The Power of Clean Clothes

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 The Power of Clean Clothes



Unsheltered homeless populations face a perpetual crisis of hygiene. Without access to basic resources (such as clean food/water and clean clothes), one’s health is left particularly vulnerable. One exacerbating factor here is the lack of health & hygiene facilities actually available to the homeless population. In this blog post, I wish to argue that one particularly underutilized hygiene facility is that of the laundry facility. By expanding our infrastructure to include large-scale and affordable laundry facilities, we can help alleviate the sanitation crisis that inherently accompanies severe poverty. 


Without a reliable way to wash old clothes, individuals in the homeless population are forced to discard many articles of clothing. As such, one upside of upscaling laundry facilities is that of waste management. A 2025 study by the city of Portland discovered that 17% of all waste left in homeless encampments takes the form of clothing: by giving the homeless population a reliable ability to wash (and thus re-use) old clothes, less trash will be left on our streets. 


One reason I feel so strongly about the laundry facility is that it has proven results. In 2024, the city of Portland opened a free laundromat called The Wash House. Support for the Wash House was universal among its shelterless clients: all statements taken from interviews indicate improvement in both physical and mental health. Everybody interviewed agreed that the service made them healthier and less likely to discard old clothes. To this day, the Wash House continues to serve (and help) individuals struggling with severe poverty. 


The ongoing success of the Wash House should be expanded upon as much as possible. Similar projects must be undertaken in order to help combat the sanitation woes that plague the homeless population. Expanding low-income laundry services in our infrastructure will not only benefit the mental and physical health of our shelterless population, it will also reduce the amount of litter contributed by homelessness. 


I urge readers to vote for (or otherwise support) such expansion of laundry services in the future. 



Read more about Portland's Wash House:

https://www.opb.org/article/2025/07/27/portland-wash-house-free-laundry-service/


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