The prize for anti-homeless devices
It’s an awards ceremony* special event which took place a few days ago in Paris, at the instigation of the Abbé-Pierre Foundation: it was a question of rewarding the worst urban development, the objective of which is to prevent night-time camps.
Useless armrests, curved benches, empty flower pots, concrete blocks, not to mention the countless picks and blades which represent a danger for children, there is no shortage of ideas for cluttering up any space protected by a building recess or a bus shelter canopy. An urban planning researcher has identified no less than 266 devices of this type today in France. This means that this is not an isolated phenomenon.
The intention is devious. Under the cover of an aesthetic or practical purpose which is difficult to be fooled, the objective is clearly to thwart any clandestine installation. Certainly, no one likes walking past a dicked body in their sleeping bag to reach the entrance to their bakery or bank. However, is it enough to make it disappear from one’s visual field by an unsavory method to resolve the problem of poverty?
Sleep protected from bad weather when one does not have a roof is one of the vital necessities. This is why there is deep violence behind this option, taken by certain municipalities, businesses or individuals. It even resembles torture, if we consider these accordion figures on a bench who, to be dry, spent the night with an iron bar under their backs. Enough to make them sink a little further into precariousness by depriving them of restful sleep which would allow them to better cope with their situation.
The exponential rise of homeless people – including a growing number of children – is a problem that must be faced on a large scale, but also at our small local level. At neighborhood level. Rather than deploying strategies that reduce the homeless to the status of pests, it is a question of betting on friendly gestures capable of restoring human dignity.
* The third edition of Pics d’or took place on Monday, November 18, at the Théâtre de l’Atelier, in Paris.
