St. Louis Bill Would Let Homeless People Pee in Public.
Legislation to expand the rights of homeless people — including a provision exempting them from the city’s law against urinating and defecating in public — was introduced Friday at the Board of Aldermen.

The sponsor, Alderwoman Alisha Sonnier of Tower Grove East, and Aldermanic President Megan Green asserted that the exemption was needed because police had targeted the unhoused with selective enforcement.

“After every sporting event, after Mardi Gras, we see (other) people engaging in public urination,” Green said at a news conference after the board meeting. “But ... enforcing those laws against that segment of the population is not the same as the enforcement we see against our unhoused population.”

Sonnier added that advocates for the unhoused pointed out to her that there are few public rest rooms in the city. Moreover, she said, businesses don’t want them to use their bathrooms.

The provision, which wasn’t in a similar “bill of rights” for the homeless measure that failed at the board last year, drew sharp criticism Friday from two opponents of the legislation.

“What are we doing?” Alderwoman Pam Boyd of Walnut Park West said in an interview. “This is not a third world country. This is St. Louis, Missouri. That’s so disrespectful to us as a community. That’s unhealthy.”

“Does society have any rules any more?” asked Alderman Tom Oldenburg, of St. Louis Hills. “Give me a break.”

Homeless people who need to relieve themselves should go to a shelter, he said. “That’s where bathrooms exist,” he said.

He also challenged Green and Sonnier’s statements that police have been selectively enforcing the ban. “I would love to see the data,” he said.

Sonnier said city police don’t itemize such violations and that they are included under a more general category of vagrancy.

The police department didn’t respond Friday to a request for comment.

Alderwoman Shameem Clark Hubbard of the West End said she was undecided on the overall legislation but has concerns about the exemption from the urination/defecation ban.

“I wouldn’t want a man to ... publicly urinate in front of my home and my daughters and say, ‘Well, I’m within my rights,’ because of ordinances,” she said.

Sonnier said she hopes that the debate over public urination “will become a conversation about what can we do to get all the members of our community access to their basic needs and how we can destigmatize these things and decriminalize them.”

Green added that arrests of unhoused people for such violations makes it more difficult for them to improve their situation. “Once you get caught in the criminal justice system, it’s even harder to break that cycle of homelessness,” she said.

The legislation also would bar the city from using police “to target or harass” homeless people through laws restricting panhandling and loitering. The goal, Sonnie