Photo by Nick Matthew.

OPINION: “New Bedford has installed hostile architecture to make life harder for the poor!”

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“Does anyone else find it irksome that New Bedford has installed hostile architecture to make life harder for the poor?

The Route 18 exit into downtown New Bedford has an island that’s often occupied by homeless asking for help.

I know it’s a buzzkill to be begged for money on your commute, but it doesn’t seem compassionate (or effective) for the city to discourage it through hostile architecture.” -Nick Matthew‎.


Photo by Nick Matthew.

About Michael Silvia

Served 20 years in the United States Air Force. Owner of New Bedford Guide.

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12 comments

  1. Does anyone else find it irksome that these people can stand near Market Basket for hours begging for money every day but can’t get a job? If you can get there every day to beg why can’t you get there to work?

  2. Anastasios Gounaris

    Stupid.

  3. A society and an individual can be judged by how they treat the most vulnerable of society.

  4. I offered one of these beggars a job at 15 bucks an hour, he just looked at me until the light turned green. Save your pity for those that need it.

  5. Get bent Nick, those panhandlers are druggies. I don’t feel bad for those people. They are left there for a reason not because of some sympathetic story.

  6. Poor?!?!?! I watch them get money and instantly run and go meet their drug dealer!! I see these bums out my window everyday at the octopus intersection…. It’s awful, they shouldn’t even be allowed there at all… One guy waves and stares down every car/driver which makes most people uncomfortable. I have watched a guy get handed a $20 bill and then i followed him up the road to see what exactly he was doing with it since he took off the second he got the money, and yup he went and got drugs…. So they aint poor they are lazy scumbags…. I say kick them all off the corners!

  7. There is help available. They don’t need to beg for money all day. I don’t want to see them at streetlights every day. They don’t want the help they just want the money.

  8. There but for the grace of God go I. Some will beg in order to buy drugs, some to buy booze, some to buy food, some for rent or a bus ticket to someplace else they think might be more suitable for them. None of us are perfect in God’s eyes, and every one of us needs a savior. Who’s your savior and why?

  9. So if ya sprain ya ankle and fall in the traffic & live.. your suing the city …
    And I thought people ruining I mean running Brockton we’re idiots.
    Massachusetts as a whole is a hole….

  10. Im someone whose been a homeless youth because my parents were abusive at 20 and I’m disabled and they were shit people where i was fighting the state for a place to live and for my disability case. It takes an extremely long time to get this done due to hoops people have to jump through. The mentally and physically disabled especially are out here suffering especially from these new things implemented, and from the ones still put in place like the ways unnecessary bars are put on benches or on the ground or places people can potentially lie down. This leaves us without safely lit areas to lie when night falls if some of us can’t be in a shelter or fall through the cracks for numerous reasons. Its unsafe on the streets for this alone in the dark, nevermind starving, the pandemic, the riot scuffles that have happened, and more. They really didn’t need to do us like this. Many of us homeless people need to walk everywhere anyway, sometimes miles to get what we need. This is added injury to insult ontop of an existing injury.

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