Sleeping Rough Just Got A Little Less Rough In Manchester, UK
February 8, 2017 5:52 PM Subscribe
Ok but like wtf. Who even thought that was a good idea in the first place?
(Although everything looks nicer with those brightly colored cushions.)
posted by Night_owl at 6:37 PM on February 8, 2017 [4 favorites]
(Although everything looks nicer with those brightly colored cushions.)
posted by Night_owl at 6:37 PM on February 8, 2017 [4 favorites]
This is beautiful.
posted by OrangeDisk at 6:47 PM on February 8, 2017 [6 favorites]
posted by OrangeDisk at 6:47 PM on February 8, 2017 [6 favorites]
I wonder how much those spikes cost.
I wonder how much it costs to fund a bed in a good shelter.
posted by biogeo at 7:08 PM on February 8, 2017 [26 favorites]
I wonder how much it costs to fund a bed in a good shelter.
posted by biogeo at 7:08 PM on February 8, 2017 [26 favorites]
When your plan to change the lives of your city's homeless people starts wih the phrase, "Well, what we do with pigeons is...," maybe just stop and think about that for a second.
posted by Sys Rq at 7:25 PM on February 8, 2017 [60 favorites]
posted by Sys Rq at 7:25 PM on February 8, 2017 [60 favorites]
Night_owl: "Who even thought that was a good idea in the first place?"
Like practically every building manager and NIMBY busy body ever. Anti rough sleeping and anti sitting architectural features are depressingly common.
posted by Mitheral at 7:30 PM on February 8, 2017 [9 favorites]
Like practically every building manager and NIMBY busy body ever. Anti rough sleeping and anti sitting architectural features are depressingly common.
posted by Mitheral at 7:30 PM on February 8, 2017 [9 favorites]
Very happy about this. I always hate to see people being designed out of places.
I wonder how much those spikes cost.
I wonder how much it costs to fund a bed in a good shelter.
I wonder how designers who put such things in their designs sleep at night.
posted by unearthed at 7:50 PM on February 8, 2017 [11 favorites]
I wonder how much those spikes cost.
I wonder how much it costs to fund a bed in a good shelter.
I wonder how designers who put such things in their designs sleep at night.
posted by unearthed at 7:50 PM on February 8, 2017 [11 favorites]
99% Invisible episode on hostile urban architecture, of which this is a perfect example. As you can imagine, Roman Mars & friends are not sympathetic to designs intended to be unpleasant. Apparently citizens of Manchester share the same intuitions. :)
posted by mark k at 8:25 PM on February 8, 2017 [6 favorites]
posted by mark k at 8:25 PM on February 8, 2017 [6 favorites]
Good. I hate this anti-people architecture bs.
Indeed. Why build ugly, hostile environments like that, when you can instead build an office park, surrounded by parking lots and tasteful landscaping, easily accessible only by car. And suburbs full of houses that are spaced far enough apart that walking anywhere is just about hopeless, and again you need a car. Where the only public areas that have enough people that one would stand a chance to beg for money or food are private malls where 'disruptive' people will be removed.
So the homeless people gravitate away from these places and toward cities, where they remain. And the cities provide services but there's never enough funding, and in the public spaces the fact of poverty and mental illness is never far from notice and the parks are hostile to women walking alone.
And the middle-class people encounter the homeless and give them some coins and become indignant when spikes are laid out to prevent them from sleeping. And then also resolve to move to the suburbs to raise their families where it's nicer and their tax dollars go to maintaining the roads nicely and landscaping the public spaces instead of whatever it is that the city wastes massive amounts of money on.
And when a proposal is floated to build apartments and shops on their suburb's train station's parking lot, to make the area a little more friendly to walking, they strongly object because traffic and parking and people aren't meant to live in stack-and-pack boxes and those apartments aren't even going to be cheap so it's not like they're helping any poor people anyway.
And somewhere in the suburbs there's a guy who's struggling to make ends meet and his car breaks down and he can't get to his job so he's fired, and he can't pay his rent. He'd live on his brother's couch but his brother's also in the suburbs and he can't get a job without a car and he can't get a car without a job and his brother's struggling too. So he becomes homeless, and he goes to the city...
There's anti-people architecture, and then there's the way we've been building our urban areas for decades. Spikes can be installed in a day, are ugly and obvious and cruel, and can be removed in a day. Our built environment is far more effective, it's more pernicious, and we'll be dealing with its effects for decades.
posted by alexei at 8:28 PM on February 8, 2017 [118 favorites]
Indeed. Why build ugly, hostile environments like that, when you can instead build an office park, surrounded by parking lots and tasteful landscaping, easily accessible only by car. And suburbs full of houses that are spaced far enough apart that walking anywhere is just about hopeless, and again you need a car. Where the only public areas that have enough people that one would stand a chance to beg for money or food are private malls where 'disruptive' people will be removed.
So the homeless people gravitate away from these places and toward cities, where they remain. And the cities provide services but there's never enough funding, and in the public spaces the fact of poverty and mental illness is never far from notice and the parks are hostile to women walking alone.
And the middle-class people encounter the homeless and give them some coins and become indignant when spikes are laid out to prevent them from sleeping. And then also resolve to move to the suburbs to raise their families where it's nicer and their tax dollars go to maintaining the roads nicely and landscaping the public spaces instead of whatever it is that the city wastes massive amounts of money on.
And when a proposal is floated to build apartments and shops on their suburb's train station's parking lot, to make the area a little more friendly to walking, they strongly object because traffic and parking and people aren't meant to live in stack-and-pack boxes and those apartments aren't even going to be cheap so it's not like they're helping any poor people anyway.
And somewhere in the suburbs there's a guy who's struggling to make ends meet and his car breaks down and he can't get to his job so he's fired, and he can't pay his rent. He'd live on his brother's couch but his brother's also in the suburbs and he can't get a job without a car and he can't get a car without a job and his brother's struggling too. So he becomes homeless, and he goes to the city...
There's anti-people architecture, and then there's the way we've been building our urban areas for decades. Spikes can be installed in a day, are ugly and obvious and cruel, and can be removed in a day. Our built environment is far more effective, it's more pernicious, and we'll be dealing with its effects for decades.
posted by alexei at 8:28 PM on February 8, 2017 [118 favorites]
So these spikes were basically plastic strips screwed into the ground with two or three crosshead screws. They were the cheapest and most pathetic anti-homeless spike you've ever seen. I'm surprised nobody had covertly removed them on the first night.
Secondly, and almost hilariously, the building in question, Pall Mall Court, has another and bigger section which overhangs the street to provide cover from rain. None of that section was spiked and homeless people could still have used it.
All said, the roughsleeping problem in Manchester is dire. A recent survey found about 80 people sleeping rough in the city centre.
posted by Emma May Smith at 11:41 PM on February 8, 2017 [3 favorites]
Secondly, and almost hilariously, the building in question, Pall Mall Court, has another and bigger section which overhangs the street to provide cover from rain. None of that section was spiked and homeless people could still have used it.
All said, the roughsleeping problem in Manchester is dire. A recent survey found about 80 people sleeping rough in the city centre.
posted by Emma May Smith at 11:41 PM on February 8, 2017 [3 favorites]
"I wonder how designers who put such things in their designs sleep at night."
Comfortably, I fear. Look up 'the banality of evil'.
posted by BiggerJ at 11:56 PM on February 8, 2017 [3 favorites]
Comfortably, I fear. Look up 'the banality of evil'.
posted by BiggerJ at 11:56 PM on February 8, 2017 [3 favorites]
This pearl-clutching over the spikes is only because of how obvious the methods are. A "prettier" alternative method -- say, just less flat surfaces -- would not have brought the local's ire as it wouldn't have reminded them daily of their own insensitivity to the homeless.
Unless you personally invite the homeless to camp in your front garden, any criticism of the spikes is merely aesthetic.
posted by mary8nne at 1:11 AM on February 9, 2017 [8 favorites]
Unless you personally invite the homeless to camp in your front garden, any criticism of the spikes is merely aesthetic.
posted by mary8nne at 1:11 AM on February 9, 2017 [8 favorites]
Just look at the photo on the BBC, they are having a grand old time covering up the spikes, pulling faces melodramatically. Doing "good" but moreover "having fun" at the same time. There is something unnerving about the shameless joy of this middle class family has in the self-righteous intervention into the misery of the homeless. The spikes are merely an occasion for them to show what such "good people" they are, and how much fun being "good" can be.
posted by mary8nne at 1:22 AM on February 9, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by mary8nne at 1:22 AM on February 9, 2017 [4 favorites]
The spikes are merely an occasion for them to show what such "good people" they are
This sounds unnervingly like the current talking point that all protest/activism/objecting to anything political is merely 'virtue signalling', and the people involved in doing it either don't genuinely care in the first place or will have forgotten it all by tomorrow anyway.
We don't know what else these people have or haven't done - maybe they regularly campaign in less newsworthy ways against the total gutting of social care, maybe they donate to Shelter. Maybe they don't and had never even thought about this issue until realising what the spikes were for. But even if that's the case, so what? Something is frequently better than nothing, even if that something just means a cushion - along with press coverage and pressure on the local authority about rough sleeping. Maybe they'll become more politically aware and engaged members of their local community now - everyone has to start somewhere.
It seems somewhat unconstructive to excoriate people for doing something, just because they are not also doing everything else.
posted by Catseye at 2:29 AM on February 9, 2017 [70 favorites]
This sounds unnervingly like the current talking point that all protest/activism/objecting to anything political is merely 'virtue signalling', and the people involved in doing it either don't genuinely care in the first place or will have forgotten it all by tomorrow anyway.
We don't know what else these people have or haven't done - maybe they regularly campaign in less newsworthy ways against the total gutting of social care, maybe they donate to Shelter. Maybe they don't and had never even thought about this issue until realising what the spikes were for. But even if that's the case, so what? Something is frequently better than nothing, even if that something just means a cushion - along with press coverage and pressure on the local authority about rough sleeping. Maybe they'll become more politically aware and engaged members of their local community now - everyone has to start somewhere.
It seems somewhat unconstructive to excoriate people for doing something, just because they are not also doing everything else.
posted by Catseye at 2:29 AM on February 9, 2017 [70 favorites]
I found this blog post from 2014 about the use of spikes in architecture quite interesting. In summary: the spikes are there to stop people killing themselves by personal neglect and visible homeless people are a byproduct of failures in social services caused by underfunding.
posted by The River Ivel at 2:59 AM on February 9, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by The River Ivel at 2:59 AM on February 9, 2017 [5 favorites]
Unless you personally invite the homeless to camp in your front garden, any criticism of the spikes is merely aesthetic.
This is precisely the same argument being used against refugees. 'If X really cares about them, why doesn't he/she let them live in their home?'
Do you really mean that?
posted by mushhushshu at 3:00 AM on February 9, 2017 [31 favorites]
This is precisely the same argument being used against refugees. 'If X really cares about them, why doesn't he/she let them live in their home?'
Do you really mean that?
posted by mushhushshu at 3:00 AM on February 9, 2017 [31 favorites]
There is something unnerving about the shameless joy of this middle class family has in the self-righteous intervention into the misery of the homeless.
Do I ever wish that more people spent time taking shameless joy in self-righteously relieving others' misery! It sounds absolutely beatific.
posted by value of information at 3:07 AM on February 9, 2017 [38 favorites]
Do I ever wish that more people spent time taking shameless joy in self-righteously relieving others' misery! It sounds absolutely beatific.
posted by value of information at 3:07 AM on February 9, 2017 [38 favorites]
All said, the roughsleeping problem in Manchester is dire. A recent survey found about 80 people sleeping rough in the city centre.
I live in a shitty little Midlands market town, well under a tenth the size of Manchester (probably closer to one one-hundredth the size) and there's about a dozen rough sleepers here. If Manchester is dire, what the hell is the rest of the country?
posted by Dysk at 3:10 AM on February 9, 2017 [1 favorite]
I live in a shitty little Midlands market town, well under a tenth the size of Manchester (probably closer to one one-hundredth the size) and there's about a dozen rough sleepers here. If Manchester is dire, what the hell is the rest of the country?
posted by Dysk at 3:10 AM on February 9, 2017 [1 favorite]
People who are surplus to economic requirements are reclassified as vermin.
posted by acb at 3:18 AM on February 9, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by acb at 3:18 AM on February 9, 2017 [2 favorites]
visible homeless people are a byproduct of failures in social services caused by underfunding
Yes, and on a lot of insidious levels too. Whatever City Council doesn't have the funding for to help everyone who needs it, so they don't sufficiently fund programmes to keep people in crisis off the streets so: more rough sleepers. At the same time, Whatever City Council looks at their budget and adjusts their social care eligibility criteria accordingly, to a triage system set at at "we can only help if you're already in crisis". This means you can't put money into prevention to catch people before they're in crisis, obviously, so: more rough sleepers. And then people in crisis cost a lot more money for social care than they would have done if services had reached them properly earlier, so there's not as much money to help with longer-term programmes to keep them out of crisis, so: more rough sleepers. And so on and so on.
Sometimes, the way to fix things really is by throwing more money at them.
posted by Catseye at 3:52 AM on February 9, 2017 [14 favorites]
Yes, and on a lot of insidious levels too. Whatever City Council doesn't have the funding for to help everyone who needs it, so they don't sufficiently fund programmes to keep people in crisis off the streets so: more rough sleepers. At the same time, Whatever City Council looks at their budget and adjusts their social care eligibility criteria accordingly, to a triage system set at at "we can only help if you're already in crisis". This means you can't put money into prevention to catch people before they're in crisis, obviously, so: more rough sleepers. And then people in crisis cost a lot more money for social care than they would have done if services had reached them properly earlier, so there's not as much money to help with longer-term programmes to keep them out of crisis, so: more rough sleepers. And so on and so on.
Sometimes, the way to fix things really is by throwing more money at them.
posted by Catseye at 3:52 AM on February 9, 2017 [14 favorites]
Manchester Council has minimal interest in preventing homelessness, as long as they can keep it as invisible (to the rich) as possible. They've taken out numerous legal actions against homeless camps.
posted by threetwentytwo at 4:56 AM on February 9, 2017
posted by threetwentytwo at 4:56 AM on February 9, 2017
I came into this thread annoyed that my faith in the idea that most of humanity is mean-spirited and selfish was challenged by these anti-spike activists. Reading the thread has restored that faith somewhat.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 5:03 AM on February 9, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by Kirth Gerson at 5:03 AM on February 9, 2017 [4 favorites]
There's anti-people architecture, and then there's the way we've been building our urban areas for decades.
alexei, your comment should be required reading. I can't favorite enough. I lose sleep over how society has just been steadily plowing along in the wrong direction and it'll take twice as long as we've come to fix everything we've done.
posted by FirstMateKate at 6:07 AM on February 9, 2017 [4 favorites]
alexei, your comment should be required reading. I can't favorite enough. I lose sleep over how society has just been steadily plowing along in the wrong direction and it'll take twice as long as we've come to fix everything we've done.
posted by FirstMateKate at 6:07 AM on February 9, 2017 [4 favorites]
I really hate that term "roughsleeping." It's prettified. It makes homelessness sound more like a hobby or something you do on a camping trip. Like there must be a Roughsleeping section at Cabela's.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:14 AM on February 9, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by Thorzdad at 7:14 AM on February 9, 2017 [4 favorites]
I really hate that term "roughsleeping." It's prettified. It makes homelessness sound more like a hobby or something you do on a camping trip. Like there must be a Roughsleeping section at Cabela's.
It's an attempt to distinguish between different but overlapping things. You can be homeless but not sleeping rough (e.g. you could be sleeping on a friend's couch, or in a shelter).
posted by mushhushshu at 7:21 AM on February 9, 2017 [13 favorites]
It's an attempt to distinguish between different but overlapping things. You can be homeless but not sleeping rough (e.g. you could be sleeping on a friend's couch, or in a shelter).
posted by mushhushshu at 7:21 AM on February 9, 2017 [13 favorites]
It doesn't seem that prettified to me. It sounds quite rough if anything.
posted by biffa at 8:37 AM on February 9, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by biffa at 8:37 AM on February 9, 2017 [4 favorites]
I am familiar with urban bivouac tactics and technique, though it's been a few decades since I employed them. Cushions over spikes are a humanitarian gesture, however little they might affect underlying conditions that promote homelessness. Architects can be whores, to be sure, and their customers unfeeling or blind to the goings on around their darling buildings. NIMBY thought is rampant. Really, who likes to walk to work in the morning through the gauntlet of odors wafting from behind stoops and from alleys? Stale piss and glazed countenances encourage one to keep their eyes up and ahead, and their ears closed. I once slept over a heated vent. Its warm draft helped dry my clothes. Anyhow, I would like to have been able to use a public toilet. I'm pretty sure something is wrong with the homeless (can it be a mixture of them and us?), but I don't know how we might go about fixing it, whatever it is.
Here in southern Oregon one of the churches has rigged a portable shower and a laundering facility on a couple of trailers. Arrangements are made with various local businesses to use electric outlets and sewage points (as gray water drains), so they can set up their meager facility. They move the trailers around town on a schedule. The idea is that you can be homeless, but now and then you still can clean up and wash your clothes. Even so, many of the homeless here can't take advantage of this service because, well, because. Nobody actually knows why, but some people just can't be herded into even a token conformity.
Twice a year my group of old-time musicians plays for one of the churches that give Christmas and Thanksgiving feeds to all who care to attend. Hundreds show up. Many of them aren't actually homeless, but they probably wouldn't get a turkey dinner with all the trimmings except for this church's efforts. Family's with kids. There is a line of circumstance, I guess, between being affluent and being homeless. Those who hover just above being without a home merit a helping hand, too. The rest of us are left to make token efforts, token gestures. It adds up to only a little, but that little is precious. Nothing is fixed. We may as well try to stem a tide. I try to believe that we aren't lost so long as we care to keep trying.
posted by mule98J at 10:30 AM on February 9, 2017 [5 favorites]
Here in southern Oregon one of the churches has rigged a portable shower and a laundering facility on a couple of trailers. Arrangements are made with various local businesses to use electric outlets and sewage points (as gray water drains), so they can set up their meager facility. They move the trailers around town on a schedule. The idea is that you can be homeless, but now and then you still can clean up and wash your clothes. Even so, many of the homeless here can't take advantage of this service because, well, because. Nobody actually knows why, but some people just can't be herded into even a token conformity.
Twice a year my group of old-time musicians plays for one of the churches that give Christmas and Thanksgiving feeds to all who care to attend. Hundreds show up. Many of them aren't actually homeless, but they probably wouldn't get a turkey dinner with all the trimmings except for this church's efforts. Family's with kids. There is a line of circumstance, I guess, between being affluent and being homeless. Those who hover just above being without a home merit a helping hand, too. The rest of us are left to make token efforts, token gestures. It adds up to only a little, but that little is precious. Nothing is fixed. We may as well try to stem a tide. I try to believe that we aren't lost so long as we care to keep trying.
posted by mule98J at 10:30 AM on February 9, 2017 [5 favorites]
Manchester Council has minimal interest in preventing homelessness, as long as they can keep it as invisible (to the rich) as possible. They've taken out numerous legal actions against homeless camps.
Manchester is the most visible place in England for roughsleepers I've ever lived. Maybe I'm not rich, but I doubt that Manchester (as opposed to Cheshire) really has that much of a rich bubble.
Manchester City Council has, however, taken action against people who set up tents in the middle of the street, while letting people sleep rough in the very same streets.
posted by Emma May Smith at 10:50 AM on February 9, 2017 [1 favorite]
Manchester is the most visible place in England for roughsleepers I've ever lived. Maybe I'm not rich, but I doubt that Manchester (as opposed to Cheshire) really has that much of a rich bubble.
Manchester City Council has, however, taken action against people who set up tents in the middle of the street, while letting people sleep rough in the very same streets.
posted by Emma May Smith at 10:50 AM on February 9, 2017 [1 favorite]
To me, this is a "broken windows theory" type thing. No one individual has the power to solve homelessness, but evil is something slippery sloped into. I'm happy to see a community be all "no fucking way, there are limits to our callous disregard for the poor and this breaches them."
If we can design slippery slopes towards goodness, maybe being aggressively nice when faced with some small shitty thing is a step in the right direction. They didn't vandalize the spikes, they defeated them in a loving way. Their cushions were not old, ugly and dirty. They were clean, pretty and brightly colored and they also brought food. Take that, haters. We will just come out in force with love and kindness.
Civilization tends to get undermined by people being all meh and figuring there is no point in bothering as this one small thing won't fix it. Yeah, your breakfast doesn't fix hunger for all eternity, but you eat it anyway. Small steps in the right direction can accumulate.
Maybe this sort of thing will eventually help make SROs and other genuinely affordable housing more socially acceptable, and then people who have some money, but not enough for an upper middle class lifestyle, will get off the street and this trend (towards more homelessness) will reverse.
posted by Michele in California at 10:50 AM on February 9, 2017 [13 favorites]
If we can design slippery slopes towards goodness, maybe being aggressively nice when faced with some small shitty thing is a step in the right direction. They didn't vandalize the spikes, they defeated them in a loving way. Their cushions were not old, ugly and dirty. They were clean, pretty and brightly colored and they also brought food. Take that, haters. We will just come out in force with love and kindness.
Civilization tends to get undermined by people being all meh and figuring there is no point in bothering as this one small thing won't fix it. Yeah, your breakfast doesn't fix hunger for all eternity, but you eat it anyway. Small steps in the right direction can accumulate.
Maybe this sort of thing will eventually help make SROs and other genuinely affordable housing more socially acceptable, and then people who have some money, but not enough for an upper middle class lifestyle, will get off the street and this trend (towards more homelessness) will reverse.
posted by Michele in California at 10:50 AM on February 9, 2017 [13 favorites]
Unless you personally invite the homeless to camp in your front garden, any criticism of the spikes is merely aesthetic.
I was literally just in an argument five minutes ago on another website with a jerk who thought that a church was hypocritical for welcoming in and helping support a family of Syrian refugees because they'd seen some kind of "experiment" on TV where people wouldn't say that they would personally put up refugees on their own couches. (This after the previous argument, "Well, gee, wouldn't it be nice if this church cared about LOCAL homeless?" failed when it was pointed out that this church actually has run a shelter program weekly for decades.) Clearly, this person concluded, everyone was as small-minded and mean-spirited as they themselves were, and anyone who tried to help anyone else--especially those foreigners--was just lying to themselves and showing off.
I get the impression that you think your critique comes from the left. You are badly mistaken. With this comment, you are literally indistinguishable from a U.S. Trump supporter. Can this possibly be your intent?
posted by praemunire at 10:52 AM on February 9, 2017 [4 favorites]
I was literally just in an argument five minutes ago on another website with a jerk who thought that a church was hypocritical for welcoming in and helping support a family of Syrian refugees because they'd seen some kind of "experiment" on TV where people wouldn't say that they would personally put up refugees on their own couches. (This after the previous argument, "Well, gee, wouldn't it be nice if this church cared about LOCAL homeless?" failed when it was pointed out that this church actually has run a shelter program weekly for decades.) Clearly, this person concluded, everyone was as small-minded and mean-spirited as they themselves were, and anyone who tried to help anyone else--especially those foreigners--was just lying to themselves and showing off.
I get the impression that you think your critique comes from the left. You are badly mistaken. With this comment, you are literally indistinguishable from a U.S. Trump supporter. Can this possibly be your intent?
posted by praemunire at 10:52 AM on February 9, 2017 [4 favorites]
Quite. Widnes is in Cheshire, and posh it ain't.
And I'm certainly not suggesting that roughsleepers aren't highly visible in the centre, simply that the Council isn't in the slightest interested in throwing money at solutions as per Catseyes comment.
posted by threetwentytwo at 11:50 AM on February 9, 2017
And I'm certainly not suggesting that roughsleepers aren't highly visible in the centre, simply that the Council isn't in the slightest interested in throwing money at solutions as per Catseyes comment.
posted by threetwentytwo at 11:50 AM on February 9, 2017
The council doesn't have money to throw at this. There's a veneer of spending that principally goes on events that bring extra revenues into the city, but otherwise the budget is cut to the bone. Manchester has serious revenue problems (those who earn the good money tend to live outside the city boundaries), and still has some of the most deprived wards in the UK. And let's not forget the extra responsibilities all Greater Manchester councils are taking on as part of the city-region deal.
I'm not excusing the council. But there's a context to their behaviour.
posted by mushhushshu at 12:44 PM on February 9, 2017 [1 favorite]
I'm not excusing the council. But there's a context to their behaviour.
posted by mushhushshu at 12:44 PM on February 9, 2017 [1 favorite]
Widnes is in Cheshire, and posh it ain't.
I CAN VOUCH FOR THAT.
posted by biffa at 1:13 PM on February 9, 2017 [1 favorite]
I CAN VOUCH FOR THAT.
posted by biffa at 1:13 PM on February 9, 2017 [1 favorite]
It was bad enough when local councils started making their park and public benches UNCOMFORTABLE AS FUCK so that you can't sit in them for longer than about ten minutes.
posted by turbid dahlia at 2:56 PM on February 9, 2017
posted by turbid dahlia at 2:56 PM on February 9, 2017
Unless you personally invite the homeless to camp in your front garden, any criticism of the spikes is merely aesthetic
I don't if it's true that people wouldn't have noticed if the methods were more subtle - I can kinda buy that actually. But I don't know what this part of the comment even means. If you were appalled by the spikes but also kicked out people sleeping on your property you'd be something of a hypocrite, perhaps, but who says any of these people did or would? And anyway public spaces are a thing that is different from your house so I'm not sure it's that weird that people find this specifically to cross a line.
posted by atoxyl at 3:19 AM on February 10, 2017 [1 favorite]
I don't if it's true that people wouldn't have noticed if the methods were more subtle - I can kinda buy that actually. But I don't know what this part of the comment even means. If you were appalled by the spikes but also kicked out people sleeping on your property you'd be something of a hypocrite, perhaps, but who says any of these people did or would? And anyway public spaces are a thing that is different from your house so I'm not sure it's that weird that people find this specifically to cross a line.
posted by atoxyl at 3:19 AM on February 10, 2017 [1 favorite]
If you were appalled by the spikes but also kicked out people sleeping on your property you'd be something of a hypocrite, perhaps, but who says any of these people did or would?
I believe that those comments are expressions of the argument that if you are not actively doing something to cure a social problem, you have no standing to criticize things that make the problem worse. It's related to the argument that if you advocate something, you must therefore support the most extreme and unhinged advocates of that thing. Always swell to encounter.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:56 AM on February 10, 2017 [3 favorites]
I believe that those comments are expressions of the argument that if you are not actively doing something to cure a social problem, you have no standing to criticize things that make the problem worse. It's related to the argument that if you advocate something, you must therefore support the most extreme and unhinged advocates of that thing. Always swell to encounter.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:56 AM on February 10, 2017 [3 favorites]
I really hate that term "roughsleeping." It's prettified. It makes homelessness sound more like a hobby or something you do on a camping trip. Like there must be a Roughsleeping section at Cabela's.It's an attempt to distinguish between different but overlapping things. You can be homeless but not sleeping rough (e.g. you could be sleeping on a friend's couch, or in a shelter).
posted by mushhushshu at 10:21 AM on February 9 [6 favorites −] Favorite added! [!]
I can totally see how you'd interpret it as Some New Fad, but I think this is a needed classification. Afterall, the resources a roughsleeper needs are beyond what someone couch surfing needs.
I've been homeless-staying in a relative's shed-but fortunate enough to not have to sleep on the street or in bus terminals.
posted by FirstMateKate at 7:11 AM on February 10, 2017 [3 favorites]
Unless you personally invite the homeless to camp in your front garden, any criticism of the spikes is merely aesthetic.
Likewise if you say your local library shouldn't close you are a hypocrite unless you convert your front room for lending books. If you complain about a lack of local parking you are being two faced unless you build a multi storey over your flowerbeds. Presumably comments about the NHS are only welcome from those with their own dining room cum operating theatres.
posted by biffa at 7:19 AM on February 10, 2017 [12 favorites]
Likewise if you say your local library shouldn't close you are a hypocrite unless you convert your front room for lending books. If you complain about a lack of local parking you are being two faced unless you build a multi storey over your flowerbeds. Presumably comments about the NHS are only welcome from those with their own dining room cum operating theatres.
posted by biffa at 7:19 AM on February 10, 2017 [12 favorites]
Beyond the sheer absurdity of the argument, (addressed better above than I could anyway), I do actually live on a street where people sleep rough and congregate on the corners, stairs, and railings outside the buildings and have never once called for spikes, or anyone to be moved on. Instead I greet them, share any change I might occasionally have (ask me about being out of work as an EU citizen in the UK and how your ineligible for any assistance whatsoever!) all in the knowledge that this helps make my street more attractive to people who are in that situation. It's almost as if some of us actually give a shit about the issue, not just moving it out of sight!
posted by Dysk at 9:38 AM on February 10, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 9:38 AM on February 10, 2017 [5 favorites]
Unless you personally invite the homeless to camp in your front garden, any criticism of the spikes is merely aesthetic.
I personally am homeless. I personally bought another homeless person fries from McDonald's with part of my PayDay loan this morning because it is raining harder down by the PayDay loan place than up where I am currently (my usual stomping grounds) and I will probably get through the month okay.
I also personally disagree with the sentiment expressed above. And I wish folks could ignore the statement and move on. I think it is pretty clueless to suggest that "We don't want homeless people sleeping on spikes" is merely an aesthetic thing.
posted by Michele in California at 12:25 PM on February 10, 2017 [7 favorites]
I personally am homeless. I personally bought another homeless person fries from McDonald's with part of my PayDay loan this morning because it is raining harder down by the PayDay loan place than up where I am currently (my usual stomping grounds) and I will probably get through the month okay.
I also personally disagree with the sentiment expressed above. And I wish folks could ignore the statement and move on. I think it is pretty clueless to suggest that "We don't want homeless people sleeping on spikes" is merely an aesthetic thing.
posted by Michele in California at 12:25 PM on February 10, 2017 [7 favorites]
I really hate that term "roughsleeping." It's prettified. It makes homelessness sound more like a hobby or something you do on a camping trip. Like there must be a Roughsleeping section at Cabela's.
Just to echo the point that homelessness ≠ rough sleeping. I've worked with hundreds of homeless people in the last few years, and less than half a dozen entrenched rough sleepers. The failure to distinguish between rough sleepers and the homeless more generally is actually a major problem. Research got our last Christmas appeal found that there were 124,000 homeless children in the UK in December 2016. Some of those kids are in temporary accommodation that's not too bad, and not necessarily any worse than private rented accommodation (although if they're from London it's probably in Birmingham or Peterborough...), but some of them are in hostels, or B&Bs for months on end (even though it's unlawful to house homeless children in B&Bs for more than 6 weeks). Recognising that rough-sleeping is a specific problem within the broader context of homelessness is important, because conflating the two obscures the massive structural and infrastructure issues that underlie homelessness.
posted by howfar at 3:12 PM on February 11, 2017 [2 favorites]
Just to echo the point that homelessness ≠ rough sleeping. I've worked with hundreds of homeless people in the last few years, and less than half a dozen entrenched rough sleepers. The failure to distinguish between rough sleepers and the homeless more generally is actually a major problem. Research got our last Christmas appeal found that there were 124,000 homeless children in the UK in December 2016. Some of those kids are in temporary accommodation that's not too bad, and not necessarily any worse than private rented accommodation (although if they're from London it's probably in Birmingham or Peterborough...), but some of them are in hostels, or B&Bs for months on end (even though it's unlawful to house homeless children in B&Bs for more than 6 weeks). Recognising that rough-sleeping is a specific problem within the broader context of homelessness is important, because conflating the two obscures the massive structural and infrastructure issues that underlie homelessness.
posted by howfar at 3:12 PM on February 11, 2017 [2 favorites]
Recognising that rough-sleeping is a specific problem within the broader context of homelessness is important, because conflating the two obscures the massive structural and infrastructure issues that underlie homelessness.
I will add that seeing homelessness as only "street people" (aka rough sleepers) adds stigma and makes it harder for "normal" people to relate or empathize because it makes it vastly easier to people to feel that this is a problem only had by addicts and others that are easily dismissed as bad or broken people who cannot possibly get their act together. It makes it all too easy to feel this is just a personal problem and not a societal problem.
In the U.S., there is a decades old backlog of need for more affordable housing. The ratio of people who need affordable housing to availability of it has been steadily getting worse for a long time. Alongside this statistic, homelessness is rising nationwide.
But most people completely miss the connection there and dismiss "The Homeless" as "just a bunch of addicts and crazies" or similar. This makes it a great deal harder to try to find real solutions to the problem. It makes it easy for people to remain completely oblivious to the fact that a root cause of homelessness is a general and widespread lack of decent housing that someone not rich can afford.
There are homeless people who have income. I am one of them. It is just not enough income to pay "middle class" housing costs in a situation where new housing has grown larger and more luxurious with every passing decade while simple, basic accommodations (that also do not cost a fortune) have largely gone the way of the dinosaur.
posted by Michele in California at 3:30 PM on February 11, 2017 [4 favorites]
I will add that seeing homelessness as only "street people" (aka rough sleepers) adds stigma and makes it harder for "normal" people to relate or empathize because it makes it vastly easier to people to feel that this is a problem only had by addicts and others that are easily dismissed as bad or broken people who cannot possibly get their act together. It makes it all too easy to feel this is just a personal problem and not a societal problem.
In the U.S., there is a decades old backlog of need for more affordable housing. The ratio of people who need affordable housing to availability of it has been steadily getting worse for a long time. Alongside this statistic, homelessness is rising nationwide.
But most people completely miss the connection there and dismiss "The Homeless" as "just a bunch of addicts and crazies" or similar. This makes it a great deal harder to try to find real solutions to the problem. It makes it easy for people to remain completely oblivious to the fact that a root cause of homelessness is a general and widespread lack of decent housing that someone not rich can afford.
There are homeless people who have income. I am one of them. It is just not enough income to pay "middle class" housing costs in a situation where new housing has grown larger and more luxurious with every passing decade while simple, basic accommodations (that also do not cost a fortune) have largely gone the way of the dinosaur.
posted by Michele in California at 3:30 PM on February 11, 2017 [4 favorites]
Michelle in California, where's the praise hands emoji? because you need them. The two times I was homeless, I had a full time job. My problems - growing up in systemic poverty, the racket that is "credit", inability to save money due to low-paying jobs, and inability to react to a disaster, again, due to not having any savings-are very, very different than a lot of problems by rough sleepers - addiction, lack of mental healthcare system, poor care for veterans, the job crisis for felons, domestic violence etc.
posted by FirstMateKate at 10:15 AM on February 12, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by FirstMateKate at 10:15 AM on February 12, 2017 [2 favorites]
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posted by carter at 6:08 PM on February 8, 2017 [29 favorites]