London's Dundas Place now has 'game-changing' gender-neutral public washrooms

For the last two months, a public washroom facility has quietly been operating at Dundas Place, on the south side of the street near Richmond Street in London, Ont.

The three gender-neutral washrooms, which are accessed through a locked door opened by a security guard, are available from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week.

It just brings more humanity to people that are experiencing a very marginalized life.- Steve Cordes, executive director, Youth Opportunities Unlimited

"I think it's such a wonderful move," said Steve Cordes, executive director, Youth Opportunities Unlimited. "It just brings more humanity to people that are experiencing a very marginalized life."

The washrooms at 179 Dundas St. are in the city's so-called field house, which was designed as a back-of-house location for events proposed for the newly minted street, long before COVID-19 hit.

But due to the pandemic, Dundas Place didn't come to life quite the way staff had anticipated, so the washrooms were sitting empty at a time when restaurants, coffee shops and the library all shut down, and life got more difficult for people experiencing homelessness.

"The two washrooms will be game changing for people who are experiencing homelessness," said Cordes. "Is it enough? No. Is it a step in the right direction? It's a huge step in the right direction — just the acknowledgment that this is an important consideration."

$300K cost to city

The Dundas Place bathroom facility, in conjunction with the washrooms in the bandshell at Victoria Park that are now also open daily from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., costs the city $300,000 a year.

That pays for a full-time security guard on Dundas Street and building attendants who clean the bathrooms.

The funding was approved through the London Community Recovery Network process, which identified ways to bolster the city after COVID-19 first locked it down.

About 60 people a day are using the facilities on Dundas Street, said Ryan Craven, the City of London's manager of core area programs.

"We are certainly serving the unsheltered and we are serving everyone," said Craven.

"It's certainly not intended as a service exclusively for that community," he added. "It's really to try to make Dundas Place a holistic environment welcoming to everyone that includes the unsheltered, and it includes the shoppers and the workers, and everyone in between."