In 2022, Chicago Review Press Published Overdue: Reckoning with the Public Library by Amanda Oliver. In the book, Oliver describes her stint at a Washington, D.C. public library branch that serves a large homeless community. The challenges involved and her lack of preparation resulted in a PTSD diagnosis.
Oliver advocates in the book for more training for staff as well as embedding services for the homeless, such as showers, storage lockers, and clean needle exchanges, in new or remodeled facilities. An armed security guard was eventually installed at her location; Oliver both laments that decision and admits that it made for a calmer and safer working environment.
The challenges described by Oliver could be ameliorated in one of three ways:
Other agencies could provide daytime services for the homeless (shelters, counseling, housing navigation, drug treatment) so that library staff could concentrate on providing for their educational, recreational, and informational needs.
Libraries could provide homeless wrap-around services by partnering with outside agencies. This would involve providing space in library buildings for other types of employees (social workers, housing navigators, drug treatment counselors) and services (i.e., showers).
Library staff could be trained in providing services to the homeless and library buildings could be modified for providing those services.
While all library staff should be trained in de-escalation techniques, possibility #3 seems like it is asking too much of library staff; Oliver herself left her job after nine months due to stress. Possibility #1 seems like the best solution, but the housing first model has taken hold and there doesn’t seem to be the political will to re-direct some of those efforts into daytime services for the unsheltered. Possibility #2, therefore, seems the most realistic.
Top image: Tuesday afternoon, 12 January 2021 Walk to US Capitol & Supreme Court - Washington DC 04.HomelessTents.NE.WDC.12January2021 (50845383242).jpg/ Wikimedia Commons
I have no solutions right now but have suffered much sadness from one of my advisees' deaths by a homeless man in Ft.Myers Beach, FL.. I do not know if this story made national news.
I think it is inappropriate for libraries to be expected to or forced to provide social services. It isn't and shouldn't be a part of their charter. It's redundant - theoretically, at least - and inefficient to require overlapping training across multiple agencies. Job security for the organizations that provide the training, though. I've seen what happens in a number of libraries in and around the Seattle area. People like me who used to be regulars basically stop going to them. They lose community engagement from the broad base of people who created them in the first place. Probably an unpopular opinion here, but there it is.
One thing I forgot to mention is whether the public wants libraries to provide homeless services. The problem is, many public libraries are currently acting as daytime shelters regardless. There is also the NIMBY factor with the public- nobody wants a homeless shelter in their neighborhood.
Wow! I got the impression from Oliver (the author) that she hews to a certain progressive ideology that at the very least needs some re-examining, like doing away with police presence, the "housing first" model, and clean needle exchanges as opposed to drug treatment. I don't know if making those changes would help but they are worth discussing.
It is more than inappropriate, it is wrong to put untrained and underpaid library assistants and technicians, and in some cases unpaid volunteers, on the front lines of mopping up every mess we have thanks to decades of slashing up the social safety net.
Public Libraries are meant to serve their whole community, turning them into social service hubs drives off many citizen who do not want to put themselves or their children at risk. Meaning the kids who need the library the most are too scared to go there. Libraries lose good staff because they know it is not their job to do the 8 or 9 social service jobs that the governments (both left & right) have defunded and deprioritized. Policymakers who created this problem should have tent cities on Their lawns in Their neighborhoods. The billionaire pharma companies that have manufactured the drug crisis should build the treatment centers and funding recovery treatment. Putting any of this on the shoulders of public Libraries is wrong.
What about the kids and adults who want to use the library? Who might be the only people in their families who love to read and learn, who want to expand their worlds with books and the ideas that are in them? Just screw them? Libraries have to become homeless shelters because our tax dollars, which could be going into social services, must go into the pockets of the rich instead. Librarians have to become social workers, because since the majority are women, we should live to serve anyway, right? This idea that librarians must provide all these services is based on a lot of flawed ideas which devalue the services we actually provide.
I would love for libraries to be able to just focus on their primary mission, but unfortunately, at the moment, those other services do not exist and libraries are caught in the middle. I will say, I have some experience with working for a city that employed a housing navigator who found homes for people, and quickly, and it helped a lot.
I have no solutions right now but have suffered much sadness from one of my advisees' deaths by a homeless man in Ft.Myers Beach, FL.. I do not know if this story made national news.
https://winknews.com/2023/02/17/adam-soules-sentenced-to-life-in-prison-for-murder-of-fort-myers-beach-librarian/
I think it is inappropriate for libraries to be expected to or forced to provide social services. It isn't and shouldn't be a part of their charter. It's redundant - theoretically, at least - and inefficient to require overlapping training across multiple agencies. Job security for the organizations that provide the training, though. I've seen what happens in a number of libraries in and around the Seattle area. People like me who used to be regulars basically stop going to them. They lose community engagement from the broad base of people who created them in the first place. Probably an unpopular opinion here, but there it is.
One thing I forgot to mention is whether the public wants libraries to provide homeless services. The problem is, many public libraries are currently acting as daytime shelters regardless. There is also the NIMBY factor with the public- nobody wants a homeless shelter in their neighborhood.
Some major incidents at two Canadian libraries: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/millennium-library-winnipeg-stabbing-1.6682493 and https://bc.ctvnews.ca/woman-dead-6-others-injured-after-stabbings-at-north-vancouver-library-1.5365190
Wow! I got the impression from Oliver (the author) that she hews to a certain progressive ideology that at the very least needs some re-examining, like doing away with police presence, the "housing first" model, and clean needle exchanges as opposed to drug treatment. I don't know if making those changes would help but they are worth discussing.
It is more than inappropriate, it is wrong to put untrained and underpaid library assistants and technicians, and in some cases unpaid volunteers, on the front lines of mopping up every mess we have thanks to decades of slashing up the social safety net.
Public Libraries are meant to serve their whole community, turning them into social service hubs drives off many citizen who do not want to put themselves or their children at risk. Meaning the kids who need the library the most are too scared to go there. Libraries lose good staff because they know it is not their job to do the 8 or 9 social service jobs that the governments (both left & right) have defunded and deprioritized. Policymakers who created this problem should have tent cities on Their lawns in Their neighborhoods. The billionaire pharma companies that have manufactured the drug crisis should build the treatment centers and funding recovery treatment. Putting any of this on the shoulders of public Libraries is wrong.
What about the kids and adults who want to use the library? Who might be the only people in their families who love to read and learn, who want to expand their worlds with books and the ideas that are in them? Just screw them? Libraries have to become homeless shelters because our tax dollars, which could be going into social services, must go into the pockets of the rich instead. Librarians have to become social workers, because since the majority are women, we should live to serve anyway, right? This idea that librarians must provide all these services is based on a lot of flawed ideas which devalue the services we actually provide.
I would love for libraries to be able to just focus on their primary mission, but unfortunately, at the moment, those other services do not exist and libraries are caught in the middle. I will say, I have some experience with working for a city that employed a housing navigator who found homes for people, and quickly, and it helped a lot.