It seems as if boulders and “artistic” unconventional benches are popping up all around the Biggest Little City. The reason is clear, it’s to prevent people with nowhere else to go from congregating and staying for hours on end in certain areas. This essay will talk about a few examples of this hostile architecture, as well as some solutions that we can take to help the unhoused.
Hostile architecture is not a new talking point in American discourse. To put it simply, hostile architecture involves using taxpayer dollars to implement different measures to restrict the houseless population of the city from sleeping on the streets and in public spaces comfortably. If you’ve ever visited the Reno area of northern Nevada, you have seen many unhoused struggling to survive.
A major way to implement hostile architecture is to divide the seats on a bench. Public benches are everywhere and by dividing the seats with an arm rest, it ensures that someone who needs to sleep on these benches can not lay comfortably, as they would have to lay over the raised arm rests in order to even lay down.
The divided bus seats at an RTC bus station on Virginia Street.
If we’re being quite honest, these arm rests make the benches uncomfortable to sit in as well. Take this RTC bus stop for example, with a cover above the top, it offers protection from the weather, whether rain, sun, or snow. This seems as if it would be a good place to rest overnight until you look down at the seats.
This bus stop has two aspects of hostile architecture. As mentioned earlier, there are armrests dividing the seats that prevent someone from laying down. But, if they are crafty enough to crawl through the armrests, they will notice that due to the seats being divided into sections of three, either their head or feet will end up dangling off due to the shorter length.
So, if the unhoused population of Reno are not able to sleep on the benches around town, then where are they going to sleep? This brought me to the Nevada Cares Campus. As I walked up to the campus, I saw a few people laying on the dirt trying to get some rest. But, as I walked further I saw many large boulders that lined the outer fences of the campus. This is very ironic.
Boulders line the outskirts of the Nevada Cares Campus on 4th Street.
The campus promotes a safe place for the unhoused, offering food and shelter to men and women who are in need of it, but around the sides of the campus they put up boulders to prevent them from resting nearby if they don’t want to be inside. This is very discouraging to see.
Boulders fill planters at the RTC CitiCenter on 4th Street.
Boulders are a common theme in hostile architecture. By putting boulders over patches of dirt or planters, it takes away a solid area that if you needed to, you can throw a blanket down over the dirt and lay down. The softness of the dirt can provide more relief than the cold concrete. With the boulders resting in these spots, it obviously prevents an unhoused person from laying on the dirt.
Divided benches line the Truckee River walk.
An observation that I made while visiting different spots in Reno is the real inconsistency of the hostile architecture. For example, take the benches on the Truckee River walk. There are plenty of benches to view the river, with the arm rests in between the seats, but not even 50 yards down the path there is a pod of benches that have no arm rests, which makes them sleepable. Along with this, across the street from many of large bus stops with the split benches, there are smaller bus stops, with standard benches.
A regular set of benches on the Truckee River walk.
Throughout my life I have been lucky enough to never be affected by homelessness. However some people did not get my luck. I can assure you that the homeless people do not want to be without stable housing. By using this hostile architecture, it demonizes the unhoused. Maybe instead of pumping taxpayer dollars on random boulders and uncomfortable benches, our city government can provide some sort of relief for the unsheltered.
Another bench on 4th street, only made for one person with an “artistic” design.
The first step to take in slowing the rate of homelessness is to have a little empathy. These people are human like you and me who don’t want to be in this situation. All it takes is to lose your main source of income, have a medical calamity with mounting bills without the necessary resources, have your rent raised too high, or get foreclosed upon to become homeless. Having the empathy to put yourself in their shoes can drastically change your view upon the hostile architecture in the city.
Next, I would recommend instead of using funding to create this architecture, instead funnel that money into more affordable housing, or create more shelters of different varieties around the city that the unhoused can go rest at to have a meal and sleep for the night with security. For example, look at Houston, Texas. Houston has a housing first program that works to move the unhoused and families from shelters into a permanent housing situation.
Here’s a snippet from a New York Times article: “During the last decade, Houston, the nation’s fourth most populous city, has moved more than 25,000 homeless people directly into apartments and houses. The overwhelming majority of them have remained housed after two years. The number of people deemed homeless in the Houston region has been cut by 63 percent since 2011, according to the latest numbers from local officials. Even judging by the more modest metrics registered in a 2020 federal report, Houston did more than twice as well as the rest of the country at reducing homelessness over the previous decade. Ten years ago, homeless veterans, one of the categories that the federal government tracks, waited 720 days and had to navigate 76 bureaucratic steps to get from the street into permanent housing with support from social service counselors. Today, a streamlined process means the wait for housing is 32 days.”
Maybe Reno needs to work harder to continuously look at programs which are working rather than perpetually adding to our hostile architecture.