Mister Semple

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 "Not the answer    

Not sure when this happened but saw this yesterday walking through town. Dividers have been added to park benches in Equality Park. This is a common design tactic used to prevent people from sleeping on park benches, with the target typically being the unhoused population.

I’m no stranger to this park, I’m aware of concerns residents and business owners in the area have raised with the city in the past and the resolutions they believed to be the answer.

Now that the Supreme Court has made it legal for cities to criminalize homelessness (e.g. sleeping in public spaces even when shelter beds are unavailable), how does the City of Newport plan to help their vulnerable unhoused population? How does the City of Newport plan to be a leader in changing the narrative around homelessness? Educating the community about the multi-layered, systemic factors and societal failures (lack of affordable housing, lack of affordable healthcare, lack of support for addiction & substance abuse, lack of racial equity, lack of support for domestic violence, lack of liveable wages) that contribute to to homelessness? Being a leader in ending homelessness?

There are groups of people and organizations doing this work in town and in the state. How does the City support them and plan to support more of this work and the interdisciplinary coordination that is needed as the cost of living continues to increase disproportionately?

I genuinely ask these questions because the way I hear my community speak about the unhoused concerns me. It is so old hat and vile to be a person that dehumanizes the unhoused.

I don’t have all the answers but as a landscape designer I do know what I’m seeing in a public park in the form of a bench is meant to exclude specific groups of people.

I hope for anyone reading this that it may reshape a pre-existing thought around homelessness and encourage further exploration. I will be looking into this further and try to follow up with some of the questions I have with the City.

Have you ever noticed   before in your town or community? "

Spotted in London

📸:

Virtue signalling combined with anti-homeless hostility