Council Speaker Julie Menin in West Harlem Saturday in announcing a $4 million pilot citywide program to install up to 30 “self-cleaning” modular public bathrooms.
“Too many of our fellow New Yorkers feel a desperation too often in their lives … Suddenly, you feel it. You have to go to the bathroom,” said Mamdani.
“In a city that has everything, the one thing that is often impossible to find is a public bathroom. In the greatest city in the world, you should not have to spend $9 to buy a coffee just to be able to find a little relief,” he added.
Mamdani said the city would begin soliciting proposals from prospective bidders within the next three months to install 20 to 30 new restrooms, including a new one at the site of Saturday’s press conference on 12th Avenue and St. Clair Place. The site already has a public toilet Mamdani said has long been languishing.
It was unclear Saturday where the other bathrooms would be located, when they would be operating or what criteria the city use to decide what neighborhoods get them.
However, the new restrooms will provide a much-welcomed alternative to the city’s public streets, sidewalks and subways that have long been targets for New Yorkers seeking relief — especially the rising homeless population.
The new units will be self-cleaning, limited to 15-minute use per person and have maintenance performed on them twice a day.
There are about 1,100 public restrooms in the city serving 8.6 million New Yorkers, but the City Council last year set a goal of building 2,100 new bathrooms by 2035.
Mamdani said the cost to build public bathrooms — which he estimated running more than million bucks a pop — has long “prohibited” the city from opening up more. However, the modular bathrooms being sought through the “request for proposals” from interested suppliers should cost “far less than what we’ve come to expect in the city.”
Menin called the lack of public bathrooms “shameful,” saying as a Manhattan mom of four kids there were many times while they were growing up where she found herself desperately seeking a toilet.
“When they got to go, they got to go, and you don’t have a lot of time to find a bathroom,” she said.
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