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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe homeless are having to use libraries as day shelters
I started visiting the main library in my town not that long ago. One day I arrived before they opened, and much to my surprise I found throngs of people waiting there - all of them with huge bags, backpacks, and some with rolling carts filled with their belongings - all were homeless and waiting to enter. Once the doors were opened, there was a rush to get in - some went to the bathroom (to use it, and some to wash), some ran for the more comfortable available seats, and others signed up computer reservations (where many of them play computer games).
When I was a child, I spent a lot of time at the public library. A lot of other children my age spent time there, as did adults, students, and folks checking out books. I don't recall homeless people occupying many of the seats there. Now it seems homeless people are spending a good part of their day there for lack of other places to go or be.
In another city I lived in, there was an issue with homeless people, and in particular a woman who was homeless and had emotional/mental issues. I was told that she never showered and as a result, the smell made it nearly impossible for other patrons of the library. Patrons began staying away, and the library staff was forced to work under unpleasant circumstances, so the city had to get involved, the police department, and so did the ACLU. It was a mess.
I think the damage done by decades of right wing ideology has resulted more people than ever being homeless in our country, and to make matters worse, right wing policy over decades has destroyed programs for the needy. So now libraries have taken on a role as homeless shelters during the day. I looked up articles on this and found quite a few. Here is one:
Public Libraries - The New Homeless Shelters
SAN FRANCISCONot everyone who spends all day, every day in the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library is down and out. Only mostly everyone.
Kathleen Lee knows this because she spends hours a day walking the six floors of the vast, sky-lit building, looking for patrons who might need real help. They are everywhere: in the carrels, amid the stacks, on the computers. Some wear all they own on their backs and all theyve lived through on their faces. Others hide in plain sight. Lee knows this, too, since she was homeless a few years ago. So she tries to let everyone know who she is and what she does. I strike up a lot of conversations, she said at the end of a recent three-hour shift.
What Lee does at the San Francisco main library is help homeless and indigent patrons fill fundamental needsfood, shelter, hygiene, medical attention, substance abuse and mental health services. Shes one of five peer counselors, all formerly homeless, who work with a full-time psychiatric social worker stationed at the library to serve its many impoverished patrons. This outreach team, one of the first in the country, is no longer a novelty. In these hard times, as social safety nets shrink, libraries have become more vital than ever as safe spaces for people with nowhere else to go. Since the San Francisco Public Library outreach program began, about four years ago, it has been inundated with requests for guidance from libraries all over the country grappling with their new role as de facto day shelters.
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/07/public_libraries_the_new_homeless_shelters_partner/
OneGrassRoot
(22,917 posts)Safetykitten
(5,162 posts)Little Star
(17,055 posts)gollygee
(22,336 posts)I worked at a library when I was in college in the late 80s early 90s and it also had a large group of homeless people who hung out there every day, particularly in the winter (in Michigan.) It was not an official daytime shelter but it served that purpose.
Neoma
(10,039 posts)Not news to me. One of the (church) homeless shelters is right across from the library.
Zorra
(27,670 posts)spend their day in the library to stay cool on hot days.
Some can't afford to run their AC, and mobile homes turn into metal ovens in the hot AZ sun if they are not cooled effectively.
Sarah Ibarruri
(21,043 posts)Haven't they? They've impoverished our country.
Zorra
(27,670 posts)bettyellen
(47,209 posts)HardTimes99
(2,049 posts)the homeless on Skid Row back into visibility and thereby dignity. While OLA may have had its share of shortcomings, that willingness to 'see' the homeless as 'us' and not ignore them will forever justify OLA's existence to me.
Sarah Ibarruri
(21,043 posts)while there are so many people with no place to go, that they have to go to the library to wash, to use the bathroom, and even to get some sleep.
I'm very disheartened by the sickening right wing ideology that shaped this country over the past decades. When will the sick right wing ideology finally die out and with it the damage that it's done to this country?
HardTimes99
(2,049 posts)efforts of 19th-century steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, IIRC. There's no small irony in that fact that libraries have become the refuge for victims of the de-industrialization of America.
As to your question, I have no crystal ball and can only hope that the continuing transformation of America's electorate to a more ethnically and culturally diverse cohort will result in the death of the racist, fascist ideology. No guarantees, though.
CBGLuthier
(12,723 posts)There were homeless people back then who came in and stayed all day to escape the heat. Never more than about five to ten of them at a time. Of course, these were the old style homeless, the drunks and mentally ill for the most part. This was a large downtown branch .
Libraries have been homeless shelters for some time. We just have a lot more homeless now than back then.
Sarah Ibarruri
(21,043 posts)It appears that libraries are serving as places for the homeless to wash, hang out, and sleep. That alone is pretty scary, because some of the homeless are not mentally well, in part I suppose because some are mentally ill, and in part because I suspect homelessness itself makes people mentally ill.
I'm going to find out if the homeless shelters in this area simply don't provide places for them to wash or hang out. Perhaps they only provide a place to sleep, if that.
I just read that Seattle's libraries have regulations about offensive odors. People with offensive odors are not allowed to remain.
theHandpuppet
(19,964 posts)... I used to love going to the library. It was always full of the homeless but hell, I didn't care if someone was there taking a snooze in unwashed clothes. The problem, however, was that of the mentally ill taking up residence. When it got to the point that I didn't feel safe there, due to an ill man who kept following me around, exposing himself and jacking off, I simply stopped going. It's not like I didn't report this kind of outright harassment but the (male) librarian just laughed at me. Then I knew, sadly, I wouldn't be using the that library ever again.
Sarah Ibarruri
(21,043 posts)Apparently the main library has the sheriff dept kicking some people out. They seem to leave the homeless at the library, so it must be the drug addicts and schizophrenics that they kick out. The library I frequented as a child had no homeless, no crazy people, and no druggies, and it definitely wasn't in a wealthy part of town.
I asked my cousin (who is a bit older) and my parents, and none remember the throngs of homeless idling away the hours at the library, so I've simply got to believe that this overwhelming number of homeless, and the lack of places for the poor to be in during the day, started happening with Reagan and is continuing on to the present.
EC
(12,287 posts)progressoid
(49,827 posts)Mostly to keep people from sleeping.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)support & can be defunded.