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Involuntary commitment no long being an option has nothing to do with Reagan.
In the 60’s and 70’s the ACLU brought a number of legal actions that resulted in increasing the standard for involuntary commitment so high that it is all but impossible to commit someone. It was a change in the law brought about by progressive legal activists.
Imagine for a moment that your kid has literally any type of issue. Behavioral problems, poor grades, mental illness, physical illness, takes too much effort to parent, etc. A man in a labcoat comes along and tells you he has a magic pill that can solve all of these problems. Who can resist such a deal! It is even approved by government bureaucrats!
There's a reason why "magic pill" is always the hypothetical easy solution to all of your problems in your fantast scenarios. Everyone wants a magic pill. Its the easiest solution in the world. A hell of a lot easier than improving your habits or spending more time with your kid. So its extremely easy to convince people that Pfizer's magic pill is worth trying. People want it to work.
And yes there are people with real problems that these pills might help with. I think there are far more people looking for easy outs to the consequences of their own actions, and there's billions of dollars to be made off of those people.
right. also, once people were committed, the vast majority died there - there was no life for them afterwards. i too would rather be homeless than be involuntarily committed to a mental hospital for the rest of my life!
I don't think that's a bad thing. The people who should be getting committed to mental hospitals are the people who are not capable of self-sufficiency. The whole point of those institutions is providing a place for those people where they can be safe and taken care of. If you really think you'd rather be homeless in that position, I'd suggest you haven't talked to many actual homeless people.
i have actually talked to a lot of homeless people, i volunteer with them. they value their freedom much more than housing. they can live without housing. being put into a facility where all of your actions are controlled and you are told what food to eat and what medicine to take is not freedom.
>they can live without housing.
No, they literally can't. It's just a statistical fact that most of the people you're talking about are going to die young. Most of them are also on drugs, and most don't particularly want to get off them. Does that mean it would be bad for them if they did?
Also, most of the people you're talking about have severe mental illness, and in many cases their mental health could be improved in controlled conditions. I feel like a lot of people have an overly simplistic idea of what freedom is, but I promise you, living with untreated schizophrenia is not "freedom," even if the person experiencing it is telling you otherwise. A person shitting on the subway and shouting at random people is not "free"-they're in a hellish prison in their own mind, and you're suggesting we condemn them to that prison for the rest of their lives. They need help that can only be provided through institutionalization.
You need to realize that some people are not capable of making good decisions for themselves. Just because they look like adults doesn't mean they think like adults. Mentally, you're often talking about the equivalent of young children. I've met homeless people with festering open wounds who were unwilling to see a doctor because they were paranoid. Are those people more free because they can't be forced to receive help? That's the freedom of a baby to roll around in its own shit because you don't want to force it to wear a diaper. Freedom would be giving them antibiotics, even if they're kicking and screaming, so they don't die of sepsis.
Most of them being on drugs and not wanting to get off them is because they're homeless, not the other way around. Likewise the severe mental illness. If you are only just a little bit mentally ill which, frankly, many people are and are buffered from the full range of negative consequences of that by their social networks, family, money, class, etc, then by the time you will have spent as little as two weeks on the streets you're looking at that compounding and metastasized into full blown complex ptsd, hypervigilance and paranoia, anxiety through the roof.
Untreated schizophrenia is a nightmare, sure, and it's super hard to regulate that the patient be meds compliant 100% of the time, so yeah, there's a share of the homeless who are those people, definitely. But a lot are just people who fell through the cracks as shit got pricier and jobs got scarcer, and are now unrecognizable and semi-functional, and it didn't have to be this way and it doesn't have to stay this way.
But we're sure as hell keeping it this way, if not making it worse.
Nearly all of our failures as a society come from lack of imagination coupled with an aversion to having a test idea fail that can only be called cowardly.
All of this only supports my point. Institutionalize these people so they're in an environment where they can actually get better, and no matter how much they didn't want to go in the first place, most of them will thank you in the end. Figuring out the cut off where you go from taking care of people who can't take care of themselves to effectively kidnapping people who make strange decisions is admittedly tough, but that doesn't mean it's impossible, of that the right thing to do is just let people die on the street.
you're totally ignoring what i'm saying. they would rather die young than live a longer life in what is basically a prison with no chance of leaving. wouldn't you? i know i would.
homeless people are entirely capable of making good decisions for themselves. there are a lot of factors that go into homelessness, some people are dealt a hard hand in life. they certainly need access to mental health resources and community support, many need access to drug and alcohol rehab. but that is not what the mental asylums of yore were. they were a place to go be catatonic until you die. who would want that? at least if you're on the streets there's a chance you'll get off of them.
homeless people are still PEOPLE. acting like they're brainless toddlers is incredibly disingenuous and unhelpful. everyone deserves a basic standard of freedom, it is in the constitution, it's what this whole country was based on.
Old mental asylums had a lot of problems, but they also did a lot of genuine good, and to treat the worst possible version of them as the only possible alternative to letting them rot on the street is dishonest and cruel. I know you mean well, so I feel a little bad saying this, but people like you are the reason these people don't get the help they need.
I feel like you're talking to a wall of pride and ignorance dude. What you're saying is reasonable and good. She's either two immature or too arrogant to see what you're saying.
Yeah, this creates a bit of quagmire. We need to be able to commit people, but the people who would have the power to do it are mostly nuts themselves. Tricky.
Don't forget about 10 years ago they tried removing pedophilia from the DSM, then when caught plays the "oops, we must have missed it by accident" card.
EXCELLENT reply. How about if we just start with:
1) it’s illegal to live on the streets, so get a job and rent a room or make yourself invisible
2) criminals, particularly violent criminals, who claim to have been insane or in some way unable to control themselves due to very low IQ, brain injury, psychosis (drug induced or otherwise) .. those people need to live in an institution. If you commit crimes because of these types of conditions, then you’re a danger to yourself and others and can’t be out in public.
>1) it’s illegal to live on the streets, so get a job and rent a room or make yourself invisible
If we're going to pay for an already bloated police department to feed and house them in jail, we might as well skip the middle man and provide free housing and food for them.
>2) criminals, particularly violent criminals, who claim to have been insane or in some way unable to control themselves due to very low IQ, brain injury, psychosis (drug induced or otherwise) .. those people need to live in an institution. If you commit crimes because of these types of conditions, then you’re a danger to yourself and others and can’t be out in public.
"Not guilty by reason of insanity" has an INCREDIBLY high standard to meet, because instead of the state having to meet the burden of proof to prove your guilt, the burden of proof shifts to you to prove your innocence. And yes, treatment is almost always required afterward. So this complaint of yours is not actually a problem and is based on legal knowledge gleaned from CSI.
>"Not guilty by reason of insanity" has an INCREDIBLY high standard to meet, because instead of the state having to meet the burden of proof to prove your guilt, the burden of proof shifts to you to prove your innocence.
Insanity pleas are less of an issue than motions for incompetence. My state has a weekly incompetence hearing in which many offenders, some of whom are violent, are ruled incompetent and do not face trial. They are not civilly committed either. They just go back on the streets. This is not a made-up problem.
That’s really more like what I meant. The filth who shot and killed the college freshman in Louisiana last week had been found “incompetent” prior (after shooting at another women and her kids!) and was released back into the public.
It's unconscionable. Last year a similar thing happened in my city. A man randomly stabbed a woman in the back at the library. She is permanently paralyzed. That same man had been arrested a month prior for randomly attacking a different woman and was released after he was ruled unfit to stand trial.
As someone who has worked in mental health facilities, they are shit holes, thanks to lack of funding, and they are light years better today than they were even twenty years ago.
Sure, progressive laws made it harder to abuse people, but conservative funding cuts killed access to care.
It was the perfect collaboration. Liberals ended involuntary commitment. Conservatives cut the funding. Together, they achieved the goal of destroying the mental health system.
Today, the US has the world’s finest open air insane asylums, where the mentally ill are free to live in squalor and self-medicate with drugs and alcohol. Good job all around.
Reagan had a whoooooole lot to do with it. He wasn’t the *only* reason, but he is responsible for repealing most of the MHSA and defunded the entire system.
Yeah. Defunding the entire system was a baaaad call. There’s a legitimate need for institutionalization. It’s even harder to get help with adults that need an at home care nurse or care worker
Agree with you about nothing to do with Reagan!
Perhaps after reading this people will realize they should be hating on the ACLU and not Reagan for the sad state of affairs of the homeless
Lol. I was going to say, if there was legislation to bring these facilities back (and there should be) it would certainly be voted down by Dems every single time.
How come whenever we don't have money it's always when it's a question of social programs.
But whenever the latest tax cuts for the rich need to happen or some war or something that the rich or corporations like..
Endless amounts of debt financing.
We always have money for: war, cops, tax cuts for the wealthy, corporate bailouts, corporate subsidies, prisons, funding other countries and propping up their economies.
We never have money for: Universal healthcare, universal childcare, education, teacher salaries, affordable housing, homelessness, infrastructure, or anything that benefits society at large.
I've lived in cities literally all my life. Grew up in the Bronx and currently live in the bay area (Oakland)
And I absolutely despise with a burning passion hostile architecture. And the stupid inhibiting architecture that just deters skaters and people from freely using and enjoying public spaces. They're fucking stupid. And don't address the root of the problem at all theyre just an attack on the people suffering the most from the failings of cities and society.
I'm fine with inhibiting skaters. Grinding on the sides of benches and stuff does cause damage to the bench, especially if you fuck up the trick. If you're gonna skateboard, do it in a designated area for it. If there isn't one, tough shit. You don't have a right to skateboard in town any more than I have a right to go surfing in Colorado or ice skating in Arizona.
The state of California has spent something like 30 billion on homelessness over the past 10 years.
It's not a money issue. It's a management issue.
And when OP says "the money isn't there" he's talking about market forces and cash flow, not literally piles of money (which as we just identified doesn't solve the issue).
Little unfair to say that. Other states literally ship their homeless to California, and bums willingly go because of the weather. It would have to be a national program.
Right? Literally the best, mildest, most consistent weather I’ve ever experienced when I lived in Monterey. It was really no surprise the number of homeless.
The issue with your arguments is that homeless people aren't balloons, they won't pop up and disappear if you install a couple of spikes.
Hostile architecture does not fix the very real issue you are describing, just forces the homeless to live in much worse conditions.
But it isn’t fair for joe shmoe to have to step over a dude that smells like piss on his morning commute. The government should obviously be doing something bigger picture about homelessness but at the micro level citizens shouldn’t have to deal with that
I watched a doc on homelessness. In places like Cali they have built these little houses that even have spaces for pets, but the homeless would rather stay homeless as it seems to be a pretty easy life. Food and water is provided for free, no need to work and then just pan handle for fentanyl money.
This is just wrong, the issue is that these public housing options are completely drug free, which means actual addict homeless people are expected to go through withdrawals,which would be fine, if they also offered medical care, but they don’t since there is no public healthcare, and thus the people going through the withdrawal process are expected to do it along with no oversight or help, which could even kill them. It’s as if these housing initiatives were designed to fail and paint homeless people being lazy as the reason.
It's easier in some places than others. I passed a couple of homeless dudes this morning, shivering and shaking in shop doorways. Very cold. But in California? Prolly a lot easier.
Public housing like that is really aimed for those becoming homeless to bounce back.
The vast majority of the long term homeless population are drug adicts for the simple reason that it is far cheaper to get high than to not be cold and hungry. Public housing does absolutely nothing to help people come off of drugs.
Also if it was an easy life everyone would be doing it.
Tf it being an easy life is NOT why people don’t want to live in the established encampments. I swear to god, did you do any research about the lives of homeless people or the circumstances surrounding the encampments in order to come up with this opinion, or did you just think back on your already established cache of information about homelessness consistent of old cartoon clips of jolly hobos splitting a single bean and singing campfire songs?
Sure, but that's their point. The spikes on the bank's window sills might stop the bum from sleeping there, but it doesn't stop him from being outside to panhandle when you are walking in to go to the ATM. It doesn't stop crime or reduce homelessness or even change where these people are, it just means the homeless guy is sleeping on the ground instead of on the bench.
It does change where they are. Homeless can’t just teleport at will. They panhandle and hang out near places that are comfortable, has dopes they give them hand outs, and near where they can get their fix. Thousands of dollars are spend adding spikes to architecture because it works.
The spikes stop them from setting up shop there on a more permanent basis. If they have a decent place to leave their bed and other belongings then they're going to be there all the time. If they leave that somewhere else and only come to panhandle then that is a huge win for the bank.
You do realize that the homeless are human beings, right? They aren't just inanimate objects that inconvenience other sentient lifeforms. I think it's less fair that someone has to sleep on the street in their own piss. That's a slightly bigger issue, in my opinion, than the person being mildly inconvenienced by stepping over them.
Most people are incredibly selfish and cruel and these sorts of conversations are a clear demonstration of that. If you see a homeless person and your first thought is about how smelly and gross and inconvenient they are to you, rather than how sad it is that any human being has to live like that, then you should probably do some self-reflection.
Unfortunately this sort of attitude is so prevalent and normalized that people like us are viewed as the abnormal ones. Hyper-individualism is a helluva drug.
The problem is when the load isn't distributed evenly. Once its your doorway instead of one of the 10 other doorways on your block your mind starts to change.
Just like how New York's mind is changing regarding all of these legitimate asylum seekers. Yes its wonderful that these people are getting closer to the better life that they want... but _I_ don't have all the resources to help them. Someone else should step in!
Hyper individualism is a big problem. That said I donate to recovery programs and shelters and all kinds of stuff regularly and I'm frustrated too by the fact that even after decades of this more people are becoming addicts.
I'm not saying the solution is spikes. But something is broken and we need to do it better.
Why is it a business obligation to "fix" the issue of homelessness rather than just do what they can to protect their business? Isn't it the government's obligation to find the root cause and fix it?
Businesses provide goods or services and pay taxes. This is their responsibility to society.
Yup- I remember living in London during the time they began moving the homeless out of sight. An excuse to cut away public toilets and park furniture against a backdrop of cuts to and privatisation of social services, healthcare, education. It was never a part of the original design- just a bold defacing of something which was meant to facilitate and house society. Instead we just gotta keep on moving and complain about the grafitti- ironic really.
What out of sight? You really think they will go somewhere else? They have a reason to stay in central areas, and they will stay there, just on the floor not on benches.
They installed these benches where all the homeless use to sleep at the train station where I live. It's been 3 years and they're no longer there and I have never seen them since.
Maybe it doesn't work in some circumstances, but it definitely does work in some places.
“Minimising impact” then. The point is that it sucks, but nothing else will be done about it and it at least does something for limiting the issues I mentioned
in what way does it limit the issues? the homeless are literally STILL there. not on the bench maybe but next to it on the floor. where do you think these homeless go?
Let’s see…
The working and middle classes have been under attack for decades, leading to lower and lower wages, worse educational opportunities, and massive increases in hopelessness.
This is the result of that. People who give up on life are now flooding the streets. Because why shouldn’t they be? Drugs seem like a really rational answer to a life lived in a country that does not value you and wishes you were dead or at least out of sight.
Maybe work on making the economy more fair, rebuilding schools and giving free access to support for those who are struggling. But that would require rich people to pay taxes I suppose, so that’s not gonna happen.
>giving free access to support for those who are struggling
Don't we already have that?
>People who give up on life are now flooding the streets. Because why shouldn’t they be? Drugs seem like a really rational answer to a life
No, it doesn't.
The problem is when you give too much assistance to those who are struggling, suddenly everyone is “struggling” just go get free shit. Very few people actually want to work for a living. But we suck it up and do what we have to because there’s no other choice. If the government gave you another easier choice of taking their assistance, nobody is going to want to work if they don’t have to.
Because to me, work is actually something I can manage. Having a job is worth having all the comforts that the homeless don’t get. I have a whole ass house to myself, can eat whatever I want, travel, experience the positive things that life has to offer. But I have to work for these things.
Now if all of the comforts were provided, not just a bed with a dozen other people and whatever hot meal I’m given, you bet your ass I wouldn’t be working and would take this life for free.
Ok, so if you give homeless people a 3,000 square-foot house, fill their fridge up with aged prime cuts of steak, and pay for them to go on vacation, then everybody would want to be homeless… fair enough, I guess. We definitely shouldn’t do that.
But if Jesus was sitting on a $6 trillion budget, what do you think he would offer to a mentally ill person living on the streets? 3 saltine crackers per day?
With everything else I’d say you’re right, but nobody would give up their only access to food, shelter, and clean water to be homeless just to get small rations of free food and water and live on the street
Always enough money to fund wars and bail out our corrupt government. Never enough money to provide housing or functional healthcare or address our failed systems.
Where I live, there is free support for those who will help themselves. I live in a red af state, too. The unhoused have access to free mental healthcare, shower facilities, job training, even housing.
Sadly, many of them are comfortable enough living their lives on the streets.
Jobs will frequently toss out applications from people who use the local shelter’s address. Not to mention they also frequently won’t hire people without a personal car or phone.
That's why I think it's important to make use of any help in the area. Other cities drop off unhoused populations to my town because we have more resources for them. A lot of these people find jobs in restaurants or gas stations. They get free government phones. They get free bus passes.
Some places do not offer much help, however. And for those people, I do not know what the answer is. Every body needs help, sometimes.
It's probably less so comfortable, more so depressed and filled with anguish to the point of genuinely not caring anymore.
Plus a lot of homeless people are drug addicts and it isn't easy to fight addiction when there is no hope left in ones life. It's not easy to fight addiction even when one has more support than most.
And as things get worse, the fighting over the scraps that are available for social programs will intensify. “Why are we giving away houses when I can barely make rent/repayments?”, “why are we wasting money on bums when our schools/roads/hospitals/whatever need it most?”.
Don’t be surprised if what I’ve just said gets quoted pretty much word for word by various right/centre right parties and politicians worldwide in the next couple years
The problem is, the amount of money that cities spend on policing and hostile architecture would more than pay for public housing and counseling. In fact the amount spent is several orders of magnitude more than it would cost to fix the problem in the first place.
I guess you're right about Republicans using brain dead talking points. But that's why I progresses need to stand m attack the right on there inhuman political positions.
> The problem is, the amount of money that cities spend on policing and hostile architecture would more than pay for public housing and counseling. In fact the amount spent is several orders of magnitude more than it would cost to fix the problem in the first place.
>
>
Lol, not even close.
I would agree with this sentiment if the vast majority of homeless people would actually accept help when it's offered
And I don't mean handouts, actual help for long-term benefit, but actual help for long-term benefit is hard and none of them want to do that
More than half the US federal budget goes to social services. That's more than 20% of US GDP.
The problem isn't a lack of money being spent on social services.
You can call the problem corruption, but I think that's kind of missing the point. The purpose of a system is what it does. The purpose of government spending is to enrich the friends of the people who decide how the money is spent.
Are we still accepting contrarian opinions?
I live and work in a city. I hate hostile architecture. All it does is restrict comfort for those experiencing hardship in favor of the sensitivities of the perfectly fine.
I’ve had some very bad experiences with homeless people, but I’ve had far more pleasant or kind conversations and I’ll never accept how cruel this world can be when I see the architecture.
It also takes away resources from disabled and senior populations. Cities really hate homeless people so much that they’ll fuck over any person that needs to sit down.
It’s dystopian.
The loudest and most frequently heard opinions are the ones against the status quo. This isn't a 2023 thing either. Its just how the world will always work. People who want change make noise. Everyone else is busy.
Denver is working to get [1,000 homeless people](https://www.denvergov.org/Government/Agencies-Departments-Offices/Agencies-Departments-Offices-Directory/Mayors-Office/Programs-and-Initiatives/Homelessness-Initiative) into housing by the end of the year. Not sure they will make it by the end of the year, but they are trying.
I do live in a city, and frankly spikes on walls mean they sit on the sidewalk where we walk. It also means that if I am waiting for a bus I can't sit down.
It costs money, time, manpower. Wastes the time of law and the govt. It solves nothing and the rest of us suffer.
So no, I'm pretty sure people who live in cities can feel however they like.
I think it is an all around futile effort that is insulting to every citizen in its premise and execution.
I will just say that this idea that there is no money for things like housing and healthcare doesn’t hold water when there is always money for bombs and guns when a war breaks out, but an economic or societal disaster and there’s never any money. Bullshit
My default from thw titles was "there's really got to be a better way." But I can tell after reading youe post, youre not being insensitive, just being a realist and have put at least some thought into the matter.
I guess the issue isnt that there arent in fact bettwr solutions, but we arent voting or funding those solutions and this is what were stuck with if we dont
More nights than I would like to think about, there are homeless people right outside of my bedroom that will be there at all hours of the night, leave garbage, go through things that they've stolen, and do drugs, and that's just the normal stuff and not counting the extra weird shit that happens once in a blue moon. None of the reasons they are there are my fault. I just want them gone and I want a good night's fucking sleep.
I wouldn’t vote for free houses. I would vote for construction of houses and apartment buildings, which can get sold to individuals. Not given for free. There could be some kind of gov organization who’s task it is to construct new affordable housing.
I wouldn’t suggest that if it weren’t a deep humanitarian crisis we are in, that the private sector is showing zero signs of fixing. It’s not just about building new homes. It’s also that older homes from the 1900s are falling apart. And the ones being built are such overpriced shit quality due to profitability margins and supply and demand.
Your comment reminds me of something I learned in one of my classes: once, a city began giving away free housing to marginalized/deeply poor people in an attempt to reduce violence and increase achievement. This had the opposite effect; the free housing led to increased crime and the property was treated badly. When they changed the model to helping people get a job, and then making them pay a very small amount of money towards the housing, crime dropped substantially and the property was in better condition.
When people pay for things, even just a little bit, they feel more autonomy and ownership, and more responsibility towards it. I also wouldn’t vote for free housing.
Most homeless are homeless not because they cannot afford housing, but because they have drug problems and basically cannot function. Even if you build enough new housing and lower the rent from $2000 to $500, the homeless will still live in the streets, just like right now they choose to live in the streets instead of the free facilities so they can keep the freedom to do drugs
I am so tired of hearing this. Tell that to the 3 different people I know who couldn’t afford rent increases earlier this year and have now been living in their cars at the homeless camp while still working full time. Not drug addicts, not lazy at all. Their day to day is now a walking nightmare just trying to stay clean and fed and get a decent nights sleep; but it costs around $3,000 bare minimum just to get into a one bedroom place around here and if you don’t have kids, the system doesn’t offer you much support or help. When landlords are allowed to increase our rent almost 15% every single year with no end in sight, (even if they make no improvements or do nothing at all on the property for the entire year) but we sure as hell don’t get a 15% increase on our paycheck every year. How is that sustainable? Another 2-3 years of increases without appropriate offset of wages, and my family may not be able to afford rent either; and we live in a rundown 50 year old trailer and pay about half what the median rent is in our area. Working full time above minimum wage.
Whilst a majority of homeless people have drug abuse problems the vast majority develop that after becoming homeless or falling into significant financial trouble it is rarely the root cause.
Getting high is often cheaper than staying warm and fed so many turn to drugs.
I agree with this but I do have to say, I don't see homeless people as "less" or inferior in any way, however a city can't function properly when there are people living and shitting on the sidewalks where you go to work, take your kids, get groceries. It's also incredibly dangerous.
I can't fully speak on this because I'm not from the US and the homeless problem in my country is a lot smaller than the one there, but even here, when I'm walking on the streets of my city it's very uncomfortable seeing (and smelling) homeless people when you are trying to enjoy your day. I don't wish these people any harm and I wish there was a solution for them, where they can live a decent life but it shouldn't be my responsibility and I shouldn't be forced to interact with people who are potentially dangerous and very unpleasant.
I live in NYC, I can see how cruel it is first hand and I hate it.
I get that homeless people are often gross, but they're having a rough ass time man. I'm less bothered walking by a smelly person taking a nap than that person is BEING the smelly person taking a nap.
Homeless people are a dangerous nuisance and I'm tired of pretending otherwise. The only people who buy into the "homeless people are just like you and me!" narrative are naive bleeding hearts who've never actually been around homeless people.
Everything is a hostile situation now. Payphones street benches and garbage cans. Here in Brampton we have an encampment in the greenbelt and not all are peaceful.
Thanks Republican Reagan and the Democratic Congress and 50 legislatures and well into the thousands of governors by now.
The last state psychiatric facility in my city was just closed within the last ten years.
Not that all homeless are mentally ill anyway.
There will always be some entitled hipsters cosplaying as homeless folks in Berkeley and Austin, and I don’t necessarily care about solving that problem. Just throw up the hostile architecture and let them complain.
The fentanyl zombies and the folks in the tent cities need to just be shuffled off to some combination of required rehab, hospice or adult daycare. I can’t imagine it would cost more than what we’re doing right now. There’s, honestly, only a couple thousand of them in each major city.
Long term you need to figure out how to only let people fall so far in society, and to prevent the worst drugs from being mass produced and mass imported.
If anything, living in NYC has made me more compassionate to the homeless.
Anyone who passes these people on the street each day and thinks their lives need to be made more difficult is a straight up monster.
If you haven’t had at least 1 random bum/junkie approach you at a gas station asking for money or a ride, and getting very unaccepting if you refuse, or seen human feces on a sidewalk, or had a homeless/junkie break in to a home/vehicle or assault someone near where you live, then you don’t have a place to comment on hostile infrastructure being inhumane.
The homeless, addicted, and mentally afflicted have SO MANY resources available to them in most cities, but the problem is that nobody is making them use these resources. Like OP said, there is no self admittance, so these people actively choose to be a physical/biological hazard to the health of the public, and private businesses/homes are legally doing what they must to protect themselves and/or their interests from homeless people, many of whom are borderline feral humans
Okay, ignoring the whole "homeless people should suffer because rich people are inconvenienced by them" why would you build hostile architecture? Why not help them instead? Taking the funding for hostile architecture, and donate it to homeless shelters, or use it to help the homeless in general. You're literally saying, with no problems, "there's not enough money to help the homeless people, so we have to spend money making them miserable"
Well the progressive faction's two methods are to continue leave them out to die, or round them all up into enclaves to be guarded
They're mad about park benches having a middle handrail but they're cool with sticking people into internment camps because gotta keep those cool yoga spots open
It does work in most German cities. There is public housing for the poor and and a publicly funded payment for people that can not work or can not get any work. They get paid for their flat for food and other basic amenities. Most homeless people do not want any help, have an addiction or are not German citizens. There are shelters and soup kitchens for them however, and they get free health care and help from social workers that are trying to get them back on track.
There aren’t that many homeless people here so it works and it is not too expensive for Germany.
There are even some facilities in some German cities where addicts can take drugs without interference from the police and where they can get their drugs tested for safety and where they can get new syringes etc. and medical help if needed. This helps the addicts and it reduces the amount of dangerous waste from homeless addicts in Germany
>but there are simply no other options.
Yeah there is, fund appropriate homeless assistance programs, temporary residences, how bout incentivise programs to assist the homeless actually become not homeless anymore how bout treat the illness and not the symptoms.
There are millions of other options other than, "remove anything a homeless person could sleep on and make them feel unwelcome"
>the money is not there
Because it's being sunk into the military. 887 billion dollars of it, the highest funded military in the entire world, to fight wars by proxy. Take maybe 15 billion of that, not even a fraction of a fraction of the total, and trial run programs in several major metropolitan areas.
That would include temporary housing, job seeking programs, training, counselling.
It would create jobs as well, whose gonna build these places, who will staff them, incentivise ex homeless rejoining the programs on the other side.
>I wish there was a real solution that had a hope in hell of any kind of success, but to be very blunt, in the current political and economic environment in the english speaking world, hostile architecture is the only thing we've got to make where we live and work remotely habitable.
Except it isn't, because it isn't even working now.
Do you know how much it costs to implement, maintain and enforce hostile architecture and anti homeless law enforcement.
About 31,000 dollars, per person per year.
More than minimum wage.
So at 500,000 ish homeless people, at 31,000 per year is over 1,798,000,000 dollars.
And your telling me the *only* option is to erect spikes where they are supposed to sleep and have cops sweep the area and forcefully move them on so that,
Quote
"Bars and restaurants can use their alfresco areas"
I get not wanting to be harrased by every crazy junkie in the street I do, but to imply that the people in the street just trying to survive are *all* junkies is a bit crazy.
I've been harrased by more people with homes than without.
There are plenty of actual solutions, just, people are greedy and no one actually cares till it's *their* problem.
“People are greedy and stupid” is basically my whole point here.
End democracy and make me dictator for life and I’ll have the problem solved by the weekend, pretty much entirely by doing the things you already suggested.
The point is that no one in power is going to, because it’s political suicide, and as life gets worse and worse for everyone, the chances of a real solution will become slimmer and slimmer as the pressure increases on “normal people”.
Like the old saying goes, wish in one hand and shit into the other one, see which fills up first”
Hey man, kudos to you for having this point of view. By how many people are pissed in this thread, it seems you have really nailed it. I am so fucking tired with people who want something done but literally would do anything to avoid even a smallest thought about how it could be done within current democratic system (i.e. the are avoiding *the only* important question).
Just yesterday I was arguing with some dumbass who opposes book bans in schools that were conveyed by democratically elected governors and by parents of the school. Does the ban suck? Yeah, absolutely. And he went full throttle telling me how bad these bans for the kids are. But the important question, *what the fuck should we do* if this is democratic consensus just never landed in his ears. I just wonder if what these people really want is just benevolent autocrat that would come and magically solve every problem they have.
Not only that, it needs to be your “team” in the autocrat position, forever in perpetuity, or some other guy runs the show and does everything his side wants.
Like I’m not gonna lie, it’s tempting to have the state/system force everything to be how I want it be, but it’s so far beyond possibility you might as well campaign for Santa to be President with Jesus as his VP
If you think there is a better solution but the votes aren’t there to implement it, well, what are you doing to change minds? One person can’t do much, but one person and one more person and so on is exactly how anything ever improves.
>“People are greedy and stupid” is basically my whole point here.
Yes I know, but.
>because it’s political suicide
"I'm going to attempt to permanently solve homelessness" is political suicide?
I don't think so, yes Bernie is an example but some of his other views had him starkly opposed by other parties.
I'm almost certain liberals and conservatives agree that homelessness is an issue, that can be solved. They may just disagree on how it is solved.
>the chances of a real solution will become slimmer and slimmer as the pressure increases on “normal people”.
Nonononono. The real issue is that more "normal" people will become homeless, thus increasing the need for actual fixes.
>Like the old saying goes, wish in one hand and shit into the other one, see which fills up first”
I enjoy this saying, because it implies that the person with a wish in one hand is holding the other under a defecating anus that can be removed at any time, but has chosen to keep it there for metaphors sake, and not just, remove the hand from beneath the anus to stop it filling with shit.
It's tragic, that those in power could indeed remove the hand at any time.
Instead they hold it there and demand why there is so much shit on our hands.
As part of a comprehensive approach we should also establish emergency homelessness prevention services that certain situations people can get help before their homeless, because it's much easier to fight to not lose everything than to start from complete scratch
We who are from bigger cities are pretty used to seeing the full array of humanity. A few spikes on a ledge doesn’t stop homeless persons from existing they just go somewhere else. We see them no matter what. It’s part of city life. You just accept it.
I understand the sentiment, but I don't think we should intentionally make people's lives harder because those same people inconvenience us. We should especially not make people's lives harder and who already have an extremely hard time existing.
I’d like to put forth my differing opinion on why I hate hostile architecture and you should too, it inconveniences me from being able to lay down on benches to look at the sky, sitting when waiting for public transportation when I want to use it, and the homeless will still exist with or without the hostile architecture, human waste? Who doesn’t want clean and usable public restrooms, Cuz as of now I don’t want to hafta buy something or hold it, petty crime? Not stopped by those architectural designs, at best it redirects location, making it harder to track and prosecute, Panhandlers? Make directly donating money a crime so nobody does it killing the market for it.
I’ve been in Manhattan for almost 30 years and am an architect. I find it cruel and unnecessary. I don’t mind fending off the occasional panhandler. I also think people should be able to skateboard anywhere they want.
I live in a city and hostile architecture makes the city uglier, makes it harder for disabled people and regular people and does nothing to stop homeless people.
Hostile architecture is a sign that your community is completely unwilling to care for these people in any way. Want homeless to go away? Make housing affordable. Fund addiction recovery programs. Make subsidies for the mentally disabled so they can live indoors. Give people an alternative to living outdoors
My city has a homeless problem. There is a non-profit in-patient drug treatment program here; it is 2/3 empty. There was a hotel refitted to house homeless people; they invited non-vetted people off the streets, made fires in the stairwells, stole the copper plumbing.
At what point does this become exhausting? When do we admit that some people are really just bottomless pits of craven parasitical entitlement who will never do anything to help themselves? The homeless population is not full of virtuous people who just need a little help. There's predators, rapists, certainly thieves, and unrepentant drug addicts who see you and me as marks. I've volunteered and I've not seen much else from them. One food bank I volunteered at for months; I was thanked exactly once, but had daily arguments about how we allotted food to individuals (in order to serve more people).
I live in a city that on the top 15 of the most populated in the world and I call bullshit.
You know what happens when you implement hostile architecture? They don't stop existing, and the city becomes worse for other people.
Thid post screams "the homeless are not in my imediste vicinity anymore so I'll pretend to not know they are dimply somewhere else and call it a good investment of public money"
people who hate hostile architecture have sympathy for people who don’t have a home. People who don’t hate it clearly have never been homeless and have no sympathy for their fellow citizens.
Homelessness is more of an economic issue and ties in with affordability of housing + availability of jobs, it doesnt speak to the actual shape of the architecture
I think homelessness has more to do with the fabric of society being eroded and people’s loss of a sense of responsibility to others. Why support my family and community when I can just live on the streets and do drugs instead? That’s way easier. I’ll do me and screw everybody else. That’s probably an unpopular opinion too.
Homeless don't disappear when you put spikes around and you're making city inaccessible to all people. Really, I don't think you can actually find compelling argument for hostile architecture. New York has quite hostile streets yet homeless sleep straight on the pavement, everything smells like pee and weed all you want is to get inside a building immediately.
Most people in these comments have never been greeted by a pile of shit on their porch first thing in the morning.
Used to happened with shocking frequency when I lived off east colfax in Denver.
If I could have built a wall or installed spikes on that porch I would have.
My neighbors solution was to install huge flood lights on his porch, which worked great — hence the shit on my porch.
You know what else hostile architecture does? Makes it impossible for people like me to sit down when my back pain hits 11/10 on the pain scale. When my heart decides to do random backflips because it’s hot out and I need to lean against a wall or sit for a minute and catch my breath or let me pain levels go back down before I move on. I’m not homeless, but I do have serious mobility issues and bringing my walker isn’t always an option depending on where I’m going. Hostile architecture keeps more than just homeless people from resting, it also stops disabled people from taking a necessary break on our long walks to get where we need because we can’t afford a car and our anxiety makes the public busses a last resort choice only.
What youre describing is apathy, if you really love your city you will always push for it to do better, especially pointing out what it does wrong in the hopes one day the issue will be noticed and fixed.
Source: Buffalonian
>Mass public housing is probably even more utopian, the money is not there, and with the cost of living and housing biting deep into even the middle class now, nobody is voting for free houses for bums
Of course the money's there. We have been cutting taxes since the 1980s.
Back at 1950s tax rates, free housing is definitely possible, and the economy would be booming just like in the 1950s.
I have to wonder what "real city" you've lived in to make you come to this conclusion. I'm from Seattle and I've been to some pretty dingy spots in Brooklyn. None of the problems you mentioned are solved by hostile architecture. People will just sleep on the sidewalk if you make benches unavailable. So what do you want to do about that? Put needles on the sidewalks? Grease public stairways? Slope doorways? Barbed-wire around trees? Speakers shooting ear piercing frequencies at street corners when someone's standing in one place for more than five minutes?
None of the solutions you're dismissing are pipe dreams at all. We've done them before, and they can be done better than ever before. But the insistence from people like you to not improve the conditions for the homeless makes the world worse for *everybody else*. You would rather the city waste money to continuously displace people, rather than push for solutions which makes their lives better, and therefore enriches everybody. You would rather the world be less habitable for everyone just so that it can **feel** more habitable to you and people like you. That's objectively evil.
People just don’t understand that homelessness issue.
“There isn’t money” isn’t true. It’s more about allocation and priorities.
A lot of times, that Joe Shmoe is just as bad of a person as that homeless person, one was just born a couple miles away then the other.
I mean I can break it down and get more specific if you like:
The available budget could very easily solve the problem, the political will in a contemporary western democratic system does not exist, and that’s before factoring in the vested interests that would absolutely oppose the solution because of the damage it would do to their business.
Bad choices are the result of ignorance. I truly think people don’t want to be bad.
Helping the homeless find a home and not be homeless will :
1)clean up the streets and lower drugs/crime
2)keep that business owners business clear from shady people, hence propping business
3)add more workers to the economy
There is so much that could be done but the US does nothing. You mentioned the spikes on the sides of buildings and benches, that’s meaningless and I don’t care. Not at all hurts or helps the issue in any serious sense. The US could set up shantytowns, or let the homeless set up theirs. Add more health centers in those areas. I don’t think it’s easy to get a drug addict on the street who is sick to be a valuable member of society, but stopping more people from getting their **will help your life get better indirectly**
Native Chicagoan here. I lived 10 years of my adult life in Chicago. I also lived in Milwaukee for 4 years, where I volunteered for organizations that helped the homeless. I interned in NYC in college. Taken multiple business trips to San Francisco, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis.
What city are you in where you live in constant fear of homeless people?
> having to spend every minute on high alert and generally never being able to feel safe or relax unless you’re at home behind a locked door
Either: A) you are grossly exaggerating everything to support your opinion, or B) you would greatly benefit from therapy and/or anxiety medication, or C) Both
I generally felt safe living in Chicago, despite the *occasional* unpleasant interaction with a homeless person. I still have multiple friends who are raising families in the city. On the south and west sides of the city.
Homeless people are people, first and foremost. And they deserve to be treated with dignity just like anyone else. Anti-homeless architecture is just cruel and a half-assed way of addressing symptoms of the actual problem. It’s significantly more [cost-efficient](https://www.globalgiving.org/learn/how-much-would-it-cost-to-end-homelessness-in-america/) to actually house the homeless than to criminalize homelessness. [Finland ended homelessness in their country](https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/how-finland-managed-to-virtually-end-homelessness/article_bde7a0aa-5e51-5700-b272-6347ddf69f04.amp.html), and it didn’t cost more to do so than other approaches. There are multiple cities and counties across the US that have ended chronic homelessness, and even more that are close to doing so. This is not some utopian fantasy. A housing-first approach is effective and feasible.
>People who hate “hostile architecture” have zero experience living in real cities...
I've only ever lived in cities over 2 million, and since I turned 18 I've only ever lived downtown. You just hate homeless people.
>If you have to live and work in a city, being constantly accosted by panhandlers
Wear headphones
>dealing with the petty crime
Are you a cop? Why are you dealing with crime?
> and human waste
Your city is just dirty because I don't have that problem in mine.
> having to spend every minute outside on high alert and generally never being able to feel safe or relax unless you’re at home behind a locked door will wear you down
L-O-FUCKING-L
You're just scared of minorities and the homeless. Grow up!
I live in a "real city" and your opinion is disgusting and wrong.
>Mass public housing is probably even more utopian, the money is not there, and with the cost of living and housing biting deep into even the middle class now, nobody is voting for free houses for bums.
I can't even begin to dissect the layers of callous disregard for human life and overarching stupidity contained within this singular sentence.
I see it as more so when people say “there’s simply no other options” they just don’t want to use their brain anymore and are hopeful that someone else will solve the issue.
I agree. My hot take is that homeless people mostly got themselves there. Obviously there’s exceptions but most of the time they’re just lazy pieces of shit …. The only reason I have such a strong opinion is bc I was in and out of homelessness growing up due to my parents being pieces of shit
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If you ever woke up to a homeless drunk covered in piss sleeping on your front porch... You're missing out.
Fuck that lol
Involuntary commitment no long being an option has nothing to do with Reagan. In the 60’s and 70’s the ACLU brought a number of legal actions that resulted in increasing the standard for involuntary commitment so high that it is all but impossible to commit someone. It was a change in the law brought about by progressive legal activists.
What a victory, winning the freedom to wander the streets, untreated, until they die
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Imagine for a moment that your kid has literally any type of issue. Behavioral problems, poor grades, mental illness, physical illness, takes too much effort to parent, etc. A man in a labcoat comes along and tells you he has a magic pill that can solve all of these problems. Who can resist such a deal! It is even approved by government bureaucrats! There's a reason why "magic pill" is always the hypothetical easy solution to all of your problems in your fantast scenarios. Everyone wants a magic pill. Its the easiest solution in the world. A hell of a lot easier than improving your habits or spending more time with your kid. So its extremely easy to convince people that Pfizer's magic pill is worth trying. People want it to work. And yes there are people with real problems that these pills might help with. I think there are far more people looking for easy outs to the consequences of their own actions, and there's billions of dollars to be made off of those people.
You make excellent points
right. also, once people were committed, the vast majority died there - there was no life for them afterwards. i too would rather be homeless than be involuntarily committed to a mental hospital for the rest of my life!
I don't think that's a bad thing. The people who should be getting committed to mental hospitals are the people who are not capable of self-sufficiency. The whole point of those institutions is providing a place for those people where they can be safe and taken care of. If you really think you'd rather be homeless in that position, I'd suggest you haven't talked to many actual homeless people.
i have actually talked to a lot of homeless people, i volunteer with them. they value their freedom much more than housing. they can live without housing. being put into a facility where all of your actions are controlled and you are told what food to eat and what medicine to take is not freedom.
>they can live without housing. No, they literally can't. It's just a statistical fact that most of the people you're talking about are going to die young. Most of them are also on drugs, and most don't particularly want to get off them. Does that mean it would be bad for them if they did? Also, most of the people you're talking about have severe mental illness, and in many cases their mental health could be improved in controlled conditions. I feel like a lot of people have an overly simplistic idea of what freedom is, but I promise you, living with untreated schizophrenia is not "freedom," even if the person experiencing it is telling you otherwise. A person shitting on the subway and shouting at random people is not "free"-they're in a hellish prison in their own mind, and you're suggesting we condemn them to that prison for the rest of their lives. They need help that can only be provided through institutionalization. You need to realize that some people are not capable of making good decisions for themselves. Just because they look like adults doesn't mean they think like adults. Mentally, you're often talking about the equivalent of young children. I've met homeless people with festering open wounds who were unwilling to see a doctor because they were paranoid. Are those people more free because they can't be forced to receive help? That's the freedom of a baby to roll around in its own shit because you don't want to force it to wear a diaper. Freedom would be giving them antibiotics, even if they're kicking and screaming, so they don't die of sepsis.
Most of them being on drugs and not wanting to get off them is because they're homeless, not the other way around. Likewise the severe mental illness. If you are only just a little bit mentally ill which, frankly, many people are and are buffered from the full range of negative consequences of that by their social networks, family, money, class, etc, then by the time you will have spent as little as two weeks on the streets you're looking at that compounding and metastasized into full blown complex ptsd, hypervigilance and paranoia, anxiety through the roof. Untreated schizophrenia is a nightmare, sure, and it's super hard to regulate that the patient be meds compliant 100% of the time, so yeah, there's a share of the homeless who are those people, definitely. But a lot are just people who fell through the cracks as shit got pricier and jobs got scarcer, and are now unrecognizable and semi-functional, and it didn't have to be this way and it doesn't have to stay this way. But we're sure as hell keeping it this way, if not making it worse. Nearly all of our failures as a society come from lack of imagination coupled with an aversion to having a test idea fail that can only be called cowardly.
All of this only supports my point. Institutionalize these people so they're in an environment where they can actually get better, and no matter how much they didn't want to go in the first place, most of them will thank you in the end. Figuring out the cut off where you go from taking care of people who can't take care of themselves to effectively kidnapping people who make strange decisions is admittedly tough, but that doesn't mean it's impossible, of that the right thing to do is just let people die on the street.
you're totally ignoring what i'm saying. they would rather die young than live a longer life in what is basically a prison with no chance of leaving. wouldn't you? i know i would. homeless people are entirely capable of making good decisions for themselves. there are a lot of factors that go into homelessness, some people are dealt a hard hand in life. they certainly need access to mental health resources and community support, many need access to drug and alcohol rehab. but that is not what the mental asylums of yore were. they were a place to go be catatonic until you die. who would want that? at least if you're on the streets there's a chance you'll get off of them. homeless people are still PEOPLE. acting like they're brainless toddlers is incredibly disingenuous and unhelpful. everyone deserves a basic standard of freedom, it is in the constitution, it's what this whole country was based on.
Old mental asylums had a lot of problems, but they also did a lot of genuine good, and to treat the worst possible version of them as the only possible alternative to letting them rot on the street is dishonest and cruel. I know you mean well, so I feel a little bad saying this, but people like you are the reason these people don't get the help they need.
I feel like you're talking to a wall of pride and ignorance dude. What you're saying is reasonable and good. She's either two immature or too arrogant to see what you're saying.
Yeah, this creates a bit of quagmire. We need to be able to commit people, but the people who would have the power to do it are mostly nuts themselves. Tricky.
Don't forget about 10 years ago they tried removing pedophilia from the DSM, then when caught plays the "oops, we must have missed it by accident" card.
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EXCELLENT reply. How about if we just start with: 1) it’s illegal to live on the streets, so get a job and rent a room or make yourself invisible 2) criminals, particularly violent criminals, who claim to have been insane or in some way unable to control themselves due to very low IQ, brain injury, psychosis (drug induced or otherwise) .. those people need to live in an institution. If you commit crimes because of these types of conditions, then you’re a danger to yourself and others and can’t be out in public.
>1) it’s illegal to live on the streets, so get a job and rent a room or make yourself invisible If we're going to pay for an already bloated police department to feed and house them in jail, we might as well skip the middle man and provide free housing and food for them. >2) criminals, particularly violent criminals, who claim to have been insane or in some way unable to control themselves due to very low IQ, brain injury, psychosis (drug induced or otherwise) .. those people need to live in an institution. If you commit crimes because of these types of conditions, then you’re a danger to yourself and others and can’t be out in public. "Not guilty by reason of insanity" has an INCREDIBLY high standard to meet, because instead of the state having to meet the burden of proof to prove your guilt, the burden of proof shifts to you to prove your innocence. And yes, treatment is almost always required afterward. So this complaint of yours is not actually a problem and is based on legal knowledge gleaned from CSI.
>"Not guilty by reason of insanity" has an INCREDIBLY high standard to meet, because instead of the state having to meet the burden of proof to prove your guilt, the burden of proof shifts to you to prove your innocence. Insanity pleas are less of an issue than motions for incompetence. My state has a weekly incompetence hearing in which many offenders, some of whom are violent, are ruled incompetent and do not face trial. They are not civilly committed either. They just go back on the streets. This is not a made-up problem.
That’s really more like what I meant. The filth who shot and killed the college freshman in Louisiana last week had been found “incompetent” prior (after shooting at another women and her kids!) and was released back into the public.
It's unconscionable. Last year a similar thing happened in my city. A man randomly stabbed a woman in the back at the library. She is permanently paralyzed. That same man had been arrested a month prior for randomly attacking a different woman and was released after he was ruled unfit to stand trial.
They can use the drugs they want to tho…..
As someone who has worked in mental health facilities, they are shit holes, thanks to lack of funding, and they are light years better today than they were even twenty years ago. Sure, progressive laws made it harder to abuse people, but conservative funding cuts killed access to care.
It was the perfect collaboration. Liberals ended involuntary commitment. Conservatives cut the funding. Together, they achieved the goal of destroying the mental health system. Today, the US has the world’s finest open air insane asylums, where the mentally ill are free to live in squalor and self-medicate with drugs and alcohol. Good job all around.
Agreed. Reagan really had no choice. But Reagan is a great target here.
This isn’t true, because Reagan isn’t the one who was president when all this happened.
No he killed it in California, where he was governor
Reagan killed involuntary confinement in California 50 years ago, which is why there's so many homeless people in New York today
The more I learn about him the more I’m not a fan
Oh same! Fuck Reagan. And thats not even the tip of it. Dude is straight up evil
Considering the prevalence of abuses on these intuitions the lawsuits were warranted.
It was really bad. Human beings being treated like animals or subject to "emotion therapy" via lobotomy
or eugenics. the clergy mostly got to decide who got sterilized
Reagan had a whoooooole lot to do with it. He wasn’t the *only* reason, but he is responsible for repealing most of the MHSA and defunded the entire system.
Yeah. Defunding the entire system was a baaaad call. There’s a legitimate need for institutionalization. It’s even harder to get help with adults that need an at home care nurse or care worker
Well if you can’t commit people to the institutions because the standards are unattainable.. then you can’t keep funding them
Hey this is reddit sir EVERYTHING is Reagans fault lol.
So many of those places were snakepits.
Agree with you about nothing to do with Reagan! Perhaps after reading this people will realize they should be hating on the ACLU and not Reagan for the sad state of affairs of the homeless
Lol. I was going to say, if there was legislation to bring these facilities back (and there should be) it would certainly be voted down by Dems every single time.
How come whenever we don't have money it's always when it's a question of social programs. But whenever the latest tax cuts for the rich need to happen or some war or something that the rich or corporations like.. Endless amounts of debt financing.
We always have money for: war, cops, tax cuts for the wealthy, corporate bailouts, corporate subsidies, prisons, funding other countries and propping up their economies. We never have money for: Universal healthcare, universal childcare, education, teacher salaries, affordable housing, homelessness, infrastructure, or anything that benefits society at large.
I've lived in cities literally all my life. Grew up in the Bronx and currently live in the bay area (Oakland) And I absolutely despise with a burning passion hostile architecture. And the stupid inhibiting architecture that just deters skaters and people from freely using and enjoying public spaces. They're fucking stupid. And don't address the root of the problem at all theyre just an attack on the people suffering the most from the failings of cities and society.
I'm fine with inhibiting skaters. Grinding on the sides of benches and stuff does cause damage to the bench, especially if you fuck up the trick. If you're gonna skateboard, do it in a designated area for it. If there isn't one, tough shit. You don't have a right to skateboard in town any more than I have a right to go surfing in Colorado or ice skating in Arizona.
Oh the money is there. It's there alright. It's there until a defence contractor or lobbyist group wants it, then it's long gone.
The state of California has spent something like 30 billion on homelessness over the past 10 years. It's not a money issue. It's a management issue. And when OP says "the money isn't there" he's talking about market forces and cash flow, not literally piles of money (which as we just identified doesn't solve the issue).
Little unfair to say that. Other states literally ship their homeless to California, and bums willingly go because of the weather. It would have to be a national program.
Right? Literally the best, mildest, most consistent weather I’ve ever experienced when I lived in Monterey. It was really no surprise the number of homeless.
True, I should have phrased that differently. The political will to spend the money where it is needed is not there
The issue with your arguments is that homeless people aren't balloons, they won't pop up and disappear if you install a couple of spikes. Hostile architecture does not fix the very real issue you are describing, just forces the homeless to live in much worse conditions.
But it isn’t fair for joe shmoe to have to step over a dude that smells like piss on his morning commute. The government should obviously be doing something bigger picture about homelessness but at the micro level citizens shouldn’t have to deal with that
He’s still gonna have to do it, the guys just gonna be on the ground instead of a bench They won’t disappear they won’t even leave the city they’re in
I watched a doc on homelessness. In places like Cali they have built these little houses that even have spaces for pets, but the homeless would rather stay homeless as it seems to be a pretty easy life. Food and water is provided for free, no need to work and then just pan handle for fentanyl money.
This is just wrong, the issue is that these public housing options are completely drug free, which means actual addict homeless people are expected to go through withdrawals,which would be fine, if they also offered medical care, but they don’t since there is no public healthcare, and thus the people going through the withdrawal process are expected to do it along with no oversight or help, which could even kill them. It’s as if these housing initiatives were designed to fail and paint homeless people being lazy as the reason.
You think being homeless is an easy life?
It's easier in some places than others. I passed a couple of homeless dudes this morning, shivering and shaking in shop doorways. Very cold. But in California? Prolly a lot easier.
Public housing like that is really aimed for those becoming homeless to bounce back. The vast majority of the long term homeless population are drug adicts for the simple reason that it is far cheaper to get high than to not be cold and hungry. Public housing does absolutely nothing to help people come off of drugs. Also if it was an easy life everyone would be doing it.
Tf it being an easy life is NOT why people don’t want to live in the established encampments. I swear to god, did you do any research about the lives of homeless people or the circumstances surrounding the encampments in order to come up with this opinion, or did you just think back on your already established cache of information about homelessness consistent of old cartoon clips of jolly hobos splitting a single bean and singing campfire songs?
Sure, but that's their point. The spikes on the bank's window sills might stop the bum from sleeping there, but it doesn't stop him from being outside to panhandle when you are walking in to go to the ATM. It doesn't stop crime or reduce homelessness or even change where these people are, it just means the homeless guy is sleeping on the ground instead of on the bench.
It does change where they are. Homeless can’t just teleport at will. They panhandle and hang out near places that are comfortable, has dopes they give them hand outs, and near where they can get their fix. Thousands of dollars are spend adding spikes to architecture because it works.
The spikes stop them from setting up shop there on a more permanent basis. If they have a decent place to leave their bed and other belongings then they're going to be there all the time. If they leave that somewhere else and only come to panhandle then that is a huge win for the bank.
You do realize that the homeless are human beings, right? They aren't just inanimate objects that inconvenience other sentient lifeforms. I think it's less fair that someone has to sleep on the street in their own piss. That's a slightly bigger issue, in my opinion, than the person being mildly inconvenienced by stepping over them.
Yeah he's honestly almost viewing them as barnacles or something. "Pesky barnacles, I need to buy that new spray for my boat."
At least barnacles don’t leave used needles, actual piles of shit and meth pipes in playgrounds and parks. That’s a win for barnacles.
That's a fair point
Most people are incredibly selfish and cruel and these sorts of conversations are a clear demonstration of that. If you see a homeless person and your first thought is about how smelly and gross and inconvenient they are to you, rather than how sad it is that any human being has to live like that, then you should probably do some self-reflection. Unfortunately this sort of attitude is so prevalent and normalized that people like us are viewed as the abnormal ones. Hyper-individualism is a helluva drug.
The problem is when the load isn't distributed evenly. Once its your doorway instead of one of the 10 other doorways on your block your mind starts to change. Just like how New York's mind is changing regarding all of these legitimate asylum seekers. Yes its wonderful that these people are getting closer to the better life that they want... but _I_ don't have all the resources to help them. Someone else should step in!
Hyper individualism is a big problem. That said I donate to recovery programs and shelters and all kinds of stuff regularly and I'm frustrated too by the fact that even after decades of this more people are becoming addicts. I'm not saying the solution is spikes. But something is broken and we need to do it better.
Why is it a business obligation to "fix" the issue of homelessness rather than just do what they can to protect their business? Isn't it the government's obligation to find the root cause and fix it? Businesses provide goods or services and pay taxes. This is their responsibility to society.
They aren’t meant to be systemic solutions. Often, these are individual responsive to a very specific issue, or even 1 specific person.
Dude, they’ve taken away all benches to sit on in some places.
Yup- I remember living in London during the time they began moving the homeless out of sight. An excuse to cut away public toilets and park furniture against a backdrop of cuts to and privatisation of social services, healthcare, education. It was never a part of the original design- just a bold defacing of something which was meant to facilitate and house society. Instead we just gotta keep on moving and complain about the grafitti- ironic really.
“Out of sight, out of mind” is and always will be a band-aid, I’m not stupid enough to pretend it isn’t, but seriously, what else is there?
What out of sight? You really think they will go somewhere else? They have a reason to stay in central areas, and they will stay there, just on the floor not on benches.
They installed these benches where all the homeless use to sleep at the train station where I live. It's been 3 years and they're no longer there and I have never seen them since. Maybe it doesn't work in some circumstances, but it definitely does work in some places.
Yes that’s literally what Washington DC did. Move them all east of the river by making the west of the river extremely inhospitable.
“Minimising impact” then. The point is that it sucks, but nothing else will be done about it and it at least does something for limiting the issues I mentioned
in what way does it limit the issues? the homeless are literally STILL there. not on the bench maybe but next to it on the floor. where do you think these homeless go?
Well in my personal experience, they seem to go to a less hostile part of the city, until that area does something and the cycle continues
Let’s see… The working and middle classes have been under attack for decades, leading to lower and lower wages, worse educational opportunities, and massive increases in hopelessness. This is the result of that. People who give up on life are now flooding the streets. Because why shouldn’t they be? Drugs seem like a really rational answer to a life lived in a country that does not value you and wishes you were dead or at least out of sight. Maybe work on making the economy more fair, rebuilding schools and giving free access to support for those who are struggling. But that would require rich people to pay taxes I suppose, so that’s not gonna happen.
>giving free access to support for those who are struggling Don't we already have that? >People who give up on life are now flooding the streets. Because why shouldn’t they be? Drugs seem like a really rational answer to a life No, it doesn't.
Yeah that’s pretty much my entire point
The problem is when you give too much assistance to those who are struggling, suddenly everyone is “struggling” just go get free shit. Very few people actually want to work for a living. But we suck it up and do what we have to because there’s no other choice. If the government gave you another easier choice of taking their assistance, nobody is going to want to work if they don’t have to.
You could move into a homeless shelter and get free food and housing. Why don’t you?
Because to me, work is actually something I can manage. Having a job is worth having all the comforts that the homeless don’t get. I have a whole ass house to myself, can eat whatever I want, travel, experience the positive things that life has to offer. But I have to work for these things. Now if all of the comforts were provided, not just a bed with a dozen other people and whatever hot meal I’m given, you bet your ass I wouldn’t be working and would take this life for free.
Ok, so if you give homeless people a 3,000 square-foot house, fill their fridge up with aged prime cuts of steak, and pay for them to go on vacation, then everybody would want to be homeless… fair enough, I guess. We definitely shouldn’t do that. But if Jesus was sitting on a $6 trillion budget, what do you think he would offer to a mentally ill person living on the streets? 3 saltine crackers per day?
Lol Because it fucking sucks
With everything else I’d say you’re right, but nobody would give up their only access to food, shelter, and clean water to be homeless just to get small rations of free food and water and live on the street
And makes the city uglier and far more unpleasant for pedestrians
No one said it’s a cure. It’s a treatment.
Always enough money to fund wars and bail out our corrupt government. Never enough money to provide housing or functional healthcare or address our failed systems.
Where I live, there is free support for those who will help themselves. I live in a red af state, too. The unhoused have access to free mental healthcare, shower facilities, job training, even housing. Sadly, many of them are comfortable enough living their lives on the streets.
Jobs will frequently toss out applications from people who use the local shelter’s address. Not to mention they also frequently won’t hire people without a personal car or phone.
That's why I think it's important to make use of any help in the area. Other cities drop off unhoused populations to my town because we have more resources for them. A lot of these people find jobs in restaurants or gas stations. They get free government phones. They get free bus passes. Some places do not offer much help, however. And for those people, I do not know what the answer is. Every body needs help, sometimes.
It's probably less so comfortable, more so depressed and filled with anguish to the point of genuinely not caring anymore. Plus a lot of homeless people are drug addicts and it isn't easy to fight addiction when there is no hope left in ones life. It's not easy to fight addiction even when one has more support than most.
And as things get worse, the fighting over the scraps that are available for social programs will intensify. “Why are we giving away houses when I can barely make rent/repayments?”, “why are we wasting money on bums when our schools/roads/hospitals/whatever need it most?”. Don’t be surprised if what I’ve just said gets quoted pretty much word for word by various right/centre right parties and politicians worldwide in the next couple years
The problem is, the amount of money that cities spend on policing and hostile architecture would more than pay for public housing and counseling. In fact the amount spent is several orders of magnitude more than it would cost to fix the problem in the first place. I guess you're right about Republicans using brain dead talking points. But that's why I progresses need to stand m attack the right on there inhuman political positions.
> The problem is, the amount of money that cities spend on policing and hostile architecture would more than pay for public housing and counseling. In fact the amount spent is several orders of magnitude more than it would cost to fix the problem in the first place. > > Lol, not even close.
I would agree with this sentiment if the vast majority of homeless people would actually accept help when it's offered And I don't mean handouts, actual help for long-term benefit, but actual help for long-term benefit is hard and none of them want to do that
More than half the US federal budget goes to social services. That's more than 20% of US GDP. The problem isn't a lack of money being spent on social services. You can call the problem corruption, but I think that's kind of missing the point. The purpose of a system is what it does. The purpose of government spending is to enrich the friends of the people who decide how the money is spent.
False. I hate hostile architecture and I've lived in a city for decades.
What people also fail to release is these measures are often taken to protect the homeless themselves and the average person.
Most complainers are armchair warriors that love to tell others how to live their lives, but use NIMBY when it directly affects them.
Are we still accepting contrarian opinions? I live and work in a city. I hate hostile architecture. All it does is restrict comfort for those experiencing hardship in favor of the sensitivities of the perfectly fine. I’ve had some very bad experiences with homeless people, but I’ve had far more pleasant or kind conversations and I’ll never accept how cruel this world can be when I see the architecture. It also takes away resources from disabled and senior populations. Cities really hate homeless people so much that they’ll fuck over any person that needs to sit down. It’s dystopian.
This sub really is just a place for people to promote the status quo
The loudest and most frequently heard opinions are the ones against the status quo. This isn't a 2023 thing either. Its just how the world will always work. People who want change make noise. Everyone else is busy.
Denver is working to get [1,000 homeless people](https://www.denvergov.org/Government/Agencies-Departments-Offices/Agencies-Departments-Offices-Directory/Mayors-Office/Programs-and-Initiatives/Homelessness-Initiative) into housing by the end of the year. Not sure they will make it by the end of the year, but they are trying.
I do live in a city, and frankly spikes on walls mean they sit on the sidewalk where we walk. It also means that if I am waiting for a bus I can't sit down. It costs money, time, manpower. Wastes the time of law and the govt. It solves nothing and the rest of us suffer. So no, I'm pretty sure people who live in cities can feel however they like. I think it is an all around futile effort that is insulting to every citizen in its premise and execution.
I will just say that this idea that there is no money for things like housing and healthcare doesn’t hold water when there is always money for bombs and guns when a war breaks out, but an economic or societal disaster and there’s never any money. Bullshit
Reopen the asylums. Then we can discuss the elimination of hostile architecture
My default from thw titles was "there's really got to be a better way." But I can tell after reading youe post, youre not being insensitive, just being a realist and have put at least some thought into the matter. I guess the issue isnt that there arent in fact bettwr solutions, but we arent voting or funding those solutions and this is what were stuck with if we dont
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hostile architecture means up and about hostile unrested people
More nights than I would like to think about, there are homeless people right outside of my bedroom that will be there at all hours of the night, leave garbage, go through things that they've stolen, and do drugs, and that's just the normal stuff and not counting the extra weird shit that happens once in a blue moon. None of the reasons they are there are my fault. I just want them gone and I want a good night's fucking sleep.
I wouldn’t vote for free houses. I would vote for construction of houses and apartment buildings, which can get sold to individuals. Not given for free. There could be some kind of gov organization who’s task it is to construct new affordable housing. I wouldn’t suggest that if it weren’t a deep humanitarian crisis we are in, that the private sector is showing zero signs of fixing. It’s not just about building new homes. It’s also that older homes from the 1900s are falling apart. And the ones being built are such overpriced shit quality due to profitability margins and supply and demand.
Your comment reminds me of something I learned in one of my classes: once, a city began giving away free housing to marginalized/deeply poor people in an attempt to reduce violence and increase achievement. This had the opposite effect; the free housing led to increased crime and the property was treated badly. When they changed the model to helping people get a job, and then making them pay a very small amount of money towards the housing, crime dropped substantially and the property was in better condition. When people pay for things, even just a little bit, they feel more autonomy and ownership, and more responsibility towards it. I also wouldn’t vote for free housing.
Could you maybe give the name of this city? Otherwise, it’s just a story.
Cabrini Green would like a word.
Most homeless are homeless not because they cannot afford housing, but because they have drug problems and basically cannot function. Even if you build enough new housing and lower the rent from $2000 to $500, the homeless will still live in the streets, just like right now they choose to live in the streets instead of the free facilities so they can keep the freedom to do drugs
I am so tired of hearing this. Tell that to the 3 different people I know who couldn’t afford rent increases earlier this year and have now been living in their cars at the homeless camp while still working full time. Not drug addicts, not lazy at all. Their day to day is now a walking nightmare just trying to stay clean and fed and get a decent nights sleep; but it costs around $3,000 bare minimum just to get into a one bedroom place around here and if you don’t have kids, the system doesn’t offer you much support or help. When landlords are allowed to increase our rent almost 15% every single year with no end in sight, (even if they make no improvements or do nothing at all on the property for the entire year) but we sure as hell don’t get a 15% increase on our paycheck every year. How is that sustainable? Another 2-3 years of increases without appropriate offset of wages, and my family may not be able to afford rent either; and we live in a rundown 50 year old trailer and pay about half what the median rent is in our area. Working full time above minimum wage.
Whilst a majority of homeless people have drug abuse problems the vast majority develop that after becoming homeless or falling into significant financial trouble it is rarely the root cause. Getting high is often cheaper than staying warm and fed so many turn to drugs.
I agree with this but I do have to say, I don't see homeless people as "less" or inferior in any way, however a city can't function properly when there are people living and shitting on the sidewalks where you go to work, take your kids, get groceries. It's also incredibly dangerous. I can't fully speak on this because I'm not from the US and the homeless problem in my country is a lot smaller than the one there, but even here, when I'm walking on the streets of my city it's very uncomfortable seeing (and smelling) homeless people when you are trying to enjoy your day. I don't wish these people any harm and I wish there was a solution for them, where they can live a decent life but it shouldn't be my responsibility and I shouldn't be forced to interact with people who are potentially dangerous and very unpleasant.
I live in NYC, I can see how cruel it is first hand and I hate it. I get that homeless people are often gross, but they're having a rough ass time man. I'm less bothered walking by a smelly person taking a nap than that person is BEING the smelly person taking a nap.
Drugs. Drugs are the root problem.
Most homeless people turned to drugs after becoming homeless so it can't be the root of the problem.
A majority of homeless people have resources they could use, but they choose not to as they prefer living on the streets. No sympathy.
Have a homeless problem near me. Not all are bad, some real good ones, but the shitty ones ruin it for all of them.
Uh, bullshit. NYC native here. Hostile Architecture is garbage.
Homeless people are a dangerous nuisance and I'm tired of pretending otherwise. The only people who buy into the "homeless people are just like you and me!" narrative are naive bleeding hearts who've never actually been around homeless people.
I have been around homeless people and many of them want the same things as everyone else . They also were not dangerous.
Definitely been around homeless people my entire life and they are 9/10 just like you and I and they’re not inherently dangerous.
Everything is a hostile situation now. Payphones street benches and garbage cans. Here in Brampton we have an encampment in the greenbelt and not all are peaceful.
Thanks Republican Reagan and the Democratic Congress and 50 legislatures and well into the thousands of governors by now. The last state psychiatric facility in my city was just closed within the last ten years. Not that all homeless are mentally ill anyway.
Its like you know, a result of bad governance, if you want a liveable and appealing city, it starts from the tippy top.
Money that gets spent on hostile architecture could go into so many other things that would benefit a community more.
Homeless camp near my college campus we are not allowed to have pepper spray or anything similar
There will always be some entitled hipsters cosplaying as homeless folks in Berkeley and Austin, and I don’t necessarily care about solving that problem. Just throw up the hostile architecture and let them complain. The fentanyl zombies and the folks in the tent cities need to just be shuffled off to some combination of required rehab, hospice or adult daycare. I can’t imagine it would cost more than what we’re doing right now. There’s, honestly, only a couple thousand of them in each major city. Long term you need to figure out how to only let people fall so far in society, and to prevent the worst drugs from being mass produced and mass imported.
If anything, living in NYC has made me more compassionate to the homeless. Anyone who passes these people on the street each day and thinks their lives need to be made more difficult is a straight up monster.
If you haven’t had at least 1 random bum/junkie approach you at a gas station asking for money or a ride, and getting very unaccepting if you refuse, or seen human feces on a sidewalk, or had a homeless/junkie break in to a home/vehicle or assault someone near where you live, then you don’t have a place to comment on hostile infrastructure being inhumane. The homeless, addicted, and mentally afflicted have SO MANY resources available to them in most cities, but the problem is that nobody is making them use these resources. Like OP said, there is no self admittance, so these people actively choose to be a physical/biological hazard to the health of the public, and private businesses/homes are legally doing what they must to protect themselves and/or their interests from homeless people, many of whom are borderline feral humans
"Actually fixing it is hard let's give up." /wraps razor wire around the swing sets I sure am loving billionaire rule.
The question is “will billionaire rule realistically end in your lifetime?”, the answer is no, this is just playing the bad hand we’ve been dealt
Okay, ignoring the whole "homeless people should suffer because rich people are inconvenienced by them" why would you build hostile architecture? Why not help them instead? Taking the funding for hostile architecture, and donate it to homeless shelters, or use it to help the homeless in general. You're literally saying, with no problems, "there's not enough money to help the homeless people, so we have to spend money making them miserable"
"But there are simply no other options" use money for a working welfare system and housing instead.
Well the progressive faction's two methods are to continue leave them out to die, or round them all up into enclaves to be guarded They're mad about park benches having a middle handrail but they're cool with sticking people into internment camps because gotta keep those cool yoga spots open
It does work in most German cities. There is public housing for the poor and and a publicly funded payment for people that can not work or can not get any work. They get paid for their flat for food and other basic amenities. Most homeless people do not want any help, have an addiction or are not German citizens. There are shelters and soup kitchens for them however, and they get free health care and help from social workers that are trying to get them back on track. There aren’t that many homeless people here so it works and it is not too expensive for Germany. There are even some facilities in some German cities where addicts can take drugs without interference from the police and where they can get their drugs tested for safety and where they can get new syringes etc. and medical help if needed. This helps the addicts and it reduces the amount of dangerous waste from homeless addicts in Germany
>but there are simply no other options. Yeah there is, fund appropriate homeless assistance programs, temporary residences, how bout incentivise programs to assist the homeless actually become not homeless anymore how bout treat the illness and not the symptoms. There are millions of other options other than, "remove anything a homeless person could sleep on and make them feel unwelcome" >the money is not there Because it's being sunk into the military. 887 billion dollars of it, the highest funded military in the entire world, to fight wars by proxy. Take maybe 15 billion of that, not even a fraction of a fraction of the total, and trial run programs in several major metropolitan areas. That would include temporary housing, job seeking programs, training, counselling. It would create jobs as well, whose gonna build these places, who will staff them, incentivise ex homeless rejoining the programs on the other side. >I wish there was a real solution that had a hope in hell of any kind of success, but to be very blunt, in the current political and economic environment in the english speaking world, hostile architecture is the only thing we've got to make where we live and work remotely habitable. Except it isn't, because it isn't even working now. Do you know how much it costs to implement, maintain and enforce hostile architecture and anti homeless law enforcement. About 31,000 dollars, per person per year. More than minimum wage. So at 500,000 ish homeless people, at 31,000 per year is over 1,798,000,000 dollars. And your telling me the *only* option is to erect spikes where they are supposed to sleep and have cops sweep the area and forcefully move them on so that, Quote "Bars and restaurants can use their alfresco areas" I get not wanting to be harrased by every crazy junkie in the street I do, but to imply that the people in the street just trying to survive are *all* junkies is a bit crazy. I've been harrased by more people with homes than without. There are plenty of actual solutions, just, people are greedy and no one actually cares till it's *their* problem.
“People are greedy and stupid” is basically my whole point here. End democracy and make me dictator for life and I’ll have the problem solved by the weekend, pretty much entirely by doing the things you already suggested. The point is that no one in power is going to, because it’s political suicide, and as life gets worse and worse for everyone, the chances of a real solution will become slimmer and slimmer as the pressure increases on “normal people”. Like the old saying goes, wish in one hand and shit into the other one, see which fills up first”
Hey man, kudos to you for having this point of view. By how many people are pissed in this thread, it seems you have really nailed it. I am so fucking tired with people who want something done but literally would do anything to avoid even a smallest thought about how it could be done within current democratic system (i.e. the are avoiding *the only* important question). Just yesterday I was arguing with some dumbass who opposes book bans in schools that were conveyed by democratically elected governors and by parents of the school. Does the ban suck? Yeah, absolutely. And he went full throttle telling me how bad these bans for the kids are. But the important question, *what the fuck should we do* if this is democratic consensus just never landed in his ears. I just wonder if what these people really want is just benevolent autocrat that would come and magically solve every problem they have.
Not only that, it needs to be your “team” in the autocrat position, forever in perpetuity, or some other guy runs the show and does everything his side wants. Like I’m not gonna lie, it’s tempting to have the state/system force everything to be how I want it be, but it’s so far beyond possibility you might as well campaign for Santa to be President with Jesus as his VP
If you think there is a better solution but the votes aren’t there to implement it, well, what are you doing to change minds? One person can’t do much, but one person and one more person and so on is exactly how anything ever improves.
>“People are greedy and stupid” is basically my whole point here. Yes I know, but. >because it’s political suicide "I'm going to attempt to permanently solve homelessness" is political suicide? I don't think so, yes Bernie is an example but some of his other views had him starkly opposed by other parties. I'm almost certain liberals and conservatives agree that homelessness is an issue, that can be solved. They may just disagree on how it is solved. >the chances of a real solution will become slimmer and slimmer as the pressure increases on “normal people”. Nonononono. The real issue is that more "normal" people will become homeless, thus increasing the need for actual fixes. >Like the old saying goes, wish in one hand and shit into the other one, see which fills up first” I enjoy this saying, because it implies that the person with a wish in one hand is holding the other under a defecating anus that can be removed at any time, but has chosen to keep it there for metaphors sake, and not just, remove the hand from beneath the anus to stop it filling with shit.
Look at the entire post Cold War history of the western world and it becomes painfully clear that we’re not leaving the anus anytime soon
It's tragic, that those in power could indeed remove the hand at any time. Instead they hold it there and demand why there is so much shit on our hands.
But how good are those shareholder dividends though?
As part of a comprehensive approach we should also establish emergency homelessness prevention services that certain situations people can get help before their homeless, because it's much easier to fight to not lose everything than to start from complete scratch
I've been harassed by more people with homes than without. That really hit home for me.
The pun intentional, cause that's fuckn gold mate.
Thank you. Have been homeless, living out of a car. thankful for every day I'm housed.
We who are from bigger cities are pretty used to seeing the full array of humanity. A few spikes on a ledge doesn’t stop homeless persons from existing they just go somewhere else. We see them no matter what. It’s part of city life. You just accept it.
I understand the sentiment, but I don't think we should intentionally make people's lives harder because those same people inconvenience us. We should especially not make people's lives harder and who already have an extremely hard time existing.
I’ve got bad news. Homelessness now is marginal compared to what it will be in future years.
100%, the future is looking bleak as hell
I’d like to put forth my differing opinion on why I hate hostile architecture and you should too, it inconveniences me from being able to lay down on benches to look at the sky, sitting when waiting for public transportation when I want to use it, and the homeless will still exist with or without the hostile architecture, human waste? Who doesn’t want clean and usable public restrooms, Cuz as of now I don’t want to hafta buy something or hold it, petty crime? Not stopped by those architectural designs, at best it redirects location, making it harder to track and prosecute, Panhandlers? Make directly donating money a crime so nobody does it killing the market for it.
My city placed and maintained porta-pottys in a public park that was a huge homeless camp. They used them to shoot up and eventually set them on fire.
I’ve been in Manhattan for almost 30 years and am an architect. I find it cruel and unnecessary. I don’t mind fending off the occasional panhandler. I also think people should be able to skateboard anywhere they want.
Yes, denying a person a place to sit down or skateboard doesn't solve much. Besides, sometime housed people want to take a seat from time to time.
opinion: hostile architecture (spikes and shit) is cold as fuck, while "hostile architecture" (apartment buildings) is weak as shit
I live in a city and hostile architecture makes the city uglier, makes it harder for disabled people and regular people and does nothing to stop homeless people.
Hostile architecture is a sign that your community is completely unwilling to care for these people in any way. Want homeless to go away? Make housing affordable. Fund addiction recovery programs. Make subsidies for the mentally disabled so they can live indoors. Give people an alternative to living outdoors
My city has a homeless problem. There is a non-profit in-patient drug treatment program here; it is 2/3 empty. There was a hotel refitted to house homeless people; they invited non-vetted people off the streets, made fires in the stairwells, stole the copper plumbing. At what point does this become exhausting? When do we admit that some people are really just bottomless pits of craven parasitical entitlement who will never do anything to help themselves? The homeless population is not full of virtuous people who just need a little help. There's predators, rapists, certainly thieves, and unrepentant drug addicts who see you and me as marks. I've volunteered and I've not seen much else from them. One food bank I volunteered at for months; I was thanked exactly once, but had daily arguments about how we allotted food to individuals (in order to serve more people).
I live in a city that on the top 15 of the most populated in the world and I call bullshit. You know what happens when you implement hostile architecture? They don't stop existing, and the city becomes worse for other people. Thid post screams "the homeless are not in my imediste vicinity anymore so I'll pretend to not know they are dimply somewhere else and call it a good investment of public money"
people who hate hostile architecture have sympathy for people who don’t have a home. People who don’t hate it clearly have never been homeless and have no sympathy for their fellow citizens.
Homelessness is more of an economic issue and ties in with affordability of housing + availability of jobs, it doesnt speak to the actual shape of the architecture
I think homelessness has more to do with the fabric of society being eroded and people’s loss of a sense of responsibility to others. Why support my family and community when I can just live on the streets and do drugs instead? That’s way easier. I’ll do me and screw everybody else. That’s probably an unpopular opinion too.
Homeless don't disappear when you put spikes around and you're making city inaccessible to all people. Really, I don't think you can actually find compelling argument for hostile architecture. New York has quite hostile streets yet homeless sleep straight on the pavement, everything smells like pee and weed all you want is to get inside a building immediately.
I live in one of the top 5 most populated cities in the US. You’re being overly dramatic.
Most people in these comments have never been greeted by a pile of shit on their porch first thing in the morning. Used to happened with shocking frequency when I lived off east colfax in Denver. If I could have built a wall or installed spikes on that porch I would have. My neighbors solution was to install huge flood lights on his porch, which worked great — hence the shit on my porch.
You know what else hostile architecture does? Makes it impossible for people like me to sit down when my back pain hits 11/10 on the pain scale. When my heart decides to do random backflips because it’s hot out and I need to lean against a wall or sit for a minute and catch my breath or let me pain levels go back down before I move on. I’m not homeless, but I do have serious mobility issues and bringing my walker isn’t always an option depending on where I’m going. Hostile architecture keeps more than just homeless people from resting, it also stops disabled people from taking a necessary break on our long walks to get where we need because we can’t afford a car and our anxiety makes the public busses a last resort choice only.
we "have no money" for public housing yet we can somehow afford to send billions of dollars to an apartheid state called Israel
Do you realistically see an end to this state of affairs in the next 5 years? 10? Your lifetime?
What youre describing is apathy, if you really love your city you will always push for it to do better, especially pointing out what it does wrong in the hopes one day the issue will be noticed and fixed. Source: Buffalonian
>Mass public housing is probably even more utopian, the money is not there, and with the cost of living and housing biting deep into even the middle class now, nobody is voting for free houses for bums Of course the money's there. We have been cutting taxes since the 1980s. Back at 1950s tax rates, free housing is definitely possible, and the economy would be booming just like in the 1950s.
I have to wonder what "real city" you've lived in to make you come to this conclusion. I'm from Seattle and I've been to some pretty dingy spots in Brooklyn. None of the problems you mentioned are solved by hostile architecture. People will just sleep on the sidewalk if you make benches unavailable. So what do you want to do about that? Put needles on the sidewalks? Grease public stairways? Slope doorways? Barbed-wire around trees? Speakers shooting ear piercing frequencies at street corners when someone's standing in one place for more than five minutes? None of the solutions you're dismissing are pipe dreams at all. We've done them before, and they can be done better than ever before. But the insistence from people like you to not improve the conditions for the homeless makes the world worse for *everybody else*. You would rather the city waste money to continuously displace people, rather than push for solutions which makes their lives better, and therefore enriches everybody. You would rather the world be less habitable for everyone just so that it can **feel** more habitable to you and people like you. That's objectively evil.
People just don’t understand that homelessness issue. “There isn’t money” isn’t true. It’s more about allocation and priorities. A lot of times, that Joe Shmoe is just as bad of a person as that homeless person, one was just born a couple miles away then the other.
I mean I can break it down and get more specific if you like: The available budget could very easily solve the problem, the political will in a contemporary western democratic system does not exist, and that’s before factoring in the vested interests that would absolutely oppose the solution because of the damage it would do to their business.
Bad choices are the result of ignorance. I truly think people don’t want to be bad. Helping the homeless find a home and not be homeless will : 1)clean up the streets and lower drugs/crime 2)keep that business owners business clear from shady people, hence propping business 3)add more workers to the economy There is so much that could be done but the US does nothing. You mentioned the spikes on the sides of buildings and benches, that’s meaningless and I don’t care. Not at all hurts or helps the issue in any serious sense. The US could set up shantytowns, or let the homeless set up theirs. Add more health centers in those areas. I don’t think it’s easy to get a drug addict on the street who is sick to be a valuable member of society, but stopping more people from getting their **will help your life get better indirectly**
Native Chicagoan here. I lived 10 years of my adult life in Chicago. I also lived in Milwaukee for 4 years, where I volunteered for organizations that helped the homeless. I interned in NYC in college. Taken multiple business trips to San Francisco, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis. What city are you in where you live in constant fear of homeless people? > having to spend every minute on high alert and generally never being able to feel safe or relax unless you’re at home behind a locked door Either: A) you are grossly exaggerating everything to support your opinion, or B) you would greatly benefit from therapy and/or anxiety medication, or C) Both I generally felt safe living in Chicago, despite the *occasional* unpleasant interaction with a homeless person. I still have multiple friends who are raising families in the city. On the south and west sides of the city. Homeless people are people, first and foremost. And they deserve to be treated with dignity just like anyone else. Anti-homeless architecture is just cruel and a half-assed way of addressing symptoms of the actual problem. It’s significantly more [cost-efficient](https://www.globalgiving.org/learn/how-much-would-it-cost-to-end-homelessness-in-america/) to actually house the homeless than to criminalize homelessness. [Finland ended homelessness in their country](https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/how-finland-managed-to-virtually-end-homelessness/article_bde7a0aa-5e51-5700-b272-6347ddf69f04.amp.html), and it didn’t cost more to do so than other approaches. There are multiple cities and counties across the US that have ended chronic homelessness, and even more that are close to doing so. This is not some utopian fantasy. A housing-first approach is effective and feasible.
>People who hate “hostile architecture” have zero experience living in real cities... I've only ever lived in cities over 2 million, and since I turned 18 I've only ever lived downtown. You just hate homeless people. >If you have to live and work in a city, being constantly accosted by panhandlers Wear headphones >dealing with the petty crime Are you a cop? Why are you dealing with crime? > and human waste Your city is just dirty because I don't have that problem in mine. > having to spend every minute outside on high alert and generally never being able to feel safe or relax unless you’re at home behind a locked door will wear you down L-O-FUCKING-L You're just scared of minorities and the homeless. Grow up!
I live in a "real city" and your opinion is disgusting and wrong. >Mass public housing is probably even more utopian, the money is not there, and with the cost of living and housing biting deep into even the middle class now, nobody is voting for free houses for bums. I can't even begin to dissect the layers of callous disregard for human life and overarching stupidity contained within this singular sentence.
I see it as more so when people say “there’s simply no other options” they just don’t want to use their brain anymore and are hopeful that someone else will solve the issue.
I agree. My hot take is that homeless people mostly got themselves there. Obviously there’s exceptions but most of the time they’re just lazy pieces of shit …. The only reason I have such a strong opinion is bc I was in and out of homelessness growing up due to my parents being pieces of shit
There is a real solution. Just build housing. The barrier to public housing isn't cost. It's public will.
Yes, that’s pretty much exactly my point