We hope you’ll take the time to vote for our $1000 Referral Reward Yearly Award winner this year. $1000 is a big boost to any charity and we donate to groups large and small throughout the year, but we restrict our Yearly Award to the smaller groups. It’s not that big groups like Red Cross or Oregon Food Bank couldn’t use it; they could and we know they’d do great work with it! But while $1000 is a good gift to them, for a small, unrecognized charity just getting off the ground it could be a lifeline. One of our past Reward recipients, Hygiene4All, is a perfect example. They’re small and local, and they’re addressing a problem that everyone talks about but no one does anything about. Hygiene4All is eligible for our Yearly Award this year and you should consider them, but we aren’t trying to sway your vote. We just thought this was a great opportunity to introduce you to a stellar example of the tiny groups who are quietly making a difference in all our lives…

Meet Hygiene 4 All

By Sandra Comstock

There is a new solution in town that we believe can make an important difference for our housed and houseless neighbors. We would like to take a moment to introduce ourselves. Last year, during our Campaign for Compassionate Change many friends experiencing houselessness joined our Coalition to share stories of exclusion from life-critical services that many of us housing-secure folks take for granted.

As Bekah, who lived outside for years and works at a local cafe shared:

“With the cold, rain, and danger outside my tent, I would hold my pee all night long till it hurt. Sometimes I got infections from holding it in. If I was downtown…. shelters didn’t let me use the bathroom outside of a few hours. Two of the closest Portland loos were far from my tent. Many times they were clogged or out of service. Local businesses — if even open at 6 AM — turned me away, making me feel so rejected and depressed I stopped trying. I ended up dirty; I got rashes from wet, dirty clothes and sleeping gear. All I could think of was getting clean. But if bathrooms are hard to find, showers or laundry? Well, those were nearly impossible to come by. People don’t realize what it is like to not have access to a bathroom, a bath, a change of clean clothes. Too many times people can’t understand all the discrimination and punishment we go through just to try to use water and toilets and things most people think anyone can choose to use when they want.”

As Michael, a former Army Sergeant lamented:

“I try to have some dignity but — at 58 years old – when you have to go you have to go. I mean – dogs just need grass and a plastic bag, and a dog can have a bowl of treats and a drink of water at a cafe but humans have to pay for a glass of water so they can use the bathroom… Sometimes I just wish I was a dog!”

From these stories, an idea – Hygiene4All – was born. Since May we have collaborated tirelessly to build a program to address issues related to lack of hygiene access, but also issues related to lack of community connection and mutual recognition of our human dignity and extraordinary capacities to collaboratively change our city and circumstances. In a city of over half a million, (2,000 of whom live unsheltered on the streets) our city provides

only 9 year-round public restrooms –open largely 7 AM-7 PM;
a handful of shower facilities operating a few days a week; and
no regular voluntary waste collection for those living outside.

Weekly, the city registers approximately 450 complaints related to human waste — each clean-up costs approximately $316 to mitigate. Rather than wasting funds on cleanups after the fact, we believe it is time to provide places where ALL city residents may use the bathroom in safety and dignity.

Most of us are aware that Portland, Oregon is facing a public health and civic crisis that affects the thousands of city residents experiencing houselessness; few realize that unsheltered residents’ exclusion from hygiene & sanitation services place the general public at risk for bio-waste borne illnesses such as Hepatitis, MRSA, and parasites. Preventing houseless folks from using bathrooms, laundries, and trash bins increase their trauma, shame, and depression as housed neighbors, private security, and police vilify, discriminate, and punish them simply because they have nowhere to sleep, use the bathroom, wash, or legally dispose of their trash, except outside. At Hygiene4All, we have united our efforts across the housing divide, to propose a new response to these problems that will

provide reliable access to water, toilets, waste disposal, and safety-critical for survival and human dignity,
open opportunities for houseless community members to lead in identifying shared problems and advocating for collaborative solutions joining housed-unhoused efforts to tackle tough issues
demonstrate and disseminate the savings and benefits to the public through rigorous data tracking and analysis.

We are here to make a change — TOGETHER—!

Hygiene4all is an unhoused led and operated hygiene & sanitation hub promoting community health, engagement, and connection across the houseless-housed divide. Hygiene4All has designed a pilot Hygiene Hub modeling the virtues of peer-led hygiene, sanitation and safety services with a special commitment to low-barrier work and practices founded in principles of trauma-informed care, harm reduction, de-escalation, and anti-oppression. We will be tracking how this effort improves neighborhood life for all while raising community awareness about the terrible toll exclusion from basic services takes on those experiencing houselessness. We could use your support in the following ways: