ROCHESTER, N.Y. \u2014\u00a0For those forced to live on the street, a park bench or even just a smooth piece of concrete is often what they call home, even if it’s just for a night.<\/p>\n
Advocates say a national movement is making those public places inaccessible to those who need them most.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
Although New York state has\u00a0helped\u00a0establish\u00a0shelters to mitigate homelessness,\u00a0advocates say they haven\u2019t\u00a0sufficiently addressed the conditions faced by unsheltered individuals
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Those who are impacted by homelessness are often forced to seek shelter in public spaces. However, a large percentage of those public spaces are now becoming inaccessible to those who need them most
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According to reports from the New York State Comptroller\u2019s Office, there were more than 158,000 homeless New Yorkers in 2024 \u2013 about one in five of the nation\u2019s homelesss<\/p>\n
Barriers, spikes and armrests now occupy the spaces that those facing homelessness once did.<\/p>\n
Hostile architecture has swept over the nation, altering public amenities. Making it harder for people without shelter to find safe places to rest.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe easiest way to fight against homelessness is to provide people with housing,\u201d Rochester chapter of Democratic Socialists of America \u00a0co-chair Gregory Lebens-Higgins said. \u201cAnd because we’re not meeting people’s needs. People are forced to remain on the streets. Although we do have some shelters, many of those shelters are not sufficiently accommodating. Many cities are just making it more uncomfortable for people to be homeless by [using] strategies such as hostile architecture.\u201d<\/p>\n
And as these spaces have become inaccessible, the Rochester chapter of Democratic Socialists of America organized a walk-through in partnership with Rochester Grants Pass Resistance for residents to see firsthand these changes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn order to do something about this,\u201d Higgins said. \u201cIf we can get a critical mass, we can support legislation at City Council to cut down on hostile architecture in our community and to increase support for unhoused people.\u201d<\/p>\n
For long-time resident and associate real estate broker, Marlynn Butler, this is a first for her, coming across these issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don’t think we’re doing enough to help,\u201d Butler said. \u201cEspecially like the veterans being homeless. You know, that’s a big issue with me because my dad is a veteran. And it just saddens me so much to see it.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to reports from the New York State Comptroller\u2019s Office, there were more than 158,000 homeless New Yorkers in 2024 \u2013 about one in five of the nation\u2019s homeless. Its organizers hope local leaders would limit the use of these architectural designs and do more to aid the homeless community.<\/p>\n
Seeing these changes in the community has been problematic not only for its primary targets, but for all people.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen public resources are made more uncomfortable, benches are made more uncomfortable when there’s a lack of access to public restrooms. It affects everybody,\u201d Higgins said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ROCHESTER, N.Y. \u2014\u00a0For those forced to live on the street, a park bench or even just a smooth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194465,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7410,29083,2000,9,11,10,49,51,50,12,115,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-194464","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-adriana-loh","9":"tag-app-homelessness","10":"tag-homelessness","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-headlines","13":"tag-new-york-news","14":"tag-new-york-state","15":"tag-new-york-state-headlines","16":"tag-new-york-state-news","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-rochester","19":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}