A shopping centre has been criticised for playing the popular kids’ song Baby Shark to deter homeless people from loitering in its stairwells.
The song is played on loop at various speeds in emergency stairwells at Complexe Desjardins – which also houses office space -in downtown Montreal in Canada.
It was introduced around a year ago to respond to ‘security issues’ involving people experiencing homelessness, Complexe Desjardins’ spokesperson Jean-Benoit Turcotti told Canadian website CBC.
He said the firm had ‘noticed an improvement’ since the tactic had was implemented.
But charities supporting homeless individuals have hit out at the move.
Sam Watts CEO of Welcome Hall Mission in Montreal, – which offers various services to homeless people – said the firm was just moving the problem elsewhere.
‘It isn’t possible to resolve the complexities of homelessness by using juvenile tactics that are conceived to exclude people,’ he said. ‘You don’t solve a problem by displacing a problem.’
Mr Watts said he understood businesses and the general public are concerned about the increasing visibility of homelessness, but ‘the answer isn’t to do things that are going to further make people who are vulnerable even more vulnerable’.
Meanwhile, executive director of shelter Resilience Montreal, David Chapman, believes it is cruel to irritate vulnerable people until the leave.
He said there had been an increase in homelessness in the area due to a lack of shelter options.
‘In the last 10 years in Canada, there’s been a movement away from funding homeless day shelters and night shelters and we’re beginning to see the consequences of that,’ he said
Mr Turcotti said Desjardins is sensitive to homelessness issues and has employed two social workers to ‘ensure a dialogue’ with homeless people. ‘Our aim is not to coerce, but to support these people,’ he added.
Baby Shark, with its repetitive lyrics and catchy tune, was released in 2015 and before long went viral across the world.
By 2018 it had been viewed on YouTube more than 1.6 billion times.
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