it's not the benches ought to be designed to lay down, it's that this is a form of "hostile design" specifically intended to deter it and deprive unhoused folks of simple comforts. benches were fine for hundreds of years with the normal bench design, it's not a coincidence that you see different ones popping up over the last couple of decades disguised as things like "benches made for the elderly!" -- from OPs comments it's clear that they have a lot of hostility and resentment toward unhoused people and it's hard to believe that wasn't behind why they decided to take the effort and time out of their day to post this.