Rebuild Woonsocket Condemns Anti-Homeless Architecture

Community organization Rebuild Woonsocket strongly condemns the City of Woonsocket’s recent construction of hostile bench architecture in Social Park. This type of architecture, which the city recently installed on the benches immediately adjacent to Bouley Field, is used to make it impossible for unhoused community members to sleep there. 

“It’s an act of violence… This is the newest development in the city’s - and in particular, the Baldelli-Hunt Administration’s - long string of attacks, both systemic and direct, on our unhoused neighbors.”

Alex Kithes, Rebuild Woonsocket Executive Director

The Baldelli-Hunt Administration has a history of bad housing policy that favors the wealthy and well-connected over the working class. They’ve also regularly used the force of the city government to directly interfere with the survival of unhoused community members, such as the eviction and bulldozing of a homeless encampment on public property in January of this year. The city has recently begun coordinating with the community to implement small-scale band-aid solutions, and for that we're thankful. But we need large-scale, systemic fixes to the housing crisis.

A resident of the neighborhood near the park shared with Rebuild Woonsocket that:

“The consensus in our neighborhood is that nobody is bothered by the folks in the park. A lot of us have relationships with people that we’ve seen in the area for years.

I don’t feel unsafe, and the only thing that bothers me about people sleeping in the park is that they’re being forced to sleep outside because of a lack of affordable housing.”

Rebuild Woonsocket echoes the calls being made by our community, by our state, and across the country: stop the violence against our unhoused neighbors and build more high-quality affordable housing. 

“Over the past few years, residents of Woonsocket showed overwhelming support for a substantial municipal investment in affordable housing,” continued Kithes. “It’s time the city government focused on taking care of the needs of our community.”

Find Rebuild Woonsocket on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @RebuildWoon