MONEY IN THE TOILET – THE BILLION DOLLAR COST OF PUBLIC BATHROOMS

New York and California socialists can’t even build bathrooms.

The fastest rising item in the country isn’t gold or bitcoin, it’s the cost of a public bathroom.

In ’08, a San Francisco Weekly article fumed that a park restroom in Golden Gate Park was costing taxpayers $531,219. Fast forward, a decade later the cost of a park restroom in the Golden Gate Boathouse had balloonedto $2 million or $4,700 per square foot.

The modern bathroom had a third All-Gender option that the ’08 bathroom didn’t. But adding a non-gender shouldn’t have quadrupled the price. Inflation would have kept the cost well below a million.

Why did a 15-foot by 28-foot bathroom cost millions? Part of the answer may be that San Fran privileges minority businesses and requires that 15% of work hours be carried out by “disadvantaged” workers.

New York City’s bathrooms were always pricey. In ’08, they ran to a million. A recent report noted that the overpriced real estate market had pulled off a new high with a $6 million bathroom. Fit not only for a king, but for Steve Austin. The bionic bathroom is a new record. Last year’s record was a $4.7 million bathroom in the Bronx. An average park bathroom in the Big Apple now runs to $3.6 million. 

The Parks Commissioner blamed “market forces”. But while New York City is famously expensive with residents paying the cost of a home elsewhere for a closet in Manhattan, these bathrooms were being set up in parks. You can still pick up a Central Park West condo with multiple rooms for the cost of a public bathroom on Staten Island. Socialists like Senator Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez like to claim that they could put the money of wealthy people to much better use.

Their own city government demonstrates that for the money it takes to get a Central Park apartment with French Empire styling and celebrity neighbors, socialists will give you a toilet. Eventually.

Comments