NYC Park Bathrooms Riddled With Busted Fixtures, Report Says

NEW YORK — You won't want to park it on these toilets. Hundreds of New York City park bathrooms are riddled with busted fixtures — and many park-goers are left with no place to go at all, a new report says.

City Comptroller Scott Stringer's office examined the conditions of 1,428 park bathrooms across the city. Parks inspectors found nearly 400 broken toilets, sinks, ceilings and other fixtures and dozens of hazards that could hurt someone, according to the report released Thursday.

Even more New Yorkers lack access to any park bathrooms — the city has just 16 for every 100,000 residents, a number that ranks an "embarrassing" 93rd among the nation's 100 largest cities, the report says.

"Our bathroom facilities should be comfortable — but our report reveals many of them just stink," Stringer, a Democrat, said in a statement. "Every neighborhood, including in low- to moderate-income areas, deserves quality public spaces."

Some 100 of the city's park bathrooms were in "unacceptable" condition by the Parks Department's own measurements on their last inspection, Stringer's report says. That number accounts for about 7 percent of the bathrooms the comptroller's office reviewed, but it included 15 percent of Manhattan's bathrooms and 12 percent of Brooklyn's, according to the report.

Inspectors also discovered 399 unacceptable components in 207 bathrooms across the city, the report says. Among them were 29 busted toilets, urinals, sinks and hand dryers; 23 damaged or missing soap dispensers; 17 damaged changing tables and 23 deteriorated ceilings, walls and floors.

There were also 53 hazards in 38 bathrooms that posed a risk of "moderate to debilitating injury," such as noxious odors, missing changing-table straps and exposed wires, the comptroller's office found.

Additionally, more than two thirds of all bathrooms are not accessible to disabled visitors and nearly three quarters lack changing tables for infants and toddlers, the report says.

Some neighborhoods have more decrepit bathrooms than others, the report shows. Some 40 percent of those in Manhattan Community District 3, encompassing Chinatown and the Lower East Side, were in unacceptable shape, well above the citywide rate, the comptroller's office says. East Harlem's Community District 11 had a similar rate of 39 percent.

And other parts of the city barely have any park restrooms at all — 10 community districts have fewer than eight for every 100,000 residents, the report says. They're most scarce in The Bronx's Community District 5, which has just six bathrooms to serve more than 148,000 people, according to the comptroller's office.

Stringer's report calls on the Park Department to upgrade existing bathrooms and build new ones in underserved areas. Reforming the procurement process to standardize the cost and design of new facilities could help with that, according to Stringer's office.

The Parks Department says it is already working to revamp many of its comfort stations.

"This administration has invested in the construction and reconstruction of more than 15% of our park comfort stations — 27 have been completed, and 76 are active capital projects," Parks Department spokesperson Crystal Howard said in an email. "Since 2015, we have worked to standardize their design and each facility includes changing tables — in the men’s and women’s restrooms."

The department also contested the number of facilities that Stringer cited — it says it has only 690 comfort stations, which are open 94 percent of the time during the season. The discrepancy is likely because the comptroller's office counted men's and women's bathrooms separately, a spokesperson for Stringer said.

Moreover, only eight of the roughly 400 bathroom problems the report noted are in the most serious category, and most of them can be addressed easily, the Parks Department said.