We are seeing more and more of these [anti-homeless] devices not just in France, but across Europe. Different people are responsible – sometimes it is the state, sometimes the city, sometimes it is private individuals. A lot of urban architects are integrating these features into building and design plans.



We do understand that there are objective reasons why a private business might install something like this. [If homeless people are camping out in front of their business], it can get dirty or look bad for the company’s image. But these installations do nothing to solve the problem, they just push it farther away.



The state has a responsibility to create housing for the homeless. But, ultimately, private citizens have a responsibility too. We can’t become numb to this situation. As long as people are sleeping in the streets, we need to speak up and demand a solution.

These seats respond to the needs of our passengers, who sometimes have very short wait times on the platforms. The metro isn’t meant to become a home or a reception centre for homeless people.

Christophe Robert, spokesman for the Fondation Abbé Pierre, explained the thinking behind this campaign to the FRANCE 24 Observers team.In the past 10 years, the homeless population in France has increased by 50 percent.There has been widespread outcry in the past few days about a privately owned Parisian parking garage that installed automatic sprinklers to stop homeless people from entering the space or using it as a toilet. The company that owns the garage claimed that they had tried other measures to no avail.Many people who took up the #soyonshumains challenge posted pictures of benches in the Paris metro, claiming that the true reason behind sloped seats or armrests were to dissuade people from using the benches as beds.The FRANCE 24 Observers team contacted the Parisian transport authority RATP to ask why they had chosen to install “leaning bars” instead of traditional benches. We got this response from their communications team.The RATP did note that, in 1994, it created a special Social Welcome service with 90 employees tasked with taking care of any homeless people found within the transportation system.“[The RATP] is conscious of the problem and is working to respond to it,” said Robert of Fondation Abbé Pierre.