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Hostile Architecturule
(lemmy.blahaj.zone)
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this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2026
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I mean a subway station isn't a homeless shelter and homeless people are unfortunately very often mentally ill or addicted, which can create danger for commuters.
Shit situation though
the solution should be housing the homeless not making everyone's lives more miserable
Not just housing, but mental health services for everyone.
I would say we can probably link something like 80% of the bullshit going on in modern society to widespread mental health issues. Definitely a large part is constantly electing obvious sociopaths to political offices. And allowing psychopaths that obviously lack empathy entirely to run corporations and employ large parts of the populace while missing a fundamental part of what many would consider their humanity.
A big driver of mental health issues are economic pressures. When you have to work long hours for shit pay, it does a number on you. Addiction rates increase with poverty, and our current economy is stressful for all but the richest and most fortunate. Even high earners have to work themselves to the bone for their position, and their lack of work/life balance drives them to isolation.
So it all comes back to capitalism. Solving economic inequities is a prerequisite to addressing almost all of our problems.
The entire system in the US is made to keep as many people as possible teetering at the brink of absolute poverty and scared shitless from that happening (since what follows that is mostly homelessness or prison, both dealth with in the most inhumane way imaginable), since that makes it much easier to exploit those people to the max.
The point of the Social Safety Net was to stop that, but whatever little of it ever existed has been torn down in the US (and is even being torn down in other countries as mainstream politicians there have aped American "liberal" politics)
Everyone everywhere should be terrified of their country emulating the US
All the right wingers are hard at doing so, as are the "center"-"left" mainstream parties though in a more dilluted way - essentially the conquests of the post-War period are being destroyed, same as in the US but starting from a higher basedline in Europe so there's more to destroy before reaching the bottom.
Shit, even the "fringe" "left" has a large subset of parties led by people whole detached from any single global and consist ideology (such as the older ones like Socialism, Social Democracy or Anarchy) who grew up only ever knowing Neoliberalism and thus whose idea of being "left" is the Neoliberal "moral liberalism" (mostly commonly known as Identity Politics) that very explicitly excludes the greatest, most widespread and most suffering causing inequality of all - Wealth Inequality - which is probably why the Far-Right is gaining massivelly from the fall of the mainstream parties than those "left" parties, since even the Far-Right lies are more appealing to the Working Class than the upper middle class well-off scion of well-off parent's idea of "equality" that these parties defend.
(I was actually a member of such a "fringe" "left" party for a few years and was thoroughly dissapointed)
And yeah, I'm terrified.
There also should be a diagnosis for money and power hoarding, common in billionnaires and CEOs.
megalomania?
mental health issues, in turn, mostly come from lack of resources. so housing people directly leads to a decline in mental health issues.
Definitely agreed, but the subway station is for the commuters, not for solving the housing issue. It shouldn't be that commuters are having a less safe commute because the city, state, whatever isn't willing to deal with the housing/homeless issue.
I mean removing the benches is a poor solution to that anyway. Should keep the benches but just make sure the station is actually serving the commuters
You think the subway should house the homeless?
If the alternative is nothing then I guess yeah. I'd rather they get the subway as shelter until a proper solution is in place than them being condemned to die.
The subway should be suitable for disabled people to use. If that makes the subway a home for the homeless, that isn't the fault of the choice to make the subway suitable for disabled people.
Homeless people will find some place to stay. If you make places more unpleasant until homeless people find somewhere else to stay, and then you make that place unpleasant until they move away from there, etc., then all you're doing is spending massive amounts of money to make the entire city unpleasant and still end up with homeless people in the least unpleasant spots.
I agree with you almost completely. The issue is if the homeless prevents the space from being suitable for disabled people or other commuters, then this is the "less worse" option from the subway's perspective. The subway is focused on creating a safe and clean commuter environment; it's not within their power to solve homelessness so they have little choice but to make everything a bit worse for everyone to stop the problem they're dealing with from making it even worse yet for everyone.
it is not within their power to solve homelessness completely, but they can contribute to it. if they simply post "the city should build shelters for homeless people" on their feed or website, it sends a clear signal that is hard to ignore, as millions of people see it each day. that would move politics to care for people. yet they don't, and that's their negligence.
Well there's your problem. Your subway organisation is myopically focused on making its own little corner as "well-functioning" as possible even at the cost of the rest of the city. It ignores the social harm it causes to whatever the next place is that homeless people decide to congregate instead (and the additional harm it causes to homeless people by forcing them to stay in less hospitable locations, and the additional harm it causes everyone in those homeless people's vicinity because they are more desperate on account of staying in less hospitable environments and thus more likely to resort to crime).
Sorry, I'm bumping up against Poe's Law with this comment so I think I'm misunderstanding your point.
I don't own a subway, it's not my organisation. I was just using my imagination to put myself in the shoes of others to understand their decisions.
Now then: You're literally stating that having homeless people in a space causes social harm, and that making a place less hospitable for the homeless, even if it improves that place for its main function, is also a societal bad. Let's accept that for the sake of argument. Why are the homeless camping in the subway? Doesn't that mean they've already passed down from further up this displacement chain and the subway is also a victim of the same thing?
The subway and the homeless are both just dealing with their situations in the best ways they can. Asking the subway to house the homeless in their corridors is about as helpful as just telling those homeless people to stop being homeless.
The subway is an inanimate location, it can not be a victim. The people of the city that may use the subway are a victim, but less so than if the subway was made less hospitable for everyone without improving the situation of the homeless in the city.
All it would take for the homeless to stop being homeless is for the cops to stop throwing homeless people out of buildings that haven't been used for a year. Homeless people are constantly doing their best to stop being homeless, and the state and other people keep violently attacking them to make them homeless again.
Meanwhile all it would take for the subway organisation is to do its job of making the subway a nice place to be. If that makes it the nicest place homeless don't get attacked by cops, that's not the subway organisation's fault.
i think that the millions of vacant homes should house the homeless, but since thats seemingly impossible then sure I'd rather they keep the benches for the homeless to lay on than this
You think offering benches to sit on qualifies as housing the homeless?
No, I was being a bit facetious in my response to the comment that the solution is housing the homeless, not making things less hospitable. It's of course not within the Subway's powers to actually solve homelessness so giving them flack for picking the less worse option with their limited options instead of magically solving the root of the problem is silly.
Get mad at the people who are actually responsible for dealing with the root cause, not the ones needing to make tough choices dealing with the reality of it.
yes :)
Now I'm not in NYC myself, but I can't stand for long periods of time or walk long distances. There's tons of disabled or elderly people like me that need public transit and need those benches.
So how about we don't fuck those people over in a desperate quest to be unnecessarily cruel to homeless people?
Getting rid of benches doesn't get rid of the homeless. They'll still be homeless with no where else to go without them. It just makes things worse for everyone.
I mean for the transit authority it's one tool, but I agree it's not the best one. Preferably keep the benches but hire more security people.
why are they addicted????
who sold them the thing they are addicted to????
🪿
Alcohol is sold in most stores from what I know. If drugs, I dunno, drug dealers?
Pharmaceutical companies and Alcohol Brands are both run by the 🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁 bourgeoise 🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁
you think drug dealers give out free samples?
it usually starts with a prescription
Do you mean like owned by? Because the actual people running those places are just regular clerks and shit
Some do yeah. Often the dealer isn't some random guy but a person you know or even a friend of yours. They might give you a hit
They do fent or alcohol prescriptions 👀
Not sure what this has to do with the subway benches though
owned by
SOME
And yes, fentanyl is used A LOT in medical care and so are multiple other addictive substances such as morphine and other addictive painkillers
the homeless are homeless because of the system
the best we could do is house them
Right but it's not the transit system's job. Of course they don't want to make commuting worse for all of those non-homeless people using it
how would people having a place to sleep make commuting worse?
How would people struggling with mental, substance abuse and addiction issues camping right next to the commuters make the experience worse, even dangerous, to those commuters? Not much of a question, really. And aside from those, there's piss and shit too and that sort of issues, waste, used needles and stuff. Areas where there's a lot of homeless people unfortunately are pretty dangerous and others start to avoid them
Subway stations aren't build to house people.
I mean it seems like a lot of that could be avoided by, for example, keeping the goddamn bathrooms open (or making there be public bathrooms). Drugs are already illegal. The station is still a roof over your head, making it preferable to the street whether or not there are benches.
Ironically it seems like the most direct harm done by homeless people sleeping on the benches is that those benches aren't usable by commuters who may need to rest. And this certainly makes that problem go away, I guess. Wouldn't exactly call it solved.
I'd see the dangerous and unstable behaviour, the harassment and whatnot faced by the regulat commuters that's a more direct harm, personally
Maybe my experiences are unusual, but I've seen more harassment and general shittiness from other commuters than I ever have from homeless people camping nearby. Not saying it doesn't happen, but I feel like we're back to the problem of harassment and violence already being illegal. Going back to the immediate question here, removing the benches doesn't make harassment or assholery any more difficult or more consequential.
There should be a lot, a lot more commuters than there are homeless. But homeless people unfortunately have very high incidence of mental and substance abuse issues that often manifest in unpredictable and dangerous behaviour. And it's not made for housing people, so facilities for that aren't there and removing the homeless from there (or trying to, rather) you can try to minize the issues and make the place better for commuters.
Something being illegal doesn't stop it from happening. I'd prefer more enforcement over removing benches, but with too limited resources I don't think the transit system can really do that.
hm, maybe we could help more people to get houses then? and access to food, basic utilities, and medical / mental health care? 🤔
And how would the transit authority do this..?
Sorry you got downvoted for speaking the truth. I bet every one of these virtue signaling commenters also distance themselves when they come across a bum on a bench.
wheres my money
you lost the bet
Seeing someone write “virtue signalling” unironically gave me a bout of 2010s nostalgia that I never thought I’d have.
You think if we push them enough we can get them to unironically say SJW?