Yes, there’s a problem with pooping uptown. And there’s a solution. | Opinion
Recently, some uptown Charlotte residents petitioned the Charlotte City Council to make public urination and defecation a crime again.
Two years ago, the council did a comprehensive review of city ordinances and waived criminal penalties for public urination and defecation. Residents of Fourth Ward, an uptown neighborhood, argue that removing penalties from these actions has led to increased incidents.
In recent media accounts, Fourth Ward residents have described unusable public parks due to human excrement. At an Aug. 28 City Council meeting, a representative of Friends of Fourth Ward described the unsettling experience of walking to Discover Place with her granddaughter and observing a woman defecate on the sidewalk in front of the museum.
Fourth Ward residents describe themselves as the “canary in the coal mine,” warning others that Charlotte is becoming a city where “vagrants urinate and defecate on our public spaces.”
To be clear, I agree this is a serious problem. I don’t want anyone to live in a neighborhood dotted with human excrement. It’s more than unpleasant, it’s a public health risk for the entire community. The Fourth Ward representative who spoke at the council meeting called for criminal penalties to be restored so that police can be involved, but residents have emphasized that they want officers to intervene in a compassionate way.
But compassionately incarcerating the most vulnerable people in our community isn’t a solution. The police can’t solve this problem. Only the community can.
For the millionth time, Mecklenburg county has an affordable housing crisis. And when people don’t have anywhere to live, they also don’t have anywhere to perform basic biological functions with dignity and privacy. When people are living in their cars, they don’t have access to a toilet in the middle of the night.
Whether we outlaw it or not, people will still need to poop. Obviously, no one wants any human to have to defecate outside a museum, but I have to wonder whether the woman would have been turned away if she had tried to go inside to use the facilities. In and around uptown Charlotte, only a few public bathrooms exist. And most commercial establishments prominently display signs declaring that restrooms are for paying customers only.
In October of 2021, we closed the main library and demolition on it began last month. Along with access to books and technology, people lost access to a free public bathroom. The new public library will open in spring 2026, but people aren’t going to be able to hold it that long.
I agree with the folks in Fourth Ward that they are the canary in the coal mine. Their experience shows us that the affordable housing crisis affects all of us, even those fortunate enough to live in the most desirable neighborhoods in our city.
If the fact that 3,182 of our neighbors in Mecklenburg County are currently experiencing homelessness doesn’t seem like a moral crisis for all of us, maybe it takes stepping around human excrement on the sidewalk to show us that, even if we are housed, lack of accessible housing is still our problem.
Almost everyone is theoretically for building more affordable housing in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, as long as it’s not near their neighborhood. Unfortunately, every proposed build is near somebody’s neighborhood. So proposed solutions often face fierce opposition.
If we aren’t going to make housing accessible to everyone, the very least we could do is make public restrooms ubiquitous. Being a human with a body shouldn’t be a criminal offense. No one should be too poor to poop.
Right now many of our parks and communal spaces include accommodations like dog runs and pet waste disposal stations. Many commercial establishments provide water and complimentary dog biscuits, encouraging patrons to bring in their pets. So we live in a community that makes accommodations for the biological necessities of dogs, but not humans. Now that’s truly disgusting.