Persuasive Essay on Homeless

Homeless: unseen, unheard, and un cared for by the general population, for thousands of years humanity has risen above nature and grew out of the need for survival, however, those who find themselves without shelter are seen in low regard as opposed to being helped. Having homeless people in a city is a bad look for its administration, people will complain if they see the homeless in public spaces and look to the leadership of the city for solutions. There are many ways to go about this issue, however, if in a person's mind, they have dehumanized the homeless, as well as being on a tight budget, this solution might be good for them. The solution that cities have come up with is to simply remove them from public spaces, so that other citizens are not aware of just how many homeless there are in the city. This has been practiced for many years in the form of banning tents from being played out, and banning loitering, however recently, city planners have taken to excluding the homeless in various ways through design. Things such as pointless dividers on benches, spikes under freeways, and even replacing benches with leaning bars are included in this. There are many clear problems with this, including how it is bad for the homeless, unpopular amongst other people, and the fact that urban design can be much more helpful. 

One of the worst things that can happen to a person is social isolation, humans are social creatures and must socialize or face immense psychological and emotional problems. Hostile architecture helps to push this onto homeless people; the architecture will push them away from public spaces to places where they can at least exist and it will not be a healthy way to live. Hostile architecture also reinforces negative stereotypes about the homeless, if they need to be pushed out by society, that means that there is something wrong with them. For years there has been ideas that go along the lines of the poor deserve to be poor because they make bad decisions, however this could not be further from the truth, thousands of years of civilization shows that the poor are products of their society, as well as wealth being inherited so that economic class remains rigid; most people are poor because their parents were poor. Another stereotype it reinforces is that the homeless are criminals and will pose a physical danger to people in public spaces. Of course, some people are homeless by their own design, and some homeless commit crimes, however, this does not justify stereotyping. Psychology shows that stereotyping causes people to conform to said stereotype, so it is unknown how much the behavior of our society causes anti-social behavior from these groups. 

The opinions of those that dwell in cities should be considered as well; overall, hostile architecture is extremely unpopular among them. When hostile architecture started to be noticeable, people online were outraged and argued that it was horrible of their city to do this. People in cities would overall like to know that their administration is trying to solve the homeless problem instead of pushing it to the side. The architecture is also ugly; people do not want to see something jarring like spikes or an awkward bench while walking around the city. Cities should be designed to be pleasing to the eye so that it is an enjoyable experience; there are more eyesores within cities besides hostile architecture, however. Overall, when people walk the streets and see these things there are two categories: they don’t know about what it is and they see an ugly design, or they are aware and know their city does not care about the homeless. 

Public spaces can be used more effectively to help the homeless, as well as everyone else. As far as America goes, it is far behind other countries as far as beatification goes; focus on car-centric infrastructure has led to our cities being mostly pavement and designed for cars to be the mode of transportation that everybody should use. Car dependent design comes with a lot of problems that would be fixed without, making hostile architecture just one in a long list of flaws in our cities today. One of these flaws includes the tried and tested way to help the homeless, which is simply give them houses. The way we help homeless usually goes that they need to sort out their problems before they are housed, however, Finland among other countries that have low homeless population, have robust public housing programs to reduce homelessness. This works surprisingly well; the apartments include housing and financial advisors within the buildings to help them make an economic recovery. This way is cost effective overall and helps the economy as the people helped by this program can now join the workforce. Finland got the means for these houses by buying existing property or building new houses.  

Many people argue that Hostile architecture will make an effective way to reduce crime by keeping people away from people who will likely do crime. As mentioned, this is not an effective way at solving problems, pushing the homeless away will only make them more isolated from society and antisocial. A far more useful way of spending money would be to drastically decrease homelessness altogether, as previously mentioned. Doing this would start with zoning laws, which are strict in many states and cities. Restructuring zoning laws could allow for construction of denser housing that can fit more people, as well as make distances between stores and houses closer so that owning a car would not be necessary. Cheaper housing along with social services could solve the problem leading to less dependence on government to solve issues in the long run. On another note, many, including myself believe the architecture to generally be ugly, this may not seem important, however, the architecture of a city should reflect the culture and values of its people, and it hinders people from having pride in their city when they look at something that is mediocre at its main purpose, and its secondary purpose is to exclude people.  

In conclusion, at its worst, hostile architecture is just another chapter in America’s story against positive solutions to outcomes, and provides a bleak outlook towards how our problems will be solved in the future. However, through continuing our tradition of optimism and innovation, we can value human life and protect people's dignity through solutions that have been proven to work in similar situations. At its best hostile architecture is a continuation of the “uglification” of America that has happened over the past few years, architects should seek to focus on ease of use as well as appealing designs that can make people proud to live in the city that they built.