Although homelessness is as prevalent of an issue as it's ever been, that doesn't mean it's easy to get people to agree on how to handle it.
It should be noted that there are many people in the world who look at the issue and the people affected by it with a compassionate eye. Not only that but research conducted throughout the world is showing increasingly interesting results and potentially providing communities with a sustainable toolkit to tackle the problem at large head-on.
However, that doesn't mean that it's unusual to see the issue reduced to how uncomfortable others are seeing homeless people in public spaces. As The Guardian reported, such philosophies can even be built into those spaces through what's known as "hostile architecture." These can include spikes on ledges, dividers on park benches, and other features intended to keep homeless people from sleeping in certain areas.
So while it's not hard to see how a statue that resembled a sleeping homeless person came to be treated as it does in the story we're about to go through, the fact that events unfolded as they did show why it exists in the first place.