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In cities over the past thirty years, a ever stricter separation between “public” and “private” spheres has been enforced, leading to the progressive disappearance of “interstices” providing potential shelters for the homeless. Drawing upon Foucault’s Discipline and Punish and upon Bentham’s Panopticon, the author illustrates with evidence from his own fieldwork how the logic of urban planning is one of deterrence with regard to the most disadvantaged. Recent laws targeting the poorest and the growth of urban video surveillance have changed the meaning of “emergency care treatment” given to these populations by humanitarian organizations and charities, suggesting more of a “hunt” against the homeless. Setting these facts against the philanthropic rhetoric which confuses aid with social control, he analyses how this paradoxical situation in which the homeless are caught up is managed: unable to meet the needs of the homeless, society both forces them onto the streets and does not allow them to remain there.