Old Buses Will Become Showers For San Francisco's Homeless

Not all decommissioned city buses end up in a Top Gear-style touring car race getting smashed to bits. Many sit around rotting for years until they're repurposed for some other use. Like in San Francisco, where there's a plan to soon convert old Muni buses into showers for the homeless population.

It's the idea of a former PR executive in San Francisco, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, whose program, Lava Mae, takes retired Muni buses and turns them into giant showers on wheels to be driven around the city for use by people who have no facilities of their own.

Officials peg San Francisco's homeless population at about 3,400 and there are just 16 public showers in the city. Transforming old buses into shower stalls seems like a big leap, but it's a rather clever fix to the problem.

Doniece Sandoval, who started the nonprofit mobile shower service, will offer showers to people in need for free. She already has one bus being retrofitted with stalls and set to start running beginning in March, with an option to get three more from the city if all goes well.

So after March, make sure the bus you're trying to board in San Francisco actually has seats in it.

Photo: Flickr/Sharat Ganapati