Anti-Homeless Benches with Armrests - Do they really prevent sleeping?

You’ve seen them, the benches that have either actual armrests or just small bars that prevent someone from laying fully across the length of the bench and instead make it so each bench has two or three seperate seats.

I know they’re 100% meant to prevent homeless people from sleeping on them, but what’s preventing homeless people from just sleeping sitting down, since I also still see that all the time? They really don’t seem to be preventing homeless people from sleeping on the benches and in fact could mean you can have three homeless people sleeping on the same bench.

I understand the whole idea of hostile architecture but it doesn’t seem to prevent people from sleeping on them at least from what I seen.

Perhaps the purpose of the armrests is to prevent sleepers from hogging the entire bench. Then again, i wouldn’t want to sit next to a sleeping bum. Even if they don’t prevent sleeping, they certainly deter it.

I think the word “discourages” is more accurate than the word “prevents”. Sure, one can sleep in a sitting position, but to do so for an entire night is another matter. The idea is that homeless individuals who would find it attractive to sleep on a full length bench perched above the cold wet ground will, instead, seek other accommodations.

Hostile architecture is usually part of broader strategies meant to make entire areas undesirable to transient populations. The goal is to make things unpleasant enough in aggregate that the homeless are encouraged to move on and become somebody else’s problem.

Sure would be nice if society provided those other accommodations.

What bothers me are the rafts of iron spikes along some buildings’ alcoves. Suppose someone trips while walking past? That would be an ugly injury.

If people used to sleep on ropes aka “two penny hangovers”, then sleeping sitting up is a breeze.

Who’s to say they don’t?

One problem that many cities face is that the permanent homeless population (the ones typically found under freeways, etc…) often choose not to avail themselves of the shelter that is available. They don’t like the rules/requirements, whatever they may be, and they choose to be homeless.

It’s a tough problem, but I have a hard time blaming the public transit authorities because they don’t want their benches (and stations) monopolized by rancid-smelling and aggressive homeless people.

While hostile architecture is definitely a thing, I’ll expand this to say that the point may well be to prevent anyone from hogging the bench. I was at a doctor’s office the other day and the backed padded bench had arm rests dividing it into discrete seats. I don’t think that a lot of homeless people sleep in that suburban doctors office and it was more about one guy not “claiming” the whole bench from the center and people are probably more comfortable sitting next to some stranger when there’s a divider rather than hip to hip.

The reasons to have a bench versus three chairs would include space, cost and people are more likely to try to rearrange chairs than a three person bench.

A person can sleep anywhere if they’re tired enough. That doesn’t make any of it easy. At some point it just becomes a matter of choosing the least miserable thing.

Hostile architecture is meant to make the least miserable thing packing up and finding a different group of taxpayers to bother.

Often shelter is full or not availble.

Sometimes those rules are onerous and counterproductive. For example, many have last check in curfews that would prevent someone from having a second shift job.

Shelters are also not necessarily safe, lots of assault and sexual assault goes on there.

It’s not really a choice that they have made.

Or even perfectly clean and friendly homeless people.

Agreed; however, a significant number of these people are mentally ill, and they end up on the street again despite efforts to prevent it.

It sounds like part of the problem is our pretty much complete lack of mental health care.

In our society, health care is a for profit business. Homeless people are not known for having health insurance, so they get pretty much nothing in terms of any health care.

Exactly. I wonder how many of the mentally ill are the result of living on the streets for years as opposed to that being the initial reason.

Even so, there has to be a way to provide basic safe shelter. Maybe if the nation actually practiced the “Christian” values we’re so fond of shouting about, something could be done.

As is the case with so many social issues, the most visible problems are symptoms of systemic failure. You don’t reduce the number of homeless by building more shelters. You reduce the number of homeless by building a society that takes care of people from the cradle to the grave.

…I honestly thought that sentence was going to a much darker place.

Heh. No Jonathan Swift I. :man_cook:

Shouldn’t they be eligible for Medicaid?

A lot of the ones who need the help most aren’t all that reliable in showing up or doing the necessary self-care. Nor do they have the facilities or supplies for such.