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Scottish Charity Register No. SC043760

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Hostile environment

April 01 2026

The trend towards hostile architecture and hostility towards homeless people generally is deeply troubling. By Chris Sampson 

In recent years there has been an upsurge in hostile architecture: spikes and other impediments deliberately built onto likely resting places to prevent homeless folk using them. Most London bus stops now have thin, sloping seating designed to prevent any poor soul kipping on them. It’s not bad enough that you’re without a home, it seems that you’re now expected to stay awake 24/7, too. But surely it couldn’t get any worse…?

A homeless man slumps on a park bench at midnight, exhausted after a day trying to scrape enough cash together for a night in a hostel. Rest at last. Suddenly, four private park rangers emerge from nowhere and jump him, poking bayonetted rifles into his shocked face. He had heard vague whispers about new legislation for such powers, but news stories often pass you by when you’re living hand to mouth. His attackers frog-march him to the park’s perimeter and manhandle him outside its boundary. For good measure he is insulted and punched in the gut by the thugs.

“Serves you right for not being rich,” brays their leader. “Yeah,” sneers a subordinate. “Homeless scumbags should be killed off…!”

Sound a bit far-fetched? Well, in 2025 in the US, Fox News presenter Brian Kilmeade apologised after stating that mentally ill homeless people should be given an “involuntary lethal injection. Just kill ‘em.”

Democrat politician Gavin Newsom responded with a biblical quote: “Whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered.” Amen to that!

Even a Republican, Don Beyer, pointed out that more than a million homeless folk in the USA are children, and thousands are army veterans. “These Fox [News] hosts are calling for mass murder,” he said. “It is sick.”

Kilmeade eventually made an on-air apology for his “callous remark”, but the idea was already widely disseminated by then. Who knows how many have taken up that message over there? And given how the UK often seems to mimic what goes on in the States, and with the possibility of an extreme right-wing government looming here, we must be on our guard against any further dehumanisation of homeless people, and any legislation that makes life even more difficult for our readership.

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April – May 2026 : Working together

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