Nonprofit uses bus as shower for homeless in San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO – A nonprofit group is taking a novel approach to helping the homeless in San Francisco with a new bus that allows them to take a shower.

The former public transit bus has been outfitted with two full private bathrooms and offers hot showers, clean toilets, shampoo, soap and towels free of charge. The founder of the nonprofit Lava Mae mobile shower bus said she wanted to return a sense of dignity to those living on the streets.

“If you’re homeless, you’re living on the streets and you’re filthy, you’re trying to improve your circumstances, but you can’t interview for a job, you can’t apply for housing and you get disconnected from your sense of humanity,” Doniece Sandoval said. “So a shower just in of itself is amazing for people.”

Lava Mae says the bus is mobile, allowing it to reach homeless people scattered throughout the city. And having a facility on wheels eliminates the potential for rent hikes and evictions in a city with high real estate prices.

A homeless survey in 2013 counted more than 6,400 homeless people in San Francisco.

San Francisco officials are testing a similar mobile toilet program in the struggling Tenderloin district, where complaints about human waste are common. The toilets will be available at three locations from 2 p.m. through 9 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and then removed and taken off site to be cleaned, the city’s public works department said.

The $75,000 cost to refurbish the Lava Mae bus was provided by private donations, including from technology giant Google, whose employee buses in San Francisco have attracted protesters who view them as a symbol of economic inequality and gentrification.

Ralph Brown, a 55-year-old military veteran who has been homeless for about a year, took a shower aboard Lava Mae’s bus on its first day of service last month. It was his first shower in several days.

“When people move away from you on the bus, it’s time to take a shower,” he said.

Some homeless shelters in the city have showers, but they can have long waits.