Posted Thursday, May 15 --- 3:00pm

The Brittany Zimmermann murder investigation put the homeless issue back into the spotlight, as police arrested dozens of transients on unrelated charges.

Police have continued to stress that they have no suspects in the case, but all the attention has caused tension in the city.

Figures show more than 3,000 people a year in Dane County spend a night in emergency shelter.

But experts say it's hard to know exactly how many people have no permanent place to call home.

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By Dana Brueck

"They start lining up about 6:30 around the corner here," Jim Willis says.

"One of my clients told me quite candidly ... I will not go to your office without my husband at night," Marilyn Townsend says.

"We do open the doors at 7:30 p.m." Willis says.

"I was shocked by her statement because her appointment is usually 5:30 in the evening," Townsend says.

Marilyn Townsend makes a living fighting for people she describes as vulnerable.

"Many of my clients are newly fired," she says.

But as darkness falls, her comfort level outside of her office sometimes falls with it.

"Each night it appeared that more sleeping bags appeared outside my door and I was worried that I might be attacked."

Townsend's building is next door to the men's Drop-In Shelter.

"I have noticed a substantial change in last 19 months."

In the warmer months, about 85 single men spend the night here. Once homeless himself, Jim Willis manages this sanctuary in the shadow of the Capitol.

"To be honest with you, it's just like if you had some sons hanging out, some days it's good days, some days it's bad days," he says.

In his seven years, Willis says he has witnessed three fights.

Though, the night NBC 15 visited, police responded for a threat against a staff member. Still, Willis says violence is rare.

"It wears them out being homeless… trying to find something to eat."

Last year, 45 percent of those seeking emergency shelter were single men… more than half reported being homeless due to substance abuse or mental illness.

"These are good people. Circumstances put them in the situation but they are people and let's understand that," Willis says.

Townsend understands. She says her brother spent 10 years on the street but she senses a problem is growing, putting a fragile downtown at risk.

"Folks have to realize that to the extent the square becomes more friendly to the homeless… it becomes less friendly to the public and to small businesses," Townsend says.

This is Peace Park -- a popular hangout -- especially on a beautiful day. A veteran officer of State Street says while the number of people here grows when it gets warm, in her ten years on the job, she's noticed little change in the population or in their behavior.

"I have not seen a groundswell of concern," downtown Alder Mike Verveer says.

But he says awareness has risen since Brittany Zimmermann's murder.
It was obvious to him at the Mifflin St. block party.

"For the first time, it seemed like the residents of the Mifflin Street area were concerned about that and would tell cops, 'this guy is on our property can you have him leave.'"

Willis still sees Madison as friendly toward this community.

He says police visited the shelter after Zimmermann's murder but says the men largely understand.

"There's not a lot of complaints. A lot of guys understand and if anyone complains it's usually someone who's doing no good anyway," Willis says.

A number of people and agencies recently organized the Dane County Coalition to Fight Homelessness and End Poverty. The coalition is holding its first event June 5th at First United Methodist Church.

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By Zac Schultz

Madison has developed a reputation as being very welcoming to the homeless. But in some places around the nation there is a subtle movement to discourage the homeless through the use of architecture and public design.

There are hundreds of different ways to design a bench for sitting. But there are also ways to design a bench to prevent you from sleeping.

The benches along the newly designed State Street can be used by anybody who needs a place to sit. When Michael Scott first saw them he had a different reaction. "I looked at the benches and said, 'Well these benches are wonderful for sleeping on.' My instant thought was what a missed opportunity."

But Scott looks at things through a different prism. He is a UW Law Professor, specializing in a field called Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design.

It's a simple premise. "All people take cues in the physical environment about how to behave in that environment, including criminals."

Professor Scott says you can encourage or discourage certain behavior through design. "Some of the crime preventive effects of design, in many cases, are actually very subtle and hidden to the untrained eye."

Things like quality lighting, high visibility, and high traffic discourage certains kinds of crime.

If you want to discourage the homeless, don't give them a comfy place to sleep. "There's both an art and a science to this, and it has to be done carefully," says Scott.

One London based engineer/blogger calls it discriminatory architecture. He has cataloged a number of new bench designs that make it uncomfortable or impossible to sleep on, such as short benches, curved benches, and benches with middle armrests. One company even brags the bench is designed with a center arm to 'discourage overnight stays.'

"Have you paid too great of a cost to take care of that one thing?" asks Ken Saiki, one of the lead designers on the State Street Redesign project.

Saiki says the middle armrest may keep the homeless from sleeping there, but others are impacted as well. "You're making it difficult for a couple to sit on the bench together. You're making it difficult for a family to use that bench."

While the anti-homeless benches haven't made it to Madison yet, the so-called architectures of control have been around for a while.

A large heating grate on the Capitol grounds used to be flat. Rep. Frank Boyle (D-Superior) says it was changed out about 10 years ago. "It's very subtle. Yet it is very specific. It's geared to the elimination and discomfort of homeless people."

Boyle can see the grate from his office. He says on really cold nights the homeless still use it. "So the homeless are now literally draped over, shoulder to shoulder, and they line these grates in a very uncomfortable manner."

Lisa Link Peace Park is another good example. It's located on State Street, and it's commonly populated by a mix of colorful locals, panhandlers and the homeless.

Ken Saiki said during the re-design process the locals were asked what they wanted it to look like. He says they asked for public restrooms, so they put in a porta-potty. "They were used as porta-potties. They were used to do drugs in. They were used by prostitutes."

They wanted moveable tables and chairs. "At the end of the summer they were all gone. They were not stolen, they were destroyed."

"All of the problems at Peace Park were forseeable," says Prof. Scott. He says this happens all over the country. "The crime prevention people are not often consulting with the design people at the early stages of projects. Then they discover too late, we've designed something that has become an attractive nuisance."

But Saiki says no matter the design, Peace Park will likely by popular with the same people. "There are no other users of that park."

The city and Madison Police are both active supporters of the concepts of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design.

While they haven't started installing benches with middle dividers they are doing other things to improve behavior in some trouble spots.

In Brittingham Park the city is trying to encourage good behavior by bringing in a more diverse crowd to do things like sports and family activities. They are trying to discourage negative behavior by installing security cameras, and cutting off some of the electricity inside the park shelter to prevent some of the transients from cooking meals in the shelter.

On Allied Drive the city installed traffic calmers to get people to slow down, and they want new apartments to have porches facing the street. The idea is to have more eyes on the street to prevent crime.

Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz says even so, they are often reacting to problems rather than automatically designing with preventing crime as a goal. "We probably should think about it more than we have. In the case of Allied Drive, from a positive perspective, we have thought about it. In the case of Brittingham Park just recently we have thought about it from a standpoint of both encouraging behaviors we want and discouraging behaviors we don't want. To be honest with you we didn't think about it much on State Street."