When Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced his $4 million public bathroom expansion program on January 10, he was stepping into a framework that already existed. Nine months earlier, the City Council unanimously passed Local Law 694-2024, authored by Bushwick Council Member Sandy Nurse, requiring the city to nearly double its public restrooms by 2035.
Nurse represents District 37, Bushwick, East New York, Cypress Hills, Ocean Hill, and Brownsville and has a track record of delivering resources to the district. Her bathroom legislation sets a target of one public restroom per 2,000 residents, up from the current ratio of one per 7,820. It also mandates a Deputy Mayor-led strategic planning process, with the first comprehensive report due by February 2029.
Nurse’s work on bathroom access began publicly on September 19, 2024, when she rallied outside City Hall with the “Free to Pee” coalition to support two bills aimed at expanding public restroom access citywide, according to PoliticsNY. Seven months later, the Council passed her bill. Nine months after that, Mamdani announced his funding commitment.
PoliticsNY reported the bill “aims to make it easier to find a restroom across the city” while creating “a long-term strategic planning process for establishing and maintaining a city-wide public bathroom network.”
Mamdani acknowledged Nurse’s legislative work during his January 10 press conference. The mayor said the city would spend $4 million to bring “30-40 modular, high-quality public bathrooms” to New York, with the investment specifically adding bathrooms outside of the park system. The city currently has about 1,000 public restrooms, roughly 70% of which are in parks.
Introduction 694-2024, the formal bill number, requires the city to nearly double its public restrooms from approximately 1,100 facilities to 2,120 by 2035, according to a January 2026 analysis of the legislative framework. The target ratio of one restroom per 2,000 residents would represent a 3.9-fold improvement over NYC’s current provision of one toilet per 7,820 people. The city currently ranks 93rd out of the 100 largest U.S. cities for restroom access, with 12.79 restrooms per 100,000 residents.
The legislation specifies four implementation methods: converting existing public buildings, deploying prefabricated kiosk toilets, establishing private partnerships with commercial establishments, and new construction. At least 50 percent of the 2,120 facilities must remain publicly owned.
The law also requires the city to maintain a publicly accessible, up-to-date map of all public restrooms. The Adams administration published locations through NYC OpenData on Google Maps. The Mamdani administration has not announced whether it will continue using that platform or establish a new tracking system as facilities come online.
A 2025 NYC Council report titled “Good to Go?” documented pervasive quality failures in existing infrastructure. Of 337 bathrooms surveyed across 172 sites, 40 percent lacked basic amenities including soap, toilet paper, trash bins, or hand-drying mechanisms. Eleven percent were closed during posted operating hours. Fifteen percent had non-functioning stall locks—up from 11 percent in 2024. Only 4 of 172 sites (2.3 percent) provided menstrual product dispensers, and 26 percent lacked diaper-changing tables.
The legislation explicitly addresses populations disproportionately affected by limited restroom access: an estimated 3,675 to 50,000 unsheltered individuals in NYC, menstruating individuals, caregivers with children, delivery workers, and people with medical conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome, urinary tract infections, and diabetes. Current facilities operate primarily during daylight hours, typically 6 AM to dusk.
World Health Organization research estimates a $5.50 health return for every $1 invested in sanitation infrastructure. San Francisco’s Pit Stop public restroom program documented $1.9 to $12 million in cost savings from 2016-2019 attributable to reduced open defecation and associated public health costs.
The legislation and funding serve distinct functions. Nurse’s bill creates a statutory mandate that binds current and future administrations to the 2035 targets—without it, any mayoral bathroom program could be defunded or abandoned by a successor. But the bill does not appropriate money. Implementation depends on executive branch funding: the Adams administration’s “Ur In Luck” initiative committed $150+ million for 82 facilities through 2029, and Mamdani’s $4 million announcement adds supplementary funding for modular units outside the park system.
When Ur In Luck completes in 2029, the city will have approximately 1,182 public restrooms—only 7.5 percent above the current 1,100 baseline. Reaching the 2035 target of 2,120 facilities requires 938 additional bathrooms in the six years after Ur In Luck ends, an average of 156 per year. The legislation does not specify funding sources for this second phase. The first strategic planning report, due February 2026, must identify capital strategies, policy reforms, specific sites, cost estimates, and funding mechanisms for the remaining expansion.
If Mamdani serves two terms, his administration would be responsible for overseeing the majority of the expansion—from completing the Ur In Luck pipeline through most of the second phase. The 2035 deadline falls two years after a potential second term would end, meaning the next several mayoral budgets will determine whether the city meets its statutory target.
When Bushwick Daily first profiled Nurse after her 2021 election to represent the 37th District, she was described as a Panama-born Brooklynite who “once thought she would never” take on the role of council member.
The New York Daily News ran an opinion piece on January 14 praising Mamdani’s focus on “sewer socialism” and noting he is “trying to get stuff done” with walkable streets and infrastructure improvements. The piece positioned the bathroom expansion as part of the mayor’s broader effort to restore faith in government.
Neither the mayor’s January 10 press release nor the subsequent media coverage referenced Nurse’s prior legislation. The NYC Mayor’s Press Office announced the commitment as a “new commitment of $4 million to bring modular, high-quality public bathrooms to NYC” and described it as part of the “Mamdani Administration continues fast-paced, focused efforts to improve lives of working New Yorkers.”
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