Sounds like the area you were in didn’t have adequate homeless shelters. Where I live, you could always have gone there. The cops wouldn’t necessarily have taken you there, but you could certainly have gotten there in your own.

I will admit that “anti-homeless” bench features don’t make much sense unless you have places and resources for homeless people to fall back on. But if there are said resources, I see the utility of these features to disincentivize homeless people from using public benches as a substitute for getting professional help.