Winnipeg orders removal of toilets installed for homeless

Two portable toilets installed by a Winnipeg architect on land near his inner-city office to provide proper facilities for local homeless people have been removed.

Wins Bridgman and the Downtown Business Improvement Zone set up two portable toilets near Bridgman's newly renovated building on the corner of Higgins Avenue and Main Street in an attempt to provide a more dignified way for homeless people in the area to relieve themselves.

In the few weeks the toilets were in use, indigent people in the neighbourhood had been using them, and the smell of urine that had once been prominent in the area had disappeared, Bridgman told CBC News earlier this week.

But the portable toilets, which had been rented for three months, were removed Wednesday, after the city told Bridgman they couldn't stay.

"They said that there wasn't a permit," he said. "So we then applied, and they said that they felt as though it represented the wrong things for the gateway [to downtown], esthetically."

Bridgman is disappointed, but said he will work with the city and people in the area to find another spot for the portable loos.

"It worked. People on the blogs and the … websites and the press said, 'Yes, of course this is a logical thing to do,' and so regardless of whether this part of it was cut short or not, it clearly leads to further steps."

Winnipeg's last experience with public washrooms came to an end in the summer of 2006, when a small building in Memorial Park, across from the legislature, was torn down after three decades of controversy over its use by transients and drug users.