homelessness

Seattle Gives High-Tech Toilets Another Go, Starting in Pioneer Square

 

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One rendering of what the freestanding toilets might look like in Pioneer Square.

By Erica C. Barnett

Anyone who has walked through Seattle’s densest neighborhoods—First Hill, downtown, Capitol Hill—knows that it’s damn near impossible to find a public restroom outside libraries, parks, and tourist-heavy areas like Seattle Center and Pike Place Market. Past efforts to add public restrooms have ended poorly; in 2008, after spending around $5 million on installation, cleaning, and maintenance, the city tore down five freestandimg restrooms installed just four years earlier downtown and on Broadway in Capitol Hill.

During the pandemic, Seattle actually locked existing public restrooms and replaced them with port-a-potties, euphemistically referred to as “comfort stations.” Plans to install something as minimal as freestanding sinks for handwashing got ground up in the gears of concern-trolling masquerading as public process: How will the city maintain them? How can we keep homeless people from ruining them? Won’t people be at risk of tripping if there’s a hose on the sidewalk?

Given that history, it’s tempting to assume that the latest proposal for public restrooms, from a D.C.-based company called Throne Labs, will also run headlong into the Seattle process. But so far, the company’s proposal—a total of 11 freestanding restrooms across the region, each at cost of around $100,000 a year—is moving forward without too much friction. (Really straining—sorry!!—to avoid toilet analogies here). The Pioneer Square Preservation Board recently approved Throne’s proposal to add two of its restrooms in the historic district—a surprising turn from a board whose members recently debated allowing bike parking because it would require ahistorical flex posts and paint on the ground. The vinyl-clad loos have to be wrapped in images of trees, but won’t have to mimic historic bricks, an idea that was proposed and rejected.

The toilets—smaller than a trailer, but bigger than a Port-a-Potty—use a pump system called a vacuum macerator that pulls waste upward and allows water to flow down into toilets and sinks, allowing them to have running water without expensive plumbing. A bigger innovation (or downside, if you prefer your toilets low-tech and accessible right this second) is that the new restrooms only be accessible via an app, a QR code, text message, or an entry card. The first three options allow Throne to keep track of user ratings and to pinpoint which users are causing damage or overstaying the restrooms’ ten-minute limit, while the fourth is intended to make the restrooms accessible to anyone who doesn’t have a working phone.

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The proposed toilets, which will be installed through a contract with the Seattle Department of Transportation, are “not a perfect solution, but right now, if you have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the day, there’s nothing for anyone unless you go to spend money in a business,” said Lisa Howard, executive director of the Alliance for Pioneer Square. “The other advantage of the pilot is that they’re looking at things that didn’t work out for X, Y, or Z reasons” in the past, Howard said.

Throne is working on several other contracts with local transportation agencies, including King County Metro, whose spokesman confirmed that it will be replacing two existing portable restrooms at the Burien Transit Center and the Aurora Village Transit Center in Shoreline at an estimated cost of $270,000 a year.

Jessica Heinzelman, who co-founded Throne Labs along with Fletcher Wilson and Ben Clark, said Throne toilets have succeeded in places where other types of mobile restrooms have failed because they “create accountability”—if someone trashes a restroom or smokes in it, for instance, the company can generally pinpoint their identity using sensors in the unit or from negative user reviews immediately after that person left.

“What we learned as we started talking to folks in the public space is, even when there are restrooms, if it’s getting vandalized, or if there’s shit smeared all over the wall, they just shut it down, and they don’t necessarily have the operational capacity to deal with that, and so people kind of stop counting on them,” Heinzelman said. “So [the question was], How do you offer publicly available private space and keep it nice and mitigate against misuse [by] the 1 percent of users that fuck up bathrooms for the other 99 percent?”

SDOT public space manager Joel Miller acknowledged that this kind of “accountability” could deprive some users of restroom access. “If somebody is repeatedly damaging the unit so it is going offline and other people can’t use it, that user would eventually lose access,” Miller said. “It’s not the perfect solution, that we have someone that might need access lose access, but it’s better than everybody losing access because the unit repeatedly goes offline.”

Heinzelman said that even in “high-risk” locations like MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, where lots of homeless people hang out and live, fewer than 1 percent of users end up getting banned.

“I think partially it’s because if you give people the dignity and respect of having a nice space where they have enough room to change clothes, they have running water, and they can wash their their face, they want to keep it.” Heinzelman said. She confirmed that Throne hasn’t had any discussions about card distribution with local homeless service providers, but said they plan to do so once they’ve finalized their contracts. (PubliCola contacted several local service providers and only one had heard about the restrooms).

SDOT’s Miller says the city hopes to get the restrooms up and running in Pioneer Square before the World Cup games in June. One of the two restrooms will be located outside the stadiums at First Ave S and S. Charles Street; the other will be at Second Ave. S and S. Washington St.—about a block away from PubliCola’s office.

Both Heinzelman and Miller said the restrooms have to appeal to the general public, not just unsheltered people with fewer options. “We’re talking about it as a homeless issue, and we felt like the homeless absolutely need it, but you have a sustainability problem” if the restrooms are seen as a homeless service, Henzelman said. “When budgets are slashed, what gets cut? It’s the services for the people that don’t vote or can’t advocate for themselves. [We want to] create a service that everyone wants to use and everyone wants to fund because they are personally benefiting from it, but that also enables all members of society to use it.”

Mayor Wilson, Police

What Is the NYU Policing Project, and Why Did the Police Chief Resign from their Board?

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Until Monday, Police Chief Shon Barnes was on the board of the Policing Project, which Mayor Wilson has tapped to do a security audit of police surveillance cameras here.

By Erica C. Barnett

On Monday, PubliCola exclusively confirmed, Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes abruptly stepped down from the advisory board of New York University’s Policing Project— the organization that Mayor Katie Wilson tapped to perform a data and security audit of Seattle’s police surveillance cameras. Barnes joined the board in late 2025.

We reached out to the mayor’s office about the potential conflict of interest first thing Monday morning. Initially, a spokesman for Wilson told PubliCola that the “mayor is aware of the chief serving on that board” but did not indicate she had any concerns.

Late this morning, the spokesman, Sage Wilson (no relation), said Barnes “was not consulted in the selection of the NYU Policing Project. He chose to resign from the advisory board after the decision on the audit was made to ensure the audit process instills the highest degree of confidence.” The mayor’s office did not say whether they asked Barnes to step down.

In a statement, Barnes said he stepped down to “avoid any potential conflict of interest or appearance of impropriety. … I do not want my service to cast any doubt on the auditors’ work, which I am confident would meet the highest ethical and professional standards regardless of my service on the advisory board.”

Barnes noted that he hasn’t actually met yet with the board, which holds meetings infrequently, adding that “advisory board members do not influence or have insight into the research conducted by The Policing Project.”

Wilson (the spokesman, not the mayor) said Barnes was on the board “because he is nationally recognized as a leader on police accountability issues.”

The NYU Policing Project has done many surveillance evaluations, including a 2020 analysis of a Baltimore aerial and ground surveillance program that captured footage from an airplane and retained it indefinitely. That audit concluded that the program, which allowed police to track individual people both in real time and after the fact, had the strong potential for violating people’s civil rights and was subject to likely “mission creep.” After it came out, the Fourth Circuit found the program violated the Fourth Amendment.

According to the Policing Project’s founder and faculty advisor, NYU Law professor Barry Friedman, the Policing Project’s audit team generally looks at things like “retention limits, who has access [to footage], what kind of training they need to have, [and] what kind of logging is there about the reason databases were reviewed,” along with questions about a department’s use of AI analysis and algorithms to make decisions that result in arrests. “And at the end, we write a report.” Often, Friedman said, that report will include an analysis of potential harms and recommended “guard rails”—policies that can prevent a technology from being misused by the people operating it.

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For instance, the Policing Project has raised questions about how long a department is retaining footage or other personal information and for what purpose. In Baltimore, which had a 45-day retention period for aerial footage, their audit revealed that the department was actually holding on to footage more or less indefinitely. SPD’s current policy allows the department to retain license reader footage that’s “flagged” by a license reader for 90 days, although a new state law will reduce that to 21 days.

The project receives funding from across the political spectrum; its current funders include the right-wing Koch Foundation and Cato Institute as well as racial equity groups like Justice Catalyst.

Axon, the company that provides Seattle’s surveillance cameras and automated license readers as well as Tasers, funded the Policing Project’s work on the company’s AI Ethics Board between 2019 and 2022. After Axon announced plans to build Taser drones and use them to respond to school shootings, the Policing Project resigned from its role staffing the board, and Friedman stepped down from the board, along with eight other board members. Mark 43, the computer-aided dispatch program, provided funding in the past but isn’t currently a funder, according to Friedman.

One thing the Policing Project’s audit won’t cover is whether SPD’s surveillance system is accomplishing its stated goals, which, at various times, have included deterrence and crime prevention as well as solving crimes that couldn’t be solved without police surveillance. “You really need social scientists to do that work,” Friedman said. “I’m super interested in that question, and it turns out how to be really hard social science, because you have to figure out [things like ‘What’s a control group?’ and ‘How do you know they couldn’t have solved it in other way?'”

The city is contracting with the University of Pennsylvania’s Crime and Justice Policy Lab to do an analysis of the cameras’ effectiveness. According to SPD’s website, “Successful implementation of CCTV will  be “indicated by a decrease in violent crime, priority one response times, no increase or a decline in measures of police over-presence, measure of disparate impact, and an increase in perceptions of trust and safety.”

City Council, discrimination, Mayor Wilson, Police

Councilmembers Say Wilson Must Turn On Stadium Cameras by June, Rob Saka Won’t Use His Committee’s Actual Name
And more details about the city’s settlement with an officer who sued over alleged racial and gender discrimination.

1. Highlighting a Monday update to last week’s story about the settlement between the city and SPD officer Denise “Cookie” Bouldin, who filed a lawsuit in 2023 alleging racial and gender discrimination: The city will pay Bouldin $750,000, according to the settlement agreement. Image

SPD has settled a number of discrimination lawsuits in recent years, for amounts ranging from around $200,000 (paid to SPD sergeant John O’Neil, who was himself the subject of multiple discrimination complaints) to $3 million (paid to police captain Deanna Nollette, who claimed former chief Adrian Diaz discriminated and retaliated against her by demoting her and moving her to overnight duty after she alleged discrimination.

Bouldin, best known for her chess club for students in Rainier Beach, claimed in her lawsuit that her fellow officers and SPD officials subjected her to “race and gender discrimination on a daily basis that had “been ongoing and continuous throughout her entire career.”

2.  Citing concerns about potential attempts by ICE and other federal agencies to access camera footage and data, Mayor Katie Wilson said last week that she’ll hold off on expanding the Seattle Police Department’s camera surveillance program until an audit into the privacy and security of SPD’s camera operations is complete.

Some council members, including Maritza Rivera and Bob Kettle, expressed concern on Tuesday that the audit will take too long, arguing that Wilson needs to turn on the cameras that will be installed around the stadiums in advance of the World Cup games in June. Wilson said the city will not turn the cameras on unless there’s a “credible threat.”

Committee chair Kettle, a former Navy intelligence officer, said this was inadequate, given how often major terrorist attacks have not involved a credible threat.

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“As somebody who worked in the intelligence security world, I think about 9/11. I think about being in European Command and Germany during the East Africa bombings, we were well aware of al Qaeda and bin Laden. … I was one of those people that read the chatter in the leadup to 9/11 and on 911 was there a credible threat, warning that al Qaeda was going to use planes as weapons to go into buildings? No. No, there wasn’t.”

“And it should be noted too,” Kettle continued, “that we’re in a heightened threat environment especially because of the Iran war. And it’s important to note that Iran was scheduled to play here on Pride weekend. And I think it’s important, among different other reasons, to also look out for LGBTQ+ community.” (Iran’s participation in World Cup games in the US remains up in the air.)

Kettle also chided camera opponents who “think they know the program” but, according to him, don’t. “They think they know all the decisions that went into the program, to include incorporating Seattle values, incorporating the idea that we’re not going to include facial recognition.”

Later in the meeting, the committee approved a “pause” on SPD’s use of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) on patrol cars and parking enforcement vehicles, which will put Seattle in compliance with a new state law banning the use of ALPRs near places of worship, food banks, immigration facilities, schools, and health care facilities that provide reproductive or gender-affirming health care.

Long before Trump was reelected, the city’s own Surveillance Working Group strongly recommended against installing the cameras at all, based on concerns about privacy and the risk of “disparate impacts … on minority communities.”

3. One of the oddest things that routinely happens at Seattle City Council meetings these days is that Councilmember Rob Saka refuses to refer to his committee by its actual name. For three years running, Saka has headed up the transportation committee, which was expanded this year to include arts and the Seattle Center, giving it the acronym TASC.

But Saka doesn’t use that acronym. Instead, he insists on referring to his committee as “STEPS,” short for “Safety, Transportation, Engineering Projects, Sports and Experiences.” He uses this not-quite-acronym consistently across all platforms—from the City Council dais to his Instagram, where he recently shortened the name to “Sports and Experiences, otherwise known as STEPS.”

Saka’s committee does not deal directly with public safety, engineering (beyond transportation projects), sports, or general “experiences.” It does explicitly include the arts (which has its own city office) and Seattle Center, which wants to propose a ballot measure that would use bonds to fund more than $1 billion in improvements and repairs.

Saka has reportedly been asked more than once to refer to his committee by its actual name. Nevertheless, he persists. He even announced the “informal name” in a formal press release earlier this year.

Mayor Wilson, podcasts, Police

Seattle Nice: Does Mayor Wilson Really Believe Police Surveillance Enhances Safety?

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By Erica C. Barnett

Was Mayor Katie Wilson’s decision to audit the safety and security of police surveillance cameras a classic “split-the-baby” compromise, a pro forma move with a foregone conclusion, or a thoughtful approach to ensure public safety for Seattle residents? That’s our topic of discussion on Seattle Nice this week.

As I reported last week, Wilson announced she would leave all the existing cameras up and recording while the Policing Project, out of New York University, does a “privacy and data governance audit” to determine whether outside entities, such as federal immigration authorities, could access camera footage and use it to target people caught on camera in Seattle. (There’s no such thing as privacy in public places, but until lthe cameras were installed last year, Seattle residents were not under routine camera surveillance by police.) Assuming the report says the cameras are reasonably safe from outside access, Wilson said, her administration will work to strengthen city laws restricting access to the footage.

Wilson also said the city would hold off on installing new cameras in the Central District and Capitol Hill, but will install dozens of new cameras around the stadiums south of downtown, where six World Cup games will take place in June. For now, these new cameras will only be turned on if there is a “credible threat.”

In justifying her decision to keep existing cameras rolling and install new ones, Wilson said she trusts SPD to use the cameras wisely to solve crimes. “I know that cameras can be, have been, and will be useful tools to solve crime in Seattle and in countless other cities across the world,” she said. (Indeed, police cameras cover every in across the UK and China, but the United States has its own traditions and values that, at their best, have prioritized individual rights like privacy).

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“There’s no doubt that these cameras make it easier to solve some crimes, including serious ones like homicides, but also, cameras are not the one key to making our neighborhoods safe,” Wilson said. “And on the other hand, there are legitimate concerns about privacy over surveillance and potential misuse of surveillance technologies. But also, these cameras are not the primary threat to immigrants, trans people or people seeking reproductive health care in our country right now.”

At Wilson’s press conference last week, I asked a question about how her values were guiding her decision on whether to expand the police department’s ability to surveil Seattle residents. Say the audit comes back golden, and she says, “Great, let’s expand the program.” That’s not just an endorsement of a particular camera system’s safety; it’s a statement of Wilson’s values, and one where her position has flipped since the campaign, when many voters were excited to support a candidate who didn’t want to give SPD even greater powers.

Maybe Wilson’s values have shifted. Maybe SPD has convinced her that crimes really will go unsolved without 24/7 video surveillance, despite the fact that the cameras have only existed for nine months. Or maybe the camera supporters she’s talking to in neighborhoods with high crime rates have convinced her that surveillance is a form of safety and social justice, as the mayor has often suggested. In any case, my guess is that more police surveillance cameras are coming, and that Wilson will expand them again in the future. Once you’ve decided that it’s simply unsafe not to have surveillance in some places, it’s very hard to justify not providing the same level of “safety” to other neighborhoods, and eventually the whole city.

City Council, Civil Rights, homelessness, Mayor Wilson, Police

This Week On PubliCola: March 21, 2026
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Council takes up Wilson’s ambitious shelter plan, surveillance cameras stay on, King County’s return-to-office mandate makes waves, and more.

By Erica C. Barnett

Monday, March 16

Downtown Seattle Association Leader Discusses Density, Return-to-Office Mandates, and Surveillance

Jon Scholes, head of the Downtown Seattle Association, had a lot to say about the present and future of downtown when we spoke with him for the podcast after the DSA’s “State of Downtown” event last week. It was Scholes and Sandeep vs. me on surveillance cameras, and since this is my site, I’ll reiterate my point: Even if we must accept some level of surveillance to live in the modern world, there has to be a higher barrier for surveillance by police, who have a history of arresting Black and brown people on pretext and otherwise violating people’s rights.

Tuesday, March 17

Wilson’s “Path to 500” New Shelter Beds: $17.5 Million, With First Units Opening In April

Highlights from this week’s council briefing about Mayor Katie Wilson’s plan to add 1,000 shelter units this year included the total estimated price tag for the first 500 units—$17.5 million—and the estimated average annual operating cost for each new shelter unit—around $28,000 for each new shelterbed.

Thursday, March 19

Pioneer Square Bike and Scooter Parking Plan Runs Into Road Bumps

The Pioneer Square Preservation Board and local businesses have raised objections to a proposal to install bike and scooter parking spaces in 21 curbside locations in Pioneer Square, calling the proposal too much, too fast and claiming white lines and flex posts are out of keeping with the historic character of Pioneer Square.

Wilson “Pauses” Police Camera Surveillance Expansion But Keeps Existing Cameras On

In a highly anticipated announcement, Mayor Katie Wilson said she’s pausing the expansion of police camera surveillance planned for the Central District and Capitol Hill until results come back from an upcoming audit into the privacy and security of the footage. She also said the city will install 26 planned cameras around the stadium district in time for this year’s World Cup games but won’t turn them on without a “credible threat.” SPD will also turn off its automated license readers, at least for now, in response to a state law placing restrictions on where they can be used.

Friday, March 20

City Settles In SPD Discrimination Suit

The city of Seattle settled last week with Seattle police officer Denise “Cookie” Bouldin, a longtime officer who sued the department in 2023, alleging gender and racial discrimination. It’s the latest in a series of discrimination claims against the department, which continues to hire very few women despite adopting a goal of having a 30 percent-female recruit class by 2030.

Council Queues Up Questions on Mayor’s Shelter Plan

Mayor Wilson’s shelter expansion and funding proposals are now in front of the city council, which was not alerted to the plan before Wilson announced it. Internal questions include whether an average cost of $28,000 a year will be enough to provide the services that are integral to the plan, and whether 250 people is too large for a tiny house village.

King County Employees Push Back on In-Office Mandate

King County’s return-to-office mandate will be in place by this June, but many employees are still unhappy about their new commutes—arguing that they don’t need to drive to Seattle and sit at a desk that may be far away from their homes to do their jobs efficiently.

Maybe Metropolis: French Revolution Vibes

Responding to the Downtown Seattle Association’s fanciful descriptions of downtown consumers (from “Laptops and Lattes” to “Top Tier”), Josh predicts a revolution in this week’s Maybe Metropolis.

 

Economy, Maybe Metropolis

Maybe Metropolis: French Revolution Vibes

ImageBy Josh Feit

Seattle’s capitalist class gathered last week in the fifth-floor ballroom of the $2 billion Pine St. convention center for the Downtown Seattle Association’s annual state-of-downtown shindig.. Mayor Katie Wilson, who playfully identified herself as a socialist, received a tepid—though hardly hostile— response as she defended higher taxes while bonding with the establishment camp on the need to improve public safety.

As they do every year, the DSA paired the event with a user-friendly report on the economic state of downtown, which they define as 13 distinct neighborhoods that stretch from SoDo to Lower Queen Anne and from the Chinatown/International District to the western blocks of  Capitol Hill. The boosterish report had lots to brag about this year: An uptick in downtown visitors and daily foot traffic. An increase in occupied apartments, new units,, and new businesses. And a decrease in violent crime. One troubling footnote: A drop in new housing permits, the precursor to a construction and housing downturn.

ImageHere’s something I found even more concerning. I got French Revolution vibes reading the DSA’s descriptions of who’s keeping downtown flush.

According to the group’s Downtown Seattle retail assessment, a 2025 snapshot of downtown consumers courtesy of DSA consultant Downtown Works and analytics from mapping software company Esri, there are five key demographics driving the downtown economy. They are: 1) Metro Renters (34.7 percent of downtown shoppers): “Young, educated, professionally ambitious, tech natives;” 2) Laptops & Lattes (21.1 percent): “Digitally connected, trend-conscious, experience-driven”; Urban Chic (19.8 percent): “Health-conscious, financially savvy, globally connected”; 4) Top-Tier (8.7 percent): “Affluent, cultured, service-oriented urban dwellers”; and 5) Trendsetters (6.1 percent): “Tech-savvy, health-minded, socially engaged.”

And while it’s a bit hard to tell the difference between thee five discrete groups, the Top-Tier crowd is specifically differentiated as hyper-wealthy. As in: “The pinnacle of affluence, earning more than three times the U.S. average household income and enjoying an average net worth exceeding $3 million.” This is as opposed to the Metro Renters, who are explicitly described as younger and who “Prefer generic and budget-friendly brands when shopping.”

Otherwise, the five categories, which read like they were written by AI, an intern, or both, seem indistinguishable. They are all educated, tech savvy, health conscious, environmentally conscious, and active. And the Urban Chic certainly don’t seem that different than the Top-Tier. “They indulge in the finer things—imported wines, organic foods, luxury cars and world travel. Equally at home in yoga studios, ski resorts and art galleries, these discerning consumers prize both wellness and worldly experiences.”

As I said, French Revolution vibes. Seattle’s privileged elite “earn above-average incomes but happily channel much of it into rent, fashion and cutting-edge technology that keeps them connected [and] entertained.” For those who haven’t seen Metropolis, Fritz Lang’s early-20th century sci-fi masterpiece about a mob-rule proletarian revolution, these descriptions are reminiscent of the super rich in the “Garden of Delights,” who live sequestered above the toiling city before the violent revolution. A more modern reference? Think of President Snow and Effie Trinket lounging in the Capitol in The Hunger Games. 

I’m not one of those Gen Xers who’s nostalgic for the ’90s. In fact, I think Capitol Hill is more diverse and more exciting these days. However, as I float around the coffeehouses and bars on the Capitol Hill circuit, I’ve duly noted how dramatically the typical topics of conversation have changed over the years—from bohemian concerns such as politics, underground theater, and feminism to 9-to-5, normie talking points, like Monday’s stand-up meeting, investment strategies, and weddings.

In that context, the Urban Chic who “indulge in the finer things,” the Trendsetters “who crave the latest in branded fashion and tech from laptops to smartphones and tablets,” alongside the Top-Tier who “channel their disposable income into experiences that fuel both body and soul — organic foods, fitness clubs, stylish wardrobes, travel, arts,” is a red flag for a renter-majority city where half of renters are cost-burdened, spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent. A city that relies on rarefied lifestyles at this extreme is not sustainable.

In other words, it’s no wonder that, against the preference of Seattle’s business establishment, the majority of Seattle elected a socialist mayor this past November. The DSA members might not like Mayor Wilson’s pitch for progressive taxation, but if we don’t go that route, the inequality DSA inadvertently portrayed with its Marie Antoinette character sketches also paints a volatile picture. Howard Schultz may have been wise to flee Seattle last week.

Footnote: The DSA profiles don’t add up to 100 percent of downtown’s customer base. Evidently, shoppers who account for 10 percent of downtown customers are going unnamed.