London's wealthy placing "Homeless spikes" outside luxury flats

After reading this i wondered why the money wasted here was not used to actually help the problem?
This just has Liability suit written all over it.



"Metal spikes have been installed outside a block of luxury flats in London to deter homeless people from sleeping there."




www.telegraph.co.uk...

I wouldn't want to have people trespassing on my property either.

It isn't safe for my wife or children.

Thats sad .. worse is reading the comments after the article .. humanity is on a deathspiral .. whatever happened to simple compassion and treating people like human beings .. disgusting ... world needs a total reboot ..

originally posted by: Expat888
Thats sad .. worse is reading the comments after the article .. humanity is on a deathspiral .. whatever happened to simple compassion and treating people like human beings .. disgusting ... world needs a total reboot ..

Dont worry....

Its coming.

Like building owners would for pigeons. Do we now consider the homeless vermin?

originally posted by: Metallicus


It isn't safe for my wife or children.

Neither is a metal spike grid

originally posted by: Metallicus
I wouldn't want to have people trespassing on my property either.

It isn't safe for my wife or children.

Get over it. You aren't the owner of a block of flats and I am sure your 'home' isn't as appealing to others as you might think. Ego-centric attitudes need not prevail. They 'spike' buildings in the UK to deter pigeons. Do we then equate the homeless as the same?

a reply to: Metallicus

I am confused about this one too, this is about spikes out side of their home....
That is like saying that people walking around outside of your house is a danger to your family....

Simple gate can fix a trespassing problem, that is not what is trying to be accomplished here

This is very sad. The first thing that popped up in my mind when I saw the picture from the article was exactly what everyone is thinking. Treating the homeless like they are pigeons.

These spikes are a danger to everybody, to guests and children.
Plus it seems like a wasted effort because anyone with the right mind would just put a gate from entering those so-called homes.

Perhaps we humans can no longer find compassion to help out these individuals without homes.

no one can afford central london on anything less than a couple with 30-50k each.

benifits and what not blurr the line but the real thing is, transport costs.

If you could buy a train ticket to work every day for just pounds a week London wouldnt be so enclosed, you either pay a premium to be a close or your stay on the outskirts and pay through the nose for parking, petrol, trains busses etc.

Wow! I clicked on this thread because I had never heard of spikes. However after seeing the photo, Anyone positive could improvise something both constructive and something to add value to the property. With a large planter or triple planter arrangement plus a fixed single chair in that space, they could achieve their aim by adding value to the space without hurting anyone in any way. Moreover, they could have made a warm inviting space to rest, be it visitor or tenant.

I hope someone calls them on it. It honestly is quite embarrassing to see a display of inhumanity like that.

The people I would consider human vermin aren't the ones sleeping on the streets.

Those spikes should not be there even if they where for pigeons and even less for homeless people. The karma backlash to this is insane. Humanity have become insane.

a reply to: trig_grl


That looks so effin dangerous! And not just for homeless but for everyone, small children included!

Just one more reason to despise the wealthy.

Scumbags.

a reply to: trig_grl

I must state first, that I have slept rough for an extended period before. That is as clarification and to provide context to what I am about to say.

There is no need for a person who is sleeping rough, to do so outside dwelling places, and shopping venues. In fact, doing so places a homeless person in more danger than they would be, if they had selected a good place to bed down. When one goes to select a place in ones locality, to bed down for the night, one must consider the following things:

First, violence against the homeless, both by passers by and other homeless persons, can be a problem for someone living the hard life. Therefore, it is best to select a patch where one is out of the way of foot traffic as much as possible, reducing the number of people who will potentially stroll by, which in turn reduces the potential sources of violence that a rough sleeper might encounter. For that reason, I chose to sleep on a large roundabout, which used to dominate the top end of the High Street in our local town center.

I made my bed against a tree there more often than not, and the area I had selected was surrounded on all sides by thick shrubs, which kept prying eyes from locating me, and the foliage also provided shelter from rain and wind, not to mention being slightly warmer because of the plant and insect life in the area.

When I did not sleep there, I slept under a pedestrian bridge which provided similar cover, save for the fact that the protection offered was provided by concrete rather than by vegetation.

The other thing to ensure is that one never uses private property to doss down on. Public land is generally easier to access, far less likely to be visited during the later hours of the day and the early hours of the morning, and therefore is statistically speaking, quite a bit safer for someone living rough. You have to think tactically if you are living on the street, because otherwise you expose yourself to unnecessary risk, and THAT is what gets a person shived in their sleep and robbed of what pathetic belongings one might have available to them, or worse.

So... the main things to look for are a place which allows for concealment from prying eyes as a priority, and shelter as a far secondary priority.

The example of that rebated area in the OP story, fails on the primary consideration of concealment, and only offers a little shelter anyway, and therefore even at my most desperate, I would never consider bedding down in such a place. Whether you live in a high rise, penthouse suite or on the dirtiest street in your city or town, stupidity is not acceptable, and you would have to be pretty stupid to select a bedding area which not only fails to conceal you against being seen by potential sources of threat, but also offers very poor shelter from the elements, as the featured location does.

Also, a word on the anti-social behavior prevention element of the placement of these spikes. I currently live in a flat above the place I work. To access it, one walks out through the back door of our shop, and up a flight of stairs. These stairs, during the summer months, are plauged with youths toking on illicit smokeables, drinking beer they are not legally allowed to purchase, and occasionally (and only in the circumstance that both persons are morally defunct, intellectually stunted morons) people screwing under them in amongst the filth. This practice particularly, is both upsetting for those of us with some sort of sense of propriety, and is drastically unhealthy when you consider the biomechanical requirements of penetration, and how enacting such a thing in a place which is frequented by stray cats, foxes, birds, and occasionally rats, should be quite obviously a bad idea.

Now, in the case of smoking and drinking on the stairs, this blocks the private access to the flats above, and creates tension between the residents of the flats, and the kids on the stairs, some of whom are verbally abusive to the residents when they try to ascend. For some reason (I cannot think why) I get very little of that, even when I inform them that they have approximately five minutes to leave the area, before I call the police and start throwing them off the property. For other residents up here however, they appear quite intimidating as I am sure you can appreciate, and lets face it, I am not always here to clear them out.

If the addition of spikes was not the enormous health and safety risk that it would be to legitimate users, then I would consider them a welcome addition to the stairs, since they would be far less likely to be used as a place to sit and partake of illegal drugs, and illicitly obtained beverages. The importance of a stair being flat and not having protrusions to trip on make use of these spikes in that place an impossibility.

The under stairs area however, would be a PERFECT candidate for the addition of such things, since no one goes there, aside from to engage in the most ill advised sexual pursuits ever enacted since Katie Price lost her virginity.

In short, the homeless have a raw deal, but having been there myself in various states of mental disrepair, I can tell you that it is NOT necessary, and is infact counter productive, for a homeless person to use areas like those being fitted with these spikes, as a bedding place.

I used to live in London and I saw those spikes years ago, it's not new.

Homeless are treated like vermin by many. Back in '98 I used to work at one of the most luxurious and prestigious hotel in the heart of the West End. At the end of the day we had so much food left over and one day I suggested to the General Manager to give the left overs to the homeless, which were already plenty back then. My idea was rejected as giving some food would bring more homeless to the area....they rather chuck the food in the bins (employees were also not allowed to take home).

We live in a society (in a world) were few have too much, most have little and many have nothing at all.

If I were homeless I would find or save up for a nice sheet of plywood and set it on the spikes, throw my cardboard boxes on top with my blankets or whatever I could steal from these wealthy pricks and sarcastically thank them for lifting my bed a couple inches off the ground. It would work better if the wealthy pricks actually used more spikes to fill in the gaps, it would be easier on the plywood...like lying on a bed of nails. Lemons into lemonade sorta thing... work with what you got. Two can play at this game.

Pricks nonetheless.

a reply to: aboutface

Precisely. They could've added value instead of looking like a modern take on a dark age torture device. They wouldn't have had to worry about young children tripping in the area and risking spiking themselves either. Those spikes are tasteless and mean to the core. Like you said, tall beautiful planters would deter that cozy corner from being used and not harm a soul.

Then again, just looking at the picture and how the spikes are laid out and honestly, between the spikes themselves and the fact that they aren't even in a neat row just tells me how disturbingly tasteless the crafter was in their work. Ugly to behold and ugly in spirit.

In calif they put concrete flower planters in places like that.

i have also seen drip units mounted in the over head that drop water at night.

it isn't safe for them either, but of course that never comes up in anyone's itty bitty teeny tiny little microcosmic world.

a reply to: Metallicus