The scarcity of laundry, shower and public toilet facilities in downtown Portland stems, perhaps in part, from a historical view of homelessness as a temporary, emergency situation rather than the chronic, long-term reality it often becomes. For many, lack of housing can stretch into a multi-year endurance test, and all the normal, everyday human needs become exponentially more difficult.
We asked our vendors to tell us how they keep their clothes clean.
“I just throw my clothes away when I get new clothes,” said Frank Johnson. “I don’t have money to do my laundry, ever. Nobody feels bad enough for me to pay for my laundry. I have a hard enough time feeding myself, so I just don’t do laundry.”
Going to a shelter to do laundry, he said, is too much of a trigger for his addiction. He’s been nine years clean and sober, he said.
Frank isn’t alone with disposing of old clothes rather than wash them. “I don’t do laundry because it’s too expensive,” Katy said. “Lots of people do it that way.”
Mike H. agreed. “Most people throw their clothes away; that’s what I do. It’s pointless to keep your dirty clothes, because of bed bugs. I get clean clothes whenever I can find them. I go to Red Door, TPI (Transition Projects), wherever. I know it’s time to trade out and get clean clothes when I start itching.”
Jason agreed with Katy and Mike about the need to throw away dirty clothes. “It’s a given,” he said. “I throw my clothes out too. If you keep them, they accumulate fairly easily. If you go out of your way to get clean clothes, you can’t carry them around, they get wet and heavy. It’s the season. Even if we have the money to go to a laundromat, there’s a lot of people there, and they don’t want to see you there, because you stink,” he said.
Sandra and her boyfriend Brian have given up on doing laundry at TPI because it takes up the whole day, and sometimes when they get to the front of the line, the hours are over for doing laundry. “You can go to TPI, but only if you are lucky to get in that day because the line is so massive. If we could open up another place like that, it would help,” she said. “We go to a laundromat on the east side for all of our stuff. It can be 20 or 30 bucks if we do our blankets. We try to go once a week. We earn the money with pop cans and selling Street Roots.”
Carrying laundry back and forth can be tiring, she added.
“We have to haul it all, where we go it’s a good 25 minute bus ride. It’s an all day kind of thing. By the time you’re done, you don’t want to do anything else. You just go crash out. It’s exhausting hauling all that stuff,” Sandra said.
Steven Venus also believes there needs to be a better solution here in Portland and some place in addition to TPI to do laundry for free.
“You have to sign up and stand in line,” he said. “Same with showers. Very hard to get showers. If you are too far back (in line) and you miss the time period, then you have to go back in line later in the day. You have to spend the whole day just trying to do your laundry or take a shower.”
Several vendors spoke about feeling embarrassed about wearing dirty clothes.
“I try to do it (wash clothes) when I can, but it’s pretty hard to find laundry facilities out here,” said Mike D. “Lots of times, I just throw my clothes away and get new ones. It’s embarrassing to walk around in dirty clothes, in stink. It’s embarrassing to smell.”
“I’m not embarrassed about it, I’m just annoyed,” said Steven. “Basically you get dead skin and that gets in your clothes and perspiration gets in your clothes, it kind of gets itchy and nasty. But one way I do it, you get baby wipes and wipe yourself down, it doesn’t fully replace a shower, but it’s halfway there.
A female vendor who wished to remain anonymous spoke about how the lack of access to toilets can exacerbate the situation. “As you get older it gets harder to hold it in if you have to go really bad,” she said. “If you dribble, your clothes will start to smell terrible. I worry that I smell bad and no one is telling me. I think you get used to your own bad smells. I don’t want that to happen. I want somebody to tell me if I smell bad, but people don’t usually do that.”
Many vendors rely on friends for help.
“I do laundry at a friend’s apartment,” said Mykul G. “I take off what I have on, scrub it as best I can, which doesn’t really get things clean because it’s really dirty out here. Then I stay a couple of nights, because it takes a long time for things to hang dry without any money to dry them. Washing out by hand is hard because I have dislocated bones all across my chest. People just don’t know what I go through. If there was a bin outside with hot water and soap access I could wash them there. If Walmart had a laundry, they could have a prepaid credit card the city could give out.”
Randy Humphrys also relies on a friend to help him keep his clothes clean. “That’s why I have clean clothes. I give him quarters and he does my laundry. “$1.75 for a wash, free to dry. He only does it for me. He’s a nice guy. Other people I know they take it to the fountains. If you find one that’s working, you can wash your clothes in it. People use whatever free soap they can get; shampoo, hand soap.”
Some vendors rely on resourcefulness and creativity.
“There’s a number of ways I do laundry,” said M., “but if you don’t have hot water, it takes a while. I’ve found rivers, streams, different ways of doing things. It’s easier if you are in the wild than in the city. You can find a comfortable spot, make something more. In the city you don’t have the ease of making a space work for you. Unfortunately it’s hard to wash your clothes, hard to get rest in the city.”
Jason has a method for doing laundry outside of the city. “If you have a big pot and a fire, you can boil it, it takes a long time, but if you have a pot you can get your clothes clean,” he said. “You can actually get them white again. I’ve had friends do it and they’ve done it for me,” he said.
Life on the Streets is a periodic column about the parts of homelessness most people don’t talk about.