I hate the practice of Hostile Architecture/Anti-Homeless Architecture, just let someone sleep till the sun comes up. As long as they ain’t hurting anyone or the area then, it’s whatever.
I kinda get it to an extent. I’ve had friends that lived in a bar district that couldn’t get out of their door because the same guy set up shop on their stoop every morning. They tried to convince him to just move to the side leaving them enough room to get in and out without trying to step over him. They tried to get him to work with services to help but he had no f’s left to give. He peed there, never crapped there, though. I do wonder where he went to do that.
The right answer is to properly support, help, and house the homeless, and a city with the wherewithall to maintain a park could definitely make a dent on that.
I agree that support is needed, but I can’t take this argument seriously.
Your anecdote is an annoying case, sure. But one personal experience isn’t representative of the broader homeless population, and it’s certainly not a good argument for hostile architecture.
Using a single cherry-picked encounter to draw sweeping conclusions is exactly how you get policy that “solves” a stereotype instead of a real problem. Broad statistics don’t care about your one story, and neither should public policy.
Mental illness and homelessness go together like sex and cigarettes. You can have 1000 days of harmless hobos sleeping on benches, and all it takes is 1 or 2 stark-raving madmen attacking or harassing people to shift attention and spark concern about safety (falling property values because that neighborhood has a “bum problem”)
I’m not saying it’s right, it just how things work.
Edit: I’ve paid high rent to live somewhere and had to deal with panhandlers, hobos, and thieves. Kindness wasn’t a valuable tool. Needless to say it hits different when you are the one being affected.
I agree that support is needed, but I can’t take this argument seriously.
The way I see it, someone at city hall went out of pocket several hundred dollars to customize those benches. And then they’re paying someone to come out every morning and unlock them (or not and just leaving benches locked indefinitely). All so life is now harder for people already sleeping rough.
Does anyone really believe the city councilor or mayor or whomever who went through that trouble is going to be releasing money to improve municipal services for homeless residents? I certainly don’t.
Ok, let’s turn that argument on it’s head. In what world is not blocking benches and seats in a public a better solution than state funded programs to get the homeless sheltered and fed. I can tell you right now that the numbers of shelters available are shit everywhere I’ve been and most have little to no support for mental health, addiction or anything, just draconian rules about in/out times and in most cases fees.
edit addon:
They don’t need the benches, they shouldn’t have to be on the benches. they shouldn’t feel the need to be on the grate in the winter or camping under an underpass.
Hostile infrastructure, intended to heap misery upon the most miserable among us. We punish people who should be helped, and help people who should be punished. What a backwards world.
Somewhere, something changed and money became all, get it all so you can consume. People stopped caring unless money was involved and they were getting it.
Capitalism only cares about money.
Correction. The money must be obtained without morality or ethics… And laws are written to be both be worked around or punished with fines, hence making them an operating expense.
The only crime that is punished is those done by people with limited or no political or economic leverage. This is why burglary and shoplifting is heavily punished but a company bankrupting entire communities is not.
But it wasn’t like this 25 years ago
It may have felt differently to you 25 years ago - maybe you were in a better neighborhood or something, but capitalism has always been about heartless extraction of money from the poor. Check out The Condition of the Working Class in England for a 180-year-old account of this.
25 years ago, kinda depending on where you were, cops just rousted and beat the shit out of peaple as incentive to “move on.”
Capitalism has always been like this to one degree or another. Maybe its inherent cruelty is affecting more people than it ever has, but it has always been cruel to poor and marginalized groups.
yay. inconveniencing people AND making homeless people’s lives worse. Makes sense. /s
“its putting your head in the sand, kicking the can down the road” policy, no intention of alleviating it. probably gives reason for certain politicians to get elected. our region started doing something to the homeless in an area of our city(sweeping leo prescence, especially when world event/conferences are around) and they immediately move near the WFoods where i frequent, and they are robbing it blind(because store policy is not even to approach or give them customer service). when before they were more spread out and congregate in an area, that they dont stray far from causing “less” problems.
My takeaway from this is FREE FOOD AT YOUR WHOLE FOODS? Sweet! DM me the address! 🤣 (jk haha)
Whole foods asparagus water: $8
Whole foods aspargus water shoved into your asscrack while mumbling incoherently: priceless
Mildly infuriating? This is disgusting shit.
Ooh, free lock-picking practice!
I don’t think it would be illegal to non-destructively unlock that lock.
- Ex-cop
It’s a master lock, it won’t give you as much practice time as you hope.
I’m aware. If you really want a pedantry fight:
Nothing about my comment implies it would be a long practice session.
I was not looking for any kind of fight and I actually did suspect you knew. I was just hopping on the opportunity to mock Master Lock, since I know they make some of the worst locks on the market.
Full disclosure: I have zero lock picking skills. I probably couldn’t pick this lock if I tried.
not just the worst, but they somehow manage to release new locks that are worse than their old ones, as well as new locks with positively ancient design flaws that every lock manufacturer absolutely knows about, like not including a rear shield in the core, meaning you can just… stick something in there and open it trivially. i’m talking design flaws from the 1800s and early 1900s. their most secure core is used in a PLASTIC LOTO LOCK and none of their metal locks, for no fucking reason. the incompetence is unbelievable.
Fair enough. My hackles are usually up thanks to how people treat me.
You probably could. They’re really not very hard.
Very curious about a hypothetical: You pick the lock and secure it elsewhere on the bench so that it’s not lost and accidentally affix a proper lock keeping the bench in the bench position.
Anything is practice. Repetitive behavior hones skills. Experience is experience, good or bad. Maybe the skill is doing in the open quick enough to not draw attention.
I think it would be a lot more fun though to non-destructively unlock the lock and replace it with another one that looks identical every single day after you free the bench and put it in its upright state, locking it in place.
They’ll think that they’ve got the wrong key every single day. Just keep buying locks and replacing it.
That’s more illegal than I can openly suggest.
Oh, I don’t advise it. It would be fun though.
Damn people choosing to be broke. To the debtor’s prison with them.
It’s easier to lock up a bench than build an affordable home.
Cheaper too.
But, it’s probably not the optimal solution. I suppose it’s a step in the right direction. As bad as hostile architecture is, the old way of dealing with the problem was to have cops beat the shit out of homeless or drunk people if they tried to sleep in a place where other people might be offended or annoyed.
Oh, they still do that.
To me it doesn’t feel like a step in the right direction, since we could have always had the optimal solution, at any time: no beatings and no hostile architecture.
That might be the optimal solution to you and me, but it isn’t the optimal solution for the rich and powerful. Apparently the average voter hates the sight of homeless people more than they hate hostile architecture too.
I guess it’s time to put a bench there, get a hammer drill, put some holes in the cement, and bolt that fucker to the ground, and then round the bolts so they can’t take it out.
I guess this is how English and Spanish work but coming from language where the word “free” is not used in similar manner I find it somewhat funny that here we have “free zone / zona libre” and it means that the bench is locked and so many things are prohibited.
The Spanish is a bit easier since it literally translates to “Zone Free of…” followed by a list of things it’s a zone free from but I agree, since a “drug free zone” and a “gun free zone” mean that there is, ideally according to the sign, no drugs or guns but a “weapons free zone” would mean you’re free to shoot combatants on sight, whereas a “weapon free zone” would mean an area without weapons.
using “something free” to say that thing is prohibited sounds so 1984…
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That’s got to be annoying just to lock and unlock a bench probably every day. Also the bench can still be used as a backboard while you sit on the ground.
It doesn’t stop being a chair it’s just hostile architecture
(Not in OP city) There’s a lot of homeless people here and they like to sleep in entranceways and similar things, so you’ll often see gates etc that get closed in front. One business had a open area beside it that homeless people were sleeping in, so they installed rounded spikes on the ground to make the area unusable. Caused a quite a bit of drama with the city.
Mfs be living in pharloom
Fun fact. Bolt cutters are cheap and you can do quick and dirty stick welding with 2 car batteries and some jumper cables.
The funny part is it looks like a rusty master lock, so just a thick screwdriver and a kick is enough to break it open.
Not with that lock they don’t lol.
A symptom of homelessness being a thing although it’s a quite understandable mitigation too.
You can open a Master Lock with a Master Lock.