Meet The Free, Public Hand-Washing Stations Popping Up Around SF
While the Trump administration stammers and golfs through the widening coronavirus outbreak, the city of San Francisco is offering a novel solution. Free and public hand washing stations have been placed on various street corners around San Francisco, like the one we saw above at Haight and Ashbury Streets, to make sure everyone has access to a safe, free, and easy place to wash their hands thoroughly.
OK, sure, this one had a discarded sweatshirt and eaten box of tempura roll thrown atop when we found it. But this is still a fantastic public health innovation at a time when unhoused San Franciscans and SRO residents face exceedingly high risk for transmission of the COVID-19 virus.
This is presumably part of the $5 million investment in protecting vulnerable populations from coronavirus spread. This particular hand-washing station is in Sup. Dean Preston’s District 5, and Preston’s office confirmed to BrokeAssStuart.com that they had requested the station there.
According to a spokesperson for Preston’s office, these are apparently being placed out in a multidepartmental effort with the SF Department of Public Health and the Department of Emergency Management, in hopes of containing the spread of the virus that could hit the unhoused population the hardest.
When we visited this hand-washing station at 7 p.m. on a weeknight, the water was flowing with good pressure, there was plenty of soap, and the paper towels were plentiful. We saw people of all socieconomic status coming along and washing their hands. We’re not yet sure where else these hand-washing stations have been placed around San Francisco, but it’s a great way to keep everyone a safe as possible, including vulnerable popoualtion whoi don’t otherwise have access to a sink and soap.