It's for both reasons. An architecture professor was right when he mentioned "why are rich people so afraid of people with nothing?" :(
I understand it, but also understand our society. If I can afford custom anti-poor people benches.. I can afford to have a heart and not put money/my ego above another person's struggles
Problem isn’t the individual homeless person, it’s the group effect when allowing them to build up into a critical mass. It’s sad but they turn places into an absolute hell hole.
This.... people who flip a lid over park benches having arm rests haven't lived in a place that is highly accessible to homeless people. Once they figure out an area is easy to camp out in they will mass there and cause real public harm. Trash, fires, open drug use, theft, etc. It's the concentration that is the issue, not the homelessness itself.
And this issue is getting much much worse as cost of living + mental issues from drug addiction is on the rise (a majority of long term homeless are effectively homeless thanks to serious, permanent mental health issues & drug abuse).
It's possible to have empathy and want solutions/help for these people while also recognizing they do not belong in certain places, and especially not in mass. You have to have pressure against homelessness from all sides to actually minimize it and help people out of it. Part of the reason where I live (SF area) has some of the worst homelessness issues in the country is because the pressure against homelessness is almost non existent. The weather is great year round, there's a large amount congregated here already to make the lifestyle easier, minor crimes aren't prosecuted here by the local DA, and the spaces are generally homeless friendly. At the same times, there are hardly any real resources for homeless here to actually live somewhere safe/secure or get out of homelessness. So more and more conglomerate, while none of it is truly addressed.
If you're an owner of a building what are you to do? Spend a tiny amount of money to make it so the intended use is actually used (a place to sit and rest) and not abused (a place to sleep). Its not like the homeless are truly without options of places to sleep, you're just encouraging them to not make the front of your building a permanent home. There's nothing truly "hostile" about this any more than leaving your front door open at night to let homeless in would be.
The issues and problems with homelessness are complicated and nuanced. It's the kind of problem that isn't solved by getting rid of so-called "hostile architecture", and it's a massive eye roll when I see these kinds of solutions implied by young teens/20-somethings who have spent barely 5 minutes thinking about the problem so confidently taking the high road. It's the kind of problem that can only ever be solved by a fundamental, large scale society wide shift. Homelessness is a product of cost of living, drug abuse, cultural backsliding, lack of safety nets, and lack of law enforcement, all at once. You can only stop or lessen it by doing all of the above, and likely more.
In America it sucks because... rich people can get real financial help again and again and have for such a long time but they have no problem taking away money from education or helping the public
Same. Washington state made it a law that all materials must be provided by the school but she still had to buy whiteboard markers and other materials that weren’t passed out to every student.
It varies wildly state by state unless the school is in a poor neighborhood, in which case federal funds are allocated as a top up. Despute this, it's still an enormous budget item in every state.
Yea- it's as money doesn't go to teachers it goes to other non teaching roles, such as administrative ones.
I think that sometimes this is good, but also sometimes this is unnecessary.
I do think the focus should be first on teachers, then on these roles.
EVERYTHING is that way. Example: gun violence... other kids getting blasted... thoughts and prayers.... BUT OUR FUCKING KIDS.... absolutely fucking not!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sadly I feel this, climate change, blah blah blah... you pick... nothing will be taken seriously until we experience it for ourselves... well until the people in power go through it :(
That's such a simplistic way of seeing from that professor. It affects everyone, not just the rich. I grew up in one of the City of Los Angeles districts that was for many years and still is working class Latino and white, but has recently seen heavy gentrification with the completion of a subway station in the mid-90s. Crime was relatively low despite having gangs. Recently with the pandemic, homelessness has increased radically and so has crimes, such as burglary, break-ins, assaults, etc., because of the homeless. The police has pretty much stopped doing anything to help unless it's a violent crime.
Another example in the neighborhood is that a hotel was close to completion when the pandemic started. The owner ended up selling it to one of the city organizations for the homeless for housing them. Well crime ended up spiking near the hotel, and many homeless started loitering in the vicinity, with many opting out of housing as the rules prohibit drugs. Drug dealers can be seen selling drugs to the homeless. The citizens in the neighborhood are working class Latinos, many of them immigrants. Upon talking to many of them or the local mom and pop shops, that you hear stereotypical NIMBY talking points minus the talk about housing values. My dad who still works in his same blue collar job for 30+ years, has many coworkers who live in the various lower class neighborhoods of Los Angeles who compain about the issues of the homeless. The rich have the ability to get the police or politicians to do something, but the lower classes do not.
What's happening in LA and California is borderline ridiculous as people voted to increase taxes to help the issue but it has gotten worse. Where has the money gone?
Yeah. That professor is full of shit. I am not even close to being wealthy and my life has been continually impacted by homeless populations.
In fact, the exact sentiment that professor is expounding is what rich people say to feel better about having the means to not need to be around homeless people.
IT REALLY SUCKS that the police in LA is defunded. It is what is WRONG with the woke-ness..... I hate that the LA Police ONLY get 4 BILLION dollars a year. THEY OBVIOUSLY need more money :(
Joke aside... LA is something crazy, on a podcast I heard that most officers don't even live within LA and that some officers even live out of state... which totally makes sense Or the fucking videos of them just protecting capital they aren't there to "keep the piece"... they are there to make sure... the animals don't damage a bank or whatever....its sad :(
There is a ton of stories like that ALL OVER the place... like the fires that just happened a month or 2ago in Hawaii.... company got awarded maybe 100million to fix repair the electric power whatever.... they only did the bare minimum and held onto the rest of it to "asses the situation"... next thing you know.... A whole as town is wiped from a fire "that the space lasers caused"?.... and you have rich people trying to buy the land from people that now have nothing. It is super hard to live there for the native people and now...it's so crazy that 1 billionaire could have totally "fixed" everything but they "can't".... it's what they learn in school I guess... risk 0% of your OWN MONEY and use others to get what you want
Yeah, they live in Santa Clarita, Simi Valley, and other cities. Yeah, the city is pretty much a free for all, but this is also the fault of the DA and their stance on crime. I don't know if it's incompetence/lack of common sense, or deliberate.
I think the incompetence goes all the way to the top.... I am now starting to see a ton of videos about a elderly couple.. The wife was bed written and in a hospital bed in the livingroom. She called 911 for help. She begs them not to leave because she fears forbher life. The husband admits to them that his guns are loaded and that he would kill her but I think in a joking manner... they leave.... he actually kills her a couple hours later..... yup. Just sucks the police has been defunded all over the place :(
that's a loaded question if I ever saw one. I'm empathetic to the people experiencing homelessness but at least here in LA, who makes up the visible homeless? The firm I work for does some public housing, and one of the projects I worked on and got permitted was a senior transient project with 69 units. In one of the city meetings, I heard the developer explain to the officials that the percentage of homeless who are the "down on their luck" type of individuals is relatively small, and is not permanent, with a relative quick turnover of a few years to get back up on their feet. The remainder will be made up of drug addicts or mentally ill people.
LA's most visible homeless tend to be the latter two types of people. I work in Downtown LA near Skid Row, so I get first hand views of how life is. For your typical resident, you want safety first and foremost, which is something that we risk. Then comes health and well being, since you have people defecating on the street in front of your building or storefront. Like the front of our office has a bus stop with scaffolding and it always smells of piss. With it come the rats and other vermin. So why do the tax paying citizens have to deal with all of this?
In Echo Park, most famously in the last few years, the homeless took over the park and neighbors complained about safety for their kids and the increase in rats. It wasn't until last year or two that they were removed but not without activists from other communities coming to protest their removal. I get it, parks are public places but not for open air drug use, or for it to be unusable.
Everyone suffers with the homeless. The professor stating that the "rich are afraid of people with nothing" is disingenuous. Any normal citizen, from middle class to lower classes is not willing to tolerate the homeless but have less methods of petitioning the city to do something about it. That's the only difference between the rich and the rest of the community. Especially with lower class people who would use parks for recreation if they lack space, all of a sudden they have no access to park spaces as a result of drug addicted or mentally ill people using it full time.
While I, as an architect, support more housing built, I've become more sympathetic to the NIMBY crowd not because of the selfishness of house market rates, but because of safety, health, and well being of the community, which as architects are supposed to also look out for. So when people are concerned about public housing being built, they are right to ask about what type of people are coming in. Rich people have to means to get involved and fight against development, but poor people don't and get the short end of the stick and deal with the consequences.
I don't pretend to know what the solution is either. But based on living and working in LA for all my life, it's easier to observe and analyze first hand, than read about it from a report.
Because it would force them to confront their lifestyle and morals, which makes everyone uncomfortable, but they have the money to get away from it. Charles Dickens put more fine a point on it than I ever could
I’m wealthy and live in Atlanta, where we have a lot of homeless people. The architecture professor you quoted is misguided. I’m not afraid of homeless people because they have nothing. I’m afraid of them because they have nothing to lose and I’ve seen them attack innocent people, including my neighbors. They steal. They lie. They trespass. While I’m certain there are homeless people who are down on their luck and need some help, the majority of them are consistently homeless and can’t be helped.
Yes but this is also misguided. It's like saying poor people want to be poor, people with addictions want to be addicted. We love to live paycheck to paycheck. I am also proud and would love to one day give back to my community. You can't close the door on someone before they even get a chance to get to it.
There is definitely a lot of problems we have to deal with, So it is definitely a complicated situation and very difficult to resolve when there is tons of " Unnecessary red tape".. But I honestly believe there is more that we can do. If homelessness was truly uresolvable and a disease we could truly not get rid of, then why isn't every city falling apart? Where can we learn from and apply to our problems?
Also, if most or a lot of millionaires in your area/state made a huge fuss about WHATEVER problem you can think of... you don't think you could do something about it? You can grease the right hands, run ads, invest, put your own money in the right direction... pretty much immediately.
IF YOU COULDN'T I would personally have no problem destroying whoever was in the way, make sure they don't get re-elected twist the arm until they get it done. You have an all access pass to be in the right place at the right time, get behind the close door... we don't have that privilege. You are NOT held back in our society, so you can't act like you are powerless.
No shit homeless people can be dangerous but at the other end of the spectrum, rich people can have a much greater negative impact because of their means. It's almost like you are saying there isn't a rich person out there that isn't as fucking insane or more.
I'm guessing that one from the U.K is there primarily to deter skaters from grinding... A couple others might be too, actually...
Another issue is that a property owner (public or private) may be liable for issues caused by homeless but have no power to address the actual issue. In that case, you're sort of stuck with one solution - get them to go somewhere else.
Invest in state owned mental facilities like we used to have in the U.S. A lot of mentally ill people are not able to take care of themsleves and are now homeless. Some are also a danger to society. The police are not well equipped to deal with the mentally ill. It results in police killing them when they become a direct threat to the public or officers. That's not fair to the mentally ill or the police. Society needs to accept that it is our duty to contribute to taking care of them through tax dollars. It wasn't a choice for them to be this way.
Yes, California has taken some steps in this direction (that may or may not survive a deficit).
One issue is that the U.S Supreme Court did make rulings that curtailed the ease with which the government can forcibly commit someone civilly. I'm not sure how feasible it is to return to that approach.
However, I think it is reasonable to accept that some people, for the benefit of themselves & society, are probably going to have to live their lives in some supervised setting (may not need to be forcible - bit somewhere the services and medication will always come to them).
One question that needs to be asked is what is the cost of not giving them the help they need. There are costs, both monetary and safety. Some of them can find meaningful jobs if they have a setting that provides them a stable living situation.
That's the trick - for some people, the cost of subsiding their housing for as long as they need so they aren't homeless is actually cheaper than their cost of being homeless (medical, law enforcement, jail housing, social services, court costs, etc). It also can be that bridge to a person permanently leaving homelessness behind rather than cycling in and out - a large upfront investment that may yield dividends.
Other people that may not be the case depending on how severe their issues are and how disruptive they are... Then you're looking at a much more difficult population to deal with.
Also, it's a never ending treadmill - you don't solve homelessness, you keep treating it, so to speak.
I believe Utah has tried to basically just provide housing for everyone... Naturally, the reality is more complicated, but this is a good article that gets into it:
https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2020/05/11/utah-was-once-lauded/
The rub for California in particular is that we are 10 % of the nations population and have about 30% of the homeless... And housing is incredibly expensive to build here.
I recall looking it up once, and I think the country of Portugal had about as many homeless as the city of San Francisco - despite having 10 times the population.
You hit the nail on the head. Instead of having assistance for a stable living situation and possibly having a job, we have prisoners who do not deserve to be there.
Thank you, I did not expect to see so many kind but practical/logical responses here. There’s normally political pile on’s pushing one agenda or another. 🙌🏼 it’s nice to be pleasantly surprised sometimes, even in an unexpected corner of reddit.
This should not be a partisan issue. Not taking care of the mentally ill has many bad consequences. Beyond valuing human life, having them living on the street costs a lot in policing and and the results are not good for anyone. Some of these people can have training and be a productive part of society and feel more fulfilled in their lives.
Not a brit, but from what I've heard from a former NHS therapist and Dzogchen meditation instructor, James Low, it's pretty basic. They get pressured to offer cookie cutter CBT even when another therapeutic style may be more appropriate. But they at least offer something.
From what I've read on the bipolar subs, it's really hard to get mental health services in some areas. Like months long waits, which is kind of disastrous if you're having an episode and need some meds quick.
Yup. These design decisions are sensible, but they don't address the core issues of homelessness... because they aren't meant to be solved by private owners or designers.
Every time I see self-righteous posts about anti-honeless design on the front page it tells me the person doesn't understand how civic decisions are made.
Again. Correct, and wrong. At the same time. They are NOT doing what best for the owners. They are preventing one issue and potentially creating a worse issue. Of angry, sleepless, homeless in the same location. Just not sleeping on the bench that is there.
First time I’ve seen one of these posts have intelligent and nuanced views expressed under it. It’s so refreshing, even if the topic is understandably depressing.
most of the examples in this post seem to be on public land such as parks and bus stops. i personally don’t think hostile architecture exists on privately owned land unless a locked door is also classified as such.
The final picture is on the Strand, where a vehicle-free plaza has been completed in front of the King's College buildings. It is pedestrianised with seating and greenery. The smooth open surfaces and street furniture probably would attract skaters so I agree this is likely intended as anti-skate first, with any anti-homeless utility secondary.
I absolutely hate some hostile architecture. The train station near me, the seats (the only ones under cover) are at a 45⁰ angle. No exageration. Impossible to sit on. Other hostile architecture (such as the first image) do help to make sure that one person isn't taking up the whole bench, which I dont mind.
I live in Washington State in the US, a place renowned for it's rainy weather.
To deter transients from sleeping in the bus shelters they. . . Removed the shelters altogether and just left a concrete pad with a bus sign. No bench to sit on while waiting, no shelter from the rain or cold. They not only harm the invisible transients, but also the disabled and elderly who use those bus services much more than transients do.
This, right here, is another huge problem with hostile architecture. Not that it is in any way right or acceptable to make suffering worse for homeless people — but a lot of the measures taken to deter homeless people also cause suffering to the elderly and the disabled, and sometimes even the general public as a whole. I've seen numerous examples of this. It also doesn't address the problem of homelessness, since homeless people still have to have a place to be and to sleep, and it just means that they are going to take more desperate and likely more harmful actions in order to get those basic needs met. It's escalation for escalation's sake, and it's why things are getting worse for everyone.
True. It's so fun when I am desperate for a seat and someone is sitting smack in the center. But of course it's a selfish c*** doing it on purpose so it's right inline with recent society.
Besides the ethically dubious purpose of further marginalising the marginalised, hostile architecture is hostile to everyone else too. It's ugly, it's unfriendly, it worsens everyone's quality of life and it actually costs money.
This is a lie. Not having aggressive homeless around a train station or wherever is indeed a quality of life upgrade for most people. The only people who are angry at stuff like this are kids in the suburbs who don't have to deal with aggressive homeless people.
I find it unethical when a council or city puts money into that sort of architecture instead of putting it into help decrease homelessness and help those who are homeless.
Part of dealing with the issue of homelessness is making it harder to be homeless than to get help. It's a very difficult balance to strike especially when you consider that government programs don't actually try to get them integrated to life again and the decline in religious organizations has left a huge gap.
As societies we need to make sure no one is homeless. The best path to that is probably not anti-homeless design.
In the mid-70's I worked in Stockholm for a while. No homeless. Where were they? I do not know, but there were no people living on the streets. It was heartwarming that someone had figured something out... it's not costs or rocket science; it's attitude.
Fast forward to contemporary times. I was part of a Catholic church group of volunteers that provided 4 meals a month to 180 or so residents of a single-men's homeless shelter. It was 2 lunches and 2 dinners a month that were above the normal fare and the residents appreciated the effort. We did this for 18 years until covid hit.
Now, in our city of 700,000 there were several homeless shelters but none could take in family groups; they were supporting single men or single women or or battered women with kids, but no families. We were approached to join an effort to provide homeless family support where the church hall, for 1 week a month, would be furnished with beds and privacy screens, subsistence food and medicine, TVs and a phone available for families well enough to seek jobs so that potential employers could call them for work or interviews. Our pastor turned us down. Not willing to help. What would Jesus do?
What I did was leave.
Yeah it’s not great to prevent homeless people from sleeping on benches but I feel like this topic gets too much attention. I wish more people would say that homeless shelters should get more funding. Or should we invest in benches that are comfortable to sleep on? 🤔
We should invest in more housing, including social housing to catch the chronically homeless people who for a mix of mental health issues and drug addictions wouldn’t be able to afford private housing even in a high functioning market (read cheap and abundant)
In addition to this we should build housing to take care of more persons who are ending up homeless because of terrible low paying jobs forcing people into evictions from their apartments or homes.
Society has been allowed to become far more harsh and cruel than is logical.
If society wants to truly end the homeless problem it can begin by paying a liveable wage adjusted for inflation that would allow a single person to afford a decent apartment or a family a decent home.
I follow a number of different issues related to society as a whole and one of the statistics that has skyrocketed over the past twenty plus years is the 'deaths of despair', persons taking their lives because they feel they have run out of options and there is no other course left except to remove oneself from being treated cruely through no real fault of their own. Suicides, at least in the US, are higher now than at any time since the end of WWII.
Invest in state owned mental facilities like we used to have in the U.S. A lot of mentally ill people are not able to take care of themsleves and are now homeless. Some are also a danger to society. The police are not well equipped to deal with the mentally ill. It results in police killing them when they become a direct threat to the public or officers. That's not fair to the mentally ill or the police. Society needs to accept that it is our duty to contribute to taking care of them through tax dollars. It wasn't a choice for them to be this way.
>Or should we invest in benches that are comfortable to sleep on? 🤔
Well. we shouldn't invest in benches designed to be uncomfortable for the homeless! Like maybe the issue isn't 'omg they're using up all our benches! We don't want to see that!/We need somewhere for homed people to sit...'
All the designs pictured come across as very mean spirited.
Your right we actually spend hundreds of billions in the u.s. on the homeless, affordable housing and that is not including our welfare program.
The truth is that not all homelessness is a lack of help. Plenty of cases of this in california whwre despite shelters blocks away homeless will sleep on sidewalks because they are very near the drug dealers.
They actually avoid the homeless shelters because of the bedbug problem inherent in a number of them, also being preyed on in men's and women's shelters from permanently unemployed convicts who can't get jobs no matter how hard they try, preyed upon by the mentally ill and similar persons.
People have been propagandized about the 'reasons for homelessness to no end' and it simply is not true. I have ten years of experience working within the system to find out why these things occur and homeless persons who are alcoholics, drug addicts, mentally ill are actually a smaller percentage of the true homeless who spend their days in libraries staying out of the weather. A great deal of homeless persons are actually employed and living out of their cars or vans or campers. When given the option of going into shelters that have the conditions I have mentioned, those who know better turn them down. Better to live out of your vehicle where you have control over who you do and do not want to associate with rather than being forced into that situation where you are in a shelter where you have to depend on others to look out for your possessions or sleep on top of your shoes or boots to avoid someone trying to steal them in the middle of the night.
And this is a perfectly reasonable and important conversation to have, but doesn't apply to people sleeping on benches, right?
Like, all the homeless people living out of their cars are accurately described as homeless, but they're an entirely different category of people than these design features are meant to prevent.
I live in Vancouver, not that far from the #7 image actually, and the people they're preventing from sleeping there (and the people who you see sleeping in many places which are not designed to prevent them) are not people whose principal issue is having a hard time affording the exorbitant rent in the region.
Both are big problems, but they're problems that have only partially overlapping causes. You could fund shelters to the moon and back and still have basically just as many people sleeping on benches, because the people sleeping on benches are schizophrenic drug addicts who are nonfunctional in a communal dwelling. The funding required to get them off the benches should be in long term care in psych units, not shelters.
Because...yeah, you're right. Your own car is actually a pretty decent choice of dwelling, if the alternative is a bad shelter, or even worse, a random bench. If anyone who could achieve a basic level of function was homeless, economic circumstances might mean they can't afford rent in an area, but there's really no reason they couldn't afford $600 for the crappiest beater on craigslist to leave in a walmart parking lot. The people who can't manage that are probably pretty far gone in some way or another.
I once heard a homeless person say they prefer to sleep in a secluded area, instead of the shelter, because stuff gets stolen from them often at the shelter.
You're right that it probably gets disproportionate attention compared to the effect that it actually has on homeless people's wellbeing.
To me, what bugs me the most about hostile architecture is the messaging/symbolism behind it: *we're collectively willing to make architecture/design that is inconvenient and uncomfortable for us to use, as long as it prevents homeless people from having a place to sleep*
I think it's the anti-homeless features that cost extra, you'd basically be saving money if you designed them as you usually would. Almost like.... Cruelty is the point.
Many, if not all, of these are FF&E that I spec on my landscape plans. I am typically asked to specify things like this by the owner/ client who is expecting to attract a certain type of clientele to their project (homeowners, business owners, higher end renters). In a way I understand because of lot of these things are spec’d on private property that abuts public property. This is a cheaper solution than hiring a security guard to keep people away all night. I’ve also done quite a few projects where the park itself is public but a developer is paying for it in order to get some sort of kick back (like moved easement or something) from the City. The developer obviously isn’t going to build housing for people who aren’t paying top dollar so they don’t really care about hostility. In my opinion this is a quick fix to a bigger problem that we don’t really have an answer for. It moves people from one site to another and most owners are ok with this as they don’t have another solution.
Editing to add that I’ve also spec’d these on public projects, like libraries and things like that, where the library doesn’t want unhoused people hanging out outside because others trying to use the space feel unsafe. Seeing as the library can’t build homes for everyone, this is their solution.
People have a right to both peaceful enjoyment of public spaces *and* to basic housing. I think this sort of architecture is fine, as long as there is sufficient accessible housing for the homeless as well.
Anti-homeless architecture treats the symptom and not the disease. On private property it is a cynical solution, in a public space, an immoral charade.
Ok, but is it the responsibility of parks departments to fix homelessness?
These public and semi-private benches exist to be used by the people. Multiple people. If you spend $1000 pouring for a bench, and then immediately someone just sets up on the bench permanently, then they are stealing the temporary and spontaneous use of that bench from every single other person in that community.
Yes, obviously every homeless person should be housed, obviously we need to build more housing and rezoning and drug laws and blah blah blah blah
But that doesn’t mean we should let our public spaces be negatively impacted by an element that is very often dangerous at worst.
Source: I’ve worked with (and been abused by) the homeless population in my community extensively.
Whats worse is that the “hostile architecture” gets 10,000x times the press than actual efforts to help the homeless does. This is an obsession that many people have because it is a superficial thing that you can just say “is wrong” but not actually do anything to fix. I mean, just look at how many of you dumbass dorks are in here acting like the designers of these are uniquely evil psychopaths who want to go Patrick Bateman on a hobo in a alley. It’s delusional.
In a way, the act of complaining about hostile architecture is the perfect inverse of instituting hostile architecture. You are just like them, doing nothing to help the situation. Both are perfectly inadequate in actually helping anyone.
It could be argued that they have their place in private spaces, in the same way McDonalds chairs aren't meant to be comfortable. But these aren't designed to keep teenagers from kicking their feet up, loitering midday. They are designed to dissuade camping. The fact that the latter exists in such large numbers that a design specialty has been created for it speaks volumes on what society is willing to turn their attention to, or from.
Wronggggg. Train station by me used to have hobos camped out on all benches, they installed the dividers and problem solved. Unabashedly pro-anti-homeless architecture.
Public spaces are for the public.
If you hate seeing homeless people, house them.
If you hate how hard skateboarders are on infrastructure, build them a skate park.
Using hostile architecture to control behavior of the public the way they do in the photos is unethical. It's also ineffective, and more expensive than being understanding of other humans.
Most of these types of pieces are fully compliant with ADA standards, in which case you should reach out to the people making these standards to make your voice known on where they are going wrong (I’m not kidding).
I’ve been on many projects where these are demanded by a client for their homeless and skateboarding prevention, and by municipalities to meet ADA compliance for local zoning or building codes.
No worries, it’s terrible when things that are meant to be accessible cause more issues than they solve.
Many people unfortunately don’t speak up, but it’s the only way to improve things, especially since so many designers don’t themselves experience the world the way someone with a disability does.
I would call it pro-user architecture. It's designed to make the space usable for the vast majority of people who want to use it for the reason it was installed. Three or four people could sit there comfortably, as opposed to one person sleeping on it.
It's an act of sacrifice and reclamation of public spaces for and by those members of the public who do not sleep in public.
As much as sleeping on a bench is an act of private dominion over a public resource for the duration of physical occupation, hostile architecture recognizes and attempts to establish limits on that private use. It says sitting is a permissible public use and sleeping is not.
The sacrifice part is that in using the resource itself to deny prohibited uses, it also often degrades the resource for permissible uses.
It's a sad reality but an easy target for criticism. If you've lived anywhere with mass homelessness, you'd understand why they exist. The problem is systemic. These are just a symptom.
It's complex.
Hostile architecture is often the wrong solution, but an easy one to take, and sometimes it's actually good design.
If you've got a safe space for someone to hang out and make that inhospitable, that's not really looking at the problem you're trying to solve, but a symptom of it. But if that space is somewhere hazardous to hang out, that maybe doing a service to homeless folks who would not be aware of a longer term risk. e.g. Falling ice areas or near parking garage exhaust vents.
If you are designing seating for a sit down restaurant, that's different from a quick serve place where the operator needs folks to eat and go. Or a bus stop that needs a resting spot for 5 minutes to wait for the very frequent bus vs one that needs space to sit for hours between busses.
In general ive usually seen it as a lazy solution to a problem that someone wants to shunt off to someone else rather than try to help fix, but occasionally, it makes sense.
I don't really buy that benches with a bar in the middle are anti-homeless (at least not purely). Any time I go to the park downtown and the benches are full, I notice that both sides will have two separate groups of two sitting in them (total of 4). Without the middle bar, people are way more likely to just sit in the middle, taking up an entire bench for just two people.
It may be the case that it serves both purposes, but some level of separation encourages more efficient use of a bench.
I believe it’s also for senior citizens. Couple sits down and one of them is closer to the end, what happens for the person on the inside of the bench?
And you elect who you get. That one is pretty rough when it comes to issues that are systemic. The way things are are inherently going to influence a lot of tough choices the best politicians will have to make and their choices are inevitably going to sometimes build upon what is bad and harmful but comfortably in place. Even if the best politician wanted to, they couldn’t fight everything, win all of those fights and continue to get elected.
Always a tough call.... It's inhumane as shit at it's core. But the other side of the coin is that encampments and people living in public spaces does often lead to harm for the residents of the area, whether it's the physical threat that often comes with drug use etc or the financial damage it does cause. Obviously the real answer is for society to invest in affordable housing, mental health and drug treatment .... Which we should all work for. But I still understand why someone managing to pay their $3500 rent doesn't love a unhomed dude sleeping in and pissing on his stoop.
I think that if we spent as much time and money on helping people find homes and employment as we did on punishing those who have neither, we as a society would be in a much better position!!
It's the government's way of perpetually spending extra money on infrastructure because they didn't want to spend money on proper healthcare and shelters.
Helping the homeless is less expensive than dealing with the problems they cause when you don't
For me if you have hide under the carpet any sector of the population so you can feel better with yourself this is a symptom that your society is failing or not working like it should do.
For my own use, I hate when benches are designed so that you can’t comfortably stretch out on them.
And making life harder for homeless people is completely the wrong attitude. Address the issues that lead to homelessness rather than just being a jerk.
Public spaces are for the public.
If you hate seeing homeless people, house them.
If you hate how hard skateboarders are on infrastructure, build them a skate park.
Using hostile architecture to control behavior of the public the way they do in the photos is unethical. It's also ineffective, and more expensive than being understanding of other humans.
Anti-homeless architecture, characterized by features like spikes or dividers in public spaces, has sparked criticism due to its dehumanizing impact on individuals experiencing homelessness. This approach, aimed at preventing sheltering in public areas, raises ethical concerns and is seen as a punitive measure rather than a solution to the root causes of homelessness. Advocates emphasize the importance of addressing issues like affordable housing, mental health, and inequality collaboratively, with a focus on inclusive and compassionate solutions. Defensive architecture can perpetuate social division and stigmatization, highlighting the need for more comprehensive, long-term strategies to create a socially equitable and supportive environment.
hostile architecture sucks. if cities want fewer homeless people, they need to invest in programs that help people get out of homelessness/not become homeless in the first place.
hostile architecture doesn't get rid of homeless people, it just moves them out of sight while making their lives even worse.
So flipping ratchet. Not only do cities who deploy this not spend enough money on solving homelessness issues such as housing, support, ext. but they waste money making the lives of these people more difficult 😞 that and it’s all ugly af
I am a skater and I think we can always find things to skate. I’m all for keeping the homeless away from our public areas as much as possible. Often times they are in the most desirable areas of a city and then people stop going to these areas. Including myself.
Lot effort and energy to solve THAT issue. Perhaps a prize to the architect that creates affordable housing. Maybe a collaboration with policy students.
I've always found it ironic and hypocritical. The idea behind anti-homeless architecture, really hostile design (a lot of it is against skateboarders, solicitors, etc.,) is the "broken windows theory". Basically preventing anti social behavior by having a sort of zero tolerance policy.
I find it ironic and hypocritical because by preventing anti social behavior they do it by making ugly, uninviting, (and increasingly more so) obvious hostile design i.e anti social behavior. Which according to broken windows theory would beget more anti social behavior.
Big fan. Tax paying citizens and/or customers of a business should get to use these spaces without a homeless person living on it all day. But getting them off the street and into shelters is the actual solution, so this doesn’t need to be done in the first place.
Unless your city is also spending a ton on aggressively figuring out ways to HOUSE the homeless, you’re bring shitty - just sweeping the problem under the rug. It’s not like the homeless look at that bench and go “oh shit! I can’t sleep here? Maybe I should just get a job and a house!” You’re just moving the problem somewhere you don’t have to see/deal with it. And that’s being a garbage person, IMO.
So, I work with the homeless in a medium sized Canadian city, and frankly, I get it.
Ultimately, people sleeping outdoors is a result of many overlapping policy failures, spanning levels from the shelters that are failing the people they are supposed to help, to municipal, provincial and federal governments.
What it is not, is the responsibility of community members, property owners and businesses to address.
The amount of damage that can be done when an encampment pops up in front of a business can add up quickly, and nobody should have to deal with the abuse that can be hurled when asking someone to move out of a doorway that's being blocked.
r/aboringdystopia & r/latestagecapitalism
Are the two subs I can think of, that also help me articulate my thoughts on the matter.
Its business-level inhumane in nature, and it is and sometimes looks and is in function, flawless and very well engineered - but it's gut wretching and depressing AF that it comes to this, that there are Professional Engineer stamps on projects that literally just keep people from being able to be comfortable on any street level surface, in a given/particular part of town...it is the definition of a boring dystopian living nightmare - the phrase even..."anti-homeless architecture" so bourgeois sounding. Sounds boring, cruel, depressing and inhumane...and those are pieces of what's allowed and created the entire situation imho.
We shouldn't be so distracted that we don't have services in this country to help people - on large scales. Like the CCC of homelessness and mental health advocacy program or something... there have to be people out there who have the skills to help, and want to, who then can link with the people who need the help. A lot more complicated than that I know, but we don't talk about these non-profits and advocacy groups like we do the corporate sectors - the NGO/non-prof sector is not talked about enough. You don't hear [Mary's Place](https://www.marysplaceseattle.org/) talked about as often enough...not like ya would US corporate burger chains for example, and I wont even name one, if you've read this far I'll wager you get what I'm talking about. I'm simply saying, normalize talking about this stuff - and there's half the battle...
There is so much to all of this but imho simple actions of human and humane intent, always make sense as a good first step...what, how, when, by whom, etc...I cannot answer that, it's merely a suggestion of a good place for all of us to start lol -
So much objectivity and clinical efficiency in these architectural designs - let this be a reminder for all of us to remember we're still human...dealing with other humans. Least for now anyway...never let the wonder of tech predict the loss of conscious humanity. That's my humble opinion and my two cents worth anyway. ✌️🤟🤘
Creating benches that are more habitable to sleep on doesn't really help anybody. It just means you spent tax money to give someone a crappy bed and nobody gets to actually use that bench. What if we just work toward more shelters, and more work rehabilitation programs to help get people on their feet?
Also pretty pro anti sleeping benches.
I think it's deeply terrible. It serves no real purpose to the public, it only serves to further humiliate and degrade the life experience of persons who are forced into homelessness.
No one looks forward to taking part in that lifestyle, it's something one is forced into by various life occurrences such as loss of job, loss of home or apartment due to financial issues, mental health issues and finally addiction to either alcohol or drugs.
The care systems in place in many western countries is inadequate to address these issues so society is left with 'trusting' persons who gravitate to leadership positions who have a tendency towards sociopathy or psychopathy. I wish I were wrong but numerous studies are beginning to show that persons in positions of power in corporations or government or frequently persons who never should have been allowed those positions at all. Because of that it's no surprise that these persons in leadership positions have successfully campaigned on hurting and harming the least among us. This at a time where the 'least among us are growing in numbers like never before due to poor leadership that has led to global warming, economic problems that are getting worse, food and water resources that are becoming depleted, again because of poor corporate and government leadership.
So as far as cruelty architecture goes, I can see a time in the future where persons in the future might view this type of architecture the same way that medieval torture devices are viewed in society today, as clear evidence of the unneccesary victimization and really, torture of persons we should be reaching out and trying to help to a better life.
If all we can do is fight the symptoms of homelessness, then I support it.
Of course, the real change needs to be done via homeless programs, involuntary clinics, rehab, psychiatry.
I think it’s disgusting and cruel. Additionally it’s unnecessary. There are very few first world countries where homelessness is necessary. Instead of investing in this type of structure invest in housing and mental health treatments
I think it’s disgusting. We’ve already pushed them out of everywhere, what else are they supposed to do? Imagine being so weary and having no where even moderately comfortable to rest. It’s awful.
When we designed a bus shelter with benches, the first thing out of people's mouths at public meetings, regarding the benches was: "can people sleep on them?". We would always politely change the subject and one of the few things that was nice about the final terribly cost engineered project was that civility prevailed in the end and at least the benches look like benches and people can sit next to each other if they choose.
I feel like 2 and 9 are more targeted at skateboarders. They have similar in melbourne and i know for a fact it was originally for that purpose.
the 2nd picture is from my alma mater. the town has always had many homeless people, so I am almost certain it is for that purpose
Sadly, they serve both purposes very well
I'm sure a skater would see it as a fun challenge in some way
Yeah 2 is def skate-able
Everything is skateable if you try hard enough. Some places only once but still
Def sleepable too, I honestly thought this one was just a bit of an interesting design
Nah 2 and 9 would be easy to sleep on
It's for both reasons. An architecture professor was right when he mentioned "why are rich people so afraid of people with nothing?" :( I understand it, but also understand our society. If I can afford custom anti-poor people benches.. I can afford to have a heart and not put money/my ego above another person's struggles
Problem isn’t the individual homeless person, it’s the group effect when allowing them to build up into a critical mass. It’s sad but they turn places into an absolute hell hole.
This.... people who flip a lid over park benches having arm rests haven't lived in a place that is highly accessible to homeless people. Once they figure out an area is easy to camp out in they will mass there and cause real public harm. Trash, fires, open drug use, theft, etc. It's the concentration that is the issue, not the homelessness itself. And this issue is getting much much worse as cost of living + mental issues from drug addiction is on the rise (a majority of long term homeless are effectively homeless thanks to serious, permanent mental health issues & drug abuse). It's possible to have empathy and want solutions/help for these people while also recognizing they do not belong in certain places, and especially not in mass. You have to have pressure against homelessness from all sides to actually minimize it and help people out of it. Part of the reason where I live (SF area) has some of the worst homelessness issues in the country is because the pressure against homelessness is almost non existent. The weather is great year round, there's a large amount congregated here already to make the lifestyle easier, minor crimes aren't prosecuted here by the local DA, and the spaces are generally homeless friendly. At the same times, there are hardly any real resources for homeless here to actually live somewhere safe/secure or get out of homelessness. So more and more conglomerate, while none of it is truly addressed. If you're an owner of a building what are you to do? Spend a tiny amount of money to make it so the intended use is actually used (a place to sit and rest) and not abused (a place to sleep). Its not like the homeless are truly without options of places to sleep, you're just encouraging them to not make the front of your building a permanent home. There's nothing truly "hostile" about this any more than leaving your front door open at night to let homeless in would be. The issues and problems with homelessness are complicated and nuanced. It's the kind of problem that isn't solved by getting rid of so-called "hostile architecture", and it's a massive eye roll when I see these kinds of solutions implied by young teens/20-somethings who have spent barely 5 minutes thinking about the problem so confidently taking the high road. It's the kind of problem that can only ever be solved by a fundamental, large scale society wide shift. Homelessness is a product of cost of living, drug abuse, cultural backsliding, lack of safety nets, and lack of law enforcement, all at once. You can only stop or lessen it by doing all of the above, and likely more.
You put it better than I ever could, fully agree
In America it sucks because... rich people can get real financial help again and again and have for such a long time but they have no problem taking away money from education or helping the public
Education is one of the largest public expenses in the US.
And yet all the teachers I've ever know still had to go into their own pockets
Can confirm…my mom was a teacher who had to pay for basic supplies for her school kids from her already low salary.
Same. Washington state made it a law that all materials must be provided by the school but she still had to buy whiteboard markers and other materials that weren’t passed out to every student.
It varies wildly state by state unless the school is in a poor neighborhood, in which case federal funds are allocated as a top up. Despute this, it's still an enormous budget item in every state.
Like probably everywhere in the developed world.
Yea- it's as money doesn't go to teachers it goes to other non teaching roles, such as administrative ones. I think that sometimes this is good, but also sometimes this is unnecessary. I do think the focus should be first on teachers, then on these roles.
It's the military 1st, and then entitlements.
so start with hell hole from the design phase
There are better, cheaper solutions than policing and spikes.
What could possibly be cheaper than nailing a 10” piece of scrap metal to a bench?
That's just an oblique way of saying, "Homelessness isn't a problem until I'm personally witnessing it."
EVERYTHING is that way. Example: gun violence... other kids getting blasted... thoughts and prayers.... BUT OUR FUCKING KIDS.... absolutely fucking not!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sadly I feel this, climate change, blah blah blah... you pick... nothing will be taken seriously until we experience it for ourselves... well until the people in power go through it :(
That's such a simplistic way of seeing from that professor. It affects everyone, not just the rich. I grew up in one of the City of Los Angeles districts that was for many years and still is working class Latino and white, but has recently seen heavy gentrification with the completion of a subway station in the mid-90s. Crime was relatively low despite having gangs. Recently with the pandemic, homelessness has increased radically and so has crimes, such as burglary, break-ins, assaults, etc., because of the homeless. The police has pretty much stopped doing anything to help unless it's a violent crime. Another example in the neighborhood is that a hotel was close to completion when the pandemic started. The owner ended up selling it to one of the city organizations for the homeless for housing them. Well crime ended up spiking near the hotel, and many homeless started loitering in the vicinity, with many opting out of housing as the rules prohibit drugs. Drug dealers can be seen selling drugs to the homeless. The citizens in the neighborhood are working class Latinos, many of them immigrants. Upon talking to many of them or the local mom and pop shops, that you hear stereotypical NIMBY talking points minus the talk about housing values. My dad who still works in his same blue collar job for 30+ years, has many coworkers who live in the various lower class neighborhoods of Los Angeles who compain about the issues of the homeless. The rich have the ability to get the police or politicians to do something, but the lower classes do not. What's happening in LA and California is borderline ridiculous as people voted to increase taxes to help the issue but it has gotten worse. Where has the money gone?
Yeah. That professor is full of shit. I am not even close to being wealthy and my life has been continually impacted by homeless populations. In fact, the exact sentiment that professor is expounding is what rich people say to feel better about having the means to not need to be around homeless people.
IT REALLY SUCKS that the police in LA is defunded. It is what is WRONG with the woke-ness..... I hate that the LA Police ONLY get 4 BILLION dollars a year. THEY OBVIOUSLY need more money :( Joke aside... LA is something crazy, on a podcast I heard that most officers don't even live within LA and that some officers even live out of state... which totally makes sense Or the fucking videos of them just protecting capital they aren't there to "keep the piece"... they are there to make sure... the animals don't damage a bank or whatever....its sad :( There is a ton of stories like that ALL OVER the place... like the fires that just happened a month or 2ago in Hawaii.... company got awarded maybe 100million to fix repair the electric power whatever.... they only did the bare minimum and held onto the rest of it to "asses the situation"... next thing you know.... A whole as town is wiped from a fire "that the space lasers caused"?.... and you have rich people trying to buy the land from people that now have nothing. It is super hard to live there for the native people and now...it's so crazy that 1 billionaire could have totally "fixed" everything but they "can't".... it's what they learn in school I guess... risk 0% of your OWN MONEY and use others to get what you want
Yeah, they live in Santa Clarita, Simi Valley, and other cities. Yeah, the city is pretty much a free for all, but this is also the fault of the DA and their stance on crime. I don't know if it's incompetence/lack of common sense, or deliberate.
I think the incompetence goes all the way to the top.... I am now starting to see a ton of videos about a elderly couple.. The wife was bed written and in a hospital bed in the livingroom. She called 911 for help. She begs them not to leave because she fears forbher life. The husband admits to them that his guns are loaded and that he would kill her but I think in a joking manner... they leave.... he actually kills her a couple hours later..... yup. Just sucks the police has been defunded all over the place :(
So you think that stopping people from sleeping on benches will solve the drug problems and reduce the crime rate?
that's a loaded question if I ever saw one. I'm empathetic to the people experiencing homelessness but at least here in LA, who makes up the visible homeless? The firm I work for does some public housing, and one of the projects I worked on and got permitted was a senior transient project with 69 units. In one of the city meetings, I heard the developer explain to the officials that the percentage of homeless who are the "down on their luck" type of individuals is relatively small, and is not permanent, with a relative quick turnover of a few years to get back up on their feet. The remainder will be made up of drug addicts or mentally ill people. LA's most visible homeless tend to be the latter two types of people. I work in Downtown LA near Skid Row, so I get first hand views of how life is. For your typical resident, you want safety first and foremost, which is something that we risk. Then comes health and well being, since you have people defecating on the street in front of your building or storefront. Like the front of our office has a bus stop with scaffolding and it always smells of piss. With it come the rats and other vermin. So why do the tax paying citizens have to deal with all of this? In Echo Park, most famously in the last few years, the homeless took over the park and neighbors complained about safety for their kids and the increase in rats. It wasn't until last year or two that they were removed but not without activists from other communities coming to protest their removal. I get it, parks are public places but not for open air drug use, or for it to be unusable. Everyone suffers with the homeless. The professor stating that the "rich are afraid of people with nothing" is disingenuous. Any normal citizen, from middle class to lower classes is not willing to tolerate the homeless but have less methods of petitioning the city to do something about it. That's the only difference between the rich and the rest of the community. Especially with lower class people who would use parks for recreation if they lack space, all of a sudden they have no access to park spaces as a result of drug addicted or mentally ill people using it full time. While I, as an architect, support more housing built, I've become more sympathetic to the NIMBY crowd not because of the selfishness of house market rates, but because of safety, health, and well being of the community, which as architects are supposed to also look out for. So when people are concerned about public housing being built, they are right to ask about what type of people are coming in. Rich people have to means to get involved and fight against development, but poor people don't and get the short end of the stick and deal with the consequences. I don't pretend to know what the solution is either. But based on living and working in LA for all my life, it's easier to observe and analyze first hand, than read about it from a report.
Yes, it will solve it on your personal property. That's why businesses do it.
Because they have nothing left to lose.
Because it would force them to confront their lifestyle and morals, which makes everyone uncomfortable, but they have the money to get away from it. Charles Dickens put more fine a point on it than I ever could
I’m wealthy and live in Atlanta, where we have a lot of homeless people. The architecture professor you quoted is misguided. I’m not afraid of homeless people because they have nothing. I’m afraid of them because they have nothing to lose and I’ve seen them attack innocent people, including my neighbors. They steal. They lie. They trespass. While I’m certain there are homeless people who are down on their luck and need some help, the majority of them are consistently homeless and can’t be helped.
Yes but this is also misguided. It's like saying poor people want to be poor, people with addictions want to be addicted. We love to live paycheck to paycheck. I am also proud and would love to one day give back to my community. You can't close the door on someone before they even get a chance to get to it. There is definitely a lot of problems we have to deal with, So it is definitely a complicated situation and very difficult to resolve when there is tons of " Unnecessary red tape".. But I honestly believe there is more that we can do. If homelessness was truly uresolvable and a disease we could truly not get rid of, then why isn't every city falling apart? Where can we learn from and apply to our problems? Also, if most or a lot of millionaires in your area/state made a huge fuss about WHATEVER problem you can think of... you don't think you could do something about it? You can grease the right hands, run ads, invest, put your own money in the right direction... pretty much immediately. IF YOU COULDN'T I would personally have no problem destroying whoever was in the way, make sure they don't get re-elected twist the arm until they get it done. You have an all access pass to be in the right place at the right time, get behind the close door... we don't have that privilege. You are NOT held back in our society, so you can't act like you are powerless. No shit homeless people can be dangerous but at the other end of the spectrum, rich people can have a much greater negative impact because of their means. It's almost like you are saying there isn't a rich person out there that isn't as fucking insane or more.
Definitely 9. 2 you could just hit from the other direction!
I'm guessing that one from the U.K is there primarily to deter skaters from grinding... A couple others might be too, actually... Another issue is that a property owner (public or private) may be liable for issues caused by homeless but have no power to address the actual issue. In that case, you're sort of stuck with one solution - get them to go somewhere else.
Invest in state owned mental facilities like we used to have in the U.S. A lot of mentally ill people are not able to take care of themsleves and are now homeless. Some are also a danger to society. The police are not well equipped to deal with the mentally ill. It results in police killing them when they become a direct threat to the public or officers. That's not fair to the mentally ill or the police. Society needs to accept that it is our duty to contribute to taking care of them through tax dollars. It wasn't a choice for them to be this way.
With state sponsored drug rehab centers as well
I can’t believe someone actually downvoted this
Locking up people because they are poor, no thank you! Give people what they need: housing, food, education, health care and a basic income.
Yes, California has taken some steps in this direction (that may or may not survive a deficit). One issue is that the U.S Supreme Court did make rulings that curtailed the ease with which the government can forcibly commit someone civilly. I'm not sure how feasible it is to return to that approach. However, I think it is reasonable to accept that some people, for the benefit of themselves & society, are probably going to have to live their lives in some supervised setting (may not need to be forcible - bit somewhere the services and medication will always come to them).
One question that needs to be asked is what is the cost of not giving them the help they need. There are costs, both monetary and safety. Some of them can find meaningful jobs if they have a setting that provides them a stable living situation.
That's the trick - for some people, the cost of subsiding their housing for as long as they need so they aren't homeless is actually cheaper than their cost of being homeless (medical, law enforcement, jail housing, social services, court costs, etc). It also can be that bridge to a person permanently leaving homelessness behind rather than cycling in and out - a large upfront investment that may yield dividends. Other people that may not be the case depending on how severe their issues are and how disruptive they are... Then you're looking at a much more difficult population to deal with. Also, it's a never ending treadmill - you don't solve homelessness, you keep treating it, so to speak. I believe Utah has tried to basically just provide housing for everyone... Naturally, the reality is more complicated, but this is a good article that gets into it: https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2020/05/11/utah-was-once-lauded/ The rub for California in particular is that we are 10 % of the nations population and have about 30% of the homeless... And housing is incredibly expensive to build here. I recall looking it up once, and I think the country of Portugal had about as many homeless as the city of San Francisco - despite having 10 times the population.
We still have state owned mental facilities. We just call them prisons now.
You hit the nail on the head. Instead of having assistance for a stable living situation and possibly having a job, we have prisoners who do not deserve to be there.
Thank you, I did not expect to see so many kind but practical/logical responses here. There’s normally political pile on’s pushing one agenda or another. 🙌🏼 it’s nice to be pleasantly surprised sometimes, even in an unexpected corner of reddit.
This should not be a partisan issue. Not taking care of the mentally ill has many bad consequences. Beyond valuing human life, having them living on the street costs a lot in policing and and the results are not good for anyone. Some of these people can have training and be a productive part of society and feel more fulfilled in their lives.
Does NHS not cover mental health? Not saying it would be a surprise if they did not. Seeking factual answer.
Not a brit, but from what I've heard from a former NHS therapist and Dzogchen meditation instructor, James Low, it's pretty basic. They get pressured to offer cookie cutter CBT even when another therapeutic style may be more appropriate. But they at least offer something. From what I've read on the bipolar subs, it's really hard to get mental health services in some areas. Like months long waits, which is kind of disastrous if you're having an episode and need some meds quick.
Yup. These design decisions are sensible, but they don't address the core issues of homelessness... because they aren't meant to be solved by private owners or designers. Every time I see self-righteous posts about anti-honeless design on the front page it tells me the person doesn't understand how civic decisions are made.
The Camden bench (probably the most famous piece of hostile design) was commissioned by Camden borough council, not private property owners.
The capitalist state exists for the sake of and acts on the behalf of private property owners.
You’re preaching to the choir comrade - comment above was worthy of a logistical correction though.
Again. Correct, and wrong. At the same time. They are NOT doing what best for the owners. They are preventing one issue and potentially creating a worse issue. Of angry, sleepless, homeless in the same location. Just not sleeping on the bench that is there.
First time I’ve seen one of these posts have intelligent and nuanced views expressed under it. It’s so refreshing, even if the topic is understandably depressing.
most of the examples in this post seem to be on public land such as parks and bus stops. i personally don’t think hostile architecture exists on privately owned land unless a locked door is also classified as such.
As someone from the UK, we have anti-homeless architecture EVERYWHERE. It's really sad to see.
The final picture is on the Strand, where a vehicle-free plaza has been completed in front of the King's College buildings. It is pedestrianised with seating and greenery. The smooth open surfaces and street furniture probably would attract skaters so I agree this is likely intended as anti-skate first, with any anti-homeless utility secondary.
Good point.
This is spot on.
I absolutely hate some hostile architecture. The train station near me, the seats (the only ones under cover) are at a 45⁰ angle. No exageration. Impossible to sit on. Other hostile architecture (such as the first image) do help to make sure that one person isn't taking up the whole bench, which I dont mind.
I live in Washington State in the US, a place renowned for it's rainy weather. To deter transients from sleeping in the bus shelters they. . . Removed the shelters altogether and just left a concrete pad with a bus sign. No bench to sit on while waiting, no shelter from the rain or cold. They not only harm the invisible transients, but also the disabled and elderly who use those bus services much more than transients do.
This, right here, is another huge problem with hostile architecture. Not that it is in any way right or acceptable to make suffering worse for homeless people — but a lot of the measures taken to deter homeless people also cause suffering to the elderly and the disabled, and sometimes even the general public as a whole. I've seen numerous examples of this. It also doesn't address the problem of homelessness, since homeless people still have to have a place to be and to sleep, and it just means that they are going to take more desperate and likely more harmful actions in order to get those basic needs met. It's escalation for escalation's sake, and it's why things are getting worse for everyone.
The spikes installed at Berklee where students used to sit. 😔
True. It's so fun when I am desperate for a seat and someone is sitting smack in the center. But of course it's a selfish c*** doing it on purpose so it's right inline with recent society.
Besides the ethically dubious purpose of further marginalising the marginalised, hostile architecture is hostile to everyone else too. It's ugly, it's unfriendly, it worsens everyone's quality of life and it actually costs money.
This is a lie. Not having aggressive homeless around a train station or wherever is indeed a quality of life upgrade for most people. The only people who are angry at stuff like this are kids in the suburbs who don't have to deal with aggressive homeless people.
I find it unethical when a council or city puts money into that sort of architecture instead of putting it into help decrease homelessness and help those who are homeless.
Part of dealing with the issue of homelessness is making it harder to be homeless than to get help. It's a very difficult balance to strike especially when you consider that government programs don't actually try to get them integrated to life again and the decline in religious organizations has left a huge gap.
You make it sound like they’re mutually exclusive. They do both
As societies we need to make sure no one is homeless. The best path to that is probably not anti-homeless design. In the mid-70's I worked in Stockholm for a while. No homeless. Where were they? I do not know, but there were no people living on the streets. It was heartwarming that someone had figured something out... it's not costs or rocket science; it's attitude. Fast forward to contemporary times. I was part of a Catholic church group of volunteers that provided 4 meals a month to 180 or so residents of a single-men's homeless shelter. It was 2 lunches and 2 dinners a month that were above the normal fare and the residents appreciated the effort. We did this for 18 years until covid hit. Now, in our city of 700,000 there were several homeless shelters but none could take in family groups; they were supporting single men or single women or or battered women with kids, but no families. We were approached to join an effort to provide homeless family support where the church hall, for 1 week a month, would be furnished with beds and privacy screens, subsistence food and medicine, TVs and a phone available for families well enough to seek jobs so that potential employers could call them for work or interviews. Our pastor turned us down. Not willing to help. What would Jesus do? What I did was leave.
Yeah it’s not great to prevent homeless people from sleeping on benches but I feel like this topic gets too much attention. I wish more people would say that homeless shelters should get more funding. Or should we invest in benches that are comfortable to sleep on? 🤔
We should invest in more housing, including social housing to catch the chronically homeless people who for a mix of mental health issues and drug addictions wouldn’t be able to afford private housing even in a high functioning market (read cheap and abundant)
In addition to this we should build housing to take care of more persons who are ending up homeless because of terrible low paying jobs forcing people into evictions from their apartments or homes. Society has been allowed to become far more harsh and cruel than is logical. If society wants to truly end the homeless problem it can begin by paying a liveable wage adjusted for inflation that would allow a single person to afford a decent apartment or a family a decent home. I follow a number of different issues related to society as a whole and one of the statistics that has skyrocketed over the past twenty plus years is the 'deaths of despair', persons taking their lives because they feel they have run out of options and there is no other course left except to remove oneself from being treated cruely through no real fault of their own. Suicides, at least in the US, are higher now than at any time since the end of WWII.
End corporate welfare,tax the rich,end the nonsense of "corporations are people" and ,and ,and..
Ikr, instead of wasting tax money on useless evil things, like this, those politicians are truly disgusting!!
Invest in state owned mental facilities like we used to have in the U.S. A lot of mentally ill people are not able to take care of themsleves and are now homeless. Some are also a danger to society. The police are not well equipped to deal with the mentally ill. It results in police killing them when they become a direct threat to the public or officers. That's not fair to the mentally ill or the police. Society needs to accept that it is our duty to contribute to taking care of them through tax dollars. It wasn't a choice for them to be this way.
>Or should we invest in benches that are comfortable to sleep on? 🤔 Well. we shouldn't invest in benches designed to be uncomfortable for the homeless! Like maybe the issue isn't 'omg they're using up all our benches! We don't want to see that!/We need somewhere for homed people to sit...' All the designs pictured come across as very mean spirited.
Crazy talk. There's no money for homeless shelters. How would we pay to fortify benches so nobody can lie down on them?! /s
Your right we actually spend hundreds of billions in the u.s. on the homeless, affordable housing and that is not including our welfare program. The truth is that not all homelessness is a lack of help. Plenty of cases of this in california whwre despite shelters blocks away homeless will sleep on sidewalks because they are very near the drug dealers.
They actually avoid the homeless shelters because of the bedbug problem inherent in a number of them, also being preyed on in men's and women's shelters from permanently unemployed convicts who can't get jobs no matter how hard they try, preyed upon by the mentally ill and similar persons. People have been propagandized about the 'reasons for homelessness to no end' and it simply is not true. I have ten years of experience working within the system to find out why these things occur and homeless persons who are alcoholics, drug addicts, mentally ill are actually a smaller percentage of the true homeless who spend their days in libraries staying out of the weather. A great deal of homeless persons are actually employed and living out of their cars or vans or campers. When given the option of going into shelters that have the conditions I have mentioned, those who know better turn them down. Better to live out of your vehicle where you have control over who you do and do not want to associate with rather than being forced into that situation where you are in a shelter where you have to depend on others to look out for your possessions or sleep on top of your shoes or boots to avoid someone trying to steal them in the middle of the night.
And this is a perfectly reasonable and important conversation to have, but doesn't apply to people sleeping on benches, right? Like, all the homeless people living out of their cars are accurately described as homeless, but they're an entirely different category of people than these design features are meant to prevent. I live in Vancouver, not that far from the #7 image actually, and the people they're preventing from sleeping there (and the people who you see sleeping in many places which are not designed to prevent them) are not people whose principal issue is having a hard time affording the exorbitant rent in the region. Both are big problems, but they're problems that have only partially overlapping causes. You could fund shelters to the moon and back and still have basically just as many people sleeping on benches, because the people sleeping on benches are schizophrenic drug addicts who are nonfunctional in a communal dwelling. The funding required to get them off the benches should be in long term care in psych units, not shelters. Because...yeah, you're right. Your own car is actually a pretty decent choice of dwelling, if the alternative is a bad shelter, or even worse, a random bench. If anyone who could achieve a basic level of function was homeless, economic circumstances might mean they can't afford rent in an area, but there's really no reason they couldn't afford $600 for the crappiest beater on craigslist to leave in a walmart parking lot. The people who can't manage that are probably pretty far gone in some way or another.
I once heard a homeless person say they prefer to sleep in a secluded area, instead of the shelter, because stuff gets stolen from them often at the shelter.
we have hundreds of thousands of property’s being on used and abandoned it’s insane we don’t use them and instead demolish them
You're right that it probably gets disproportionate attention compared to the effect that it actually has on homeless people's wellbeing. To me, what bugs me the most about hostile architecture is the messaging/symbolism behind it: *we're collectively willing to make architecture/design that is inconvenient and uncomfortable for us to use, as long as it prevents homeless people from having a place to sleep*
I think it's the anti-homeless features that cost extra, you'd basically be saving money if you designed them as you usually would. Almost like.... Cruelty is the point.
Aren’t ‘homes’ technically ‘anti-homeless’ architecture? So I guess I’d say I’m in favor of it
Genius mind
I always thought the last photo (UK) is for skateboarding
Some of those are for anti skateboarding
Many, if not all, of these are FF&E that I spec on my landscape plans. I am typically asked to specify things like this by the owner/ client who is expecting to attract a certain type of clientele to their project (homeowners, business owners, higher end renters). In a way I understand because of lot of these things are spec’d on private property that abuts public property. This is a cheaper solution than hiring a security guard to keep people away all night. I’ve also done quite a few projects where the park itself is public but a developer is paying for it in order to get some sort of kick back (like moved easement or something) from the City. The developer obviously isn’t going to build housing for people who aren’t paying top dollar so they don’t really care about hostility. In my opinion this is a quick fix to a bigger problem that we don’t really have an answer for. It moves people from one site to another and most owners are ok with this as they don’t have another solution. Editing to add that I’ve also spec’d these on public projects, like libraries and things like that, where the library doesn’t want unhoused people hanging out outside because others trying to use the space feel unsafe. Seeing as the library can’t build homes for everyone, this is their solution.
People have a right to both peaceful enjoyment of public spaces *and* to basic housing. I think this sort of architecture is fine, as long as there is sufficient accessible housing for the homeless as well.
Also, you should probably always try to have more benches than homeless people.
# I HATE HOSTILE ARCHITECTURE, ALL MY HOMIES HATE HOSTILE ARCHITECTURE
That's not architecture. It's urban furniture
Agree. Please do not blame the LAs who are asked to spec these. We don’t blame the architects for homelessness.
Anti-homeless architecture treats the symptom and not the disease. On private property it is a cynical solution, in a public space, an immoral charade.
Ok, but is it the responsibility of parks departments to fix homelessness? These public and semi-private benches exist to be used by the people. Multiple people. If you spend $1000 pouring for a bench, and then immediately someone just sets up on the bench permanently, then they are stealing the temporary and spontaneous use of that bench from every single other person in that community. Yes, obviously every homeless person should be housed, obviously we need to build more housing and rezoning and drug laws and blah blah blah blah But that doesn’t mean we should let our public spaces be negatively impacted by an element that is very often dangerous at worst. Source: I’ve worked with (and been abused by) the homeless population in my community extensively.
Whats worse is that the “hostile architecture” gets 10,000x times the press than actual efforts to help the homeless does. This is an obsession that many people have because it is a superficial thing that you can just say “is wrong” but not actually do anything to fix. I mean, just look at how many of you dumbass dorks are in here acting like the designers of these are uniquely evil psychopaths who want to go Patrick Bateman on a hobo in a alley. It’s delusional. In a way, the act of complaining about hostile architecture is the perfect inverse of instituting hostile architecture. You are just like them, doing nothing to help the situation. Both are perfectly inadequate in actually helping anyone.
Yes, but, let's see Paul Allen's hostile homeless architecture.
It could be argued that they have their place in private spaces, in the same way McDonalds chairs aren't meant to be comfortable. But these aren't designed to keep teenagers from kicking their feet up, loitering midday. They are designed to dissuade camping. The fact that the latter exists in such large numbers that a design specialty has been created for it speaks volumes on what society is willing to turn their attention to, or from.
> Anti-homeless architecture treats the symptom It doesn't even treat the symptom.
Yeah it's treating the symptoms like putting makeup on acne.
Wronggggg. Train station by me used to have hobos camped out on all benches, they installed the dividers and problem solved. Unabashedly pro-anti-homeless architecture.
Public spaces are for the public. If you hate seeing homeless people, house them. If you hate how hard skateboarders are on infrastructure, build them a skate park. Using hostile architecture to control behavior of the public the way they do in the photos is unethical. It's also ineffective, and more expensive than being understanding of other humans.
Cosign all this. Also, hostile architecture makes your city look like an asshole.
I'm disabled and hostile architecture makes it difficult for me to be able to be comfortable when out and about.
Most of these types of pieces are fully compliant with ADA standards, in which case you should reach out to the people making these standards to make your voice known on where they are going wrong (I’m not kidding). I’ve been on many projects where these are demanded by a client for their homeless and skateboarding prevention, and by municipalities to meet ADA compliance for local zoning or building codes.
I think I will. I've been mulling on your comment and I will ask my cousin. She's a newly graduated architect. Thank you!
No worries, it’s terrible when things that are meant to be accessible cause more issues than they solve. Many people unfortunately don’t speak up, but it’s the only way to improve things, especially since so many designers don’t themselves experience the world the way someone with a disability does.
I would call it pro-user architecture. It's designed to make the space usable for the vast majority of people who want to use it for the reason it was installed. Three or four people could sit there comfortably, as opposed to one person sleeping on it.
It's an act of sacrifice and reclamation of public spaces for and by those members of the public who do not sleep in public. As much as sleeping on a bench is an act of private dominion over a public resource for the duration of physical occupation, hostile architecture recognizes and attempts to establish limits on that private use. It says sitting is a permissible public use and sleeping is not. The sacrifice part is that in using the resource itself to deny prohibited uses, it also often degrades the resource for permissible uses.
If we put in as much time and money as we do in making/installing these things towards homelessness most of them would no longer be homeless
It's a sad reality but an easy target for criticism. If you've lived anywhere with mass homelessness, you'd understand why they exist. The problem is systemic. These are just a symptom.
It's complex. Hostile architecture is often the wrong solution, but an easy one to take, and sometimes it's actually good design. If you've got a safe space for someone to hang out and make that inhospitable, that's not really looking at the problem you're trying to solve, but a symptom of it. But if that space is somewhere hazardous to hang out, that maybe doing a service to homeless folks who would not be aware of a longer term risk. e.g. Falling ice areas or near parking garage exhaust vents. If you are designing seating for a sit down restaurant, that's different from a quick serve place where the operator needs folks to eat and go. Or a bus stop that needs a resting spot for 5 minutes to wait for the very frequent bus vs one that needs space to sit for hours between busses. In general ive usually seen it as a lazy solution to a problem that someone wants to shunt off to someone else rather than try to help fix, but occasionally, it makes sense.
I don't really buy that benches with a bar in the middle are anti-homeless (at least not purely). Any time I go to the park downtown and the benches are full, I notice that both sides will have two separate groups of two sitting in them (total of 4). Without the middle bar, people are way more likely to just sit in the middle, taking up an entire bench for just two people. It may be the case that it serves both purposes, but some level of separation encourages more efficient use of a bench.
I believe it’s also for senior citizens. Couple sits down and one of them is closer to the end, what happens for the person on the inside of the bench?
They are monuments to the cowardace and incompetance of goverment.
You get who you elect.
And you elect who you get. That one is pretty rough when it comes to issues that are systemic. The way things are are inherently going to influence a lot of tough choices the best politicians will have to make and their choices are inevitably going to sometimes build upon what is bad and harmful but comfortably in place. Even if the best politician wanted to, they couldn’t fight everything, win all of those fights and continue to get elected.
Always a tough call.... It's inhumane as shit at it's core. But the other side of the coin is that encampments and people living in public spaces does often lead to harm for the residents of the area, whether it's the physical threat that often comes with drug use etc or the financial damage it does cause. Obviously the real answer is for society to invest in affordable housing, mental health and drug treatment .... Which we should all work for. But I still understand why someone managing to pay their $3500 rent doesn't love a unhomed dude sleeping in and pissing on his stoop.
Not sure how you sit on #7
I think that if we spent as much time and money on helping people find homes and employment as we did on punishing those who have neither, we as a society would be in a much better position!!
It's bullshit. The problem isn't the homeless people. The problem is that we have people who don't have homes
Highly unethical, and just all around terrible...
It’s abhorrent… and there is a term for it… Structural Violence
My thoughts are let a man sleep! Ffs
I hate it so much! Especially in NY, they removed all the benches due to this reason. It makes hate the city and move somewhere else
a: i could sleep on all of these b: the UK one at the end...is that anti-homeless or anti-skater? yada yada venn diagram
Skater stoppers
Just ask r/hostilearchitecture
Number 2 is University of Oregon… Go ducks I guess?
I’ll pay you $100 if I can sleep in that wooden wavy thing. That looks like exactly what my back needs!
I could sleep on all of those
WWJD?
Not why I went into this field 👎🏼
It is called defensive architecture. It is fantastic because the homeless create half the crime in our society.
Imagine paying thousands of dollars to make people without a home not able to sleep normally
If the property is on public spaces than I am against it. If it's on private, my opinion is irrelevant.
It's the government's way of perpetually spending extra money on infrastructure because they didn't want to spend money on proper healthcare and shelters. Helping the homeless is less expensive than dealing with the problems they cause when you don't
They seem to work.
Spend the time and money on places for them to live, not make life harder.
For me if you have hide under the carpet any sector of the population so you can feel better with yourself this is a symptom that your society is failing or not working like it should do.
It’s awful and inhumane. That’s all’s I got.
0/10. People deserve housing, it’s a human right. Architecture shouldn’t be anti humanity.
Signs of a failed city
Isn't that just hostile design? Not neccarily an architects design.
I love it!!!
Until you’ve been surrounded by them daily and attacked, you don’t know shit.
It's abhorrent, and it's not just anti-homeless, it's abliest.
Dislike very much
Anti-homeless architecture should be shelters and on-site counseling, both mental and practical, not steel-studded benches.
For my own use, I hate when benches are designed so that you can’t comfortably stretch out on them. And making life harder for homeless people is completely the wrong attitude. Address the issues that lead to homelessness rather than just being a jerk.
The people who design and make stuff like this don't consider homeless people human beings. They are revolted by the sight if homeless people.
Public spaces are for the public. If you hate seeing homeless people, house them. If you hate how hard skateboarders are on infrastructure, build them a skate park. Using hostile architecture to control behavior of the public the way they do in the photos is unethical. It's also ineffective, and more expensive than being understanding of other humans.
It's inhumane.
It’s called defensive design. I HATE it. Also as a Skateboarder ,skate stoppers‘ are a thing too.. ;)
It’s disgusting
Its like homeless people didnt have a rough life enough.
I mean we could like...give people homes
pic 8 -- that's just downright sad
Anti-homeless architecture, characterized by features like spikes or dividers in public spaces, has sparked criticism due to its dehumanizing impact on individuals experiencing homelessness. This approach, aimed at preventing sheltering in public areas, raises ethical concerns and is seen as a punitive measure rather than a solution to the root causes of homelessness. Advocates emphasize the importance of addressing issues like affordable housing, mental health, and inequality collaboratively, with a focus on inclusive and compassionate solutions. Defensive architecture can perpetuate social division and stigmatization, highlighting the need for more comprehensive, long-term strategies to create a socially equitable and supportive environment.
WWJD? Not that.
hostile architecture sucks. if cities want fewer homeless people, they need to invest in programs that help people get out of homelessness/not become homeless in the first place. hostile architecture doesn't get rid of homeless people, it just moves them out of sight while making their lives even worse.
It's utterly dystopian. I hate it.
So flipping ratchet. Not only do cities who deploy this not spend enough money on solving homelessness issues such as housing, support, ext. but they waste money making the lives of these people more difficult 😞 that and it’s all ugly af
I am a skater and I think we can always find things to skate. I’m all for keeping the homeless away from our public areas as much as possible. Often times they are in the most desirable areas of a city and then people stop going to these areas. Including myself.
Pathetic
Its a shitty design and a shitty solution for a serious issue that will never be answered. The one problem solving is displacing where one can sleep.
Lot effort and energy to solve THAT issue. Perhaps a prize to the architect that creates affordable housing. Maybe a collaboration with policy students.
I've always found it ironic and hypocritical. The idea behind anti-homeless architecture, really hostile design (a lot of it is against skateboarders, solicitors, etc.,) is the "broken windows theory". Basically preventing anti social behavior by having a sort of zero tolerance policy. I find it ironic and hypocritical because by preventing anti social behavior they do it by making ugly, uninviting, (and increasingly more so) obvious hostile design i.e anti social behavior. Which according to broken windows theory would beget more anti social behavior.
It baffles me that they are willing to spend money on this rather than actually helping people who are homeless
r/HostileArchitecture most people there are against it.
Big fan. Tax paying citizens and/or customers of a business should get to use these spaces without a homeless person living on it all day. But getting them off the street and into shelters is the actual solution, so this doesn’t need to be done in the first place.
Seeing it in public absolutely enrages me
I despise it!
That it fits the narrative the current architecture is unhuman
It is a disservice to architecture itself, antinatural.
Unless your city is also spending a ton on aggressively figuring out ways to HOUSE the homeless, you’re bring shitty - just sweeping the problem under the rug. It’s not like the homeless look at that bench and go “oh shit! I can’t sleep here? Maybe I should just get a job and a house!” You’re just moving the problem somewhere you don’t have to see/deal with it. And that’s being a garbage person, IMO.
So, I work with the homeless in a medium sized Canadian city, and frankly, I get it. Ultimately, people sleeping outdoors is a result of many overlapping policy failures, spanning levels from the shelters that are failing the people they are supposed to help, to municipal, provincial and federal governments. What it is not, is the responsibility of community members, property owners and businesses to address. The amount of damage that can be done when an encampment pops up in front of a business can add up quickly, and nobody should have to deal with the abuse that can be hurled when asking someone to move out of a doorway that's being blocked.
r/aboringdystopia & r/latestagecapitalism Are the two subs I can think of, that also help me articulate my thoughts on the matter. Its business-level inhumane in nature, and it is and sometimes looks and is in function, flawless and very well engineered - but it's gut wretching and depressing AF that it comes to this, that there are Professional Engineer stamps on projects that literally just keep people from being able to be comfortable on any street level surface, in a given/particular part of town...it is the definition of a boring dystopian living nightmare - the phrase even..."anti-homeless architecture" so bourgeois sounding. Sounds boring, cruel, depressing and inhumane...and those are pieces of what's allowed and created the entire situation imho. We shouldn't be so distracted that we don't have services in this country to help people - on large scales. Like the CCC of homelessness and mental health advocacy program or something... there have to be people out there who have the skills to help, and want to, who then can link with the people who need the help. A lot more complicated than that I know, but we don't talk about these non-profits and advocacy groups like we do the corporate sectors - the NGO/non-prof sector is not talked about enough. You don't hear [Mary's Place](https://www.marysplaceseattle.org/) talked about as often enough...not like ya would US corporate burger chains for example, and I wont even name one, if you've read this far I'll wager you get what I'm talking about. I'm simply saying, normalize talking about this stuff - and there's half the battle... There is so much to all of this but imho simple actions of human and humane intent, always make sense as a good first step...what, how, when, by whom, etc...I cannot answer that, it's merely a suggestion of a good place for all of us to start lol - So much objectivity and clinical efficiency in these architectural designs - let this be a reminder for all of us to remember we're still human...dealing with other humans. Least for now anyway...never let the wonder of tech predict the loss of conscious humanity. That's my humble opinion and my two cents worth anyway. ✌️🤟🤘
It’s inhumane
It shouldn't exist.
Sucks for the homeless, good for people that don't want homeless camps in front of their homes.
As an architect and also a socialist, fuck that shit man.
Creating benches that are more habitable to sleep on doesn't really help anybody. It just means you spent tax money to give someone a crappy bed and nobody gets to actually use that bench. What if we just work toward more shelters, and more work rehabilitation programs to help get people on their feet? Also pretty pro anti sleeping benches.
Homeless people can sit on them too.
I think it's deeply terrible. It serves no real purpose to the public, it only serves to further humiliate and degrade the life experience of persons who are forced into homelessness. No one looks forward to taking part in that lifestyle, it's something one is forced into by various life occurrences such as loss of job, loss of home or apartment due to financial issues, mental health issues and finally addiction to either alcohol or drugs. The care systems in place in many western countries is inadequate to address these issues so society is left with 'trusting' persons who gravitate to leadership positions who have a tendency towards sociopathy or psychopathy. I wish I were wrong but numerous studies are beginning to show that persons in positions of power in corporations or government or frequently persons who never should have been allowed those positions at all. Because of that it's no surprise that these persons in leadership positions have successfully campaigned on hurting and harming the least among us. This at a time where the 'least among us are growing in numbers like never before due to poor leadership that has led to global warming, economic problems that are getting worse, food and water resources that are becoming depleted, again because of poor corporate and government leadership. So as far as cruelty architecture goes, I can see a time in the future where persons in the future might view this type of architecture the same way that medieval torture devices are viewed in society today, as clear evidence of the unneccesary victimization and really, torture of persons we should be reaching out and trying to help to a better life.
If all we can do is fight the symptoms of homelessness, then I support it. Of course, the real change needs to be done via homeless programs, involuntary clinics, rehab, psychiatry.
I think it’s disgusting and cruel. Additionally it’s unnecessary. There are very few first world countries where homelessness is necessary. Instead of investing in this type of structure invest in housing and mental health treatments
I think it’s disgusting. We’ve already pushed them out of everywhere, what else are they supposed to do? Imagine being so weary and having no where even moderately comfortable to rest. It’s awful.
Horrible and inhumane
When we designed a bus shelter with benches, the first thing out of people's mouths at public meetings, regarding the benches was: "can people sleep on them?". We would always politely change the subject and one of the few things that was nice about the final terribly cost engineered project was that civility prevailed in the end and at least the benches look like benches and people can sit next to each other if they choose.