I have to say, I agree with Nathan in this one.
It's hard not to have a complicate attitude toward homelessness, especially in the city where there's often a fine line between a genuine need and a genuine con. I get asked for money every single day I step outside of my apartment, and it begins to feel like harassment after a while.
The thing is, I don't know really know anything about the lives of the people who live on the street. I don't know how they got there, what their experience is like, or whether their situations will ever improve. It becomes so much easier to make assumptions about people when they're personhood is at risk, and I would say that's an accurate description of what's taking place in this project. Whatever the designer's intentions may have been, it just seems to trivialize the lives and experiences of these people. Here, the goal of semiotics appears to have eclipsed the subjectivity of the individual.
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