Seems like a good idea on the surface.

It was announced today that Iowa City will be changing their park benches. Current park benches in Iowa City have an arm rest in the middle which obviously doesn't allow anyone to lay down on the bench. Iowa City is going to replace their park benches with benches that do not have an arm rest in the middle so the homeless can lay down on the park benches. Iowa City will be using $10,000 to replace 14 of their 70 park benches.

At first thought, it seems like a good idea to allow the homeless to lay on the benches instead of the much colder ground. But after reading the comments it sounds like the benches that had armrests in the middle of them were to prevent the homeless from sleeping on them. So it sounds like a change of heart as far as the city goes.

But one other point that was made was the fact that that money could be used to improve shelters that would make them more enticing than sleeping on a park bench.

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