YOU'VE probably seen them before: seats carefully placed at an angle to be perched, not sat upon, spikes, rocks and uneven surfaces deliberately placed on the ground, rails added into the centre of benches.

At first glance these might seem to be aesthetic choices - a little strange but nothing to get overly heated about. Consider if you will how these features might impact someone trying to use these places to sit, or sleep, for extended amounts of time. Welcome to the world of hostile architecture, it's subtle, insidious, and meticulously designed - not to prevent people from experiencing homelessness - but from doing so in your spaces.

It's no secret that homelessness is an incredibly prevalent, devastating problem in Scotland. I asked Shelter Scotland what the current situation was, and Alison Watson, the director, said there is a record high number of children currently living in temporary accommodation: 9,130. On their website, Shelter reports that one household becomes homeless every 18 minutes, and Alison highlighted the very real need for the government to do more to combat this.

“The Scottish Government have made a choice not to act on the endless evidence and testimony that investing in social housing ends homelessness, tackles child poverty and is vital in tackling the housing emergency,” she said. “They have chosen to deprioritise social housing in their spending plans by disproportionately slashing that budget. The Scottish Government must recognise that its choices to ignore the housing emergency will have devastating consequences for the fight against homelessness.”

We are experiencing a housing crisis, an ever-increasing cost of living and monumental inflation. Homelessness can strike at any time, for a whole number of reasons, and for many people, their right to safe and comfortable accommodation is currently something that can be taken away from them with no warning.

Alison emphasised the struggle faced by those experiencing homelessness, saying, “Life can be a nightmare for people in temporary accommodation with no safe, permanent place to live. It is disruptive both physically and mentally, often affecting relationships and impacting on children being able to do homework in a safe environment, being able to keep warm at night and so much more.”

These policies, this reduction in funding, are orchestrated and executed by people who sleep every night in comfortable beds, sit on comfortable chairs, settees and sofas and have never been looked at as a burden, as a nuisance, as a problem society wishes not to solve, but to ignore. You can spend thousands of pounds making benches as uncomfortable as you like, you can use taxes to make towns and cities as inhospitable as possible for unhoused people, but that won’t solve homelessness, it will only make it more unbearable for those experiencing it.

In stark contrast to this indifference and apathy, The Alan Davidson Foundation holds a yearly prize celebrating transformative, inclusive architecture which promotes community-minded design. The theme this year was "Somewhere to call home” and invited applicants to "imagine new kinds of home communities where people who have experienced the trauma of homelessness and housing insecurity are given the time and compassion to settle, recover and find their bearings." Here, instead of hostility, the priority is accessibility, design that takes into account the needs of all members of a community and prioritises ease and comfort of use.

Someone else challenging the status quo when it comes to exclusionary design is James Hughes, whose piece “Hostile Bench” serves as a critique of those who intentionally incorporate accessibility into their design. While it prominently features visible spikes, reminiscent of those embedded in the ground to deter people from resting there, the bench is entirely functional, subverting the viewer’s preconceived notions of comfort and hostility. James’s website states, “The bench features no obtrusive armrests, nor does it include any gaps or pockets. If necessary, this bench could theoretically provide a temporary shelter for an individual at night with its flat seating level, and two tall end pieces to attach some form of covering.”

Design is a reflection of priority, and in carefully constructing ways to discourage people from lying, resting and sitting on public installations, investment in hostile architecture sends a very clear message about the priorities of a government: they will do all they can to mitigate the effects of homelessness, for everyone except the people actually experiencing it.

On a very real, fundamental level, people experiencing homelessness are being neglected, let down and hidden from view so as not to offend the sensibilities of people who cannot fathom the level of cruelty and difficulty unhoused people often endure. The focus then becomes not getting people off the streets, but off our streets. Not helping them to find secure, stable housing, access to basic amenities and a safer, higher quality of life, but forcing them to move somewhere out of public view, somewhere we do not have to bear witness to their discomfort.

Imagine you have no place to go, and a city which does not offer you adequate shelter has engineered its public space to actively make your life more uncomfortable in the hope you move on. As does the next town, and the next town, until you feel as though there is nowhere for you to exist without being perceived as an eyesore, a burden.

A few years ago, rapper Professor Green took matters - and tools - into his own hands to remove anti-homeless rails which had been added to benches in his local area. He expressed his anger at the measures, saying, "Again, nothing done to tackle the problem, just something to make it more invisible so we can pretend it isn't happening." Regardless of someone's housing situation, they are a member of our community, and they deserve a safe and comfortable place to sleep. Every penny spent on the design, creation, installation and upkeep of hostile architecture is money that could, and should, be better spent in the eradication of homelessness and the protection of the most vulnerable members of our society. Hostile architecture epitomises apathy: in its design it acknowledges the human need for comfort, and has within it an in-built rejection of this need.

Adequate shelter is a human right. Not just for those who work, not just for those society deems worthy based on arbitrary notions of success or productivity, not just for those lucky enough to have supportive, accepting families and friends in a financial position to offer a place to sleep, but everyone. Every person who cannot access shelter represents a neglect of the responsibilities the government has a duty to fulfil. The answer is not to make benches, street corners, spaces under bridges uninhabitable, it's to make these spaces obsolete for use as shelter through the provision of safe and comfortable alternatives.