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Damn people choosing to be broke. To the debtor’s prison with them.
A symptom of homelessness being a thing although it’s a quite understandable mitigation too.
I hate the practice of Hostile Architecture/Anti-Homeless Architecture, just let someone sleep till the sun comes up. As long as they ain’t hurting anyone or the area then, it’s whatever.
I kinda get it to an extent. I’ve had friends that lived in a bar district that couldn’t get out of their door because the same guy set up shop on their stoop every morning. They tried to convince him to just move to the side leaving them enough room to get in and out without trying to step over him. They tried to get him to work with services to help but he had no f’s left to give. He peed there, never crapped there, though. I do wonder where he went to do that.
The right answer is to properly support, help, and house the homeless, and a city with the wherewithall to maintain a park could definitely make a dent on that.
I agree that support is needed, but I can’t take this argument seriously.
Your anecdote is an annoying case, sure. But one personal experience isn’t representative of the broader homeless population, and it’s certainly not a good argument for hostile architecture.
Using a single cherry-picked encounter to draw sweeping conclusions is exactly how you get policy that “solves” a stereotype instead of a real problem. Broad statistics don’t care about your one story, and neither should public policy.
Mental illness and homelessness go together like sex and cigarettes. You can have 1000 days of harmless hobos sleeping on benches, and all it takes is 1 or 2 stark-raving madmen attacking or harassing people to shift attention and spark concern about safety (falling property values because that neighborhood has a “bum problem”)
I’m not saying it’s right, it just how things work.
Edit: I’ve paid high rent to live somewhere and had to deal with panhandlers, hobos, and thieves. Kindness wasn’t a valuable tool. Needless to say it hits different when you are the one being affected.
I agree that support is needed, but I can’t take this argument seriously.
The way I see it, someone at city hall went out of pocket several hundred dollars to customize those benches. And then they’re paying someone to come out every morning and unlock them (or not and just leaving benches locked indefinitely). All so life is now harder for people already sleeping rough.
Does anyone really believe the city councilor or mayor or whomever who went through that trouble is going to be releasing money to improve municipal services for homeless residents? I certainly don’t.
Ok, let’s turn that argument on it’s head. In what world is not blocking benches and seats in a public a better solution than state funded programs to get the homeless sheltered and fed. I can tell you right now that the numbers of shelters available are shit everywhere I’ve been and most have little to no support for mental health, addiction or anything, just draconian rules about in/out times and in most cases fees.
edit addon:
They don’t need the benches, they shouldn’t have to be on the benches. they shouldn’t feel the need to be on the grate in the winter or camping under an underpass.
yay. inconveniencing people AND making homeless people’s lives worse. Makes sense. /s
“its putting your head in the sand, kicking the can down the road” policy, no intention of alleviating it. probably gives reason for certain politicians to get elected. our region started doing something to the homeless in an area of our city(sweeping leo prescence, especially when world event/conferences are around) and they immediately move near the WFoods where i frequent, and they are robbing it blind(because store policy is not even to approach or give them customer service). when before they were more spread out and congregate in an area, that they dont stray far from causing “less” problems.
My takeaway from this is FREE FOOD AT YOUR WHOLE FOODS? Sweet! DM me the address! 🤣 (jk haha)
Mildly infuriating? This is disgusting shit.
I guess it’s time to put a bench there, get a hammer drill, put some holes in the cement, and bolt that fucker to the ground, and then round the bolts so they can’t take it out.
I guess this is how English and Spanish work but coming from language where the word “free” is not used in similar manner I find it somewhat funny that here we have “free zone / zona libre” and it means that the bench is locked and so many things are prohibited.
The Spanish is a bit easier since it literally translates to “Zone Free of…” followed by a list of things it’s a zone free from but I agree, since a “drug free zone” and a “gun free zone” mean that there is, ideally according to the sign, no drugs or guns but a “weapons free zone” would mean you’re free to shoot combatants on sight, whereas a “weapon free zone” would mean an area without weapons.
Hostile infrastructure, intended to heap misery upon the most miserable among us. We punish people who should be helped, and help people who should be punished. What a backwards world.
Somewhere, something changed and money became all, get it all so you can consume. People stopped caring unless money was involved and they were getting it.
Capitalism only cares about money.
But it wasn’t like this 25 years ago
It may have felt differently to you 25 years ago - maybe you were in a better neighborhood or something, but capitalism has always been about heartless extraction of money from the poor. Check out The Condition of the Working Class in England for a 180-year-old account of this.
25 years ago, kinda depending on where you were, cops just rousted and beat the shit out of peaple as incentive to “move on.”
Capitalism has always been like this to one degree or another. Maybe its inherent cruelty is affecting more people than it ever has, but it has always been cruel to poor and marginalized groups.
Correction. The money must be obtained without morality or ethics… And laws are written to be both be worked around or punished with fines, hence making them an operating expense.
The only crime that is punished is those done by people with limited or no political or economic leverage. This is why burglary and shoplifting is heavily punished but a company bankrupting entire communities is not.
Ooh, free lock-picking practice!
I don’t think it would be illegal to non-destructively unlock that lock.
- Ex-cop
I think it would be a lot more fun though to non-destructively unlock the lock and replace it with another one that looks identical every single day after you free the bench and put it in its upright state, locking it in place.
They’ll think that they’ve got the wrong key every single day. Just keep buying locks and replacing it.
That’s more illegal than I can openly suggest.
It’s a master lock, it won’t give you as much practice time as you hope.
Anything is practice. Repetitive behavior hones skills. Experience is experience, good or bad. Maybe the skill is doing in the open quick enough to not draw attention.
I’m aware. If you really want a pedantry fight:
Nothing about my comment implies it would be a long practice session.
I was not looking for any kind of fight and I actually did suspect you knew. I was just hopping on the opportunity to mock Master Lock, since I know they make some of the worst locks on the market.
Full disclosure: I have zero lock picking skills. I probably couldn’t pick this lock if I tried.
not just the worst, but they somehow manage to release new locks that are worse than their old ones, as well as new locks with positively ancient design flaws that every lock manufacturer absolutely knows about, like not including a rear shield in the core, meaning you can just… stick something in there and open it trivially. i’m talking design flaws from the 1800s and early 1900s. their most secure core is used in a PLASTIC LOTO LOCK and none of their metal locks, for no fucking reason. the incompetence is unbelievable.
Fair enough. My hackles are usually up thanks to how people treat me.
It’s easier to lock up a bench than build an affordable home.
Cheaper too.
But, it’s probably not the optimal solution. I suppose it’s a step in the right direction. As bad as hostile architecture is, the old way of dealing with the problem was to have cops beat the shit out of homeless or drunk people if they tried to sleep in a place where other people might be offended or annoyed.
Fun fact. Bolt cutters are cheap and you can do quick and dirty stick welding with 2 car batteries and some jumper cables.
Why are they so obsessed with making sure the homeless don’t get a basic, involuntary need? Like just shoot them if you are going to be this cruel, and you are going to kill them anyway.
Lemmy lol. Answer is simple. Everyday folks don’t like seein’ them, as they consider them lowlifes. City is doing “something” about it, so city is doing good. There are shelters, so it’s not like these people have no options.
Everyday folk don’t think about shelters being overcrowded, homeless being alcoholics/druggies just to cope with their situation and thus not being able to use shelters, or the fact that I’ve seen software devs, here on lemmy, mention being homeless or being in the past.
Most people are reactive, not proactive. They see dirty homeless person, they feel yucky, they tell said person to gtfo without thinking about the fact that it’s a person in the first place.
Yeah but being proactive is illegal unless you’re part of some organization and making profit somewhere along the way.
By that I mean it’s fucked up in the US, how I cant by a few boxes of frozen burgers, cook them make a bunch of burgers and start handing food out; unless I was part of some organization that somewhere along the way is making money or hype to make sure their other businesses get business.
…wait, making field kitchens is illegal in USA? I am not living there so I wouldn’t know. Can’t ya like throw barbeque in your backyard or smth?
Capitalism requires there to be a threat of what happens if you “don’t work hard enough” or don’t play ball with those in power. Nevermind that most homeless people aren’t that way due to laziness or anything they did wrong, just unlucky situations or medical debt or being laid off at an inconvenient time or something.
It would be far cheaper to our country to have free housing, UBI, universal healthcare and social programs everywhere than what we are doing now, but what we are doing now makes about 1,000 people INSANELY wealthy at the expense of the other 342,000,000 people in the country, so that’s what we keep doing for some stupid reason.
Maybe one day everyone will wake up and stop enabling systems that create this shithole.
There’s about 40 other capitalist countries where losing your job doesn’t end in homelessness and medical debt is not even a thing. And we have universal Healthcare, paid annual leave, paid parental leave, unlimited paid sick leave, unions,…
Basically there’s only one country where all of that doesn’t exist…
where are these countries? The only one I know of uses 3 methods to prevent Homelessness.
Method 1: USA tax dollars pay for all of their healthcare.
Method 2: great unemployment benefits.
Method 3: (their most preferred method of Homelessness prevention) Step 1- Find an intact house with Palestinians in it. Step 2- shoot all of them in the heads including the children. Step 3- clean up. Step 4- give house to a filthy Israeli genocide supporter.
Medical debt might not be a thing but losing your home because you lost your job definitely happens in Europe.
Yes, losing your home after losing your job definitely happens in Europe. The difference is that many European countries have stronger safety nets: they may help with rent, provide temporary or social housing, or use Housing First, so unemployment is less likely to end in rough sleeping. They generally won’t simply pay off your mortgage, and the help isn’t guaranteed, but keeping people stably housed can be cheaper in the long run than repeatedly dealing with homelessness. It also makes finding and keeping work much easier. In the UK, for example, eligible people may receive Jobseeker’s Allowance and help with their rent through Universal Credit, or Housing Benefit in certain circumstances.
And yet losing your job can still quiet easily lead to homelessness. “There are capitalist countries where that doesn’t happen” isn’t an argument if it does in fact happen in those capitalist countries. We might have better safety nets, but they are band-aids that only slow the function of capitalism, they don’t solve it’s inherent problems.
In Germany they will pay your rent indefinitely - as long as you’re trying to find a job. Some people abuse the system, of course, but in general works well and you see very little people sleepng on the street.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Germany
I’m sure the ~300,000 rough sleepers are happy to know you don’t notice them.
they’re still sticking to the trope that the homeless are lazy, uneducated bums; at best they’re what happens to good citizens after falling into addiction.
they all WANT to be there, but we definitely don’t want them!!!
but that narrative should be falling apart as conditions deteriorate…
but you know, american education lol.
“BrO, bUt ThE mErItOcRaCy, ThE uNiVeRsE gIvEs YoU wHaT yOu AcTuAlLy DeSiRe WiThIn ThE dEpThS oF yOuR iNnEr SoUl”
made me think of the square girl video lol
Cruelty is definitely a big part of it but also NIMBYism. If we don’t see the homeless people, we don’t have to think about them and try to find solutions.
Yes, I really can’t wrap my way around their way of thinking.
There are people who have such big issues in life, and such bad options, that a bench in a park is their best option for a place to sleep. That is horrible, and something must be done. And politicians think removing their best option is a solution?
If people can show enough compassion to invest in getting these people back on their feet, if you are really just going to ignore them - at least to that. Let them be.
If we’re talking drunk people causing issues, and they need to learn to go home instead - then I’d get it. Not my preferred solution, but I’d get it.
And politicians think removing their best option is a solution?
Because it gets them votes. The politicians aren’t the problem, they merely reflect public attitudes.
They cause public attitudes in most cases, so…
What makes you think that the average politician is actually a leader, rather than just a follower who pays attention to polls? That would imply they have a spine, which seems unlikely.
You have a good point, actually 🤣
But people prefer to follow the one who “knows everything” and that never shows any kind of doubt or insecurity.
C’mon, precisely because they’re in the “Dunning-Kruger” sector of the bell curve is why they can have a big influence in a lot of people.
drunk and disorderly is arrestable. This is only for stopping sleeping 100%
The cruelty is the point. They’ll say a homeless person doesn’t deserve a fee hundred bucks a month to get back on their feet, but they’ll spend 100 grand a year per person to make them more miserable. It’s just good job security (and satisfaction) for the police unions.
They spend YOUR money too, possibly making you homeless in the process.
If you don’t want to see homeless people in your park: HOUSE THEM
Over here entrance to shelters is permitted only to the sober. Its more complicated than that.
In metro Vancouver area theyve bought old hotels and other buildings and set up barrier free housing. But it doesn’t totally fix it because some, due to mental health, still don’t want housing (or rules that go with housing) and some are destructive and start fires.
Its a super tough problem that needs a root cause fix in early childhood years when kids need a good life.
A former addict/homeless person also mentioned that all the comforts, and safe injection sites, free clean drugs, etc just insentivized them to keep using, since there wasn’t hardship to force change.
Its like a no win situation, right now.
Some people need to hit rock bottom to get the right motivation, others just need a chance to get back on top. We shouldn’t accommodate the former at the expense of the latter.
Why spend money on housing them when you can instead (i assume) employ someone to keep to anti-homeless benches on schedule and pay consultants extraorbitant fees to help you design anti-homeless parks
They literally don’t just make Concentration Camps against the poor and the homeless because that would be too brazen and obvious, I fucking hate them.
Ironically, the guy who has the job of maintaining the equipment and schedule
I am surprised they are even there at all. Better than no benches I guess.
Tbh, I think I’d prefer no architecture to hostile architecture.
If we can’t have a chair without malicious intent, we don’t need the fucking chair.
I can’t walk but about 2 meters at a time now. I think with my boomer brain. Seat, sit. But you are correct.
Probably put this in a place with 0 homeless, or maybe a campsite where people would be camping anyway. People don’t talk about how deadly it can be to sleep on the ground sometimes too. There’s a percentage of “this design can indirectly contribute to a death”, in every bench like this. It shouldn’t even be a thing
there is an acceptable number of people to kill per design and this falls far below it.
