Addressing a Public Health Crisis by Fostering Community
The Seattle Street Sink, urban hand washing station, multiple locations in Seattle and beyond

Seattle, the country’s eighteenth largest city with the third largest population of people experiencing homelessness, faces a crisis. With businesses closed during the pandemic, the unhoused have limited access to hand washing facilities, making its most vulnerable population more vulnerable still. Even before the outbreak of COVID-19, the City auditor found that the city fell woefully short in providing enough hygiene facilities; this situation was exacerbated by Governor Inslee’s ‘Stay at Home’ Order on March 25th, 2020.

The Seattle Street Sink is a seemingly simple, bottom up, community-based project that both augments and critiques this lack of hygiene infrastructure in the midst of a public health crisis. The project was initiated by Real Change, a local advocacy group for people experiencing homelessness and was designed as a collaborative effort between architects, landscape architects, public health experts, and others from around the country also working on public hygiene.

The design is intentionally easy to replicate using only simple tools and basic skills. Connecting to hose bibs on private property and treating the greywater on-site defrays the cost of constantly emptying and re-filling the water supply. Recruiting nonprofit community organizations to host and maintain the stations means the project sidesteps the red tape of City bureaucracy, allowing the sinks to be setup quickly and easily.

For more information about the Seattle Street Sink, visit the Clean Hands Collective website.