As I was trolling the internet for pedestrian news this week, I was disturbed to come across this story about the City of Santa Barbara's latest efforts to clear its downtown streets of itinerants and panhandlers. The city's redevelopment agency (sidenote: Santa Barbara needs a redevelopment agency??) plans to devote $50,000 to rearranging sidewalk benches in the city's shopping district so that they are perpendicular, rather than parallel, to the street.
Wow. There are so many things wrong with this idea, it's a little hard to know where to begin criticizing it.
Photo courtesy of Google Streetview
The idea is that this will make panhandling less lucrative for people sitting on the benches because they'll only be facing one direction, and thus have only half the opportunities to ask passersby for money. The backs will also be removed from several benches, further discouraging lingering. The city's actions stem from longstanding frustration on the part of downtown business people with the way the homeless use the sidewalks. "It's just like they've made the street their living room," one anonymous business owner complained. The hope is that changing the angle of the benches will force the homeless to relocate out of downtown.Wow. There are so many things wrong with this idea, it's a little hard to know where to begin criticizing it.