this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2025
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Anti-homeless architecture is meant to encourage homeless people to actually go to homeless shelters where they might get help finding affordable housing, not to mention help for whatever issues they have going on in their lives. It’s meant to combat the problem of some homeless people choosing to avoid getting help and continue to bury themselves in drugs/alcohol and sleep on things like public benches, where they prevent other people from using them for their intended purpose.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting people to get the help they need and stop being an inconvenience for the rest of their community. Are you against homeless outreach programs too? Do you think people should just be allowed to set up shack wherever they please in public spaces? I’m not trying to pretend that the lack of affordable housing isn’t at the core of the problem, but even if we had enough of that, there’d still be mentally ill people and drug addicts that would prefer to live on the street, just to avoid social workers pressuring them to address their problems.
Shelters, even if there was enough space, can be dangerous for vulnerable people, do not allow pets, and rarely provide medium term housing or transitional opportunity.
Anti-homeless architecture simply attempts to push the houseless further away from urban centers, and consequently food kitchens, shelters, and other resources. This is deadly when extreme weather occurs or acute health problems arise.
It actively makes the city more dangerous to those most fucked by society.
As far as "wanting" to live on the street, this is a narrative made up to victim blame and deny empathy. It only needs one or two examples for the false narrative to be cast on the population writ large.
You’re stupid if you think this is the effect anti-homeless architecture is having in the places it’s being implemented. They have very little impact to begin with. I don’t pretend to think that shelters can’t be improved, but if people refuse to utilize the resources we have, we must either come up with new resources or reevaluate our investments in the resources we currently employ.
It's a political problem. Houseless people are there because there's no political willpower to create systematic change to support them. So you're absolutely right when you say:
The only problem is the answer to this question is more often on the side of the investment not being worth it, so the problem is left unaddressed.
Not where I live. There are plenty of options for the homeless in my city, but we still have problems with homeless people taking up public space because they would rather be left alone and not address their problems.
Do you think I’m lying? Can you not empathize with this problem? Do you really think all homeless people flock to the resources available to them? None of them resort to vagrancy at all? Do you think the inventors of these bench features had steepled fingers and were like, “Let’s fuck these homeless MFers even harder!”?
Providing resources only goes so far. As a therapist, I can easily tell you that merely making help available does not guarantee the needy will come get help. Sometimes, you have to make it impossible for people to escape the consequences of their actions before they’ll do the work necessary to get better.
I've worked with hundreds of homeless people, usually trying to help them before the cops sweep their camp, or keeping their car rolling so they can keep living in it.
There was a ubiquitous set of conditions:
I've never met anyone who wanted to be living on the street.
I'm not talking about crust punks train hopping. I'm talking about the people who missed a day of work for whatever reason and couldn't make rent one month. Now they're in a tent near available services because the shelter kicked them out after the max stay of a week.
Being a therapist gives you no expertise here and it seems to me that a therapist who sees punishment as a viable means for behavioral change is kind of shit at their job.
It sounds like wherever you are does not have adequate services for their homeless population. That’s a serious problem, and I would obviously advocate for the expansion of said services over sleep-prevention measures added to park benches.
But I am a therapist with experience working with homeless people, and contrary to what you apparently think, my experience does give me expertise on their lives. Where I live, they do have options. I’m sorry your state doesn’t serve its homeless population as well as mine. We can both agree that’s a bad thing. What we disagree on is that this simple park benches feature is/isn’t an “attack” on homeless people. I also hold the position that methadone clinics are a disservice to opioid addicts—due to my extensive experience with that population who are still addicted to opioids, and whose methadone clinics actively encourage them to remain on methadone rather than titrate off of it. Are you going to tell me that being against that is an “attack” on heroin addicts?
I’m sorry you’ve had the experiences you’ve had, but my position is entirely defensible, and you haven’t presented me with any evidence to the contrary. Moreover, your contention that I’m a “bad” therapist speaks volumes about your naïveté regarding my profession.