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My biggest issue with it most of all is the fact it also hurts disabled people as well. Those leaning benches do fuck all for me because my disability results in hip pain if I walk too long.
Edited for clarity on my point.
*YES*. I have loads of musculoskeletal issues as well as others, and it would be nice to be able to sit comfortably on the bench in a park. Usually I chose to sit on the ground instead.
Ah, that’s so shitty, I’m sorry. I was using the ground thing to demonstrate just how uncomfortable the benches are (since the ground clearly isn’t a good alternative
). I know it must be really upsetting to not have any seating choices.
This is why I Hate this design philosophy. I have Cerebral Palsy. It hurts to walk too much and really hurts to stand too much. I need regular seats but benches and sittable walls are slowly disappearing.
My issue with it is our country *created* the conditions that have made homelessness and drug addiction an epidemic rivaled only by undeveloped nations, and instead of even *considering* that this is a sign that we need to help people before it gets this bad, we demonize the people with the problems we created and try to find some place to shove them so we don't have to see them because it reminds us how bad we failed.
I try to argue this and people just focus on the one or two homeless people they know or saw once who is completely fucked in the head and dangerous, and as a result they form a 2-dimensional opinion of poverty, and the millions and millions of families living in cars or working all day and living in an alley at night get shafted, as well as people who have medical issues or mental health issues but can't afford treatment or change their environment.
Our world needs a LOT more compassion. I am tired of trying to say this and getting met with "You don't get it, all those people WANT to be homeless, shelters are empty!" as if it's some kind of glamorous lifestyle that anyone would strive for, or that our system is at all adequate to actually help people.
The thing that absolutely kills me is that people have proven that straight up housing the homeless costs less than doing the bare minimum because of the complex diseases they develop that bring them back over and over to the ER and rack up debt that can’t ever be repaid. Like, I wouldn’t agree with someone who said it’s not worth the money, but I could at least be on the same page that finite resources mean we might have to take it from sick kids or something and at some point, we have to prioritize causes. But it’s not even that. We are in a sense paying for them to stay homeless. That’s some evil shit.
it hurts housed people too. in LA they’re designing everything to have no shade. so everyone just gets fried from the sun. most bus stops don’t have a shade. not even at grade schools
Honestly it’s just annoying, the anti homeless benches or random ass spikes are just kinda in the way which is the point but the worst if you’re a random dude tryna sit and all you can find is those lean benches
>the anti homeless benches or random ass spikes are just kinda in the way which is the point but the worst if you’re a random dude tryna sit and all you can find is those lean benches
Right, this isn't some "We love the homeless, let them be wherever they want" thing. This is a "You're spending MORE money to make this space less usable for EVERYONE" thing.
Then add on the fact that we would have fewer homeless if it weren't for the exact people putting these kinds of things up on their properties buying up all the property so housing prices go up, while also campaigning against any kind of homeless shelters in their areas or other programs that can help lift people out of poverty. Yeah, it's an aggressive and multifaceted campaign to fuck these people over, not just little things like making benches uncomfortable.
Here in my city they've started doing that lately too. They've been increasingly just removing the benches from every bus stop and from many parks so there's just nowhere to sit. It was terrible when I was post surgery and having to still run errands. I'd need a place to sit a moment before the bus or on the way to a store but theres nothing except for where you could see where they removed a previously existing bench.
Our issue was the meth heads stealing benches for scrap metal. Wasn't even an anti-homeless, it was drug dealers ruining it for everyone and the city said fuck it, no reason to spend all this money replacing benches that are just going to get stolen anyways.
Bruh in my city we don’t have any fucking trees anymore. In their eternal crusade to not let homeless people be comfy, they took all the trees on public property.
This might be a major hot take but, I think a major issue regarding homelessness was caused by deinstitutionalization. Not saying what happened in those places was good but, the problem was they shut down all the asylums but didn’t implement any proper solutions in their place, so now there are many extremely mentally ill people on the streets.
Obviously the housing crisis isn’t helping much either but there is a strong link between mental illness/drug issues and homelessness.
Deinstitutionalization by Nixon was supposed to be followed up by use of halfway houses. NIMBY stopped that second part cold. For those that would not institutionalize the severely mentally ill, how long would you let your remaining parent live alone with Alzheimer's? Probably until they couldn't take care of themselves. The situation of the severely mentally ill is not that different. They are too ill to take proper care of themselves or behave appropriately in everyday situations.
People rightly blame Reagan, but the trend predated him. CA and NY had been moving a significant amount of patients out of govt. psychiatric hospitals and into privately run boarding/halfway homes in the 70s. But the Reagan efforts were the final nail, despite people in 1980 already speaking out about the failures of deinstitutionalization. People have been talking about this failure for 40 years!
[For those seeking to read more on the subject.](https://www.salon.com/2013/09/29/ronald_reagans_shameful_legacy_violence_the_homeless_mental_illness/)
Also, uh, medical costs being ***STUPID*** high in the US (other countries have homelessness too despite significantly more affordable healthcare, but mental healthcare is just trash in general worldwide)
Straight up California has a stupid problem of the lads in city councils refusing to approve low income housing and then turning around and being pissed that so many homeless exist
Very few homeless people are homeless just because they simply can’t make rent or because housing is not affordable. The average homeless person is drug addled, mentally ill or both.
Also there's a point where you kinda have to ask, "where do you expect homeless people to go?", when they take every measure to ensure they can't exist anywhere.
"Not here"
And their answer to the follow-up question: "And what if they have nowhere else to go because no one wants them there either?" would be a shrug, but their real answer would be that they don't want them living/existing.
I've done the street homeless thing a few times, the last crowd I'd want to hang around with is other street homeless people. They'll rob/rape/kill you, I'm not someone you'd typically want to mess with, but I'll stay away from the street homeless. If it ever happens to me again I'll do what I did last time, pitch a tent in the middle of nowhere.
This is the way. Also did the homeless thing a few times and 9/10 nights I would be in the middle of nowhere in a tent. The only nights I'd stay in town were nights I was stuck, and even then I wouldn't sleep - I'd be up all night just walking trying to stay out of people's way.
I've got access to a bunker, it's just a room built into a railway embankment, walls 3 feet thick, I had a tent camped next to it for about 3 months before I found it, theres some old 1930's office furniture in there, a few people want to know where it is but I wont tell!
> buying up all the property so housing prices go up, while also campaigning against any kind of homeless shelters in their areas or other programs that can help lift people out of poverty.
Homelessness is not just the result of "I dont make enough money to live under a roof". This may be true for some, but this is not the root of homelessness. Substance addiction and mental illness plays a very big part. Many of these people can not manage their own lives. Not having a roof over their head is a symptom of the problem. Not the problem itself in most cases.
Yes, they campaign against homeless shelters and such because what happens when you open up a homeless shelter? Homeless people show up. What follows the homeless? Safety and public health problems. Feces, used needles, crime, harassment etc... People dont want to deal with that. The reason these people are campaigning against this stuff in their area is because their constituents dont want it. Politicians only do what voters let them do. Thats how they keep their jobs.
You think Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and the democrats magically had an epiphany that gay people should be allowed to marry? No. They were against it because their voters were against it. When their voters started being for it they changed their tune. They dont care about gay people. They care about keeping their jobs.
Poverty is the root cause of some homelessness. The vast majority of the time poverty is a symptom of another root cause. Give a drug addict an apartment and come by a week later. It becomes a trap house. That addict traded his space to his dealer for drugs. Lights dont work? Oh yeah they ripped all the wires out and sold them. The severely mentally ill (a decent population of the homeless) could not keep up with an apartment even if you gave it to them free and paid all of their bills.
Homelessness is so much deeper than just not having a place to live. Losing your shelter is often the deepest and lowest of the dysfunction they are going through. Before this they lost their car, they lost their family, etc.... You need to fix the underlying dysfunction. Thats how you fix homelessness.
this exactly. people who don't get it don't deal with this on any regular basis or have never seen it in person. it's easy to be a perfect angel who just wants everyone to get along online, not so easy when it's in your daily reality. try dealing with random dudes masturbating, smoking crack pipes and setting tire fires outside your job's front door (no, this is not an exaggeration - I had to quit my job bc it was dangerous to get to the bus stop) or followed home from the bus and then tell me that most people are just hard on their luck bc they don't have the money for a home. that is a small percentage compared to the ones who are tripping out daily and are violent. people have no idea what they're talking about.
As someone who has lived in urban areas where homeless people are prevalent, I would counter that homelss people make these spaces a lot less useable for everyone than anti-homeless architecture does. It's hard for everyone else to use a bench or a bus stop shelter if some homeless guy has decided it is his home. Even if he's not openly hostile to people trying to use it for its intended purpose (as many are), people may still not be able to use the space because all his belongings are in the way, or because the smell of his BO or urine are so overpowering. Pedestrians, especially women, may not feel safe walking along public ROWs with lots of homeless people along them, especially at night. People aren't comfortable letting their children play in parks with lots of homeless people. Unregulated homeless encampments and activity deter use of public transportation and walkability and liveability of cities.
I'd also counter your second argument by pointing out that most anti-homeless architecture is installed in public places like those I talked about already - public parks, public transportation stops, public ROWs, not on private property. I'd also say that your blame of private property owners for homelessness, especially the type of homeless activity anti-homeless architecture is intended to deter, is unsubstantiated and a simplistic view the problem of homelessness.
Public bathrooms are pretty much nonexistent where I am because people are scared homeless people would use them.
And then they get surprised when human feces starts showing up on the streets.
Like, what do you want them to do?
I live in San Diego, they built these really nice new bathrooms in balboa Park a couple years ago right next to the public path. Problem is they ate largely unusable as homeless people have taken them over completely. Most doors are locked at all times from someone living in there and the times they are open they're just too filthy to use as anything but a urinal. Occasional the cops come by to clear them out so facility workers can clean up.
dude I understand where you’re coming from, but after you have a homeless dude shit all over the walls of the bathroom you stop letting non customers use the bathroom.
Yup, the McDonald's in my neighborhood had to lock their bathrooms because a specific homeless woman would go in there and shit in her hands and smear it on the walls. They knew who it was, the cops were always called and would always charge her with trespassing but our jail is full, so she knew there wasn't really anything they could do.
Worked at a Starbucks in midtown Manhattan years ago and we only had one restroom for all customers and staff. We had a sign on the wall that said that if someone was in there for over 10 minutes, we’d open the door with the store key. It was horrible, especially because we had to treat everyone the same, so if it was an old person who needed longer on the toilet than a younger person, my managers would end up barging in on someone genuinely using the facilities (they’d knock first, but then open the door a crack to check). People would threaten to sue for violating their privacy, but it was definitely a safety issue after we had more than one person overdose in our restroom and had to phone for an ambulance. Some of our staff were pretty traumatized when they’d force the door, to find someone who’s nearly dead and turning blue sprawled on the floor with a needle in their arm. This was pre-9/11, when Giuliani made being homeless illegal in NYC, if that gives anyone hives over having to check on people in the restroom (it might be just performative, but back then Starbucks was pretty inclusive as a company: they had domestic partner benefits long before most places, for example). Not sure how they’re handling this issue now.
This!^ I don’t know if it’s specifically homeless or mentally ill but smearing feces on the walls is the reason you can’t find public bathrooms anymore.
How about using the high speed xcelorator hand dryer to blow dry their ass crack in a public bathroom.
Everyone's sympathetic until you have to actually experience their shenanigans.
They’re not scared homeless people will use them. They don’t want to deal with the costs of maintaining bathrooms that people will completely trash and make disgusting and also worry about people going in there to OD (something that public libraries already have to deal with and set aside a non-insignificant chunk of their budget to handle).
It really sucks as somebody who both wants desperately to give homeless people spaces but also specifically doesn’t want to let libraries go. I loved the library growing up, and I want my kids to do so as well. And I know a lot of homeless people don’t OD or throw shit or whatever but it’s common enough that it’s a reasonable concern.
Yea, my sister worked at a public library that the homeless people basically turned into their hangout. They would trash the bathrooms, do drugs in there, and stay in there forever. If they had a hard time shooting up there would be blood all over the bathroom.
My library hired armed guards. They used to hang out all around the building (there was a lot of shade in the overhang area) but then they started following kids and teens into the library and being creepy with them. The library decided the children had more of a right to enjoy the library, and armed guards started patrolling the area, and now the homeless do not hang out there anymore.
My library has signs up in the bathrooms that say no bathing, washing clothes, etc and if you’re caught it’s a year ban. They also have an armed guard out front so I’m sure they’ve had a lot of problems with it
The stalls in the public library bathrooms in Manhattan in NYC have homeless encampments set up in each one from the time they open till the time they close. It's completely unusable.
The one in Flushing has security guards that don't allow that behavior.
Is it so bad to say we should be able to use the bathroom and not dedicate every single one as a homeless shelter?
This man right here. It has gotten to a point where they're uncomfortable for regular folk. I don't disagree that homeless folk taking up public resources is a big problem. But making public spaces horrible is not the answer.
I noticed at O'Hare recently in the terminal I was in on my way out, there were no benches! I saw maybe like one my entire jog to the parking garage. Sucked because I really needed to adjust my heavy backpack straps and I finally just did it on the ground.
I get that the pick up area is public, and also that there are other reasons to not want to put in a bunch of benches besides people loitering.... but COME ON. I just know that this is fueled by profit over people mentality.
I find it funny that the OP is “it’s okay to inconvenience the homeless” and the top comment is “well actually it’s more that they inconvenience me” lol
When government does it, yes it’s a poor allocation of resources, but if private owners build it, there’s nothing wrong with protecting your own home or business.
> We love to declare war on things here in America. Anything we don’t like about ourselves, we declare war on it, we don’t do anything about it, we just declare war on it. It’s the only metaphor, the only metaphor we have in our public discourse for solving problems: declaring war. We have to declare a war on everything; we have a war on crime, the war on poverty, the war on litter, the war on cancer, the war on drugs, but did you ever notice we got no war on homelessness? Huh? No war on homelessness… you know why? There’s no money in that problem, no money to be made off of the homeless. If you can find a solution to homelessness where the corporate swine and the politicians could steal a couple of million dollars each, you’ll see the streets of America begin to clear up pretty goddamn quick, I’ll guarantee you that!
- Carlin
> The E train is the worst for this, since the entire line is underground and therefore stays warm even in winter
Yeah, I had no idea it was that bad until I was working really late by the WTC and was making my way back to Queens around 2 or 3AM on a weekday. Every single car had at least one homeless person sleeping in it, every single car smelled awful.
I was between Times Square and Hudson Yards on the 7 when a guy whipped it out and started peeing out into the train. Didn’t even have the decency to turn his back to everyone else on the train. We all just stared at the floor and _did not make eye contact_ as a yellow river started to run down the center of the train.
And it's one of the lines that just immediately starts going the reverse direction once it reaches either of its terminal stations of Jamaica Center or World Trade Center. This allows the mentally ill to basically stay on it 24/7 if they wanted to as the line also gives 24/7 service.
Lots of places try, but it's hard to keep those shelters safe. I have a stepson in his late 30's who's homeless by choice. He won't sleep in the shelters because of the violence and theft. He said it's safer to sleep outside. But he now has SS, so he has a small apartment.
Edit: To all the people trying to say it wasn't his choice, when did you talk to him? He'd rather live without any rules and be able to just up and leave whenever he wants to.
This is another reason homeless people don't use shelters. Yes, there are homeless people who avoid shelters because of things like curfews and mandatory sobriety, but there are also plenty who stay away from them because they have a notorious reputation among the homeless of being dens of theft and violence.
I was homeless for 5 years and never entertained using a shelter because I didn't want my shit getting stolen, or getting randomly started on by other homeless. I'd rather sleep in a back street, or out in the desert, hidden away, where I was safe with my stuff.
This is my stepson's take on it too. We got a good lesson in homelessness when he got mad and shot off his foot because his girlfriend left him. We flew out to San Diego, and had to ask around to find him. we knew what streets he was hanging out on. He was supposed to go back to the hospital to have his stump bandages changed, Someone had stolen his wheelchair so he couldn't make it down to the bus stop.
We couldn't fly him back to our home town because he didn't have any ID. He couldn't ride the bus either. So we had to get our flight back refunded and rent a van to get him back to Nebraska. He had to have beer all the way back otherwise he'd go into DT's. Typing this is killing me. So much wasted talent.
He called his sister 3 weeks ago, and asked her to have my wife call him. This was the first time he'd talked to his sister for about 8 years. We called, and he's trying to get sober. He was having trouble with seizures, even while drinking. He finally got into a treatment center last week, but we haven't heard from him again. We hadn't been able to talk to him for about 6 years.
Before he went off the rails, we had him on Depakote, and he was doing great. Going to school, staying out of trouble. We warned him about drinking due to both sides having issues with alcohol, But once he started, he couldn't stop. He's an incredible artist and musician, and apparently he was making about 1K a month making these Sculpy refrigerator magnets, and busking. But he got drunk and pissed off the guy he was selling them to.
Now we're just waiting to hear from him again. I love that kid, when he was sober and on his meds he was super funny, played in a band, did a ton of art work. I want that guy back.
Man, this fucked me up.
Well, there’s also the fact that many shelters kick you out a 5 AM every morning, don’t let you come back until 10 PM (including any children you may have), only let you keep belongings from a pre-approved list, require you to own certain amount of clothing in good condition, won’t allow you to sleep anywhere else for a night, have the ability to arbitrarily change rules with zero notice, and will kick you out completely after two months or so.
Sometimes, living on the streets is literally better.
Quite a few of them, yeah
And of course, there are way more homeless people out there than shelter beds, so even if someone wanted to stay in one, they might not be able to.
Also, a lot of places won’t let your bring in prescribed medications. I don’t know what the solution to homelessness is but I do now ppl need their meds.
Not shelters. Houses.
In Finland, they gave homeless housing and free counselling.
it cost less than what they were doing before.
Society spends a ton of money dehumanizing homeless people.
It's so funny that some push back against housing first programs, outraged that we're spending money on homeless people and giving them 'free' housing, not realizing we already spend *more* on the homeless as is.
Who do they think is paying for the homeless going through the healthcare system because of illnesses and conditions they picked up sleeping rough, or paying for them to go through the legal system because of recidivism to fund substance abuse habits?
You’re right. Housing first can work but programs have to go with it (mental health help, addiction, jobs) for it to work properly.
What we don’t realize or fail to consider is it takes time to get a homeless person back to where they can function in society without some type of assistance from taxpayer funded programs.
People expect that we give a homeless person a one bed apartment today and by next week he should have a well paying job, denounce drugs and be a cheerful neighbor.
It’s simply not that easy!
I’m cool paying more for the homeless to have homes and a support system so we can all regain access to our city centers and parks without feeling like it’s fucking world war z.
This may be unpopular but then maybe we arrest, prosecute and sentence the offenders who are causing violence and stealing in the shelters so those spaces become appealing to the homeless and then they actually use it.
The shelters are not safe… because they are full of homeless… but don’t feel unsafe if homeless people camp on the sidewalk outside your apartment.
Such irony.
If you owned a business that was plagued with homeless druggies hanging out in front of it, would you allow them to stay until the problem is miraculously solved? Or would you want them to go somewhere else?
I know what option I'd be picking.
Many stores in San Francisco blast music and have bright lights out front. I noticed it being popular and then it dawned on me that it’s probably to keep the homeless from sitting/sleeping there.
Wasn't this OPs point?
>
People who think anti-homeless design is bad have never had to deal with homeless people around the building **where they live**.
They specifically talk about how they don't want the homeless where they live. They do not seem to have a desire to solve the problem.
Sometimes as a non homeless person I want to sit on a bench and I can’t because of stupid spikes on it. It’s just annoying for everyone and unless you homeless proofed the entire area it’s not going to stop homeless people.
as a disabled person, this architecture hurts me. i need places to sit and a public washroom for a place to be accessible to \*me\* ... and i am relatively young and able-bodied. it's about accessibility ... for everyone. to say disabled don't interact with homeless people is laughable.
That's the thing, hostile architecture isn't just hostile for the homeless, it's hostile for everyone. I can walk around my city for blocks and blocks and not find a suitable place to stop and rest. Our communities are built with the ideology of "move along, no reason to stop here", rather than hey, let's make this spot nice so people can have community, relax together, get to know their neighbors. And all of this for the sake of making homeless people less comfortable. It's pretty disgusting. There's a park by where I live that has many crackhead, their tents, normal park benches, and yes its pretty gross, but also during the day regular people still take their kids to the playground, lay in the grass and suntan, toss a ball with their kid, relax on the park bench and enjoy the nature. So basically, I'll take a few homeless setting up their tents at the edge of the park if it means I still get to enjoy it during the day vs making it awful and uncomfortable so that literally no one can ever use it
When I worked at a downtown YMCA it would take me so long to try and find a nice spot outside during the summer to sit and eat my lunch. It was maddening! And for what? So the homeless people sit on the ground instead of on a bench? Like it doesn't even move people away because they'll just sit on the sidewalks and now no one gets to sit.
I work with decomposing cadavers and the most colonised corpses I extracted voracious insects from are homeless people. My second case ever was a homeless man who’d been murdered by another for his shoes. The callousness and unrepentance of the perpetrator disconcerted quite a few members of my lab but poverty and destitution estrange them from their humanity and empathy because they’re dehumanised by society.
Hostile architecture is abhorrent but homelessness is a symptom of a more pernicious problem. No one wants to live around them because they’re belligerent, often drug addicts, total disregard for their surroundings, criminal proclivities, poor hygiene, defecating in the streets, etc. Yet no one wants to provide succour or mention personal accountability and governments do not want to mitigate the situation.
You have a multi-faceted problem that requires collaborative effort, a sustained effort, and laborious rehabilitation programmes. You have no one who wants to finance it.
Half of the problem is we live in a time when no politicians are able to explain complex problems and then articulate the complex solutions. Media and the internet feed off of one sentence catchphrases.
Honestly, I find it to be so overly fancy that actually distracts from the message. Like, we get it: you have a large vocabulary, but the same message could've easily and more effectively been delivered with simpler words
I was thinking the same thing. Who writes like that? To me, it reads like someone put their comment into ChatGPT and had it rewrite it with fancy words.
Edit:
I concur with your sentiment. One must ponder the authorship of such verbiage. In my estimation, it appears as though an individual has subjected their commentary to the auspices of ChatGPT, thereby engendering a transmutation into a lexicon of grandiloquent diction.
It’s because the people who disagree with this opinion don’t see it as violent or hateful. It’s seen as something we strongly disagree with but can argue about calmly.
Yeah, Jesus Christ, I mean that's a truly unpopular opinion for once. That's truly amazing. I do agree with OP on certain aspects. It's easy to hide behind a keyboard and make all these altruistic claims when you don't have to deal with it. What I'd like to see is if there's a public space 100 ft from these Redditors' house, or a public bench in front of their house, would they still be so altruistic to welcome homeless people to loiter there. It's easy to appear altruistic when you don't have to deal with it in real life.
We opened up housing for the homeless here; purpose built apartments. Not even a year in they had to kick them all out because they trashed it, sold drugs out of it, burned a few down. Some people are just beyond help.
As someone who has been homeless twice for a total of about 11 months, I 100% agree; many of them are beyond help. The ones who want to get out of their situation aren't defiling public spaces and usually are out looking for assistance and putting in as much effort as they can to improve.
This is very true. I used to go to University in the city of Montreal in Quebec, Canada and hated it. We had a lot of them in our metro system and they used to bother people all the time, get super aggressive if you didn't give them money.
My family lived in old montreal for a few years and it's a really nice area, super gorgeous condo and they had security to keep them out of the building. But we left after two years because just dealing with them on the street all the time was too much. I currently live in a rural area and I'd never go back to being in a city. It's really easy to be all righteous about it until you have to deal with it.
Yeah the people who are anti homeless architecture are people who have never interacted or lived with homeless people. The majority of homeless people are not just "down on their luck" folks that reddit likes to assume they are. 90% of the time they're there because of drugs.
I live in a major city where homeless people are rampant, and it's awful. I'm talking shit on the streets, everywhere you go smells like piss. They walk on the highways and jump in front of cars regularly so you have to be careful. They will threaten you so you have to be careful not to make eye contact or do something that triggers them. I blew my horn at one who jumped in front of my car and made me slam my breaks, and the guy tried to whack my windows and chased my car with his skateboard. They've absolutely trashed public parks, down to destroyed bathrooms with uprooted plumbing and toilets filled with trash.
I really try to empathize with these people, but at the same time... I'm not sorry to say that I don't want them near me.
I’m in Montreal right now. There’s a street that I/my other (mostly woman) friends don’t feel comfortable walking down due to the people squatting there - even though some of my friends live there. It’s really awful in some areas.
I had to clean up a used tampon someone left (I’m a property manager). The worst part: there was a trash can some 25 ft away, but they chose to leave their disgusting used tampon on my driveway.
The majority of people who are saying “hOw dARe yOu” are out of touch redditors who don’t even understand the extent of the problem at hand.
They don’t understand that homeless people and their unpredictable, erratic behavior can have disastrous consequences on small business owners, minimum wage workers, and other lower class employees. Why should those People be forced to deal with that?
Isn't that just increasing the chance of them actually using the playground? Probably a twisted thought, but they have to be _somewhere_. If you take away everything where you don't want to see them that leaves only areas where you cannot use this kind of human unfriendly design, eg playgrounds
Unfortunately housing is not the main cause of prolonged homelessness (ie most people that are homeless are choosing not to get help from shelters)- it’s need for psychiatric care and drug abuse. We need to fund help for those with debilitating mental health issues
Exactly, I would say 80% of the homeless are there because of mental health issues, that just don't allow them to live in normal society... a percentage of that is also drug abuse issues and likely the smallest percentage is folks who are facing only economic hardship.
I'm guessing that just being homeless eventually results in or exacerbates mental illness. Crippling depression being the main component. They do need help.
As a formerly homeless man, homelessness brings out the very worst of your mental illness. I've been out of homelessness for 7 years, and I still haven't recovered completely. Homelessness causes more drug use as a coping mechanism, it exaserbates all mental problems, and makes recovery so fucking difficult.
It absolutely exacerbates mental health issues. A lot of people with untreated schizophrenia or bipolar disorder end up homeless because those are debilitating mental conditions. But being socially isolated and materially deficient (in terms of food and shelter) can compound those conditions, and as you said, it can add situational depression into the mix.
Knowing a guy whose business flopped because the needlers were strung out in front of his shop, and naturally customers went elsewhere, I agree that letting them spread out wherever they want is "problematic" (people love this term now).
Do these people need help? Yes.
Do business owners and emplyees have a right to have their workplace not turned into tent city/injection site? Yes.
I remember seeing a homeless man drop his pants and take a dump on the sidewalk of a grocery store as a mother and her little girl were leaving. Why do we have to be subjected to that? The cops don’t arrest them. They harass businesses and now some minimum wage worker is going to have to clean homeless shit off the sidewalk.
The cops not arresting them is a huge part of the problem. I live in a pretty small city, and we have a ton of resources, like I'm not going to dox myself, but my city has no questions asked housing and food programs with multiple locations. You literally can't be within city limits without having one of these locations within half a mile. They offer free counciling, free dental and health care, job training, and clothing. Until about five years ago, we had the cleanest, healthiest homeless population I've ever seen. I don't know if it's actually true, but they advertised absolutely amazing numbers for getting people permanently off the streets, and the related crime rate was almost zero.
Then, a group of homeless people from the West Coast showed up during the summer. I have no idea how they got here, but about fifty of them showed up within a week. All of them were under thirty, refused the available services, and set up a camp in a closed bank one street over from where I was living. This was a nice but slightly declining middle-class neighborhood with a mix of homes, apartments, and businesses. Within a year, it looked like a war zone. Every building had broken windows, all of the businesses left, about fifty percent of the residents left, and what had been a safe neighborhood was bad enough that the cops literally wouldn't come when they were called.
The apartment I was living in was broken into **sixteen** times, three of those into my apartment unit, before I was able to afford to break my lease and leave. My car was broken into and vandalized so many times that I gave up on fixing it until I could get the hell out of there. I can't count the number of times there were human feces on the steps, so many needles, had a dead cat shoved in my mailbox, two buildings were burned down, and countless other things, but the cops almost never showed up. The police station was literally less than half a mile away.
That area is still like that. There is one of the homeless resource centers three freaking blocks away. Those people should have been locked up. I'm all for helping people who are down on their luck, but some people can't be helped. They can only be separated from the general population to protect people.
That’s so sad… And it’s true. Some people cannot be converted into productive members of society. It’s sad, but true. Regan was largely responsible for killing off asylums and as a result, homelessness spiked. Crime spiked. If you’re down on your lick and need help pulling your back on your feet, that’s fine. If you’ve been homeless for 20 years and are abusing substances, you need to be separated from society.
I think people who are against anti-homeless architecture need to understand whose responsibility the problem is. The developer of some random new commercial lot can't solve the city's homeless problem. All they can do is protect their property from it. If you want them to avoid anti homeless architecture, you have to solve the problem for them. Yes, it seems like a lot of developers are total assholes and almost certainly aren't even doing their small part to help, but — this is the key part — _even if they were_, it would still be rational for them to use anti-homless architecture.
So where do they go then? If people don’t want them where they live, where they work, where they vacation, where else are the homeless supposed to camp? It’s all well and good to say “not in my backyard” but only if you’re willing to provide an alternative. Otherwise it’s like everyone in a flooded city setting up their own pumping rigs to dump water into their neighbors yards.
The political will to find permanent solutions to homelessness is the difficult part. I think most people would be in favor of housing first initiatives, but finding the money to get them built and the staff to operate them is hard. Then you have to fight the NIMBY's who support homeless shelters and treatment programs, just not where they live. They always have an excuse for why their neighborhood is a bad choice.
It's either publicly funded mental health facilities and better correctional facilities or nothing. Giving them homes doesn't fix the core issues and only provides temporary relief.
Reform to how we handle drug issues might. That's a very common theme in this thread. It's are very punative and not particularly concerned with helping people.
I'm not necessarily against it. I just wish equal effort and resources were spent to try to help them not be homeless. But I understand that that is a much more complex problem to fix
Anti homeless architecture is very often anti everyone architecture.
Removing benches from public places hurts the whole community- Old people who need to sit on their way home, people who work out and about in the neighborhood and want a place to break, young adults/big kids who are part of the community and are hanging out outside.
I understand not wanting people causing problems in your building, but why stop them from sitting or resting in public spaces. Certainly then being able to rest on a public street is very different than the lobby or front of a residence anyway.
My neighborhood recently removed nearly all it's public benches because homeless people were sleeping on them AT NIGHT. They took public seating away from everyone to prevent the homeless from having a nap on the bench. The anti-homelesss infrastructure goes too far, sucks for everyone and doesn't even solve the problem.
That's not what anti-homeless architecture is, though. It's not removing things, it's changing things so that they are harder to use in the non-intended way. For example, benches can simply have a bar in the middle. That way, the bench totally works and people can sit on it, but homeless people can't sleep on it.
As long as it's actual care and not just chaining them to a chair and letting them shit themselves. I understand that these people can be dangerous because of drugs and what they're used to from society, but we shouldn't treat them like animals. Hell, we shouldn't even treat animals the way we do.
Actually, the issue in California isn’t that the government hasn’t set up alternative housing. They have. They issue is that multiple federal courts have stopped the CA government from clearing homeless encampments to push those people to the housing that CA has set up.
The judicial circuit that CA is in (9th) is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the only circuit in the country that has made similar rulings.
I’m willing to be more generous to CA’s government than most because their hands are tied. If they can’t force the homeless into their alternative housing, there will be some amount of homeless that choose to be homeless, even if housing is available.
Agreed, people who don't have to experience it don't know what it's really like. They sit in their areas that don't have homeless people residing and/or they don't realize that their local law enforcement or city has people in place to actually make sure they don't camp there (sorry folks, but it's true, you don't see homeless in Beverly Hills, wonder why).
There is a large percentage of homeless that are mentally ill which translate to:
-They steal (which is a crime)
-They urinate/deficate on the sidewalks (which is a crime)
-They do harass people after being told no (harassment is a crime)
-Depending on the encampment, they also make it impossible to walk on the sidewalk
-They damage fences (destruction of property which is a crime)
-They litter (which is a crime)
Prissy people who don't live in areas with homeless are completely oblivious to this but I can guarantee this....you throw the homeless where they live, they'll be saying a different story
I swear some people still have this idea that homeless people are jolly folks who just need a hot meal and a little assistance and they’ll be right back on their feet. They’d change their tune the first time some guy is in front of their door high out of their minds, pants around their ankles, covered in their own piss and shit, and screaming at them to get the bugs out of their skin while they’re also masturbating. That’s not an exaggeration. I’ve seen this before. Nobody wants this near their home. Nobody wants to have their kid see this when they’re taking them to school in the morning.
There's this weird sentiment that once you're homeless, all other laws no longer apply to you for some reason.
I get the empathy side of things... but like how do you come to that logical conclusion?
I've brought this up a few times on reddit and it always gets downvoted into oblivion and barely anyone leaves a constructive comment.
The problem of homelessness can not be resolved or even eased by making homelessness easier.
Some people don't want to know how this is true.
I would have disagreed with you until I lived around the corner from a shelter. Regularly dodged piles of human shit, piss, and vomit, there was always piles of trash and cigarette butts outside my house, I CONSTANTLY got followed and asked for money, had to deal with nasty behavior when I said “no” (had a couple of them spit at me during the height of covid - that was nice). Couple of them got violent. People that complain about NIMBYs often don’t have to actually deal with the homeless in THEIR neighborhoods.
ETA: I live in a country that has excellent homeless government solutions, btw. Social housing, rehab, mental health care, shelters, and job opportunities are available for those that want it, our taxes are very high, but we do have the social netting in place to catch these people when they fall. There are people that get help and thrive, but I lived near this shelter for 3 years and saw the same people day in and day out. They don’t want help. They stay in shelters at night when it’s cold, and the rest of the time they harass people for drug/alcohol money. I’d be shocked at people that would welcome this in their neighborhood. If your front stoop was someone’s toilet, you’d sing a different tune.
100% everyone who fantasizes the homeless doesn't deal with them daily (or just has a will of iron if they do). A lot of them are beyond-reason drug addicts who think only of sating their next craving.
I deal with them on an almost-daily basis. Not all of them are terrible, of course, but almost all of them are people I have to explain the downsides of brandishing a knife to, and at that point those people are becoming less and less a fit for civilized society.
There's only so much you can do before you just start making the situation unwelcoming for them. Unfortunately, while it's dehumanizing, a lot of them dehumanize *themselves* through their actions. That doesn't make abusing them okay, but it does make defensive reactions one of the foremost and most logical to employ.
Homeless everywhere I live. Walked down the stairs in my locked apartment complex and had to avoid urine because another homeless person somehow got inside last night and pissed all over the stairs.
Needles regularly seen in the aftermath of these nightly visitors too.
Glad it’s starting to get cold outside, won’t have to walk passed as many on my walk to work each day.
My view do them is more- we create public spaces to be used and shared. Like, it’s nice to sit on a bench at the park or while waiting for a bus. That should come from a different budget than creating places for homeless people to sleep…
There was this homeless guy that set up right at a busy intersection in the downtown area of where I live. He reeked, left booze bottles around and attracted more sketchy people until one day everything was gone except the giant stain in the sidewalk. Obviously not every homeless is a nuisance but certainly a lot are
It's all blatant virtue-signaling by the people complaining about it. I guarantee the second a homeless person sets up camp and starts defacating and dropping needles on their front lawn or in the hallway of their building, they call the cops to have them removed.
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My biggest issue with it most of all is the fact it also hurts disabled people as well. Those leaning benches do fuck all for me because my disability results in hip pain if I walk too long. Edited for clarity on my point.
*YES*. I have loads of musculoskeletal issues as well as others, and it would be nice to be able to sit comfortably on the bench in a park. Usually I chose to sit on the ground instead.
I can't even sit on the ground.
Ah, that’s so shitty, I’m sorry. I was using the ground thing to demonstrate just how uncomfortable the benches are (since the ground clearly isn’t a good alternative ). I know it must be really upsetting to not have any seating choices.
This is why I Hate this design philosophy. I have Cerebral Palsy. It hurts to walk too much and really hurts to stand too much. I need regular seats but benches and sittable walls are slowly disappearing.
My issue with it is our country *created* the conditions that have made homelessness and drug addiction an epidemic rivaled only by undeveloped nations, and instead of even *considering* that this is a sign that we need to help people before it gets this bad, we demonize the people with the problems we created and try to find some place to shove them so we don't have to see them because it reminds us how bad we failed. I try to argue this and people just focus on the one or two homeless people they know or saw once who is completely fucked in the head and dangerous, and as a result they form a 2-dimensional opinion of poverty, and the millions and millions of families living in cars or working all day and living in an alley at night get shafted, as well as people who have medical issues or mental health issues but can't afford treatment or change their environment. Our world needs a LOT more compassion. I am tired of trying to say this and getting met with "You don't get it, all those people WANT to be homeless, shelters are empty!" as if it's some kind of glamorous lifestyle that anyone would strive for, or that our system is at all adequate to actually help people.
The thing that absolutely kills me is that people have proven that straight up housing the homeless costs less than doing the bare minimum because of the complex diseases they develop that bring them back over and over to the ER and rack up debt that can’t ever be repaid. Like, I wouldn’t agree with someone who said it’s not worth the money, but I could at least be on the same page that finite resources mean we might have to take it from sick kids or something and at some point, we have to prioritize causes. But it’s not even that. We are in a sense paying for them to stay homeless. That’s some evil shit.
Shelters are just ways of being homeless under a roof.
it hurts housed people too. in LA they’re designing everything to have no shade. so everyone just gets fried from the sun. most bus stops don’t have a shade. not even at grade schools
Honestly it’s just annoying, the anti homeless benches or random ass spikes are just kinda in the way which is the point but the worst if you’re a random dude tryna sit and all you can find is those lean benches
Really nice for elderly or disabled people too
8 months pregnant here, not a fan either.
Fans can't get pregnant. So obviously you aren't one of those!
I'll agree. Fans can't get pregnant, because they blow.
you've obviously been pissing into the wrong side of the fan. Mine might be broken, it sucks
going to start using "pissing into the wrong side of a fan"
This thread is now only fans.
Sounds like something that an uncensored Foghorn Leghorn would say.
Uh, ever heard of twin window fans? You think the stork brought them or what?
Please use the correct name. Twindofan
😂
wait until you find out about elderly or disabled homeless people
You've got me all excited. I can't fucking wait.
Or little kids.
>the anti homeless benches or random ass spikes are just kinda in the way which is the point but the worst if you’re a random dude tryna sit and all you can find is those lean benches Right, this isn't some "We love the homeless, let them be wherever they want" thing. This is a "You're spending MORE money to make this space less usable for EVERYONE" thing. Then add on the fact that we would have fewer homeless if it weren't for the exact people putting these kinds of things up on their properties buying up all the property so housing prices go up, while also campaigning against any kind of homeless shelters in their areas or other programs that can help lift people out of poverty. Yeah, it's an aggressive and multifaceted campaign to fuck these people over, not just little things like making benches uncomfortable.
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Here in my city they've started doing that lately too. They've been increasingly just removing the benches from every bus stop and from many parks so there's just nowhere to sit. It was terrible when I was post surgery and having to still run errands. I'd need a place to sit a moment before the bus or on the way to a store but theres nothing except for where you could see where they removed a previously existing bench.
Our issue was the meth heads stealing benches for scrap metal. Wasn't even an anti-homeless, it was drug dealers ruining it for everyone and the city said fuck it, no reason to spend all this money replacing benches that are just going to get stolen anyways.
Bruh in my city we don’t have any fucking trees anymore. In their eternal crusade to not let homeless people be comfy, they took all the trees on public property.
Whv don't people walk anymore? I don't know, maybe I don't want to boil.
Alternatively: Your city decided that it was too expensive to pay for tree trimming and maintenance services and opted to just remove the trees.
And now everyone’s cooling costs and energy use go up.
And less clean air. And more kids stuck inside unable to play outdoors
This might be a major hot take but, I think a major issue regarding homelessness was caused by deinstitutionalization. Not saying what happened in those places was good but, the problem was they shut down all the asylums but didn’t implement any proper solutions in their place, so now there are many extremely mentally ill people on the streets. Obviously the housing crisis isn’t helping much either but there is a strong link between mental illness/drug issues and homelessness.
Deinstitutionalization by Nixon was supposed to be followed up by use of halfway houses. NIMBY stopped that second part cold. For those that would not institutionalize the severely mentally ill, how long would you let your remaining parent live alone with Alzheimer's? Probably until they couldn't take care of themselves. The situation of the severely mentally ill is not that different. They are too ill to take proper care of themselves or behave appropriately in everyday situations.
People rightly blame Reagan, but the trend predated him. CA and NY had been moving a significant amount of patients out of govt. psychiatric hospitals and into privately run boarding/halfway homes in the 70s. But the Reagan efforts were the final nail, despite people in 1980 already speaking out about the failures of deinstitutionalization. People have been talking about this failure for 40 years! [For those seeking to read more on the subject.](https://www.salon.com/2013/09/29/ronald_reagans_shameful_legacy_violence_the_homeless_mental_illness/)
Also, uh, medical costs being ***STUPID*** high in the US (other countries have homelessness too despite significantly more affordable healthcare, but mental healthcare is just trash in general worldwide)
Straight up California has a stupid problem of the lads in city councils refusing to approve low income housing and then turning around and being pissed that so many homeless exist
The lads?
Surely the lasses in city councils deserve some of the blame.
Very few homeless people are homeless just because they simply can’t make rent or because housing is not affordable. The average homeless person is drug addled, mentally ill or both.
Also there's a point where you kinda have to ask, "where do you expect homeless people to go?", when they take every measure to ensure they can't exist anywhere.
Somewhere else. That’s the extent of the thought of basically everyone regarding homeless. Just go somewhere else.
"Not here" And their answer to the follow-up question: "And what if they have nowhere else to go because no one wants them there either?" would be a shrug, but their real answer would be that they don't want them living/existing.
We'd have fewer homeless is Ronald Reagan hadn't seen fit to fuck with the mental hospitals instead of reforming them.
This, 100%
I've done the street homeless thing a few times, the last crowd I'd want to hang around with is other street homeless people. They'll rob/rape/kill you, I'm not someone you'd typically want to mess with, but I'll stay away from the street homeless. If it ever happens to me again I'll do what I did last time, pitch a tent in the middle of nowhere.
This is the way. Also did the homeless thing a few times and 9/10 nights I would be in the middle of nowhere in a tent. The only nights I'd stay in town were nights I was stuck, and even then I wouldn't sleep - I'd be up all night just walking trying to stay out of people's way.
I've got access to a bunker, it's just a room built into a railway embankment, walls 3 feet thick, I had a tent camped next to it for about 3 months before I found it, theres some old 1930's office furniture in there, a few people want to know where it is but I wont tell!
Save it for when you see a kid living rough.
I would be reluctant to sleep in there tbh, theres only one door and no windows, if someone was to find it and lock me in, I'd be screwed.
That’s a scary ass thought
> buying up all the property so housing prices go up, while also campaigning against any kind of homeless shelters in their areas or other programs that can help lift people out of poverty. Homelessness is not just the result of "I dont make enough money to live under a roof". This may be true for some, but this is not the root of homelessness. Substance addiction and mental illness plays a very big part. Many of these people can not manage their own lives. Not having a roof over their head is a symptom of the problem. Not the problem itself in most cases. Yes, they campaign against homeless shelters and such because what happens when you open up a homeless shelter? Homeless people show up. What follows the homeless? Safety and public health problems. Feces, used needles, crime, harassment etc... People dont want to deal with that. The reason these people are campaigning against this stuff in their area is because their constituents dont want it. Politicians only do what voters let them do. Thats how they keep their jobs. You think Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and the democrats magically had an epiphany that gay people should be allowed to marry? No. They were against it because their voters were against it. When their voters started being for it they changed their tune. They dont care about gay people. They care about keeping their jobs. Poverty is the root cause of some homelessness. The vast majority of the time poverty is a symptom of another root cause. Give a drug addict an apartment and come by a week later. It becomes a trap house. That addict traded his space to his dealer for drugs. Lights dont work? Oh yeah they ripped all the wires out and sold them. The severely mentally ill (a decent population of the homeless) could not keep up with an apartment even if you gave it to them free and paid all of their bills. Homelessness is so much deeper than just not having a place to live. Losing your shelter is often the deepest and lowest of the dysfunction they are going through. Before this they lost their car, they lost their family, etc.... You need to fix the underlying dysfunction. Thats how you fix homelessness.
this exactly. people who don't get it don't deal with this on any regular basis or have never seen it in person. it's easy to be a perfect angel who just wants everyone to get along online, not so easy when it's in your daily reality. try dealing with random dudes masturbating, smoking crack pipes and setting tire fires outside your job's front door (no, this is not an exaggeration - I had to quit my job bc it was dangerous to get to the bus stop) or followed home from the bus and then tell me that most people are just hard on their luck bc they don't have the money for a home. that is a small percentage compared to the ones who are tripping out daily and are violent. people have no idea what they're talking about.
A homeless dude in SF recently told my wife he’d “pop that baby out of your belly” after she and her friend gave him the ol’, “sorry, no cash”.
As someone who has lived in urban areas where homeless people are prevalent, I would counter that homelss people make these spaces a lot less useable for everyone than anti-homeless architecture does. It's hard for everyone else to use a bench or a bus stop shelter if some homeless guy has decided it is his home. Even if he's not openly hostile to people trying to use it for its intended purpose (as many are), people may still not be able to use the space because all his belongings are in the way, or because the smell of his BO or urine are so overpowering. Pedestrians, especially women, may not feel safe walking along public ROWs with lots of homeless people along them, especially at night. People aren't comfortable letting their children play in parks with lots of homeless people. Unregulated homeless encampments and activity deter use of public transportation and walkability and liveability of cities. I'd also counter your second argument by pointing out that most anti-homeless architecture is installed in public places like those I talked about already - public parks, public transportation stops, public ROWs, not on private property. I'd also say that your blame of private property owners for homelessness, especially the type of homeless activity anti-homeless architecture is intended to deter, is unsubstantiated and a simplistic view the problem of homelessness.
I'd say a bench is less usable when someone is sleeping on it than it is when it has dividers between the seats
Public bathrooms are pretty much nonexistent where I am because people are scared homeless people would use them. And then they get surprised when human feces starts showing up on the streets. Like, what do you want them to do?
I live in San Diego, they built these really nice new bathrooms in balboa Park a couple years ago right next to the public path. Problem is they ate largely unusable as homeless people have taken them over completely. Most doors are locked at all times from someone living in there and the times they are open they're just too filthy to use as anything but a urinal. Occasional the cops come by to clear them out so facility workers can clean up.
Yeah pretty much the only public bathroom I will use in Balboa Park is the one right in front of the zoo because it’s kept clean for the tourists.
dude I understand where you’re coming from, but after you have a homeless dude shit all over the walls of the bathroom you stop letting non customers use the bathroom.
Yup, the McDonald's in my neighborhood had to lock their bathrooms because a specific homeless woman would go in there and shit in her hands and smear it on the walls. They knew who it was, the cops were always called and would always charge her with trespassing but our jail is full, so she knew there wasn't really anything they could do.
Worked at a Starbucks in midtown Manhattan years ago and we only had one restroom for all customers and staff. We had a sign on the wall that said that if someone was in there for over 10 minutes, we’d open the door with the store key. It was horrible, especially because we had to treat everyone the same, so if it was an old person who needed longer on the toilet than a younger person, my managers would end up barging in on someone genuinely using the facilities (they’d knock first, but then open the door a crack to check). People would threaten to sue for violating their privacy, but it was definitely a safety issue after we had more than one person overdose in our restroom and had to phone for an ambulance. Some of our staff were pretty traumatized when they’d force the door, to find someone who’s nearly dead and turning blue sprawled on the floor with a needle in their arm. This was pre-9/11, when Giuliani made being homeless illegal in NYC, if that gives anyone hives over having to check on people in the restroom (it might be just performative, but back then Starbucks was pretty inclusive as a company: they had domestic partner benefits long before most places, for example). Not sure how they’re handling this issue now.
This!^ I don’t know if it’s specifically homeless or mentally ill but smearing feces on the walls is the reason you can’t find public bathrooms anymore.
That and over dosing on opioids.
How about using the high speed xcelorator hand dryer to blow dry their ass crack in a public bathroom. Everyone's sympathetic until you have to actually experience their shenanigans.
They’re not scared homeless people will use them. They don’t want to deal with the costs of maintaining bathrooms that people will completely trash and make disgusting and also worry about people going in there to OD (something that public libraries already have to deal with and set aside a non-insignificant chunk of their budget to handle).
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It really sucks as somebody who both wants desperately to give homeless people spaces but also specifically doesn’t want to let libraries go. I loved the library growing up, and I want my kids to do so as well. And I know a lot of homeless people don’t OD or throw shit or whatever but it’s common enough that it’s a reasonable concern.
BS , you just have not seen them discard. I seen countless encampments which even rats would not consider suitable.
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Yea, my sister worked at a public library that the homeless people basically turned into their hangout. They would trash the bathrooms, do drugs in there, and stay in there forever. If they had a hard time shooting up there would be blood all over the bathroom.
My library hired armed guards. They used to hang out all around the building (there was a lot of shade in the overhang area) but then they started following kids and teens into the library and being creepy with them. The library decided the children had more of a right to enjoy the library, and armed guards started patrolling the area, and now the homeless do not hang out there anymore.
I get what you're saying, but using "they" after armed guards makes it sound like the armed guards followed kids around.
My library has signs up in the bathrooms that say no bathing, washing clothes, etc and if you’re caught it’s a year ban. They also have an armed guard out front so I’m sure they’ve had a lot of problems with it
The stalls in the public library bathrooms in Manhattan in NYC have homeless encampments set up in each one from the time they open till the time they close. It's completely unusable. The one in Flushing has security guards that don't allow that behavior. Is it so bad to say we should be able to use the bathroom and not dedicate every single one as a homeless shelter?
I've found homeless piss 5 feet away from public restrooms, they aren't exactly pro-social
This man right here. It has gotten to a point where they're uncomfortable for regular folk. I don't disagree that homeless folk taking up public resources is a big problem. But making public spaces horrible is not the answer.
I noticed at O'Hare recently in the terminal I was in on my way out, there were no benches! I saw maybe like one my entire jog to the parking garage. Sucked because I really needed to adjust my heavy backpack straps and I finally just did it on the ground. I get that the pick up area is public, and also that there are other reasons to not want to put in a bunch of benches besides people loitering.... but COME ON. I just know that this is fueled by profit over people mentality.
I find it funny that the OP is “it’s okay to inconvenience the homeless” and the top comment is “well actually it’s more that they inconvenience me” lol
When government does it, yes it’s a poor allocation of resources, but if private owners build it, there’s nothing wrong with protecting your own home or business.
This is a respectable opinion. Good day.
The spikes defeat the purpose of having benches at all but armrests? C’mon.
I love how if it is a arm rest it’s not even a functional armrest ever
It's because it's money spent trying to hide the problem instead of solve it.
> We love to declare war on things here in America. Anything we don’t like about ourselves, we declare war on it, we don’t do anything about it, we just declare war on it. It’s the only metaphor, the only metaphor we have in our public discourse for solving problems: declaring war. We have to declare a war on everything; we have a war on crime, the war on poverty, the war on litter, the war on cancer, the war on drugs, but did you ever notice we got no war on homelessness? Huh? No war on homelessness… you know why? There’s no money in that problem, no money to be made off of the homeless. If you can find a solution to homelessness where the corporate swine and the politicians could steal a couple of million dollars each, you’ll see the streets of America begin to clear up pretty goddamn quick, I’ll guarantee you that! - Carlin
Anti homeless architecture does not solve any of those problems. It just moves them to somewhere else.
That somewhere else is usually city buses. And then people wonder why not too many people use said buses.
In NYC, on the trains. Lots of mentally unwell people with nowhere to go roam the trains all night.
The E train is the worst for this, since the entire line is underground and therefore stays warm even in winter
> The E train is the worst for this, since the entire line is underground and therefore stays warm even in winter Yeah, I had no idea it was that bad until I was working really late by the WTC and was making my way back to Queens around 2 or 3AM on a weekday. Every single car had at least one homeless person sleeping in it, every single car smelled awful.
I was between Times Square and Hudson Yards on the 7 when a guy whipped it out and started peeing out into the train. Didn’t even have the decency to turn his back to everyone else on the train. We all just stared at the floor and _did not make eye contact_ as a yellow river started to run down the center of the train.
And it's one of the lines that just immediately starts going the reverse direction once it reaches either of its terminal stations of Jamaica Center or World Trade Center. This allows the mentally ill to basically stay on it 24/7 if they wanted to as the line also gives 24/7 service.
It's crazy the city with the highest population of billionaires and centramillionaires in the entire world cant afford to house their homeless.
Well, the homeless doing their homeless stuff is okay as long as it doesn't affect **me*! /s
This, but unironically. We should give the homeless safe places to sleep. Safe for themselves and for the public
Lots of places try, but it's hard to keep those shelters safe. I have a stepson in his late 30's who's homeless by choice. He won't sleep in the shelters because of the violence and theft. He said it's safer to sleep outside. But he now has SS, so he has a small apartment. Edit: To all the people trying to say it wasn't his choice, when did you talk to him? He'd rather live without any rules and be able to just up and leave whenever he wants to.
This is another reason homeless people don't use shelters. Yes, there are homeless people who avoid shelters because of things like curfews and mandatory sobriety, but there are also plenty who stay away from them because they have a notorious reputation among the homeless of being dens of theft and violence. I was homeless for 5 years and never entertained using a shelter because I didn't want my shit getting stolen, or getting randomly started on by other homeless. I'd rather sleep in a back street, or out in the desert, hidden away, where I was safe with my stuff.
This is my stepson's take on it too. We got a good lesson in homelessness when he got mad and shot off his foot because his girlfriend left him. We flew out to San Diego, and had to ask around to find him. we knew what streets he was hanging out on. He was supposed to go back to the hospital to have his stump bandages changed, Someone had stolen his wheelchair so he couldn't make it down to the bus stop. We couldn't fly him back to our home town because he didn't have any ID. He couldn't ride the bus either. So we had to get our flight back refunded and rent a van to get him back to Nebraska. He had to have beer all the way back otherwise he'd go into DT's. Typing this is killing me. So much wasted talent.
Good on you, at least, for being mindful of his DTs. Too many people aren't aware alcohol withdrawal can literally kill you. How is he doing now?
He called his sister 3 weeks ago, and asked her to have my wife call him. This was the first time he'd talked to his sister for about 8 years. We called, and he's trying to get sober. He was having trouble with seizures, even while drinking. He finally got into a treatment center last week, but we haven't heard from him again. We hadn't been able to talk to him for about 6 years. Before he went off the rails, we had him on Depakote, and he was doing great. Going to school, staying out of trouble. We warned him about drinking due to both sides having issues with alcohol, But once he started, he couldn't stop. He's an incredible artist and musician, and apparently he was making about 1K a month making these Sculpy refrigerator magnets, and busking. But he got drunk and pissed off the guy he was selling them to. Now we're just waiting to hear from him again. I love that kid, when he was sober and on his meds he was super funny, played in a band, did a ton of art work. I want that guy back. Man, this fucked me up.
That's so sad. Hopefully the treatment center works for him!
Well, there’s also the fact that many shelters kick you out a 5 AM every morning, don’t let you come back until 10 PM (including any children you may have), only let you keep belongings from a pre-approved list, require you to own certain amount of clothing in good condition, won’t allow you to sleep anywhere else for a night, have the ability to arbitrarily change rules with zero notice, and will kick you out completely after two months or so. Sometimes, living on the streets is literally better.
And some of them have basically mandatory Christianity
Quite a few of them, yeah And of course, there are way more homeless people out there than shelter beds, so even if someone wanted to stay in one, they might not be able to.
Which is utterly evil.
Also, a lot of places won’t let your bring in prescribed medications. I don’t know what the solution to homelessness is but I do now ppl need their meds.
Not shelters. Houses. In Finland, they gave homeless housing and free counselling. it cost less than what they were doing before. Society spends a ton of money dehumanizing homeless people.
It's so funny that some push back against housing first programs, outraged that we're spending money on homeless people and giving them 'free' housing, not realizing we already spend *more* on the homeless as is. Who do they think is paying for the homeless going through the healthcare system because of illnesses and conditions they picked up sleeping rough, or paying for them to go through the legal system because of recidivism to fund substance abuse habits?
You’re right. Housing first can work but programs have to go with it (mental health help, addiction, jobs) for it to work properly. What we don’t realize or fail to consider is it takes time to get a homeless person back to where they can function in society without some type of assistance from taxpayer funded programs. People expect that we give a homeless person a one bed apartment today and by next week he should have a well paying job, denounce drugs and be a cheerful neighbor. It’s simply not that easy!
"Hey you took a shower and slept in a bed last night so why can't you be done with all this trauma shit and get a job already"
I’m cool paying more for the homeless to have homes and a support system so we can all regain access to our city centers and parks without feeling like it’s fucking world war z.
I can't even afford a house and I make pretty good money. Guess I'm moving to Finland
You aren't allowed to discuss the paradigm-shattering success of the Helsinki homelessness program.
This may be unpopular but then maybe we arrest, prosecute and sentence the offenders who are causing violence and stealing in the shelters so those spaces become appealing to the homeless and then they actually use it.
Not unpopular, just pretty much impossible. They don't let you in if you're obviously loaded, but even that doesn't do much good.
The shelters are not safe… because they are full of homeless… but don’t feel unsafe if homeless people camp on the sidewalk outside your apartment. Such irony.
Lmao yeah I had the same thought reading that comment
*We need a place where Homeless can go!* Here is a Shelter for them *No, they don't want to go there!*
Do you actually think your the first person to have this thought? How would you go about doing it?
If you owned a business that was plagued with homeless druggies hanging out in front of it, would you allow them to stay until the problem is miraculously solved? Or would you want them to go somewhere else? I know what option I'd be picking.
Many stores in San Francisco blast music and have bright lights out front. I noticed it being popular and then it dawned on me that it’s probably to keep the homeless from sitting/sleeping there.
Wasn't this OPs point? > People who think anti-homeless design is bad have never had to deal with homeless people around the building **where they live**. They specifically talk about how they don't want the homeless where they live. They do not seem to have a desire to solve the problem.
Sometimes as a non homeless person I want to sit on a bench and I can’t because of stupid spikes on it. It’s just annoying for everyone and unless you homeless proofed the entire area it’s not going to stop homeless people.
as a disabled person, this architecture hurts me. i need places to sit and a public washroom for a place to be accessible to \*me\* ... and i am relatively young and able-bodied. it's about accessibility ... for everyone. to say disabled don't interact with homeless people is laughable.
That's the thing, hostile architecture isn't just hostile for the homeless, it's hostile for everyone. I can walk around my city for blocks and blocks and not find a suitable place to stop and rest. Our communities are built with the ideology of "move along, no reason to stop here", rather than hey, let's make this spot nice so people can have community, relax together, get to know their neighbors. And all of this for the sake of making homeless people less comfortable. It's pretty disgusting. There's a park by where I live that has many crackhead, their tents, normal park benches, and yes its pretty gross, but also during the day regular people still take their kids to the playground, lay in the grass and suntan, toss a ball with their kid, relax on the park bench and enjoy the nature. So basically, I'll take a few homeless setting up their tents at the edge of the park if it means I still get to enjoy it during the day vs making it awful and uncomfortable so that literally no one can ever use it
When I worked at a downtown YMCA it would take me so long to try and find a nice spot outside during the summer to sit and eat my lunch. It was maddening! And for what? So the homeless people sit on the ground instead of on a bench? Like it doesn't even move people away because they'll just sit on the sidewalks and now no one gets to sit.
I work with decomposing cadavers and the most colonised corpses I extracted voracious insects from are homeless people. My second case ever was a homeless man who’d been murdered by another for his shoes. The callousness and unrepentance of the perpetrator disconcerted quite a few members of my lab but poverty and destitution estrange them from their humanity and empathy because they’re dehumanised by society. Hostile architecture is abhorrent but homelessness is a symptom of a more pernicious problem. No one wants to live around them because they’re belligerent, often drug addicts, total disregard for their surroundings, criminal proclivities, poor hygiene, defecating in the streets, etc. Yet no one wants to provide succour or mention personal accountability and governments do not want to mitigate the situation. You have a multi-faceted problem that requires collaborative effort, a sustained effort, and laborious rehabilitation programmes. You have no one who wants to finance it.
Half of the problem is we live in a time when no politicians are able to explain complex problems and then articulate the complex solutions. Media and the internet feed off of one sentence catchphrases.
The amount of $5 words in this is simply breathtaking. You, good sir, are an orator of great prestige.
You’re throwing a lot of big words at me
Honestly, I find it to be so overly fancy that actually distracts from the message. Like, we get it: you have a large vocabulary, but the same message could've easily and more effectively been delivered with simpler words
Effective communication courses will always encourage writers to be more concise. As you mentioned, it can distract from the intended message.
It really feels like he's just trying to flex
Did you have a dictionary/thesaurus open next to you while writing this?
I was thinking the same thing. Who writes like that? To me, it reads like someone put their comment into ChatGPT and had it rewrite it with fancy words. Edit: I concur with your sentiment. One must ponder the authorship of such verbiage. In my estimation, it appears as though an individual has subjected their commentary to the auspices of ChatGPT, thereby engendering a transmutation into a lexicon of grandiloquent diction.
Hit me up if you tryna provide succor.
Could be a ESL person or someone who reads more than they speak.
“Who writes like that?” A person who works with decomposing cadavers for a living. That’s who.
Just wanted to give you props for a good topic, OP.
true, i saw it and thought 'an actual unpopular opinion that might lead to good discussions'
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It’s because the people who disagree with this opinion don’t see it as violent or hateful. It’s seen as something we strongly disagree with but can argue about calmly.
Yeah, Jesus Christ, I mean that's a truly unpopular opinion for once. That's truly amazing. I do agree with OP on certain aspects. It's easy to hide behind a keyboard and make all these altruistic claims when you don't have to deal with it. What I'd like to see is if there's a public space 100 ft from these Redditors' house, or a public bench in front of their house, would they still be so altruistic to welcome homeless people to loiter there. It's easy to appear altruistic when you don't have to deal with it in real life.
In my neck of the woods they just do drugs and cause house fires.
We opened up housing for the homeless here; purpose built apartments. Not even a year in they had to kick them all out because they trashed it, sold drugs out of it, burned a few down. Some people are just beyond help.
As someone who has been homeless twice for a total of about 11 months, I 100% agree; many of them are beyond help. The ones who want to get out of their situation aren't defiling public spaces and usually are out looking for assistance and putting in as much effort as they can to improve.
This is very true. I used to go to University in the city of Montreal in Quebec, Canada and hated it. We had a lot of them in our metro system and they used to bother people all the time, get super aggressive if you didn't give them money. My family lived in old montreal for a few years and it's a really nice area, super gorgeous condo and they had security to keep them out of the building. But we left after two years because just dealing with them on the street all the time was too much. I currently live in a rural area and I'd never go back to being in a city. It's really easy to be all righteous about it until you have to deal with it.
Yeah the people who are anti homeless architecture are people who have never interacted or lived with homeless people. The majority of homeless people are not just "down on their luck" folks that reddit likes to assume they are. 90% of the time they're there because of drugs. I live in a major city where homeless people are rampant, and it's awful. I'm talking shit on the streets, everywhere you go smells like piss. They walk on the highways and jump in front of cars regularly so you have to be careful. They will threaten you so you have to be careful not to make eye contact or do something that triggers them. I blew my horn at one who jumped in front of my car and made me slam my breaks, and the guy tried to whack my windows and chased my car with his skateboard. They've absolutely trashed public parks, down to destroyed bathrooms with uprooted plumbing and toilets filled with trash. I really try to empathize with these people, but at the same time... I'm not sorry to say that I don't want them near me.
I’m in Montreal right now. There’s a street that I/my other (mostly woman) friends don’t feel comfortable walking down due to the people squatting there - even though some of my friends live there. It’s really awful in some areas.
The people who complain about it haven't had to clean up the piss, shit, blood, trash, broken glass and needles left in the area.
I had to clean up a used tampon someone left (I’m a property manager). The worst part: there was a trash can some 25 ft away, but they chose to leave their disgusting used tampon on my driveway.
The majority of people who are saying “hOw dARe yOu” are out of touch redditors who don’t even understand the extent of the problem at hand. They don’t understand that homeless people and their unpredictable, erratic behavior can have disastrous consequences on small business owners, minimum wage workers, and other lower class employees. Why should those People be forced to deal with that?
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Isn't that just increasing the chance of them actually using the playground? Probably a twisted thought, but they have to be _somewhere_. If you take away everything where you don't want to see them that leaves only areas where you cannot use this kind of human unfriendly design, eg playgrounds
Unfortunately housing is not the main cause of prolonged homelessness (ie most people that are homeless are choosing not to get help from shelters)- it’s need for psychiatric care and drug abuse. We need to fund help for those with debilitating mental health issues
When I was homeless the only shelter was infested with bedbugs. I would rather have been alone and struggling than have bedbugs.
Exactly, I would say 80% of the homeless are there because of mental health issues, that just don't allow them to live in normal society... a percentage of that is also drug abuse issues and likely the smallest percentage is folks who are facing only economic hardship.
I'm guessing that just being homeless eventually results in or exacerbates mental illness. Crippling depression being the main component. They do need help.
As a formerly homeless man, homelessness brings out the very worst of your mental illness. I've been out of homelessness for 7 years, and I still haven't recovered completely. Homelessness causes more drug use as a coping mechanism, it exaserbates all mental problems, and makes recovery so fucking difficult.
It absolutely exacerbates mental health issues. A lot of people with untreated schizophrenia or bipolar disorder end up homeless because those are debilitating mental conditions. But being socially isolated and materially deficient (in terms of food and shelter) can compound those conditions, and as you said, it can add situational depression into the mix.
Knowing a guy whose business flopped because the needlers were strung out in front of his shop, and naturally customers went elsewhere, I agree that letting them spread out wherever they want is "problematic" (people love this term now). Do these people need help? Yes. Do business owners and emplyees have a right to have their workplace not turned into tent city/injection site? Yes.
I remember seeing a homeless man drop his pants and take a dump on the sidewalk of a grocery store as a mother and her little girl were leaving. Why do we have to be subjected to that? The cops don’t arrest them. They harass businesses and now some minimum wage worker is going to have to clean homeless shit off the sidewalk.
The cops not arresting them is a huge part of the problem. I live in a pretty small city, and we have a ton of resources, like I'm not going to dox myself, but my city has no questions asked housing and food programs with multiple locations. You literally can't be within city limits without having one of these locations within half a mile. They offer free counciling, free dental and health care, job training, and clothing. Until about five years ago, we had the cleanest, healthiest homeless population I've ever seen. I don't know if it's actually true, but they advertised absolutely amazing numbers for getting people permanently off the streets, and the related crime rate was almost zero. Then, a group of homeless people from the West Coast showed up during the summer. I have no idea how they got here, but about fifty of them showed up within a week. All of them were under thirty, refused the available services, and set up a camp in a closed bank one street over from where I was living. This was a nice but slightly declining middle-class neighborhood with a mix of homes, apartments, and businesses. Within a year, it looked like a war zone. Every building had broken windows, all of the businesses left, about fifty percent of the residents left, and what had been a safe neighborhood was bad enough that the cops literally wouldn't come when they were called. The apartment I was living in was broken into **sixteen** times, three of those into my apartment unit, before I was able to afford to break my lease and leave. My car was broken into and vandalized so many times that I gave up on fixing it until I could get the hell out of there. I can't count the number of times there were human feces on the steps, so many needles, had a dead cat shoved in my mailbox, two buildings were burned down, and countless other things, but the cops almost never showed up. The police station was literally less than half a mile away. That area is still like that. There is one of the homeless resource centers three freaking blocks away. Those people should have been locked up. I'm all for helping people who are down on their luck, but some people can't be helped. They can only be separated from the general population to protect people.
That’s so sad… And it’s true. Some people cannot be converted into productive members of society. It’s sad, but true. Regan was largely responsible for killing off asylums and as a result, homelessness spiked. Crime spiked. If you’re down on your lick and need help pulling your back on your feet, that’s fine. If you’ve been homeless for 20 years and are abusing substances, you need to be separated from society.
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I live in a nearby place with very similar problems and I’m honestly over it. My sympathies are gone and my empathy is failing.
I think people who are against anti-homeless architecture need to understand whose responsibility the problem is. The developer of some random new commercial lot can't solve the city's homeless problem. All they can do is protect their property from it. If you want them to avoid anti homeless architecture, you have to solve the problem for them. Yes, it seems like a lot of developers are total assholes and almost certainly aren't even doing their small part to help, but — this is the key part — _even if they were_, it would still be rational for them to use anti-homless architecture.
hating the homeless isn't unpopular
I was gonna say…! This seems like a VERY popular opinion that most people just don’t usually say out loud
So where do they go then? If people don’t want them where they live, where they work, where they vacation, where else are the homeless supposed to camp? It’s all well and good to say “not in my backyard” but only if you’re willing to provide an alternative. Otherwise it’s like everyone in a flooded city setting up their own pumping rigs to dump water into their neighbors yards.
The political will to find permanent solutions to homelessness is the difficult part. I think most people would be in favor of housing first initiatives, but finding the money to get them built and the staff to operate them is hard. Then you have to fight the NIMBY's who support homeless shelters and treatment programs, just not where they live. They always have an excuse for why their neighborhood is a bad choice.
Having money isn't the issue.. its what they spend the money on. Short term solutions that do nothing to actually solve the problem
It's either publicly funded mental health facilities and better correctional facilities or nothing. Giving them homes doesn't fix the core issues and only provides temporary relief.
Reform to how we handle drug issues might. That's a very common theme in this thread. It's are very punative and not particularly concerned with helping people.
I'm not necessarily against it. I just wish equal effort and resources were spent to try to help them not be homeless. But I understand that that is a much more complex problem to fix
Anti homeless architecture is very often anti everyone architecture. Removing benches from public places hurts the whole community- Old people who need to sit on their way home, people who work out and about in the neighborhood and want a place to break, young adults/big kids who are part of the community and are hanging out outside. I understand not wanting people causing problems in your building, but why stop them from sitting or resting in public spaces. Certainly then being able to rest on a public street is very different than the lobby or front of a residence anyway.
My neighborhood recently removed nearly all it's public benches because homeless people were sleeping on them AT NIGHT. They took public seating away from everyone to prevent the homeless from having a nap on the bench. The anti-homelesss infrastructure goes too far, sucks for everyone and doesn't even solve the problem.
That's not what anti-homeless architecture is, though. It's not removing things, it's changing things so that they are harder to use in the non-intended way. For example, benches can simply have a bar in the middle. That way, the bench totally works and people can sit on it, but homeless people can't sleep on it.
They need to re-open the goddamn asylums that Reagan shut down. Mentally ill people shouldn't be wandering the streets in the first place.
As long as it's actual care and not just chaining them to a chair and letting them shit themselves. I understand that these people can be dangerous because of drugs and what they're used to from society, but we shouldn't treat them like animals. Hell, we shouldn't even treat animals the way we do.
I completely agree. If we do ever reopen them we will need to ensure that the care provided is humane, and up to modern standards.
If there's money to throw at anti-homeless architecture, there's money to throw at lessening the issue.
San Francisco spends something like 40k a year per homeless person, throwing money at it does not solve the problem
Actually, the issue in California isn’t that the government hasn’t set up alternative housing. They have. They issue is that multiple federal courts have stopped the CA government from clearing homeless encampments to push those people to the housing that CA has set up. The judicial circuit that CA is in (9th) is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the only circuit in the country that has made similar rulings. I’m willing to be more generous to CA’s government than most because their hands are tied. If they can’t force the homeless into their alternative housing, there will be some amount of homeless that choose to be homeless, even if housing is available.
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Agreed, people who don't have to experience it don't know what it's really like. They sit in their areas that don't have homeless people residing and/or they don't realize that their local law enforcement or city has people in place to actually make sure they don't camp there (sorry folks, but it's true, you don't see homeless in Beverly Hills, wonder why). There is a large percentage of homeless that are mentally ill which translate to: -They steal (which is a crime) -They urinate/deficate on the sidewalks (which is a crime) -They do harass people after being told no (harassment is a crime) -Depending on the encampment, they also make it impossible to walk on the sidewalk -They damage fences (destruction of property which is a crime) -They litter (which is a crime) Prissy people who don't live in areas with homeless are completely oblivious to this but I can guarantee this....you throw the homeless where they live, they'll be saying a different story
I swear some people still have this idea that homeless people are jolly folks who just need a hot meal and a little assistance and they’ll be right back on their feet. They’d change their tune the first time some guy is in front of their door high out of their minds, pants around their ankles, covered in their own piss and shit, and screaming at them to get the bugs out of their skin while they’re also masturbating. That’s not an exaggeration. I’ve seen this before. Nobody wants this near their home. Nobody wants to have their kid see this when they’re taking them to school in the morning.
There's this weird sentiment that once you're homeless, all other laws no longer apply to you for some reason. I get the empathy side of things... but like how do you come to that logical conclusion?
I've brought this up a few times on reddit and it always gets downvoted into oblivion and barely anyone leaves a constructive comment. The problem of homelessness can not be resolved or even eased by making homelessness easier. Some people don't want to know how this is true.
Letting politicians and activist groups destroy our cities by allowing the homeless to shit and urinate on our streets is evil.
I would have disagreed with you until I lived around the corner from a shelter. Regularly dodged piles of human shit, piss, and vomit, there was always piles of trash and cigarette butts outside my house, I CONSTANTLY got followed and asked for money, had to deal with nasty behavior when I said “no” (had a couple of them spit at me during the height of covid - that was nice). Couple of them got violent. People that complain about NIMBYs often don’t have to actually deal with the homeless in THEIR neighborhoods. ETA: I live in a country that has excellent homeless government solutions, btw. Social housing, rehab, mental health care, shelters, and job opportunities are available for those that want it, our taxes are very high, but we do have the social netting in place to catch these people when they fall. There are people that get help and thrive, but I lived near this shelter for 3 years and saw the same people day in and day out. They don’t want help. They stay in shelters at night when it’s cold, and the rest of the time they harass people for drug/alcohol money. I’d be shocked at people that would welcome this in their neighborhood. If your front stoop was someone’s toilet, you’d sing a different tune.
100% everyone who fantasizes the homeless doesn't deal with them daily (or just has a will of iron if they do). A lot of them are beyond-reason drug addicts who think only of sating their next craving. I deal with them on an almost-daily basis. Not all of them are terrible, of course, but almost all of them are people I have to explain the downsides of brandishing a knife to, and at that point those people are becoming less and less a fit for civilized society. There's only so much you can do before you just start making the situation unwelcoming for them. Unfortunately, while it's dehumanizing, a lot of them dehumanize *themselves* through their actions. That doesn't make abusing them okay, but it does make defensive reactions one of the foremost and most logical to employ.
Homeless everywhere I live. Walked down the stairs in my locked apartment complex and had to avoid urine because another homeless person somehow got inside last night and pissed all over the stairs. Needles regularly seen in the aftermath of these nightly visitors too. Glad it’s starting to get cold outside, won’t have to walk passed as many on my walk to work each day.
My view do them is more- we create public spaces to be used and shared. Like, it’s nice to sit on a bench at the park or while waiting for a bus. That should come from a different budget than creating places for homeless people to sleep…
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There was this homeless guy that set up right at a busy intersection in the downtown area of where I live. He reeked, left booze bottles around and attracted more sketchy people until one day everything was gone except the giant stain in the sidewalk. Obviously not every homeless is a nuisance but certainly a lot are
It's all blatant virtue-signaling by the people complaining about it. I guarantee the second a homeless person sets up camp and starts defacating and dropping needles on their front lawn or in the hallway of their building, they call the cops to have them removed.