Lava Mae, a non-profit organization operating in San Francisco, has found a new way to help the homeless - offer them free showers on the go.
Lava Mae has converted a public transit bus into mobile bathroom. The bus has two large shower areas, clean toilets and also gives free shampoo, soaps and towels to those who cannot afford a roof over their heads, let alone a bathroom.
The bus travels around the city reaching several homeless people, giving them access to a clean shower.
The bus uses water from the nearby city hydrants. It has two separate areas with shower stalls, a sink, a changing space and a toilet. Each person is given 20 minutes to use the bath.
Several homeless shelters in San Francisco do have bathrooms, but the queue is usually long there.
The Lava Mae, which means "Wash me" in Spanish, bus will be parked in the city Mission District every Saturday and the organization hopes on converting more buses into mobile bathrooms for the homeless in the future. They are also planning on taking their project to other cities.
"We are already working with a bunch of different communities across the country from Honolulu to Miami," Doniece Sandoval, founder of the mobile shower bus, told Fox News.
Sandoval adds that the mobile bus project is their way of "returning dignity" in some way to these people who live on the streets.
"If you're homeless, you're living on the streets and you're filthy, you're trying to improve your circumstances, but you can't interview for a job, you can't apply for housing and you get disconnected from your sense of humanity. So a shower just in of itself is amazing for people," Sandoval told The Associated Press.
The renovations, which amounted up to $70,000 and more, were funded by private donations from various tech firms including Google, one of the main reasons why people are becoming homeless in the city. Currently, San Francisco's homeless count is 6,400 - a figure that has remained unaltered since 2011.
The "tech gentrification" has driven rents in the city through the roof. The average rent in San Francisco is something between $2,500 and $4,500 a month, according to SF Gate.
Business Insider has compiled visual maps depicting how the tech influx is affecting the real estate market of San Francisco. According to the maps, the rich are holing up in Palo Alto, while the less well-off (those earning less than $100,000) are being pushed toward Oakland and more inconvenient suburbs.
