* You install a squat toilet
    * It's cleaned by flooding the entire
      toilet area with water, which once
      turned off all washes down into the
      toilet
    * No toilet paper, you clean yourself
      with water

You might be able to build a squat toilet where the feet rested on a ramp (i.e. raised at the heel side), though I suspect most Americans would still refuse to use it.

Many of those I saw were pretty disgusting, and my travel companion reported that it also applied to the toilets for the opposite sex.

If you have so many homeless people, maybe you should solve that problem first?

Solving homelessness isn't an on/off switch; people are still going to need a toilet while homelessness is being "fixed".

(It's a problem with saying why not solve X instead? You end up with neither fixed, and everybody loses. I mean, why solve homelessness when there are hungry kids that need feeding? And so the cycle continues.)

As an aside, I'm not convinced that it's homeless people per se that are the problem; it's people with issues that abuse public toilets, whether through drugs, alcohol or being a general malcontent, and "the homeless" get blamed as convenient name.

It's not like corporate headquarters are invulnerably to toilet abuse, least of all from the execs.

Hence my comment - if you're worried about homeless people in your precious toilet, you (as a city/society) have bigger problems than public toilets.

    ...it can actually be cheaper in the end to give homeless
    people homes than to keep them homeless.

"The surprisingly simple way Utah solved chronic homelessness and saved millions" - http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2015/04/...

That's not necessarily the best source - it just happened to be towards the top of the following SERP, which finds quite a few articles: https://www.google.com/search?q=give+homeless+homes

And there are other choices besides "diarrhea floors" and coin payment; in train stations, for example, they could simply charge a fee to the train company to pay for the permanent staff, which could then (very slightly) increase the price of tickets to accommodate it.

b) In the few locations with particularly bad problems, isn't that really telling us that e.g. the problem is not something which can be solved by technology as opposed to, say, funding mental health programs?

http://www.street-art.nl/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/1-1.jpg

and

https://pinkylightsaber.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/public-t...

while useful, they usually are quite smelly though.

http://f00.inventorspot.com/images/urilift-public-pop-up-toi...

They're free to use, not drug dealer proof, and close at night. I'd say they work well, but they're rather ugly.

Then they charge you to pee.

Create a problem. Charge for the solution. Genius.

The toilets in my hometown (Warwick) were closed. There used to be some on the castle walls at the top of Smith Street (near the East Gate) but they were closed. Also I think the public toilets in the main square (by the Rose and Crown?? where Woolworths used to be) are shut too.

And I don't even know of any public toilets in the town I am living in now (perhaps because I always just go home)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WL2ZnE1vAU