One Porta-Potty Is Easing San Bernardino’s Public Defecation and Urination Problem Tied to Raves and Homelessness

After years of finding human waste splattered on the walls of his downtown business, Alan Stanly says the solution is simple: put out more portable toilets.

Stanly, who owns The Enterprise Building in San Bernardino’s Ward 1, has long sounded the alarm about the lack of public restrooms for the city’s homeless population and the overflow of rave attendees. With the NOS Events Center just blocks away, massive music festivals bring up to 50,000 people into the area multiple times a year, with attendees using surrounding streets, parking lots, and garages throughout downtown.

“This isn’t just a one-weekend thing,” Stanly said. “Every rave, it’s the same thing. Our building becomes a bathroom.”

This past weekend’s Beyond Wonderland rave, held March 28–29, was no different—except for one key change: the city placed a portable toilet outside The Enterprise Building.

“Historically, we’d average around 75 people urinating on our building, our doorways, our dumpsters on weekends when raves are held,” Stanly said. “This time, only two people urinated on our property. That’s the power of one porta-potty.”

According to San Bernardino’s January 2024 Point-In-Time Count, there are 1,417+ unhoused individuals in the city. Stanly, who uses surveillance cameras to protect his property, said the math is disturbing: if each person defecates once a day, that’s a lot of waste.

“That’s 30,000 sh*ts a month, minimum,” he said. “Downtown San Bernardino is one of the dirtiest places in the state. You’ve got the parking garage behind us with years of old feces and stains. The city hasn’t done much until recently.”

“Mayor Tran made a phone call to Public Works, and they sent 20 porta-potties to Court Street Square parking for the rave,” Stanly said. “I asked her if we could get one near our building too—and she made it happen for the past two raves in a row.”

Stanly said he has sent countless emails to the city and regularly texts defecation photos to his councilmember, Ward 1’s Theodore Sanchez—often during dinner time—to highlight the severity of the issue. He claims it wasn’t until he contacted Mayor Helen Tran directly that things began to change.

The recent outcome reinforces what other cities have learned through trial and error. In 2017, Los Angeles’ Mobile Pit Stop Program placed clean, staffed portable restrooms and sinks in areas with high homeless populations. The program proved so successful that the city extended it, citing significant decreases in public defecation.

“In L.A., my daughter used to live in a nice part of town while attending UCLA ,” Stanly said. “You were able to see the ocean from her balcony—and just across the freeway there was an encampment with porta-potties and sinks. It stops hundreds of people from pooping on the ground and walking around with dirty hands. Why can’t we permanently do that here?”

Back in San Bernardino, Stanly said the problem extends beyond waste. During major events, trash from the NOS Events Center often ends up downtown. Overflowing bins in Court Street Square were still full days later, as of Thursday, April 3, and winds blew discarded rave debris into nearby properties.

“While I was outside, one of our staff members, Robert, was picking up rave trash that had blown into the front entrance of our building,” Stanly said. “That shouldn’t be our responsibility. The city profits off these events—they should help manage the impact.”

He added that while rave attendees are often responsible for public urination—leaving behind a smell that lingers for days—it’s largely the homeless population that contributes to the defecation. “And it stinks,” he said. “Bad.”

In one recent incident captured on camera, Stanly said he saw a homeless person mid-defecation and rushed out to offer them a bag.

“These are people. They have nowhere to go. This is a human need,” he said. “The city has a responsibility to provide sanitation—this is public health.”

Now, Stanly is urging the city to go beyond one toilet on one block and scale up the program.

“If one porta-potty kept 73 people from peeing on my building, imagine what five could do downtown,” he said. “This isn’t about complaining. This is about solutions. It’s working. Let’s keep going.”