Scott Gilmore, deputy executive director of Denver Parks and Rec, doesn't love being known as the city's "restroom king" in some circles.
"Cole Chandler [one of Johnston's advisors on homelessness] said, 'Scott, you're probably the best person to be able to do this, because you know more about portalets and restrooms in the city,'" he recalled, dryly.
But his experience placing port-a-potties around town is coming in handy this week.
On Tuesday, the city received three new mobile toilets from Honey Bucket, the eponymous company that regularly supplies and cleans them in Denver parks. But these johns are different than usual: the city bought them for $2,900 apiece, rather than renting them.
The reason? Gilmore's staff needs to drill into their walls to install needle disposal boxes, trash cans and hand-washing stations, so they can deliver them to sidewalk encampments around town. It's part of Mayor Mike Johnston's broader effort to keep camps clean in the short term, while his administration attempts to house at least 1,000 people by the end of the year and make unsanctioned camping less necessary. The mayor's administration recently began trash pickup for some camps, too.
Gilmore said he'd like to have the first toilet installed downtown by the end of the week. While a spokesperson for the city's Emergency Operations apparatus confirmed this program is happening, they couldn't give us any details on timing.
"I don't know if this is going to work," he told us, "but we have to try."
Gilmore said he's been asking around to figure out how to do this right.
He said he started working in parks because he cared about the flowers and animals and people who used them. He didn't expect how much bathroom maintenance would absorb his time, but he said access has become an increasing priority in the last few years. Under former Mayor Hancock, he said, his department was directed to add more portalets in parks, in part to give people who live outside somewhere to go.
"The big thing about parks is we're for everybody," he said, adding that this new, targeted port-a-potty program hinges on collaboration.
On one hand, the city needs to provide the right kind of service for this to be successful. Gilmore reached out to advocacy groups like Housekeys Action Network Denver and Headwaters Protectors - people who've been on the ground in camps for years - to make sure the new facilities would be configured correctly.
For example, advocates who have tried this on their own suggested he buy wheelchair-accessible models, so they'd be available to people who use wheelchairs - and so they'd be harder to tip over. Gilmore also said he's thinking of contracting Honey Bucket to clean these toilets twice a day, to start, to make sure they're as clean as they can be.
Ean Tafoya, head of Headwaters Protectors, said this change of direction by the city is "about time."
On the other hand, Gilmore said, this will require some buy-in from bathroom users. If people trash them, if they throw clothes into the toilet and not into the attached trashcan, cleaning these things could become impossible.
"If they start [messing] this up, and Honey Bucket calls and says, 'Scott, we can't do it anymore,' then it's over," he said.
But dealing with unpredictable public use of a public amenity is part of Gilmore's day-to-day in city parks. His department has been busy on this front lately, repairing bathrooms continually destroyed by people he expects are housed, young and glomming onto a particularly vexing TikTok trend. He said he's working with advocates to make sure people who live outside understand continued bathroom access hinges on everyone's support.
"We need them as much as they need us. This is a team effort, and that is where we can make the most headway," he told us.
Some who live outside are happy about this development.
We went to talk to a group of people sitting around a tent on Champa Street downtown. When we told them what the city is planning, a woman who introduced herself as Angel squealed with joy, high-fiving her friends.
"This is cool, I'm excited," she said.
Angel told us she's lived outside for about a month and a half, after a domestic violence situation forced her onto the street. She said she had to relieve herself behind a dumpster that morning, something that felt demoralizing and a little dangerous. She's seen cops ticket people when they had to go.
The need is obvious, she told us, and she's confident people will properly steward the new amenity when it arrives.
"People are going to be so ecstatic about this that they're going to definitely take care of it. Because, yeah, there's literally no option around here," she said, adding that camps tend to generate leaders who would help keep things in line. "For something like this, that's going to be a game-changer, if someone's passing out in there or left a bunch of crap in there, they're going to be like, 'Hey! We want to use it too! What are you doing? Why are you messing this up?'"
Dejuan Sanchez, who was sitting next to her, said the toilets will go beyond cleanliness. A chance to keep a camp clean is a chance to help his housed neighbors see his humanity.
"If you get an opportunity to sit there and be yourself, then you can show them people that 'OK, I have some kind of decency. I'm not some kind of savage,'" he said.
Not everyone is excited about the mayor's new push on this, but he's doing his best to win them over.
On Saturday, Johnston held one of his series of Q&A sessions with residents about his plans. While attendees at some of these forums have expressed concern about how people sleeping outside will fare under his leadership, this meeting, held in Lowry, contained some residents worried bathrooms and trash pickup might send the wrong message.
A few asked the mayor: would this "coddle" people and keep them on the street?
Johnston answered with the same message he'd been espousing all morning - Denver needs to give people somewhere to go. In the meantime, the city must try to keep things as clean as possible, and the city must stop continually - possibly dangerously - moving people along.
At-large City Council member Sarah Parady, who attended the meeting with her colleague, Serenea Gonzales-Gutierrez, said this kind of charm offensive is necessary right now. She said people are still getting used to this new administration, and their priorities, even in basic ways.
"Even just that level of transparency is new and appreciated," she told us. "We're going into a level of depth of the roots of this problem, and how we dig ourselves out, that I don't think people have heard."
Both she and Johnston have said these face-to-face meetings are winning people over, even if skepticism and disagreement are sometimes present. They're hoping cleaner camps might help lower the temperature around all of this discourse.
In the meantime, Scott Gilmore said he's following his new marching orders, custom molding these toilets for their target audiences.
"We have to understand that people on the streets have been put through a lot of trauma. They've gone through a lot of hard times, so what we need to do is get that, and respect that, and try to do the best we can to provide this type of service," he told us. "This is work that [Johnston] said we need to do. These encampments, we need to try to make them cleaner and we need to give them some dignity."
