Homeless Find City Restroom to Their Liking : Poverty: After Escondido closed park bathrooms, transients began surprising city workers by frequenting City Hall lavatories.

Since Escondido city officials closed park bathrooms to combat drug dealing, some transients have been using nearby City Hall lavatories as their laundries and washrooms, unnerving city employees who have walked in on people swishing their clothes in toilets and one topless woman washing at a sink.

Authorities posted signs asking people to limit their bathroom activities to “appropriate” use, but the paper notices have been repeatedly torn down. City Hall workers have also tried to refer homeless people they see washing up in the two public ground-floor bathrooms to a city-funded soup kitchen with showers about a mile away.

“We don’t want to overreact to a problem that isn’t too frequent,” said Jerry Van Leeuwen, community services director. But he added that officials are thinking about making the signs bilingual, with information about where to find showers and laundry rooms elsewhere.

“They’re trying to do the right thing, it’s just the wrong place,” he said, adding that he has seen a man washing his hair in a sink there.

Another city worker was shocked as she entered a restroom to find a half-naked woman washing at a sink, and others have seen people rinsing clothes in the toilets.

“I guess you can almost use the edge as a bit of a washboard,” said Deputy City Manager Jack Anderson. “It’s like pounding the old clothes down by the river. People who are homeless are very creative.”

Van Leeuwen said a few transients have always used the restrooms at City Hall and the nearby library, but employees have noticed it more over the last few months since the restrooms next door in Grape Day Park were closed on weekdays.

That move came after police said drug dealing was a problem in the park bathrooms. Portable toilets were installed at the park, but there are no outdoor sinks.

“We’re convenient (to the park) and at this point we’ve been fairly tolerant,” Van Leeuwen said.

But city employees have complained about the sometimes unpleasant verbal confrontations with people washing themselves and their worldly possessions in sinks meant for quick hand rinses.

“They were quite offended,” Anderson said. “It was scary. Sometimes the people from the street aren’t exactly polite and congenial.”

The manager of the city-owned homeless shelter said this should have been expected when the park bathrooms were restricted to weekend use, because homeless people now have no place nearby to wash.

“It’s pretty gross, but I think it gives you an idea of how desperate the homeless are. . . . It’s just like people surprised to see coyotes in their back yards in suburbia,” said Bob Klug, food and shelter programs manager for the North County Interfaith Council.

The council runs a weekday feeding program at a city-owned building and the winter nighttime shelter at the downtown armory. There are showers and laundry facilities at both places.

Klug said it’s likely that someone who would take off her clothes to wash them in a public building is mentally ill. The mentally ill are sometimes reluctant to go to shelters and sign up for shower time, he added.

Klug said the city has done a good job of funding homeless services and publicizing their availability. “I can’t imagine anything else the city could do besides put up a lighted billboard,” he said. “They’re doing everything they can.”