r/europe 2d ago

Picture Every country stressing about homeless people, meanwhile Poland with double side benches:

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27.1k Upvotes

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1.4k

u/Adri4n95 Poland 2d ago

30 years in Poland and I've never seen this shit. Bigger cities have tons of anti-homeless benches like all around the world

723

u/ForkingHumanoids Bavaria (Germany) 2d ago

Yeah this is just Big Bench pushing its agenda on reddit

80

u/dat_9600gt_user Lower Silesia (Poland) 2d ago

Big Bench XDDDDD

3

u/FurryFujoshiFusion 1d ago

i love you, never let this world change you

11

u/Statically 2d ago

Big bench is my sexy name

2

u/TheHonorableDeezNutz 1d ago

Sadly I have but ONE upvote to give 😆

38

u/Darwidx 2d ago

You get them near the sea in Poland, I think Rewal have them for Example. Also, practically every not "bigger City" have no anti-homeless benches, maybe because there are practically no homeless people.

5

u/ConversationLeast744 1d ago

I was cycling around Warsaw and saw plenty of homeless people sleeping on benches. It's not Seattle, but they're not that hard to come by

5

u/Darwidx 1d ago

I mean that there are almost no in small cities, maybe 1 or 2 on a City means that changing over 100 benches is not practical even for anti-homeless government.

9

u/EkrishAO Poland 2d ago

Which cities? I live in one of the biggest ones, and I've never seen an anti-homeless bench in my life

30

u/kakao_w_proszku Mazovia (Poland) 2d ago edited 2d ago

I saw plenty in Warsaw and WrocƂaw, mostly around the business districts and new neighborhoods

But in general I always thought this „anti-homeless infrastructure” trend was an American thing. At least I haven’t seen something as actively hostile as this.

-2

u/PsychologicalCat9538 1d ago

That’s not anti homeless, it’s pro ADA inclusion. Those are designed for folks with limited mobility who use wheelchairs. The idea is that they shouldn’t just be awkwardly placed at the end of benches and tables.

5

u/NCD_Lardum_AS Denmark 1d ago

Fantastic, now they can awkwardly sit significantly further forward than everyone else.

2

u/dat_9600gt_user Lower Silesia (Poland) 2d ago

I haven't seen those either

2

u/jce_ 2d ago

Ik it doesn't fit with Poland exactly everywhere but Ari Matti has a joke about homeless people in his (cold) European country: "No bigger culture shock than me than the American homeless, because you have these erratic fucking hard to read homeless out there. There's a man holding a pipe ( waving pipe wildly ) just going off and what annoys me is just how nonchalantly everyone around me acts. Like all my neighbors are like " that's Mike" and I'm the only one that's like "uhhhhh shoot Mike..?" But like.you know your homeless you grew up with them. In Estonia we also know our homeless people, but what we also have is a rough winter. So it's not the same guy

2

u/folk_science 1d ago

The first time I saw an anti-homeless bench was this year, in Sopot. I was surprised, I thought they are not a thing in Poland. Haven't seen them elsewhere, but I don't travel often.

-3

u/ritarepulsaqueen 2d ago

Europeans lie about their countries a lot. I've said this before on reddit, but it's true

30

u/Naneh 2d ago

Dude in Poland we have only 30k homeless people for 40mln people in the country, why would we need some weird benches? I live in a big city and we don’t have any anti homeless people infrastructure.

7

u/Adri4n95 Poland 2d ago

I don't know, ask KrakĂłw why they put those on the train station

10

u/PureHostility 2d ago

So the drunk Londoners stop laying down and pissing under themselves as they pass out.

KrakĂłw is basically a tourist trap city nowadays. Maybe they want a "better image" in case someone decides to take a nap in an area where tourists move around.. Dunno.

We do have homeless people here and there and they often did resident public transport hubs AFAIK. but the amount of them is barely noticeable and as a local of a city, you will often "know" homeless people by their nicknames.

2

u/ChuckCoolrizz 2d ago

Same with ƁódĆș and the unicorn stable

1

u/Four_beastlings Asturias (Spain) 1d ago

Don't know about the unicorn stable, but there are normal, sleep-able benches all over ƁódĆș. My husband has adopted the alcohobo who sleeps in one in our street and brings him warm meals.

1

u/mtaw Brussels (Belgium) 1d ago

Well, in any major European city the area around the main train station(s) is usually a hot spot for addicts and homeless. Judging a whole country by that metric damns the whole continent.

-1

u/BellsTolling 2d ago

That's a lot of homeless people though. Poland is a very small country.

5

u/EishLekker 1d ago

Not really. That’s about 8 per 10.000 people. UK, France and Australia have about 6 times more homeless people. Germany and Sweden have about 5 times more, while the US have about twice as many.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_homeless_population

Edit: Also, why do you focus on it being a small country when we are discussing per capita?

-1

u/BellsTolling 1d ago

I'm just stating it's still an enormous amount of homeless people in a very small country. New England is around the same size and has significantly less homeless people with the same general climate.

1

u/Four_beastlings Asturias (Spain) 1d ago

New England has 15mill people, Poland has 37mill.

5

u/Grexxoil 2d ago

I think OP is like Czech so he's not speaking about his country.

And in many cases people from a given country may not realize that their whole country is not exactly like the area/city where they are living.

1

u/AltrntivInDoomWorld 1d ago

It's almost as if Europe is pretty diverse and one person experience can be different from others.

1

u/AquaQuad 1d ago

Meh, the anti-homeless are also easier to use by elders or people with back and knee problems, and it's not like a homeless won't find a fitting place to lay somewhere nearby.

1

u/sk0t_ 1d ago

This is an anti-comfort bench. I absolutely hate sitting on something without back support, whether it's a bar stool at a restaurant or, even worse, this bench in a public space when I need to rest for a few minutes

1

u/TheHonorableDeezNutz 1d ago

I mean maybe accurate but I do remember in Wroclaw there being a guy drunk/homeless (or both) sleeping UNDER a bench 😅

-1

u/kdeles 2d ago

Same in Russia. Maybe this is small city vs big city?

8

u/Adri4n95 Poland 2d ago

More like single city vs rest of the country

0

u/Pankejx 2d ago

I noticed they started getting built more recently, and mostly on bus stops and in the "good clean and safe" neighborhoods

as if the others aren’t just as safe

0

u/puaka 1d ago

they found a single bench like that and wants to make it look like poland is homeless paradise