Silas Borden has spent the last five years living on the streets of San Francisco. He’s used to making the best with what he has, so when he stumbled upon a bus offering free showers and toilet, he couldn’t resist. “Living on the streets, no matter how clean you try to stay, you’re going to be grimy,” said Borden as he prepared for his first shower in over a week, “and I want to wash it off.”
Borden is one of the first beneficiaries of a pilot program from the nonprofit Lava Mae, which has retrofitted an old city bus into a souped-up sanitation service on wheels. The bus, which is equipped with two showers and a toilet that run off city water, travels the streets of San Francisco and aims to provide 300 to 500 showers a week.
Doniece Sandoval, the brains behind the operation, was inspired after reading about the lack of options available to the more than 3,000 homeless living on her city’s streets. “There are only seven drop-in centers in the entire city, and that translates to 16-20 shower stalls,” says Sandoval, who plans to add three more buses to her fleet because of the success of these test runs.
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Tag: Doniece Sandoval
The Surprising Way a Shower Could Save a Life
Like anyone who lives in a major city, Doniece Sandoval sees homeless people everywhere. Especially in her town: San Francisco. Until two years ago, though, she saw them out of the corner of her eye, as she bustled past.
Then came one particular cab ride through the city’s South of Market neighborhood. As the cab rolled through the area, a mix of hopeful startup employees and homeless people, the driver muttered something that stuck: “Welcome to the land of broken dreams.”
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