
The Perils of Private Provision of Public Goods - jpn
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3531171
======
_bxg1
Anecdotally, the Starbucks at the very center of downtown Austin usually has a
couple of homeless people in it. They'll come in, use the bathroom, get some
AC, maybe even take a nap in a chair. The baristas happily refill their cups
with clean water.

As a customer, there's sometimes a smell, and you tend to sit where you can
keep an eye out (since you never know the mental state of people in that
situation), but I've never witnessed any real problems.

Honestly, it's heartwarming. It's dystopian, of course, that the provision of
basic needs like these falls to a private coffee chain, but regardless of that
I admire what they're doing (even though it's probably PR-driven, if we're
being honest). It's not unpleasant enough for me as a customer that I'd refuse
to go to that location (or even walk half a dozen blocks to the next one).

~~~
chance_state
>It's dystopian, of course, that the provision of basic needs like these falls
to a private coffee chain [...]

I live in a major metro city like Austin. The homeless can easily get three
hot meals a day, a warm bed every night, and all the hygiene necessities they
need for free.

I don't think you should assume they're in Starbucks because the resources
aren't available elsewhere.

~~~
lazyasciiart
I live in a world informed about homelessness and resources available to them.
You're wrong.

~~~
dang
Ok, but in that case a good HN comment should share some of what you know so
that fair-minded readers can learn. "You're wrong" doesn't teach us anything.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
lazyasciiart
I really didn't think anyone needed to learn that homeless people aren't
swanning around every major city dining on hot meals three times a day and
overwhelmed with choices on shelter and resources. In my experience literate
people who argue otherwise are deeply committed to a false worldview and
information is no more going to change their minds than a high school science
course might change the Westboro Baptist Church.

------
notlukesky
The flaw with private companies providing a public service is inevitably the
erosion of demand for public goods and standards. The public sector should be
held to higher standards considering how large their budgets are and most of
it is spent wastefully. Europe and other developed countries have a far
superior public goods availability, service and outcomes with similar GDP
going to the public sector.

In the US one has to compare all taxes including federal, state and
city/county levels with other countries.

~~~
umvi
Really? When I was in Europe we could never find restrooms (or water!) without
shelling out a few Euros. And even when we bought water, it was usually not
refillable, it was in a glass bottle. And the metros still had beggars coming
though each car asking for money and sleeping on the ground so clearly
homelessness can't be solved by raising taxes alone.

High taxes also have other cons and negative effects that are out of the scope
of this particular argument.

~~~
outime
Since you said "Europe" I can tell you that's not the case in e.g. Finland.
Restrooms in Helsinki are free to use for everybody and water is free in all
or 99% of restaurants and you can refill it as many times as you want. There
are no beggars in public transport from what I've seen here in almost 10
years. High taxes are being put into good use [1] when it comes to
homelessness.

I know that in many countries (including the one I'm from) this is the
situation, but not in whole Europe.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/03/its-a-
miracle...](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/03/its-a-miracle-
helsinkis-radical-solution-to-homelessness)

~~~
Jommi
There are sometimes beggars/junkies in the metro, but it's very rare and it's
usually about asking money for cigarettes.

------
NicolasGorden
On an anecdotal note: As someone who is self employed, I used to sit at
Starbucks a lot to get work done in a different environment than my home.
Getting out really helps me.

However, I've started to avoid Starbucks because of the homeless issue. I'm in
SoCal, and I completely relate to the struggles of the homeless. I even donate
my time to a local food pantry and our shelter. The smell and crazy stares are
one thing, but what really drives me away is the bathroom use. The Starbucks
near me have 1-2 bathrooms, and it's happened to me that these bathrooms can
be occupied by a homeless person for 30+ minutes. This is an unreasonable
amount of time for me to wait when I have to go and coffee is a diuretic.

Now when I want to work outside my home I drive to a library that's in an area
without public transportation or nearby places for the homeless to congregate,
and I can use it because of that. There's a starbucks with similar
characteristics (not near public transport, no place to congregate near by),
but it's too far. The library that's closer to me, the one I would prefer to
go to, is completely overrun by homeless.

The homeless issue is so complex. Every solution has its pros and cons. The
terrible thing is that there seems to be two sides to our communities and each
side seems to only see the pros or cons of any solution (depending on their
ideological bend) while the other does the same. No one seems to be weighing
the pros AND cons in a reasonable way, or accepting that there are no perfect
solutions. The issue is so polarized, even very intelligent people seem
incapable of even admitting something as simple, and I would hope obvious, as
the fact that any solution will have pros and cons. It's as if there's no
getting past 'the other tribe has terrible ideas' mentality.

~~~
chadcmulligan
> The homeless issue is so complex

Is it though? I'm an Australian so take my comments with a grain of salt.
Seeing the US from an external viewpoint, it seems the mental gymnastics that
people go through in the US to basically wreck the public spaces and
infrastructure is fascinating. From a purely selfish point of view being
surrounded by homeless unmedicated crazy people is a bad thing, the solution
is fairly obvious - cheap medical for those that can't afford it, homeless
shelters for the less fortunate, build more houses so that houses are cheaper,
cheap education. Looking from the other side of the world, what started out as
apparent greed some years ago has now become ideology - there is no solution.
There are some with the same ideology here, they are trying to create the same
situation, fortunately they are not winning, though it's a continual fight.

I've had the same argument with many people here - the argument seems to be
dying though, which I find promising, why should I pay taxes? Well you should
pay taxes for roads, you need roads? well yes. You want education for your
children? well yes. Sewerage? Well yes, and so on. By enumerating the things
that taxes pay for seems to make them acceptable.

Do you want to be surrounded by crazy people when you go out? No, well we
should pay taxes to have cheap health etc. I was at our state library
yesterday, it was crazy people free, there are always a couple of people
sleeping in the library, but they seem to be looked after. There's a lot of
support infrastructure that seems to keep them somewhere, I don't know really,
but I know if the government spending is reduced they'll reappear so taxes are
paid. Is there waste in my tax money? probably, the idea that private
enterprise has no waste though is farcical - I've been a corporate consultant.

~~~
darawk
Except that in the US, the problem is not a lack of funding. In California,
one of the places in the US with the worst homeless problem, there are about
150,000 homeless people[1]. Over the last two years california has spent $2.7
billion dollars. That's approximately $18,000 _per homeless person_. Which is
literally enough to pay their rent, even in a major metropolitan city like Los
Angeles.

The issue isn't funding. It's how the funds are being spent.

1\. [https://calmatters.org/explainers/californias-
homelessness-c...](https://calmatters.org/explainers/californias-homelessness-
crisis-explained/)

2\. [https://www.10news.com/news/local-news/san-diego-
news/lawmak...](https://www.10news.com/news/local-news/san-diego-
news/lawmakers-call-for-audit-of-californias-homeless-spending)

~~~
dllthomas
> That's approximately $18,000 per homeless person.

IIUC, a lot of that spending is to get (or keep) people in housing.

The people thus supported aren't reflected in the homelessness figures, and
redirecting that portion of money to the presently homeless would lead to
these people being homeless instead.

It could be that the result would still be an improvement, but that's not
obvious.

~~~
base698
In a lot of cases to divert funds to private companies. There are companies
setup to extract federal resources for states. However that many in many cases
ends up in the general fund and not to help those in need.

[https://nyupress.org/9781479874729/the-poverty-
industry/](https://nyupress.org/9781479874729/the-poverty-industry/)

~~~
dllthomas
I make no claim about the scope of waste, large or small. I was just pointing
out that the reasoning presented had the wrong denominator.

------
elliotec
The point is they knew it would be bad for business and did it anyway in a
rare case of corporate empathy.

EDIT: Okay corporations aren't people therefore cannot have empathy. Can we
say "forced empathy?" There's probably a real word here. Either way Starbucks
budged under some moral compass forced or otherwise.

~~~
PostOnce
Is it empathy, or is it the realization that the decline could be worse if
they develop a Nestle-style reputation and inspire boycotts or something? I
won't rule out empathy, but it's not the first thing that jumps to mind for
me.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
I feel like you've gotta either be willing to give the benefit of the doubt or
treat empathy as by definition inapplicable to corporations. It's always
possible to come up with a story where companies doing nice things are
secretly just maximizing profits.

~~~
rolltiide
They can also fail at maximizing profits with an idea that was
indistinguishable from empathy.

Which therefore fits the term altruistic, whether they intended for this or
not, as other businesses have not replicated what Starbucks is doing.

With all these possibilities, alongside a potentially contrived ideal of a
founder to actually subsidize public bathrooms for all, doesn't that mean it
is useless to debate and just accept the reality at face value of "they are
providing a service and its nice"

------
seieste
One of the things that bothers me about this study is the use of SafeGraph,
which provided "anonymized" data that included GPS location, race, and income.

~~~
NikolaeVarius
The article specifically claims that Safegraph only provided location pings.

All other data came from correlating that data with census data.

The actual BS that is going on is that this data is being collected by
"numerous smartphone apps (e.g. local news, weather etc.)"

More reasons to not install apps unless necessary.

~~~
bobbyi_settv
> More reasons to not install apps unless necessary.

The reason is that my data might be anonymized and used to help make academic
studies more accurate? I'm not losing sleep over that

~~~
nitrogen
The reason is that academic studies are the smallest fraction of who might
want to buy and correlate these datasets.

------
tomcam
FWIW My outside “office” is a local McDonald’s and I far prefer it to
Starbucks. Much less noisy and crowded. If you’re on a budget you can just buy
a soft drink for $1 or go crazy and spend $1.19 on a cheeseburger as well.

~~~
csomar
I think the guy running the place matters more than the franchise name these
days. I have found McDonald's that are superior to Starbucks and have even
something like small "private" tables where you can work. But also some
Starbucks have great views.

I think where McDo wins is that it has more places running 24/7.

~~~
TMWNN
>I think the guy running the place matters more than the franchise name these
days.

More to the point, most Starbucks in the world, other than kiosk ones in
larger establishments, are corporate-owned. So Seattle's decision to open all
Starbucks to unlimited loitering and bathroom usage affected all of them,
leading to what people are discussing here.

Less than 10% of McDonald's are corporate-owned. Franchisees, whether owning
one or a hundred stores, are much more focused on the bottom line and less
willing to tolerate homeless people driving away paid customers.

------
seemslegit
"Using a large panel of anonymized cellphone location data" Some completely
normal and academically ethical practices right here.

~~~
Blake_Emigro
This is exactly how Google maps knows traffic conditions.

~~~
Scoundreller
And Google provides histograms of how busy a store is at each hour of the day.

Of course, the least busy hours are always my work hours.

------
MarkMc
The problem is that the bathroom policy wasn't the only change. Around the
same time you had many people suddenly labeling Starbucks racist for having
two black men arrested [1].

So how much in the 7.3% decline of traffic is attributable to the bathroom
policy change and how much to the racism issue?

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/28/coffee-shop-
ra...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/28/coffee-shop-racism-
starbucks-arrests)

------
Blake_Emigro
In Vancouver, Canada, this is a problem. But we also have the bigger problem
that the public bus system, operated by private companies, allow the homeless
to get free rides. It makes some routes unbearable and even dangerous.

~~~
Scoundreller
With the exception of a small shuttle system, they're all owned/operated
directly or indirectly by a municipality, or Translink, which is a quasi-
public government-owned corporation.

Could still be dysfunctional though.

~~~
Blake_Emigro
Right, I forgot about the government tie-in. This part of free rides is
definitely dysfunctional. Bus drivers aren't obligated to do anything, for
their own safety, except notify the transit police.

~~~
Scoundreller
Do the homeless get a card or something? How do they prove their situation?

~~~
Blake_Emigro
Nope. They just walk on through the front door, or sneak in the back one when
someone is getting off. I just spent the last 1.5 years commuting down
Vancouver's infamous Hastings Street on the bus, and there's not a day goes by
where you don't see something messed up. I moved last weekend in part to get
away from it.

------
ChuckMcM
I wonder if cities would consider a liability waiver for any business that
wanted to contribute to a public bath house. There are many different homeless
programs in place but there are few places where the unhomed can shower and
use a toilet. That leads to a host of other problems, like the Starbucks one
mentioned. When I suggested to a city council member that perhaps one or more
of these businesses in town could pitch in to build a bath house they were not
supportive.

My impression from "reading between the lines" was that the city was both
"trying to be helpful" and trying hard not to be _too helpful_ or _too good_
which would encourage the homeless to converge here. If that really is the
underlying policy I think it sucks.

~~~
drivingmenuts
That business would last as long as it took for an incident to happen. The
liability waiver might shield it from direct economic losses from an incident,
but there is no liability against public outrage, whether it’s deserved or
not.

------
baryphonic
I was surprised when I visited the Starbucks on University Avenue in Palo Alto
recently: the bathrooms require a code to enter. The baristas happily gave me
the code, and I wonder if homeless are also able to get it, but it did seem a
bit weird. Wouldn't an easier solution be to just say that bathrooms are
reserved for customers?

~~~
ficklepickle
There are a few advantages. You can allow access to most non-customers but
refuse heavily intoxicated people.

The McDonalds near me sometimes has to call an ambulance due to an overdose or
medical distress in the bathroom. If there was no access control, it would be
less likely to notice someone not leaving the bathroom in a timely fashion. A
bathroom OD isn't great for business, but a dead body is worse.

------
throwawaysbux
Starbucks had to eat the cost because being publicly lambasted for being
"racist" for having private bathrooms turned out to be a greater cost.

------
yitchelle
Community involvement by a large corporation should be applauded. I wonder if
there is a study to show how Starbuck's action is impacting on the homeless
community. Is it positive or negative?

~~~
Scoundreller
Probably positive?

It's too bad they'd get a tax credit if they wrote a cheque to a charity, but
nada for directly providing free bathrooms and cups of water to everyone
everywhere.

------
8bitsrule
The cure for homelessness is a home. Doesn't have to be fancy or big.

To keeps costs down even further, build community facilities. Those who can
afford it can pay some rent.

I don't see that as a complex issue. It's simply rational. And where it's been
tried, it works.

~~~
umvi
> The cure for homelessness is a home.

"The cure for a cough is cough drops"

I feel it is important to idenify the root cause, not merely treat symptoms.
_Why_ is the person homeless? How could it have been prevented in the first
place? _Why_ is the person coughing? Do they have allergies? lung cancer...?

~~~
DoreenMichele
For homelessness, not having a home is the very definition of the issue. We
don't want to build "affordable housing" in the US. We literally feel it's
better to let people be homeless than provide crappy housing. Then we run
around claiming the nationwide, well-known not remotely a secret shortage of
affordable housing is totes irrelevant and the homeless are all junkies and
crazies.

Studies show that increases in rent correlate 96 percent to increases in
homelessness. Build enough housing. Make it cheap enough and possible to live
life without owning a car. If that reduces homelessness by 96 percent and the
remaining four percent are hardcore, seriously screwed up junkies and crazies,
we can throw extra resources at them because we spend more on average on
trying to help the homeless than annual rent would cost.

Sometimes hospitals provide free housing to seriously ill homeless because
it's a fraction of the cost of leaving them homeless and seeing them in the ER
constantly and hospitalizing them regularly.

You want to see fewer homeless? The single best thing you can do is advocate
for more housing in your city.

~~~
umvi
> For homelessness, not having a home is the very definition of the issue

I'm more interested in _why_ they don't have a home. Is it really because rent
is too high as you mentioned? Why can't they move to cheaper housing or take
on a roommate? How come they don't have a family to fall back on (parents,
siblings, etc)?

These are the types of questions I want studied, not "how can we most
effectively slap a bandaid on this symptom we are observing?"

> You want to see fewer homeless? The single best thing you can do is advocate
> for more housing in your city.

What I really want to see is fewer people getting into a position where they
need to rely on the government to survive. How can we identify and address
_those_ root causes?

~~~
DoreenMichele
I literally just answered exactly that and the answer is "Increase the supply
of affordable (in the most literal sense of the word) housing in the US
because there is a nationwide shortage." I don't mean "affordable housing" as
some euphemism for government owned housing. I mean stuff you can get for
under $600 that doesn't require you to own a car to get to it. There is a
dearth of such housing across the entire freaking nation.

 _For every 100 families living in poverty on the West Coast, there are no
more than 30 affordable homes_

[https://www.geekwire.com/2018/every-100-families-living-
pove...](https://www.geekwire.com/2018/every-100-families-living-poverty-west-
coast-no-30-affordable-homes/)

The Clear Connection Between Housing Costs and Homelessness

[https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-
clear-c...](https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-clear-
connection-between-housing.html)

The Missing Middle

[https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-
missing...](https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-missing-
middle.html)

I actually "majored" in this in college, so to speak. Before I spent nearly
six years homeless, I wanted to be an urban planner. I was pursuing a
bachelor's in Environmental Resource Management with a concentration in
Housing intended to eventually also get a Masters in Urban Planning. As part
of that program, I took a college class on Homelessness and Public Policy.

I feel like I repeat these exact same points ad nauseum on Hacker News.

Our housing policies have increasingly encouraged a very upper class version
of single family detached homes designed for nuclear families and our
demographics have diverged from that population. We literally don't build
housing designed explicitly for the needs of single people, childless couples,
etc and we have more such households than we used to have.

We now have this insane expectation that single people should rent housing
designed for a nuclear family and fill the extra bedrooms with strangers to
split the rent. Then we make movies, like _Single White Female_ , about what a
nightmare it is to have to live with total strangers to make your life work.

We've torn down more than a million SROs. We've largely zoned out of existence
new Missing Middle Housing.

People can't rent what doesn't actually exist and affordable housing in a
walkable neighborhood mostly doesn't exist in the US. We simply don't build
it.

Then we run around acting like homeless people are all crazies and junkies,
irresponsible, don't have self discipline, etc etc. and when you say "Just
build more housing that works for people" you get crazy-making replies saying
"But WHY?????"

Because it would fix the vast majority of this problem. That's why.

And then I feel like spitting nails because I don't know what I need to do to
more effectively communicate about this thing that I've literally studied.

~~~
belorn
Only anecdotally, but a pattern I have noticed here in Sweden is that the
government seems to not want to be in charge of building homes for people.
Affordable housing projects historically tend to up as the worst part of any
city, something which I suspect is part of why every politician treat the
topic as the plague. Local government seems to instead try get private actors
to handle the job of creating more affordable housing, and the common tool I
keep hearing is decision that areas of newly built homes must have a certain
amount of rent based apartments.

Private actors however seems to want to build a house and then get paid and
move on, either by building condos or have each resident buy a "share" in
organization that is formed to "own" the building. The apartments are thus
modeled after people who can afford that large initial investment, and the
dictated portion that need to be rent based is sized similar and selected
among those that didn't get initially sold for one reason or an other.

So from what I see the problem is not that urban planners focus on the nuclear
family, but rather that no one want to build houses in order to regain the
investment through slowly renting it out to many low income residents. Of
course this just an observation, so it would be interesting to hear your
thoughts on it.

~~~
DoreenMichele
The problem in the US is not urban planners. The main problem is that all of
our financing mechanisms are basically aimed at supporting the development of
single family detached homes and it's actively difficult to finance other
stuff.

Co-housing works in Europe to make mixed income developments. In the US, with
no financing available, it can only be built be a group of well-heeled friends
who may not have poor friends and may not think to design the space to include
anyone but their circle of friends because they are looking for a certain
social experience and failing to see there's more to co-housing than shared
meals with friends.

Single family detached housing financing and tax breaks and so forth has got
our housing situation in a strangle hold. This was born of the events that led
to the creation of the modern suburbs and most people aren't even aware of the
history.

Single family detached homes in the suburbs are a standard by which we measure
all housing and everything else is automatically presumed to be second rate
and less desirable.

We are being haunted by these mental models and the nation as a whole doesn't
really recognize it. So we go "Let's fix this problem!" and then we do more of
the same, only bigger! prettier! more expensive! And we find ourselves stumped
that the problem still persists and won't go away.

A builder in the Atlanta area owned three large lots and asked to chop them up
into five smaller lots so he could build something sane and his request was
denied in the name of _preserving neighborhood character_ because the existing
homes have big yards. So rather than build five homes more in line with the
neighborhood character, he built three McMansions in order to make the profit
he wanted or needed.

And this is part for the course.

We have studies that show that the way to preserve rural character and
farmland is to build dense housing on a small strip nearby and keep the farms.
But Americans are very resistant to that. Instead, they insist on designating
minimum lot sizes and the result is the destruction of farmland to replace it
with suburbs with ridiculous, sprawling yards.

We've got studies. We've got data. We know some things that actually work.

We can't get people to approve it locally and make it happen. It's partly
logistical obstacles in the form of policy and financing and partly some
bizarre mental block where we idealize and worship suburban patterns of
development in ways and to a degree that amounts to cutting out own throats.

And it makes me spit nails. I don't even know how to begin talking with people
in some kind of effective manner, much less begin developing stuff.

------
immichaelwang
Is there a study showing how much business they lost from the backlash when
they didn't let people use the bathroom? This may be the better business
decision.

~~~
_bxg1
And there's no way this kind of study could factor that in. Maybe people don't
go as often to the stores where this is prevalent, but maybe the positive
image it gives them of the chain causes them to go to other franchises more
frequently.

------
zelly
Starbucks had a great run from the early 2000s. I wouldn't have guessed that
this is the way they go, but already I've noticed it's becoming less and less
popular. Add in the long term effects of coronavirus on people's propensity on
going out for going out's sake, the economic recession causing people to stop
spending, increases in demographics who do not drink coffee, and you begin to
see how Starbucks will decline massively like Blockbuster, Sears, et al. It
started its decline a couple years ago after that incident that caused them to
let anyone stay inside without paying. I'm not sure what will replace it.
Probably nothing. People will just go back to meeting at restaurants, bars or
each other's homes. Long alcohol.

~~~
jcadam
Their coffee has become quite mediocre as well. I remember when it used to be
fairly good. There are several locally owned coffee shops where I live that
serve much better stuff.

~~~
tim58
I think this is a problem with scale. Starbucks has to make sure all of their
coffee in all of their stores tastes the same. That's a lot easier to do with
a locally owned coffee shop than it is with an international chain.

~~~
jcadam
There's probably a lot of truth to this. I've heard that they have to source
their beans from many different suppliers and resort to over-roasting to
ensure a more consistent (albeit, burnt) flavor.

Most of the smaller shops source their beans from local roasters, or even do
the roasting themselves.

------
S_Wolframs_Ego
They are going the McDonald's route and trying to be a community hub. I.e.
when everything else is gone, they (and McDonald's) will be the only place
left to go.

------
miked85
Starbucks restrooms were always essentially public; anybody was able to go in
and use them. The real issue is the restrooms are now apparently open for
homeless people to use drugs and sleep in. That is bad for business.

~~~
jdsully
Only in suburbia. In the cities they frequently had code locks and required
purchase to use.

~~~
miked85
You are probably right. I haven't seen this myself in a non-suburbia location,
but I wouldn't doubt it was the norm.

------
JordanFarmer
Everyone involved would have been better off if Starbucks just started a
charity to help homeless people. Political correctness and feelings (vs logic
and foresight) just cause more problems.

~~~
loeg
Homeless people really need public bathrooms! Showers would be great, too. So
far, even west coast cities haven't really begun to attempt to build public
bathroom infrastructure at any scale (AFAIK). Not in Seattle, anyway.

Here, there are public parks, but often those bathrooms (and drinking
fountains) are closed in the winter.

~~~
Blake_Emigro
There are some of these public toilets near the high-density of homeless in
Vancouver, Canada, but not nearly enough.

------
ivankirigin
> This decline cannot be calculated from Starbucks’ public disclosures, which
> lack the comparison group of other coffee shops.

What about SecondMeasure and other credit card tools used for market share?

------
the_burning_one
The problem here is calculating in dollars and cents doesn't take into account
what costs are externalized by businesses and borne by the population.

------
DoreenMichele
For those who don't know the backstory:

Two black men in Philadelphia were arrested in a Starbucks. They were waiting
to meet a white guy and showed up first. One of them asked to use the bathroom
and someone who worked at Starbucks called the cops.

The white person they were waiting to meet showed up as they were being
handcuffed. This individual told the cops "I'm the person they are waiting
for." and the arrest proceeded forward.

The two men sued the city of Philadelphia and Starbucks corporate office
decided to announce that anyone can use their bathrooms.

These two black men were not homeless. They were just victims of racist
bullshit and then Starbucks made a poor choice in the aftermath concerning how
to handle this.

Instead of firing the racist employee and admitting this was racist bullshit
and apologizing for racist bullshit, they made a nice sounding policy change
of "Anyone can use our bathrooms."

I spent nearly six years homeless. I often went to Starbucks while homeless to
buy coffee, plug in and use their wifi. I never spent excess time in the
bathrooms or trashed the bathrooms.

Starbucks did no one any good by making this policy change. This does not
really help homeless people and did not really address the actual issue that
led to this policy: Straight up racism.

In fact, it swept the racism under the carpet and tried to pretend that wasn't
really a problem. The whole thing stinks to high heaven and will probably
never be genuinely addressed. Instead, Starbucks will end up being hurt, not
learn a fucking thing and if they go out of business, people will whine about
how it's a loss to the homeless community and say nothing about "Yeah,
Starbucks and its racist bullshit basically deserved to die for not taking the
bull by the horns and addressing the racism in this incident."

Related link to make it easier to find more info on the incident if you so
desire:

 _“The police were called because these men hadn’t ordered anything. They were
waiting for a friend to show up, who did as they were taken out in handcuffs
for doing nothing. All the other white ppl are wondering why it’s never
happened to us when we do the same thing.”_

[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/16/arrest-of-
tw...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/16/arrest-of-two-black-
men-at-starbucks-for-trespassing-sparks-protests)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/05/02/a...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/05/02/african-
american-men-arrested-at-starbucks-reach-1-settlement-with-the-city-secure-
promise-for-200000-grant-program-for-young-entrepreneurs/)

------
hrdwdmrbl
While traveling I often rely on Starbucks as one of the most reliable and
convenient places I can go to use a washroom.

~~~
jcadam
I've never seen a clean restroom in a Starbucks. They're about at the same
level as gas stations.

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publicgood123
Enormously clever and fun paper.

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ct520
hate to be that dude, but that is why I don't enter starbucks in the hood. If
there's a drive thru I stop. But the people loitering inside and the bathrooms
are cray cray. seen my share of police called to Starbucks more than a corner
store. No thanks. (also thinking maybe I go to starbucks too much lol)

~~~
bdcravens
One of the Starbucks I frequent in downtown Houston is .... not clean.

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klyrs
So, homelessness combined with a lack of public facilities is a burden on
businesses with humanitarian policies? Is this the "invisible hand" correcting
an overlooked externality?

~~~
allovernow
What's the externality here?

