Trudging out of my final original oratory round at the SDSU Gaske Invitational Speech and Debate tournament, I was exhausted. I had recited a 10-minute speech about the dangers of anti-homeless architecture about a dozen times, and I was sick of hearing my own voice. As I stumbled down the street in my business heels, I came across a sorry-looking bench with three armrests protruding from the seat, malicious downward semi-circles prohibiting the nearby homeless community from lying down.
Having spoken all day at the tournament about the dark side of hostile architecture, I was enraged to see it plastered just five steps outside of the SDSU campus.
Defined as an urban design strategy in which structures are used to prevent the presence and activities of the homeless community, hostile architecture is not new in San Diego. Most metal benches at MTS stations have armrests to prevent people from lying down. In 2016, large rock formations were put under the I-5 freeway as a homeless deterrent. Spikes on window displays are prevalent across downtown.
While hostile architecture disguises itself as a solution to the issue of homelessness, it only exacerbates struggles for the homeless community.
These forms of anti-homeless architecture don’t simply appear overnight. They are a response to an underlying issue: an increase of homelessness. According to USA Today, homelessness in the United States increased by approximately 18.1% between 2023 and 2024, with more than 771,800 unhoused people accounted for. Achieving financial stability is difficult due to a mounting housing crisis, which only worsens the homelessness issue.
As homelessness becomes more visible, local governments often take action to ameliorate the situation. But, rather than tackling the issue of homelessness itself, they opt to sweep it under the rug, hidden under window spikes and armrests.
This inability to properly address homelessness not only does nothing to fix the issue but also harms the homeless community. From the book Unpleasant Design, hostile architecture was found to be associated with deteriorating mental health. Its resulting inability to acquire proper rest and shelter because of unfriendly landscapes can be highly consequential, leading to sleep deprivation that paves a road to more severe mental conditions.
But it’s not just the homeless community that is negatively impacted by hostile architecture. Making public spaces more uncomfortable for the homeless population makes them more uncomfortable for all of us. According to Parametric Architecture, public spaces in Boston have become increasingly unfriendly to over 50% of its occupants as a result of hostile architecture. The elderly, obese, disabled, and impoverished, comprising a majority of the city’s population, all struggle to find comfort in public spaces are seating becomes more scarce and uncomfortable. In Florida, WEAR ABC 3 News reported that Escambia County Area opted for the complete removal of bus stop benches in response to an increased homeless presence. With no comfortable seating — if any at all — for many residents, cities run the risk of fragmentation of public places, turning them into dead zones. Public spaces should stand for bringing community together. Instead, hostile architecture has been implemented in these spaces as a growing mechanism bent on locking the community out.
Rather than addressing the root cause of homelessness, hostile architecture opts to erase their narratives, pushing them out of sight while inadvertently making life more uncomfortable for the entire population.
Hostile architecture cannot be the solution to the problem our nation faces. Instead, focus should be directed at providing support for those living without homes. Increased rehabilitation programs, expedited housing paperwork, stricter national standards for ethical architecture all contribute to a tomorrow where the homeless community is uplifted rather than cast away.
