6mo ago

Hostile architecture reinforces hostility

transcript [text overlaid on several pictures of benches and outside windowsills. the benches have bars, or gaps to prevent someone from sleeping on them.

text reads "Ban anti-homeless arctithecture"]

sauce: https://mastodon.social/@AnarchistArt/112901196516297447

Hostile architecture is among the symptoms of the hostile modern city, where neighbours never say hi, and people die on the streets as people walk passivly by.

Anarchism @lemmy.blahaj.zone

Ranger @lemmy.blahaj.zone

6mo ago

Be hostile to hostile architecture

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37 comments

So...it's okay if someone is sleeping on the benches at the bus stop, making it harder for elderly, pregnant, or disabled people to use essential public transportation services?
- Make more benches. Or, better yet, give the homeless a place to live. Don't blame them for problems they can't control
  
  problems they can't control
  Well, now that's an assumption.
  
  Oh you're right, they must be deciding to be homeless. Why didn't i think of that?
  
  I've literally talked to some homeless people that chose to not participate in society...
  
  So better to just leave them exposed to the elements than change society to not leave them disenfranchised? A choice to not participate in society shouldn't equate to a choice to live without the most basic degree of safety and stability.
  That's a "choice" just like someone who can't afford life saving medicine "choses" to not receive treatment. Its society's failure, not the victim's.
  
  Where did I even insinuate that kind of a statement?
  
  I know three homeless people personally. Am related to one. Two are meth users, the other is on heroin. The one I am related to has stolen money and random stuff he could pawn from anyone in my family who let him stay at their house, so he became homeless cause nobody could trust him and he often wouldn't show up for whatever local job he got. (He has a truck and we gave him gas money until we learned he wasn't actually going to work.) Couldn't stay at shelters either because of drugs. Lived in a trailer in the woods for a bit with his girlfriend until she kicked him out.
  
  And I fully understand that, have you seen society lately?
  Sometimes it is tempting to just say fuck it all
- How incredibly selfish do you need to be to think that not being inconvenienced for 5 minutes while you wait for a bus to your cozy home justifies turning public resting spots into torture devices to make sure those who have nothing at all can't even lie down?
  The entitlement and lack of empathy is absolutely mind-blowing. Not to mention how you wrapped it all up as a false dilemma and then act as though you're doing it all for the elderly and disabled. I guess the homeless people just aren't disadvantaged enough.
  Honestly, at what point do you go "well the issue is real, but when it comes to "solutions", let's draw the line here"? These measures should be scoffed, ridiculed, and anyone suggesting them as a solution be forced to live on the street for 6 months, and for the remainder of whatever career they have left have a cut of their salary spent on getting people off the street.
  These contraptions, after all, are not there so uncle Bob and pregnant Priscilla can have a rest, they are there as a cheap, short-sighted measure to hide a problem nobody is interested in solving. They're a hackjob by politicians to force those already in the gutter even deeper into misery so you don't have to endure looking at them, cause you know, you might actually start demanding a real solution if you are reminded of it every day.
  
  I take it you are inviting as many homeless people into your home as it can fit each night?
  
  Why do you think that's a valid criticism? Like why is that the rhetoric you pro-homelessness people have?
  If you dislike student loans and criticize them for everyone, even if you have yours paid off, must you then pay off a certain number of other people's loans before you can advocate for government policies that forgive them? Like you see how stupid that is as a suggestion, when someone wants government to handle something (literally exercising their right to free speech as the law was written) and you demand they do it at an individual level?
  
  You're right and I'm glad you said it.
- I mean at least here they just take away the benches so the elderly, pregnant and disabled AND the homeless get nothing.
- And what exactly, oh grand liberal genius, is a society designed to produce homeless people supposed to do about it?
- The vast majority of homeless on the street are disabled. I have actually never met a homeless person (on the street, not couch surfing) who wasn't disabled, but stastically they apparently exist. When people weaponize disability rights to harm homeless, they are just using disability rights against the disabled.
  Also, considering what the government sees accomodation and disability actually as - a way to help disabled people literally live and survive here. Eg a wheelchair user needs a wheelchair to live. But everyone has a 'disability' that needs shelter, food, and water to live - yet we don't guarantee those.

37 comments