New research finds that almost half a million households in the United States, largely and perhaps surprisingly urban ones, lack proper indoor plumbing, according to The Guardian. 

The data, which was compiled from U.S. Census Bureau statistics by the Plumbing Poverty Project (PPP), a collaboration of the University of Arizona and King’s College London, and published Monday, found that renters and people of color, even in some of the country’s wealthiest cities, are more likely to be in a home without running water or toilets that flush.

The issue was found to be especially dire in San Francisco, where nearly 15,000 families live without a working plumbing system, according to The Guardian. San Francisco also has the third-most billionaires of any city in the world, the outlet noted.

Data also showed that, as of 2017, Black people made up 9 percent of San Francisco’s population but 17 percent of homes without indoor plumbing, The Guardian reported.

“The story of plumbing poverty in San Francisco is inextricably tied to unaffordable housing, declining incomes, post-recession transformations in the California rental sector, and racialized wealth gaps, fueled by a kind of ‘anti-Black urbanism’ that has either driven Black San Franciscans into more precarious housing conditions or out of the Bay entirely,” Katie Meehan, lead researcher of the PPP and professor of environment and society at King’s College London, told The Guardian.

San Francisco renters make up less than half of households in the city’s metro area but account for nearly 90 percent of homes lacking functional plumbing, The Guardian reported.

The research also showed that cities including Milwaukee, San Antonio, Phoenix, Seattle and Cleveland made little to no progress improving their plumbing issues between 2000 and 2017. All five cities have more than 3,000 households without proper plumbing, according to The Guardian.

“It’s not only that the gap between the water-rich and the water-poor is widening in America, it’s also that it’s driven by a housing sector that lacks any safety net for working families, especially households of color, that cannot afford the astronomical prices of San Francisco, Seattle, or now even Portland,” Meehan said.

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Walking around Sea Cliff on Halloween night often provided sights such as a family of pumpkins or children dressed as princesses, ninjas, or even ninja princesses.

For years, the bougie neighborhood has drawn in families for Halloween, particularly those with younger kids, thanks to its quiet streets, wide sidewalks and jaw-dropping homes promising full-size candy bars and over-the-top decorations.

“We give out about 1,500 in three hours,” said Gary Bengier, who wore a George Washington costume as he handed out XL Hershey chocolate bars in front of his garage, replete with Halloween decor. “We like to do something fun for the kids.”

But despite the hundreds of kids crowding the sidewalks, the sought-after full-size candy bars from wealthy homeowners appeared in short supply—with many children’s bags surprisingly limp as the night drew to a close. 

Families trick-or-treat in the Sea Cliff neighborhood in San Francisco on Halloween night on Tuesday. | Source: Garrett Leahy/The Standard

Along El Camino Del Mar, one of the more popular Sea Cliff streets with trick-or-treaters, homes decorated for Halloween were sparse, and groups of kids often passed several houses between stops for more candy, rather than going house-to-house in a continuous trick-or-treating spree.

Many homes had no decorations at all, and no lights came on inside them during the three hours The Standard spent in the neighborhood until 7:30 p.m.

“It used to be more decorations,” said 27-year Sea Cliff resident Kayda Ono alongside her 17-year-old son, Aiden, who was dressed as Aladdin. “When he was 5 years old, it was all the houses.”

‘A Robin Williams Effect‘

Multiple homeowners and locals said the Sea Cliff neighborhood’s Halloween celebrations had begun to slowly die down since the death of Robin Williams in 2014.

“There was definitely a Robin Williams effect,” said Andy McLaughlin, who has lived on Sea Cliff Avenue since 2010.

Families trick-or-treat in the Sea Cliff neighborhood in San Francisco on Halloween night on Tuesday. | Source: Garrett Leahy/The Standard

When McLaughlin moved in with his family, he said they would get around 900 kids every Halloween, with children lining up from their door to the sidewalk. This Halloween was different, even with at least six homes on her street giving out candy.

“This is the quietest night we had in 10 years, even with Covid,” Andy’s wife, Kendra McLaughlin, said.

The McLaughlin’s Sea Cliff home was richly decorated for Halloween on Tuesday. | Source: Garrett Leahy/The Standard

Others agreed with the sentiment that Williams’ death coincided with the decline in spookiness around Sea Cliff.

“Really, I think it was his passing that changed things,” Outer Richmond resident Donovan Truong said as his niece, Zoe, clambered into a stroller while clad in a pink tutu and plastic faux-diamond tiara. Truong said he was born and raised in the Richmond District and would trick-or-treat every year in Sea Cliff. “You’d look around and see all these houses without the lights on.”

Williams would give out glowstick necklaces instead of candy for Halloween, multiple residents said. 

Robin Williams’ former Sea Cliff home at 540 El Camino Del Mar is up for sale at a price of $25 million. | Source: Garrett Leahy/The Standard

“One year, he gave out toothbrushes too,” Sea Cliff resident Thatcher Davis said. “We thought it was hilarious, but the kids hated it.”

Williams’ former Sea Cliff home is currently up for sale at an asking price of $25 million.

Aging Owners, ‘Vacant’ Homes

Other Sea Cliff residents seemed to think part of the issue was that many of the longtime neighborhood residents grew older and could no longer physically hand out candy for hours on Halloween.

“It used to be the destination when Robin Williams was around,” said Craig Fong, who has lived on El Camino Del Mar for 22 years. “We’ve seen the residents aging, so they don’t participate anymore.”

Many of Sea Cliff’s homes are vacant or used as vacation homes by the wealthy, neighbors also told The Standard.

Families trick-or-treat in the Sea Cliff neighborhood in San Francisco on Halloween night on Tuesday. | Source: Garrett Leahy/The Standard

“This neighborhood used to be really popular for Halloween,” said Davis, who has lived on El Camino Del Mar for 15 years. “But, unfortunately, a lot of the homes are empty, or you have older people who aren’t comfortable giving out candy.” 

The Standard could not independently corroborate the neighbor’s claims the homes were empty. Locals said they knew which homes were vacant due to their long-standing presence in the neighborhood.

“I know because I live here,” said Michelle Molfino, who has lived in Sea Cliff for 20 years. “If you walk up Sea Cliff Avenue, there’s a bunch of vacant homes.”

Sea Cliff resident Michelle Molfino stands on El Camino Del Mar dressed for Halloween on Tuesday. | Source: Garrett Leahy/The Standard

The city will start a new vacant homes tax in January 2024 after voters approved it in the Nov. 8, 2022, election. The Empty Homes Tax would apply to homeowners with homes containing three or more housing units. 

Those subject to the tax would owe between $2,500 and $5,000 per vacant unit in the first year with the tax rising up to $20,000 by the third year for every unit that has been empty for longer than six months. Units exempted from the tax include single-family homes, duplexes and units under construction, among other exemptions. Filing and payment will begin for most people in 2025. 

But some locals think Sea Cliff is just in a spooky rut. Kendra thinks Sea Cliff Avenue is on the upswing as a Halloween destination.

“We’ve had some younger families moving in,” McLaughlin said. “I think in the next few years, it’ll really pick up more.”

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MINNEAPOLIS — Bailey Ober missed early. The Twins’ coaching staff also made some seemingly questionable decisions early on. And the Twins hitters? Well, they never got going.

The combination led to a homestand opening debacle Monday as the Twins lost 4-1 to the San Francisco Giants in front of a crowd of 16,627 at Target Field. Ober allowed four runs in the first inning, including a three-run home run, and the Twins were no match for the previously beatable Sean Manaea, who hit eight strikeouts in 3 2/3 innings. The Twins finished with just four goals in an uninspiring loss, their fifth in seven games.

“Crashing so early when we’re not really making a lot of runs can be tough,” said Twins manager Rocco Baldelli. “But you shouldn’t let that influence you in the future. On the mental side, to keep playing nine innings and giving yourself a chance to get back in the game, we still have work to do in that regard. We can say yes, a hit (here) or there and suddenly we have two or three runs on the board. That’s actually true. But talking about it is one thing. We need to go out there and do it. We just need more good bats. We get some, but just not enough.”

Although San Francisco only defeated the Twins 5-4, it was more than enough.

Ober started averaging just 2.1 walks per nine innings, a very good stat. He had four times as many strikeouts (28) as walks (seven) in 30 1/3 innings this season.

Still, Ober had little to no sense of the zone early on, running LaMonte Wade Jr. and Mike Yastrzemski on 13 squares early in the game. The San Francisco offense was not long in coming, as JD Davis hit a one-run double and followed Michael Conforto into the bullpen with a stunning three-run home run.

Just like that, the Twins were four runs behind.

Ober followed by leading Blake Sabol on 11 pitches, putting him in danger of being knocked out in the first inning. The right-hander managed to pull back the next three batsmen to end the inning, but not before throwing 39 pitches.

“Obviously, it’s definitely a bit of a drag,” Ober said. “I didn’t know how many pitches I was throwing until I was done with that inning. I looked at the scoreboard and realized how many I had thrown. But during the innings you’re just trying to run and pitch, get these guys out and limit as much damage as possible. … If I could do it again I’d re-run the first two guys and definitely try to get in the zone a lot better than I did.”

Ober recovered and knocked out 13 of the last 16 batsmen he faced, but the damage was done. Especially given the way the Twins hit.

Giants opener John Brebbia batted twice in a scoreless first inning and passed the baton to Manaea, who started with a 7.81 ERA in 27 2/3 innings. Manaea didn’t look like a 16-walk pitcher but effectively hit his pitches and overpowered the Twins.

While Baldelli hoped his team would slowly and surely erode San Francisco’s early lead, he never quite succeeded. The Twins had two players on board, with two outs to Byron Buxton in the third and fifth innings. But Buxton flew into the middle and landed in third to end those rallies.

The Twins had made the leadoff man in the second and fourth innings, but Manaea crushed those as well.

He limited the Twins to three hits and three walks in an 83-pitch attempt that his opponents weren’t sure they’d see after Manaea participated in a pregame bullpen.

“It’s not the way you’d ever want to start a ballgame, either from a (Ober’s) perspective or from a team perspective,” Baldelli said. “Again: It’s not like we’ve been going through every inning in silence and stuff like that. … (Kyle) Garlick hit the home run, but otherwise there wasn’t much going on with runners in goal position and things like that.”

While there wasn’t much action overall, Baldelli heated up the fanbase with a series of early moves that drastically changed the lineup. San Francisco uses several bulk pitchers including Manaea, Jakob Junis and Tristan Beck. As Brebbia Manaea gave way, Baldelli turned to his right-handers, resulting in newcomer Edouard Julien being removed before he could even strike.

Donovan Solano fought for Julien early in the second inning and Garlick scored for Alex Kirilloff in the third inning.

“When you start the game down 4-0 it really affects a lot of things,” said Baldelli. “But if you go down 4-0 and they bring in manaea, that tells you he’s going to pitch. Could they have knocked him out after an inning? Yes, but we didn’t think that would be the case if he made the game, and he made the game. After they took the lead, we had to get our guys in there.

“So it was definitely an unorthodox kind of play with the moves that we were doing, but Solano and Garlick pulled into that and did a pretty good job. Yes, it’s unusual, but our boys were prepared for what was to come. They knew it was an opening game and they knew it could be a strange game.”

As much anger as social media movements, Solano singled and walked twice in four trips, while Garlick hit a solo home run in the eighth inning for the only run and walked in three trips. The two represented five of the team’s eight players who reached the base.

• Before the game, the Twins saw Manaea go outfield for a pregame bullpen session. Initial reports indicated that the Giants’ left-hander threw up to 30 pitches during the practice session, which is the number pitchers typically throw between starts during their practice sessions. But after the game, Baldelli said Manaea only managed a “light bullpen” session and the Twins knew that didn’t eliminate him as San Francisco’s main option. From the Giants clubhouse, Manaea only threw eight to 10 pitches in a touch-and-feel session.

The Twins originally expected Manaea to pitch, so they released a lineup that had Solano starting before Joey Gallo. After Manaea’s session, the Twins revised their lineup, substituting Gallo for Solano and dropping Julien to fourth place (he was originally scheduled for the leadoff).

“We knew that (Manaea) would probably be an option,” Baldelli said. “If he throws the bullpen, don’t you think maybe? Secure. You might not think so, but you also look at who they have available and he’s certainly their best pick to pitch a lot of innings, basically. Is it also Beck? We knew he could throw a few innings too. But arrived at the end of the game? We knew it probably had something to do with Manaea.”

• Despite early moves, including the removal of one of the team’s hottest hitters (Kirilloff), several Twins said there had been no player complaints in the dugout and blamed the lack of questions on the coaching staff, who discussed their plan in the thoroughly communicated in the batsmen’s briefing on Monday. Several players were informed that despite starts, they might not sniff the plate depending on how San Francisco used its pitching team. One player said the squad had been conditioned by staff to anticipate substitutions due to the way the team’s strategy involves game-related decisions.

• Twins pitcher Tyler Mahle had successful surgery from Tommy John in Dallas, the team said.

(Photo by Bailey Ober: Jesse Johnson / USA Today)

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(Jacob Barss-Bailey/Flickr)

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – San Francisco has the highest rate of substandard plumbing among California’s 58 counties, an issue that is made even more pronounced during the coronavirus pandemic when washing hands is one of the most effective ways of warding off disease.

Nearly 2% of houses in San Francisco don’t have adequate plumbing, more than four times that in Los Angeles, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.

The San Francisco-based institute drew its data from The American Community Survey, conducted by the US Census Bureau.

The survey found that in more than 6,300 housing units in California, people have no piped hot and cold water, no bathtub or shower, or no flush toilet.

After San Francisco, the three counties with the worst plumbing are: Shasta, Yolo, and Humboldt.

Those three counties lack hot and cold piped water at the highest rates, while housing in urban San Francisco, Alameda, and Los Angeles counties tends to lack a shower or tub, according to the survey.

The California county with the best plumbing is Napa County, where only .11% of the homes don’t have the proper plumbing.

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Yan Yu Lin and her seven-year-old daughter live in a tight studio in San Francisco’s Chinatown, in a century-old building where 60 or so residents on each floor share a bathroom.

Along the back wall of the room is a plastic potty – the kind designed for toilet training toddlers. The shared bathrooms are out of order so often, so rank and unhygienic, that Lin has her daughter use the plastic potty instead. “It’s safer,” she said.

This Dickensian-sounding living situation is more common in the US than most would think.

An SRO residence in San Francisco’s Chinatown on 2 August 2021. Photograph: Max Whittaker/The Guardian

Almost half a million American households lack basic indoor plumbing, with renters and people of color in some of the country’s wealthiest and fastest growing cities most likely to be living without running water or flushing toilets, new research reveals.

While some rural and indigenous communities have never had indoor plumbing, the vast majority of unplumbed Americans are in fact found in urban areas, with one in three affected households living in just 15 cities, according to research by the Plumbing Poverty Project (PPP), a collaboration between King’s College London (KCL) and the University of Arizona.

Two side-by-side slope graphs, one showing cities where piped water access is worsening, the other improving. In the worsening graph, San Francisco, Portland, Phoenix and Seattle are labelled. In the improving graph, New York, Los Angeles, Houston and Cleveland are labelled.

The full analysis, based on data from annual community surveys by the US Census Bureau, is published today in collaboration with the Guardian as part of our long-running series exposing America’s water crisis.

It reveals how so-called plumbing poverty has gotten markedly worse in San Francisco and Portland – two booming ostensibly progressive west coast tech hubs with a growing wealth gap and homelessness crisis.

In San Francisco, which according to Wealth-X has more billionaires than any global city other than New York and Hong Kong, almost 15,000 families live in homes without proper plumbing. Median house prices have tripled since 2000 while the number of families in substandard housing with incomplete plumbing increased by 12%.

3 three groupings of bar charts comparing values between 2000 and 2017. Each grouping is looking at the percentage of residents who lack piped water access in that category. The categories are as follows: all households, renter occupied households, and Black/African American individuals. Each category has shown increases between 2000 and 2017.

Plumbing poverty, like all hardships in the US, is racialized: as of 2017, Black people made up 9% of San Francisco’s population but accounted for 17% of households without indoor plumbing.

“The story of plumbing poverty in San Francisco is inextricably tied to unaffordable housing, declining incomes, post-recession transformations in the California rental sector, and racialized wealth gaps, fueled by a kind of ‘anti-Black urbanism’ that has either driven Black San Franciscans into more precarious housing conditions or out of the Bay entirely,” said Katie Meehan, lead researcher of the PPP and professor of environment and society at KCL.

The problem is nationwide.

Even though plumbing poverty appears to have declined in several major cities including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago over the past two decades, tens of thousands of residents continue to rely on public restrooms, school showers and chamber pots.

Public restrooms in New York City. Photograph: The Photo Works/Alamy

In 2017, after a period of sustained economic growth following the Great Recession, at least 28,000 households in New York and 19,000 in LA still lacked basic indoor plumbing. And the progress made could actually be inflated due to the Census Bureau eliminating one of the three survey plumbing questions in 2015.

Meanwhile other cities including Milwaukee, San Antonio, Phoenix, Nashville, Seattle and Cleveland made little or no progress in tackling plumbing poverty between 2000 and 2017. The stagnation reflects a combination of factors including the legacy of historic racist housing policies, decades of underinvestment in water and sanitation infrastructure, and widening income inequalities since the Great Recession.

Table showing “Estimated households without piped water” and “Pct of population” for the top 50 metro areas in the US.

In Phoenix, one of the fastest growing sunbelt cities in the south-west, renters are earning less and paying more to live in homes without running water compared to two decades ago. In 2017, unplumbed renters on average spent 43% of their monthly income on rent compared to 25% in 2000.

Overall, progress to eradicate plumbing poverty remains slow: in 2017, there were still enough Americans living without piped water to fill the nation’s seventh-largest city.

“It’s not only that the gap between the water-rich and the water-poor is widening in America, it’s also that it’s driven by a housing sector that lacks any safety net for working families, especially households of color, that cannot afford the astronomical prices of San Francisco, Seattle, or now even Portland,” added Meehan.

The PPP white paper, which focuses on the 15 worst cities, is intended as blueprint for lawmakers to tackle gaps in research and infrastructure funding to end plumbing poverty – which is essential if every American household is to one day have access to affordable water and sanitation.

Clean, safe, affordable water and sanitation are essential for human health, economic prosperity and environmental justice. Yet when Covid struck and public health experts recommended regular hand washing to curtail the spread, an estimated quarter of the world’s population, 2 billion people, lacked clean running water, while almost half did not have access to proper sanitation, according to UN figures.

While the vast majority live in developing countries, at least 1.1 million people in the US, ostensibly the richest country in the world, also suffer the indignity of living in homes without running water, an indoor shower or bath, or flush toilet – because of incomplete plumbing. An additional 16 million people or so lose access every year when disconnected due to unaffordable, unpaid water bills.

‘There was nowhere for me to go’

Before the pandemic, when schools were open for in person classes, Lin’s daughter knew to use the toilets before coming home. After schools, businesses and even park amenities closed down, and families without plumbing like Lin’s were increasingly forced to rely on bottled water, wipes, potties and commodes.

Lin recalled one occasion last year when she fell ill with an upset stomach and the bathroom on her floor was out of order. She rushed down one floor, but the bathroom was occupied, as was the one on the next floor. “You can imagine how embarrassing that was,” she said. “I was ashamed. And I couldn’t even clean myself up afterwards – there was nowhere for me to go.”

Her landlord usually patches up the problem within a day or two, by pumping out the drains or tightening leaky faucets, but the ancient plumbing keeps giving out, week after week.

The situation is difficult for her to talk about. When she moved to San Francisco from China, Lin never imagined living like this. “When I speak to my dad back home, I try not to give him too many details about my life here,” she said. “I don’t want to make him upset.”

Yan Yu Lin poses for a portrait in San Francisco’s Chinatown on 2 August 2021. Lin lives in a SRO apartment and struggles with substandard plumbing. Photograph: Max Whittaker/The Guardian

She is not alone. Renters make up fewer than half of households in the San Francisco metro area, but account for almost 90% of its plumbing poverty.

Yet often, those without plumbing spend more on rent than those with running water and flush toilets. In 2017 the average unplumbed renter in San Francisco spent 44% of their monthly income to live in a home without piped running water, while the typical city resident spent 32% on a home with full plumbing.

In other words, renters with incomplete plumbing are a growing subclass in one of the richest and so-called progressive US cities, according to the PPP analysis.

Horizontal bar charts comparing all households with households without piped water. The categories examined include: people of color, renters, mobile home residents, and their median household income. Households without piped water are more likely to be renters, people of color, or mobile home residents. Households without piped access have a median income that is almost $30,0000 less than all households: $33,152.

The new data reinforces earlier findings, including a 2019 report by the non-profit Pacific Institute that estimated 140,000 people in California had incomplete plumbing. The true number is undoubtedly much higher, as excluded from the count were the growing number of Bay Area residents living in mobile homes without water hookups and families who informally rent garage units or sheds.

“Lots of people were using chamber pots,” said Laura Feinstein, who co-authored the report.

In cities like San Francisco and New York, the problem is particularly marked in single room occupancy buildings – housing units with shared bathrooms like Lin’s, which are concentrated in neighborhoods mostly populated by poor and working class families of color.

Nationwide, plumbing poverty is usually clustered in small pockets, reflecting historical racist housing and infrastructure policies which have long discriminated against communities of color and tribes.

“It’s a confluence of forces and the underlying causes will depend on where you live, but the social safety net – including infrastructure spending – being hollowed out over the last 40 to 50 years, has impacted people everywhere. The role of race and structural racism is enormous,” said Stephen Gasteyer, associate professor of sociology at Michigan State University who researches water access.

Overall, federal funding for water and wastewater infrastructure has declined steadily since its peak in 1977, making it harder for underserved communities to get financial support to build and maintain systems.

As investment stagnated, new problems converged with old ones. In addition to installing indoor plumbing in homes across the country, millions of lead lines still need to be replaced, meanwhile new contaminants like PFAS and microplastics have emerged as significant health hazards.

“It’s solvable, but we’ve spent decades creating this crisis so getting out of it will take some time, money and creativity to rethink how we do infrastructure so that we can deal with emerging contaminants and deliver affordable water to everyone,” said Gasteyer.

The Bipartisan Plan that passed the Senate included $48.4bn – less than half what Biden proposed – for water programs over five years, including $15bn for lead and $15bn for PFAS, as well as $3.5bn for sanitation projects on indigenous lands.

It’s simply not enough, and means millions of Americans will continue to live without clean, safe affordable water for years to come.

Until recently Rosa Ramiréz and her two daughters lived in a studio apartment without a working bathroom in San Francisco’s Mission District, a historically working class Latino neighborhood that has rapidly gentrified, sending rents sky high. The sink spewed yellow colored water, and the toilet wasn’t properly connected to the building’s plumbing system. Ramiréz’s rent was $2,300 a month.

San Francisco’s Mission district. Photograph: Charles O Cecil/Alamy

For two years, whenever she and her daughters needed to use the toilet or wash up, they relied on restrooms at the local donut shop, cafe or taqueria.

When the pandemic hit, the situation became untenable. With schools shut down, her daughters aged eight and 15 could no longer use the facilities on campus. “It was unbearable,” said Ramiréz, 49, who works as a cleaner. “The hardest part was when one of us had a stomach ache and none of the restaurants wanted to lend me their restroom.”

The landlord refused to fix the bathroom, and it took months for Ramirez to find another studio as rents have become so unaffordable in the neighborhood. “It has been increasingly difficult to live here,” said Ramiréz. “The conditions now are inhumane.”

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This article was amended on 28 September 2021 to attribute Wealth-X as the source of research into global billionaire cities, and to remove a photograph of the Cabrini-Green housing project in Chicago, which was largely demolished by 2011.

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(Jacob Barss-Bailey/Flickr)

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – San Francisco has the highest rate of substandard plumbing among California’s 58 counties, an issue that is made even more pronounced during the coronavirus pandemic when washing hands is one of the most effective ways of warding off disease.

Nearly 2% of houses in San Francisco don’t have adequate plumbing, more than four times that in Los Angeles, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.

The San Francisco-based institute drew its data from The American Community Survey, conducted by the US Census Bureau.

The survey found that in more than 6,300 housing units in California, people have no piped hot and cold water, no bathtub or shower, or no flush toilet.

After San Francisco, the three counties with the worst plumbing are: Shasta, Yolo, and Humboldt.

Those three counties lack hot and cold piped water at the highest rates, while housing in urban San Francisco, Alameda, and Los Angeles counties tends to lack a shower or tub, according to the survey.

The California county with the best plumbing is Napa County, where only .11% of the homes don’t have the proper plumbing.

The post San Francisco has highest lack of plumbing in California, making washing tougher throughout pandemic appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

For most Californians, handwashing is a matter of turning on their home faucet. And while it is no substitute for other guidelines, handwashing is a surprisingly effective measure against the coronavirus. Unfortunately, not everyone can implement this public health guidance. The state’s homeless population has difficulties, and so do residents with inadequate plumbing.

Nationally, plumbing issues—such as lack of running water—can make regular handwashing almost impossible, and California is no exception. The American Community Survey, conducted by the US Census Bureau, collects national- and state-representative information about housing characteristics. In more than 6,300 housing units in California, people lack adequate plumbing, meaning they have no piped hot and cold water, no bathtub or shower, or no flush toilet.

Californians across the state live in units with inadequate plumbing, including in counties being monitored for coronavirus spikes due to worsening virus indicators. Napa and Imperial Counties have slightly lower rates of housing with substandard plumbing than Sacramento and San Mateo. Of the state’s 58 counties, San Francisco has the highest rate. At about 1.8 percent, housing in San Francisco is over four times more likely than housing in Los Angeles to lack adequate plumbing.

The four counties with the highest rates of inadequate plumbing all have poverty rates exceeding 18%. Inadequacy differs by region as well: housing in Shasta, Yolo, and Humboldt Counties lacks hot and cold piped water at the highest rates, while housing in largely urban San Francisco, Alameda, and Los Angeles Counties tends to lack a shower or tub.

The coronavirus pandemic may compound struggles for those who live in housing with substandard plumbing. Over half of these units (57%) also lack a kitchen, making it hard for people to prepare meals at home. Affected individuals disproportionately face health and health care challenges. Compared to people living in modern facilities, those in housing with substandard plumbing are about twice as likely to be disabled (20% vs. 10%) and more likely to have no health insurance (13% vs. 8%). Furthermore, these units are much more likely to be single-person households (22% vs. 9%), which raises broader concerns about mental health: people living alone could be more at risk of loneliness during the pandemic.

Reducing virus spread through frequent handwashing is a vital part of managing the COVID-19 pandemic. But not every California household has the plumbing to meet basic hygiene needs. Addressing this deficiency would take time and effort, but adequate plumbing is part of the foundation of improved health for the communities we live in.

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Yan Yu Lin and her seven-year-old daughter live in a tight studio in San Francisco’s Chinatown, in a century-old building where 60 or so residents on each floor share a bathroom.

Along the back wall of the room is a plastic potty – the kind designed for toilet training toddlers. The shared bathrooms are out of order so often, so rank and unhygienic, that Lin has her daughter use the plastic potty instead. “It’s safer,” she said.

This Dickensian-sounding living situation is more common in the US than most would think.

An SRO residence in San Francisco’s Chinatown on 2 August 2021. Photograph: Max Whittaker/The Guardian

Almost half a million American households lack basic indoor plumbing, with renters and people of color in some of the country’s wealthiest and fastest growing cities most likely to be living without running water or flushing toilets, new research reveals.

While some rural and indigenous communities have never had indoor plumbing, the vast majority of unplumbed Americans are in fact found in urban areas, with one in three affected households living in just 15 cities, according to research by the Plumbing Poverty Project (PPP), a collaboration between King’s College London (KCL) and the University of Arizona.

Two side-by-side slope graphs, one showing cities where piped water access is worsening, the other improving. In the worsening graph, San Francisco, Portland, Phoenix and Seattle are labelled. In the improving graph, New York, Los Angeles, Houston and Cleveland are labelled.

The full analysis, based on data from annual community surveys by the US Census Bureau, is published today in collaboration with the Guardian as part of our long-running series exposing America’s water crisis.

It reveals how so-called plumbing poverty has gotten markedly worse in San Francisco and Portland – two booming ostensibly progressive west coast tech hubs with a growing wealth gap and homelessness crisis.

In San Francisco, which according to Wealth-X has more billionaires than any global city other than New York and Hong Kong, almost 15,000 families live in homes without proper plumbing. Median house prices have tripled since 2000 while the number of families in substandard housing with incomplete plumbing increased by 12%.

3 three groupings of bar charts comparing values between 2000 and 2017. Each grouping is looking at the percentage of residents who lack piped water access in that category. The categories are as follows: all households, renter occupied households, and Black/African American individuals. Each category has shown increases between 2000 and 2017.

Plumbing poverty, like all hardships in the US, is racialized: as of 2017, Black people made up 9% of San Francisco’s population but accounted for 17% of households without indoor plumbing.

“The story of plumbing poverty in San Francisco is inextricably tied to unaffordable housing, declining incomes, post-recession transformations in the California rental sector, and racialized wealth gaps, fueled by a kind of ‘anti-Black urbanism’ that has either driven Black San Franciscans into more precarious housing conditions or out of the Bay entirely,” said Katie Meehan, lead researcher of the PPP and professor of environment and society at KCL.

The problem is nationwide.

Even though plumbing poverty appears to have declined in several major cities including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago over the past two decades, tens of thousands of residents continue to rely on public restrooms, school showers and chamber pots.

Public restrooms in New York City. Photograph: The Photo Works/Alamy

In 2017, after a period of sustained economic growth following the Great Recession, at least 28,000 households in New York and 19,000 in LA still lacked basic indoor plumbing. And the progress made could actually be inflated due to the Census Bureau eliminating one of the three survey plumbing questions in 2015.

Meanwhile other cities including Milwaukee, San Antonio, Phoenix, Nashville, Seattle and Cleveland made little or no progress in tackling plumbing poverty between 2000 and 2017. The stagnation reflects a combination of factors including the legacy of historic racist housing policies, decades of underinvestment in water and sanitation infrastructure, and widening income inequalities since the Great Recession.

Table showing “Estimated households without piped water” and “Pct of population” for the top 50 metro areas in the US.

In Phoenix, one of the fastest growing sunbelt cities in the south-west, renters are earning less and paying more to live in homes without running water compared to two decades ago. In 2017, unplumbed renters on average spent 43% of their monthly income on rent compared to 25% in 2000.

Overall, progress to eradicate plumbing poverty remains slow: in 2017, there were still enough Americans living without piped water to fill the nation’s seventh-largest city.

“It’s not only that the gap between the water-rich and the water-poor is widening in America, it’s also that it’s driven by a housing sector that lacks any safety net for working families, especially households of color, that cannot afford the astronomical prices of San Francisco, Seattle, or now even Portland,” added Meehan.

The PPP white paper, which focuses on the 15 worst cities, is intended as blueprint for lawmakers to tackle gaps in research and infrastructure funding to end plumbing poverty – which is essential if every American household is to one day have access to affordable water and sanitation.

Clean, safe, affordable water and sanitation are essential for human health, economic prosperity and environmental justice. Yet when Covid struck and public health experts recommended regular hand washing to curtail the spread, an estimated quarter of the world’s population, 2 billion people, lacked clean running water, while almost half did not have access to proper sanitation, according to UN figures.

While the vast majority live in developing countries, at least 1.1 million people in the US, ostensibly the richest country in the world, also suffer the indignity of living in homes without running water, an indoor shower or bath, or flush toilet – because of incomplete plumbing. An additional 16 million people or so lose access every year when disconnected due to unaffordable, unpaid water bills.

‘There was nowhere for me to go’

Before the pandemic, when schools were open for in person classes, Lin’s daughter knew to use the toilets before coming home. After schools, businesses and even park amenities closed down, and families without plumbing like Lin’s were increasingly forced to rely on bottled water, wipes, potties and commodes.

Lin recalled one occasion last year when she fell ill with an upset stomach and the bathroom on her floor was out of order. She rushed down one floor, but the bathroom was occupied, as was the one on the next floor. “You can imagine how embarrassing that was,” she said. “I was ashamed. And I couldn’t even clean myself up afterwards – there was nowhere for me to go.”

Her landlord usually patches up the problem within a day or two, by pumping out the drains or tightening leaky faucets, but the ancient plumbing keeps giving out, week after week.

The situation is difficult for her to talk about. When she moved to San Francisco from China, Lin never imagined living like this. “When I speak to my dad back home, I try not to give him too many details about my life here,” she said. “I don’t want to make him upset.”

Yan Yu Lin poses for a portrait in San Francisco’s Chinatown on 2 August 2021. Lin lives in a SRO apartment and struggles with substandard plumbing. Photograph: Max Whittaker/The Guardian

She is not alone. Renters make up fewer than half of households in the San Francisco metro area, but account for almost 90% of its plumbing poverty.

Yet often, those without plumbing spend more on rent than those with running water and flush toilets. In 2017 the average unplumbed renter in San Francisco spent 44% of their monthly income to live in a home without piped running water, while the typical city resident spent 32% on a home with full plumbing.

In other words, renters with incomplete plumbing are a growing subclass in one of the richest and so-called progressive US cities, according to the PPP analysis.

Horizontal bar charts comparing all households with households without piped water. The categories examined include: people of color, renters, mobile home residents, and their median household income. Households without piped water are more likely to be renters, people of color, or mobile home residents. Households without piped access have a median income that is almost $30,0000 less than all households: $33,152.

The new data reinforces earlier findings, including a 2019 report by the non-profit Pacific Institute that estimated 140,000 people in California had incomplete plumbing. The true number is undoubtedly much higher, as excluded from the count were the growing number of Bay Area residents living in mobile homes without water hookups and families who informally rent garage units or sheds.

“Lots of people were using chamber pots,” said Laura Feinstein, who co-authored the report.

In cities like San Francisco and New York, the problem is particularly marked in single room occupancy buildings – housing units with shared bathrooms like Lin’s, which are concentrated in neighborhoods mostly populated by poor and working class families of color.

Nationwide, plumbing poverty is usually clustered in small pockets, reflecting historical racist housing and infrastructure policies which have long discriminated against communities of color and tribes.

“It’s a confluence of forces and the underlying causes will depend on where you live, but the social safety net – including infrastructure spending – being hollowed out over the last 40 to 50 years, has impacted people everywhere. The role of race and structural racism is enormous,” said Stephen Gasteyer, associate professor of sociology at Michigan State University who researches water access.

Overall, federal funding for water and wastewater infrastructure has declined steadily since its peak in 1977, making it harder for underserved communities to get financial support to build and maintain systems.

As investment stagnated, new problems converged with old ones. In addition to installing indoor plumbing in homes across the country, millions of lead lines still need to be replaced, meanwhile new contaminants like PFAS and microplastics have emerged as significant health hazards.

“It’s solvable, but we’ve spent decades creating this crisis so getting out of it will take some time, money and creativity to rethink how we do infrastructure so that we can deal with emerging contaminants and deliver affordable water to everyone,” said Gasteyer.

The Bipartisan Plan that passed the Senate included $48.4bn – less than half what Biden proposed – for water programs over five years, including $15bn for lead and $15bn for PFAS, as well as $3.5bn for sanitation projects on indigenous lands.

It’s simply not enough, and means millions of Americans will continue to live without clean, safe affordable water for years to come.

Until recently Rosa Ramiréz and her two daughters lived in a studio apartment without a working bathroom in San Francisco’s Mission District, a historically working class Latino neighborhood that has rapidly gentrified, sending rents sky high. The sink spewed yellow colored water, and the toilet wasn’t properly connected to the building’s plumbing system. Ramiréz’s rent was $2,300 a month.

San Francisco’s Mission district. Photograph: Charles O Cecil/Alamy

For two years, whenever she and her daughters needed to use the toilet or wash up, they relied on restrooms at the local donut shop, cafe or taqueria.

When the pandemic hit, the situation became untenable. With schools shut down, her daughters aged eight and 15 could no longer use the facilities on campus. “It was unbearable,” said Ramiréz, 49, who works as a cleaner. “The hardest part was when one of us had a stomach ache and none of the restaurants wanted to lend me their restroom.”

The landlord refused to fix the bathroom, and it took months for Ramirez to find another studio as rents have become so unaffordable in the neighborhood. “It has been increasingly difficult to live here,” said Ramiréz. “The conditions now are inhumane.”

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This article was amended on 28 September 2021 to attribute Wealth-X as the source of research into global billionaire cities, and to remove a photograph of the Cabrini-Green housing project in Chicago, which was largely demolished by 2011.

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New research finds that almost half a million households in the United States, largely and perhaps surprisingly urban ones, lack proper indoor plumbing, according to The Guardian.

The data, which was compiled from US Census Bureau statistics by the Plumbing Poverty Project (PPP), a collaboration of the University of Arizona and King’s College London, and published Monday, found that renters and people of color, even in some of the country’s wealthiest cities, are more likely to be in a home without running water or toilets that flush.

The issue was found to be especially dire in San Francisco, where nearly 15,000 families live without a working plumbing system, according to The Guardian. San Francisco also has the third-most billionaires of any city in the world, the outlet noted.

Data also showed that, as of 2017, Black people made up 9 percent of San Francisco’s population but 17 percent of homes without indoor plumbing, The Guardian reported.

“The story of plumbing poverty in San Francisco is inextricably tied to unaffordable housing, declining incomes, post-recession transformations in the California rental sector, and racialized wealth gaps, fueled by a kind of ‘anti-Black urbanism’ that has either driven Black San Franciscans into more precarious housing conditions or out of the Bay entirely,” Katie Meehan, lead researcher of the PPP and professor of environment and society at King’s College London, told The Guardian.

San Francisco renters make up less than half of households in the city’s metro area but account for nearly 90 percent of homes lacking functional plumbing, The Guardian reported.

The research also showed that cities including Milwaukee, San Antonio, Phoenix, Seattle and Cleveland made little to no progress improving their plumbing issues between 2000 and 2017. All five cities have more than 3,000 households without proper plumbing, according to The Guardian.

“It’s not only that the gap between the water-rich and the water-poor is widening in America, it’s also that it’s driven by a housing sector that lacks any safety net for working families, especially households of color, that cannot afford the astronomical prices of San Francisco, Seattle, or now even Portland,” Meehan said.

The post Report: Practically half one million US households, largely in cities, lack indoor plumbing appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Yan Yu Lin and her seven-year-old daughter live in a tight studio in San Francisco’s Chinatown, in a century-old building where 60 or so residents on each floor share a bathroom.

Along the back wall of the room is a plastic potty – the kind designed for toilet training toddlers. The shared bathrooms are out of order so often, so rank and unhygienic, that Lin has her daughter use the plastic potty instead. “It’s safer,” she said.

This Dickensian-sounding living situation is more common in the US than most would think.

An SRO residence in San Francisco’s Chinatown on 2 August 2021. Photograph: Max Whittaker/The Guardian

Almost half a million American households lack basic indoor plumbing, with renters and people of color in some of the country’s wealthiest and fastest growing cities most likely to be living without running water or flushing toilets, new research reveals.

While some rural and indigenous communities have never had indoor plumbing, the vast majority of unplumbed Americans are in fact found in urban areas, with one in three affected households living in just 15 cities, according to research by the Plumbing Poverty Project (PPP), a collaboration between King’s College London (KCL) and the University of Arizona.

Two side-by-side slope graphs, one showing cities where piped water access is worsening, the other improving. In the worsening graph, San Francisco, Portland, Phoenix and Seattle are labelled. In the improving graph, New York, Los Angeles, Houston and Cleveland are labelled.

The full analysis, based on data from annual community surveys by the US Census Bureau, is published today in collaboration with the Guardian as part of our long-running series exposing America’s water crisis.

It reveals how so-called plumbing poverty has gotten markedly worse in San Francisco and Portland – two booming ostensibly progressive west coast tech hubs with a growing wealth gap and homelessness crisis.

In San Francisco, which according to Wealth-X has more billionaires than any global city other than New York and Hong Kong, almost 15,000 families live in homes without proper plumbing. Median house prices have tripled since 2000 while the number of families in substandard housing with incomplete plumbing increased by 12%.

3 three groupings of bar charts comparing values between 2000 and 2017. Each grouping is looking at the percentage of residents who lack piped water access in that category. The categories are as follows: all households, renter occupied households, and Black/African American individuals. Each category has shown increases between 2000 and 2017.

Plumbing poverty, like all hardships in the US, is racialized: as of 2017, Black people made up 9% of San Francisco’s population but accounted for 17% of households without indoor plumbing.

“The story of plumbing poverty in San Francisco is inextricably tied to unaffordable housing, declining incomes, post-recession transformations in the California rental sector, and racialized wealth gaps, fueled by a kind of ‘anti-Black urbanism’ that has either driven Black San Franciscans into more precarious housing conditions or out of the Bay entirely,” said Katie Meehan, lead researcher of the PPP and professor of environment and society at KCL.

The problem is nationwide.

Even though plumbing poverty appears to have declined in several major cities including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago over the past two decades, tens of thousands of residents continue to rely on public restrooms, school showers and chamber pots.

Public restrooms in New York City. Photograph: The Photo Works/Alamy

In 2017, after a period of sustained economic growth following the Great Recession, at least 28,000 households in New York and 19,000 in LA still lacked basic indoor plumbing. And the progress made could actually be inflated due to the Census Bureau eliminating one of the three survey plumbing questions in 2015.

Meanwhile other cities including Milwaukee, San Antonio, Phoenix, Nashville, Seattle and Cleveland made little or no progress in tackling plumbing poverty between 2000 and 2017. The stagnation reflects a combination of factors including the legacy of historic racist housing policies, decades of underinvestment in water and sanitation infrastructure, and widening income inequalities since the Great Recession.

Table showing “Estimated households without piped water” and “Pct of population” for the top 50 metro areas in the US.

In Phoenix, one of the fastest growing sunbelt cities in the south-west, renters are earning less and paying more to live in homes without running water compared to two decades ago. In 2017, unplumbed renters on average spent 43% of their monthly income on rent compared to 25% in 2000.

Overall, progress to eradicate plumbing poverty remains slow: in 2017, there were still enough Americans living without piped water to fill the nation’s seventh-largest city.

“It’s not only that the gap between the water-rich and the water-poor is widening in America, it’s also that it’s driven by a housing sector that lacks any safety net for working families, especially households of color, that cannot afford the astronomical prices of San Francisco, Seattle, or now even Portland,” added Meehan.

The PPP white paper, which focuses on the 15 worst cities, is intended as blueprint for lawmakers to tackle gaps in research and infrastructure funding to end plumbing poverty – which is essential if every American household is to one day have access to affordable water and sanitation.

Clean, safe, affordable water and sanitation are essential for human health, economic prosperity and environmental justice. Yet when Covid struck and public health experts recommended regular hand washing to curtail the spread, an estimated quarter of the world’s population, 2 billion people, lacked clean running water, while almost half did not have access to proper sanitation, according to UN figures.

While the vast majority live in developing countries, at least 1.1 million people in the US, ostensibly the richest country in the world, also suffer the indignity of living in homes without running water, an indoor shower or bath, or flush toilet – because of incomplete plumbing. An additional 16 million people or so lose access every year when disconnected due to unaffordable, unpaid water bills.

‘There was nowhere for me to go’

Before the pandemic, when schools were open for in person classes, Lin’s daughter knew to use the toilets before coming home. After schools, businesses and even park amenities closed down, and families without plumbing like Lin’s were increasingly forced to rely on bottled water, wipes, potties and commodes.

Lin recalled one occasion last year when she fell ill with an upset stomach and the bathroom on her floor was out of order. She rushed down one floor, but the bathroom was occupied, as was the one on the next floor. “You can imagine how embarrassing that was,” she said. “I was ashamed. And I couldn’t even clean myself up afterwards – there was nowhere for me to go.”

Her landlord usually patches up the problem within a day or two, by pumping out the drains or tightening leaky faucets, but the ancient plumbing keeps giving out, week after week.

The situation is difficult for her to talk about. When she moved to San Francisco from China, Lin never imagined living like this. “When I speak to my dad back home, I try not to give him too many details about my life here,” she said. “I don’t want to make him upset.”

Yan Yu Lin poses for a portrait in San Francisco’s Chinatown on 2 August 2021. Lin lives in a SRO apartment and struggles with substandard plumbing. Photograph: Max Whittaker/The Guardian

She is not alone. Renters make up fewer than half of households in the San Francisco metro area, but account for almost 90% of its plumbing poverty.

Yet often, those without plumbing spend more on rent than those with running water and flush toilets. In 2017 the average unplumbed renter in San Francisco spent 44% of their monthly income to live in a home without piped running water, while the typical city resident spent 32% on a home with full plumbing.

In other words, renters with incomplete plumbing are a growing subclass in one of the richest and so-called progressive US cities, according to the PPP analysis.

Horizontal bar charts comparing all households with households without piped water. The categories examined include: people of color, renters, mobile home residents, and their median household income. Households without piped water are more likely to be renters, people of color, or mobile home residents. Households without piped access have a median income that is almost $30,0000 less than all households: $33,152.

The new data reinforces earlier findings, including a 2019 report by the non-profit Pacific Institute that estimated 140,000 people in California had incomplete plumbing. The true number is undoubtedly much higher, as excluded from the count were the growing number of Bay Area residents living in mobile homes without water hookups and families who informally rent garage units or sheds.

“Lots of people were using chamber pots,” said Laura Feinstein, who co-authored the report.

In cities like San Francisco and New York, the problem is particularly marked in single room occupancy buildings – housing units with shared bathrooms like Lin’s, which are concentrated in neighborhoods mostly populated by poor and working class families of color.

Nationwide, plumbing poverty is usually clustered in small pockets, reflecting historical racist housing and infrastructure policies which have long discriminated against communities of color and tribes.

“It’s a confluence of forces and the underlying causes will depend on where you live, but the social safety net – including infrastructure spending – being hollowed out over the last 40 to 50 years, has impacted people everywhere. The role of race and structural racism is enormous,” said Stephen Gasteyer, associate professor of sociology at Michigan State University who researches water access.

Overall, federal funding for water and wastewater infrastructure has declined steadily since its peak in 1977, making it harder for underserved communities to get financial support to build and maintain systems.

As investment stagnated, new problems converged with old ones. In addition to installing indoor plumbing in homes across the country, millions of lead lines still need to be replaced, meanwhile new contaminants like PFAS and microplastics have emerged as significant health hazards.

“It’s solvable, but we’ve spent decades creating this crisis so getting out of it will take some time, money and creativity to rethink how we do infrastructure so that we can deal with emerging contaminants and deliver affordable water to everyone,” said Gasteyer.

The Bipartisan Plan that passed the Senate included $48.4bn – less than half what Biden proposed – for water programs over five years, including $15bn for lead and $15bn for PFAS, as well as $3.5bn for sanitation projects on indigenous lands.

It’s simply not enough, and means millions of Americans will continue to live without clean, safe affordable water for years to come.

Until recently Rosa Ramiréz and her two daughters lived in a studio apartment without a working bathroom in San Francisco’s Mission District, a historically working class Latino neighborhood that has rapidly gentrified, sending rents sky high. The sink spewed yellow colored water, and the toilet wasn’t properly connected to the building’s plumbing system. Ramiréz’s rent was $2,300 a month.

San Francisco’s Mission district. Photograph: Charles O Cecil/Alamy

For two years, whenever she and her daughters needed to use the toilet or wash up, they relied on restrooms at the local donut shop, cafe or taqueria.

When the pandemic hit, the situation became untenable. With schools shut down, her daughters aged eight and 15 could no longer use the facilities on campus. “It was unbearable,” said Ramiréz, 49, who works as a cleaner. “The hardest part was when one of us had a stomach ache and none of the restaurants wanted to lend me their restroom.”

The landlord refused to fix the bathroom, and it took months for Ramirez to find another studio as rents have become so unaffordable in the neighborhood. “It has been increasingly difficult to live here,” said Ramiréz. “The conditions now are inhumane.”

Allow Scribd content?

This article includes content provided by Scribd. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click ‘Allow and continue’.

This article was amended on 28 September 2021 to attribute Wealth-X as the source of research into global billionaire cities, and to remove a photograph of the Cabrini-Green housing project in Chicago, which was largely demolished by 2011.

The post Nearly half one million US households lack indoor plumbing: ‘The circumstances are inhumane’ | US information appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.