City of Moreland to spend thousands of dollars removing armrests from a public bench
The City of Moreland will spend thousands of dollars to chop off armrests from public bench seats, with one councillor labelling the seats “hostile architecture” for the homeless people who want to sleep on them.
VIC News
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An inner city council will spend thousands of dollars removing armrests from a public bench after claims it was “hostile architecture” for the homeless.
The City of Moreland recently installed the armrests on bench seats outside Coburg Library to comply with disability discrimination laws as part of a $50,000 improvements package for Victoria Mall.
But a council meeting last week voted to remove some of them after a motion put by Socialist Alliance councillor Sue Bolton.
Cr Bolton said the armrests seemed like a reasonable refurbishment, but they were examples of hostile architecture.
“It has actually meant that homeless people who were using those benches to rest, can no longer do so,” her motion said.
“It is discriminatory to restrict their access to this public infrastructure.”
“(We need to) have this hostile architecture, and others like it, removed, and send a message to our homeless community that we do not support this kind of unfriendly infrastructure being implemented in our city.”
In comments responding to Cr Bolton’s motion, a council officer said it would cost about $6000 to remove the new armrests and have them modified to be used elsewhere in Victoria Mall.
The officer said that the mall had had issues such as significant levels of drug taking and dealing, insufficient public lighting and rising numbers of rough sleepers.
“These issues were contributing factors to residents’ and traders’ perceptions of safety and lack of active use of Victoria Mall,” the officer said.
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Moreland councillor and former mayor Lambros Tapinos said last week’s meeting rejected his amendment to keep the armrests while a policy was formulated on the wider issue of public infrastructure design.
Mr Tapinos said council property needed to comply with disability discrimination laws to help the disabled and the aged.
“The meeting took an ad hoc decision without policy guidelines, while traders and the disabled were not even consulted,” he said.
It’s understood that three of the four armrests on the bench will be removed and used elsewhere.