As the design of the city limits homeless people to camping and sleeping in public spaces in Salt Lake City

Irregular rocks fill a strip of once-green grass near the Salt Lake City Homeless Women’s Shelter. A metal armrest protrudes in the middle of the benches of the city’s Fairmont Park. And in Pioneer Park, which was the epicenter of homelessness in the state, there are no banks.

These subtle environmental interventions are largely invisible to many in the capital of Utah. But homeless people recognize designs as a way to discourage those who are homeless from camping in certain areas or sleeping in public parks.

The rocks that were recently placed near the Geraldine King Women’s Resource Center, at 700 South, for example, “have made it impossible for them to camp on this side,” noted a homeless woman who did not want to be named in a recent interview with The Salt Lake Tribune. “So no one can go.”

Proponents of so-called “hostile architecture” say it is sometimes necessary to end unwanted behaviors. But opponents and academics studying the effort say it sends a message to people experiencing homelessness who are unwanted in the community and do not belong.

“These [are] visual cues and visual cues that indicate there are members of our society we don’t want in certain places; they are not welcome, “said Sarah Canham, an associate professor at the University of Utah in the Department of Urban and Metropolitan Planning.” We are essentially dehumanizing them. “

“Defensive architecture,” as it is also known, is sometimes aimed at skateboarders, with designs characterized by metal knobs protruding from previously smooth surfaces that prevent anyone from rolling them.

Many more examples are aimed at homeless communities, with anti-treatment architectures in cities around the world ranging from anti-sleep benches to street ends or window frames that prevent someone from resting in a particular area.

But people who don’t belong to these populations almost never realize how their environment is designed to privilege some behaviors over others, noted Canham, who teaches a course at the U. that examines the distribution of social resources, environmental and economic benefits in cities.

“People who are not subjected to these feelings of dehumanization and otherness are not necessarily aware of it,” he said. “They just go through society and the world and everything is fine because they don’t have this constant confrontation with things that try to keep them out and try to keep them low.”

Whether or not they are visible to the general public, Canham argues that the effort to prevent homeless people from using public spaces in certain ways is problematic, because design cannot address the fundamental challenges that make them people are left homeless or barriers that prevent them from leaving the streets.

“Essentially, the effect is to move them completely and we have to ask ourselves where?” she said. “If there are people who are not protected, they have to go somewhere and they don’t have enough shelter beds for people. So it’s like, what solution are we talking about in our system? “

“Rocks are useless”

The parking lot in front of Salt Lake City’s Liberty Senior Center, located between the Geraldine King Women’s Resource Center on West Street and Taufer Park immediately east, used to be a popular spot for to people who experienced homelessness. camping tent.

But the space has recently become inhospitable to campers, after the senior center removed grass from the park strip and put rocks in place earlier this year.

Paul Leggett, a spokesman for Salt Lake County’s adult services and aging division, said in an email that the rocks are “an environmental design intervention to prevent long-term meetings at this site.”

“These meetings were not compatible with the use of the building for services for the elderly and for adults,” he added. “By installing the rocks, we were also able to solve public health issues outside the facility.”

The center decided to place the rocks there, he said, after regular vandalism and human waste became such a frequent issue that a landscaper said he would no longer be willing to provide services if things did not change. There were also older adults who attended the center who informed staff “that they did not feel safe coming to pick up lunch,” which caused the senior center to temporarily move its lunch program to a different building. .

Once the camp was cleaned up in October 2020, the senior center found that the grass and sprinkler system had been damaged and decided to replace it with rock, “as it was a more sustainable option, in addition to something that would deter these public health issues by going back to the center, ”Leggett said.

Rocks have also recently been added in a strip of park a bit towards the road, at the corner of 700 South and State Street.

Penny Payton, a 45-year-old who has stayed at the Geraldine King Resource Center, said in an interview that she acknowledges that rocks are a way for homeowners to “protect their business.”

“But I think they will do it wrong,” he added.

A better solution to his eyes would have been to allow him to camp there at night, but leave people out in the morning. Even better, he said, local leaders should have incorporated more beds into the homeless resource center system.

“I think they should have done the Sears building at the shelter,” Payton said, referring to the department stores closed on State Street and 700 South. “We would have a lot more space than that has. We could accommodate a lot more.”

For Michelle Nathan, a 48-year-old who sometimes camped in the area near the women’s shelter, the rocks are “really an answered prayer.” She hopes to keep some people away who, she says, stay strategically in the camps to take advantage of the women who “come out” of the shelter to break the rules.

“I prayed the rosary for the boys to leave,” he said. “I don’t think men should camp here.”

But a homeless woman The Tribune interviewed who did not want to be named said the group of campers who settled in front of the senior center had not left, but had only moved down the street. .

“All that’s happening is for them to disperse,” he said. “She is OK [still] waiting for the women to come out. If you look at it, most of the women who come out of there are disabled, mentally ill, with some kind of vulnerability. And there are predators waiting for them. The fact is that the rocks are useless ”.

Discouraging overnight stays

While the rocks present a relatively new case of hostile architecture in the city, there are other older examples, such as the “anti-sleep” benches at several Salt Lake City parks that have an armrest in the city. center that prevents someone from lying. through them.

These benches are not present in all public spaces in the city, not even in some of its large spaces. The Salt Lake Tribune did not find them in Liberty Park, Sugar House Park or Washington Square Park outside City Hall, for example.

Probably because benches with armrests have become more common in the city over the past decade and are only placed in a park when an old bench needs to be replaced, according to Kristin Riker, Salt Lake City’s deputy director of public lands.

These armrests, which will become the defaults for replaced benches in the future, are being installed for a number of reasons, he said, including accessibility, as benches with backrests and armrests “fit better for the elderly and people with accessibility needs ”.

But Riker said seat design is also one of several methods the city uses to discourage overnight stays, including “lighting, tree and bush maintenance and security,” according to city ordinances. which close parks at night and prohibit camping.

“The parks are closed at dusk for watering, and also for safety reasons,” he said in an email. “Illegal activity can take place in urban parks late at night and this activity can affect the daytime use of the park by city residents. Ultimately, our role is to ensure that the city’s parks are safe public spaces for everyone who wants to use them. “

Often, hostile architecture takes the form of a physical object that deters people from using space in a certain way. But the lack of an object can also shape the way people use public space, such as the absence of benches in Pioneer Park in the Rio Grande neighborhood of Salt Lake City, which was the epicenter of services. for homeless people in the city.

Missing banks have a disproportionate impact on people who “look for a place to rest or sit during the day because you don’t have a home or are out of the shelter,” Canham said.

Riker said the banks were removed from the park more than five years ago. As the city begins a process of public engagement to find out how residents want new funding to improve the park, banks could be added, he said.

Scott Howell, leader of the Pioneer Park Coalition, said he did not remember a time when there were benches in the park and did not believe his absence was the result of a concerted effort to prevent people experiencing homelessness from using the space.

And if so, he said this would not be personally supportive.

“In my opinion, you can’t segment a park’s market,” he said. “A park is a place for everyone. If there are people lying on a bench, I think it could be me being on a bench. You may be reviewing, taking 15 minutes with a beautiful, cheerful sun and enjoying it. “

The best way to address homelessness, he said, is to get homeless people to “get back on their feet through work and help them get to their mental health appointments, help them recover. his addiction ”.

“I do not know so much [hostile architecture], “he added.” But I don’t think it’s a way to fix it. “

Canham agreed that defensive architecture is not a long-term solution. And ultimately, he stressed that public spaces are for everyone, including people living homeless.

“In these public spaces we are all neighbors,” he said. “It simply came to our notice then. We are all part of this community, so in my opinion it is not appropriate to suggest that one person has more value than another. And having these symbols in our communities that deliberately exclude a section of our community … this is not the community I want to live in. “