#HTE

Today’s Urban Design Observation: Anti-Homeless Barricades, Both Standard and Custom

On Lafayette Street in downtown Manhattan is a Rescue Mission. They provide services, hot meals and shelter to the homeless. Each morning there is a queue of homeless people outside the mission. Many of them appear to be mentally unwell and/or suffering from drug addictions, judging by their slurred speech and impaired motor skills. When they congregate, it becomes quite noisy, with loud and animated conversations taking place. For the most part they are harmless but I can see how a tourist would cross the street to avoid them.

Along this same block are other businesses, including offices for the Whitney Museum and a rather tony window treatment and paint store. The businesses on this block have learned that the homeless will camp out and sleep on the front stoops of their buildings. So they have acquired a bunch of police barricades and shackled them together to block the stoops off each night.

The window treatment store has taken it a step further. This array of bars appears to have been commissioned specifically to fit their entryway.

They’ve opted to have the thing made out of square bar stock and shiny chrome, like they wanted it to look nice.

It seems like it’d be a real pain in the neck to unshackle and carry inside each morning, but I guess that’s the cost of doing business in a world where no solution for homelessness appears to exist.