Housing

I live in northern Virginia, specifically Fairfax County, which is about 30 min outside of Washington DC. Since I have been home for fall break, my family and I have gone to DC a few times. Washington DC has a pretty large homelessness problem. As we walked the streets of DC, it reminded me of the discussion that we had in class about hostile design. In the article, On hostile design: Theoretical and empirical prospects, the author Robert Rosenburg describes that “design strategies for discriminating against particular groups are continually evolving and their implementation may be on the rise.” Hostile design has a considerable influence in Washington DC and the DC metro area. I saw so many benches that have “armrests”, which are really just bars to keep someone from lying down, or extremely odd-shaped benches designed solely for the purpose of deterring people from using them to sleep on. It baffles me that even though the homeless population continues to rise, nothing productive is being done about it. Another example of a hostile design in DC is the security features found outside many buildings. These concrete barriers are advertised to protect federal property from potential attacks, yet they are thin enough that many people would not be able to lie down on them or even use them to sit down. I feel like we need to do a better job to make public places more accessible for people who are unhoused. Why are so much time and money being used in order to make sure that people who are unhoused cannot have a place to rest? If only that same time and money were spent to expand homeless shelters, then maybe we as a society would be able actually to lower the homelessness rate.