Just for transparency’s sake before I go into this, my wife is second from the top at the library.

The library here really did have to remove benches outside in a couple of places (in part) because of homeless people. Not because they were sleeping on them, there are other places outside the library where the homeless can sleep and the library does what it can to help the local homeless community.

Unfortunately, some (far, far from most) of the local homeless around the library were either very publicly using drugs or getting so fucked up on those drugs (or possibly just having a really bad mental illness episode) that they were harassing people and scaring kids. So when it came time to replace all of the benches since they got too old, they decided that they would not replace some of them.

There was definitely a big outcry about how the library was being anti-homeless, but it was nuts because there were people on the other side still complaining about how the library always stinks because they let the homeless people in there. I may be biased because of my wife, but I’m also a regular patron and I’m pretty much on their side on this one. It was becoming a huge issue and they really didn’t want to keep getting the cops involved because they rightfully don’t trust what the cops might do with the homeless and only end up calling them as a last resort.

Society has absolutely failed those people though. There is no question about that. But at some point, the library had to draw a line at how accommodating they could be.

NIMBY City, USA.

If only they had somewhere to go other than a Library…

Read. They literally still sleep outside the library. The library has not driven them away. They took away benches so that they weren’t shooting up in front of toddlers going into the library.

As I told someone else- homeless people can be in the library from open to close. They can sleep on library property. They have free access to all library services including free internet, help accessing all kinds of government aid, and just having someone to talk to them if they’re lonely. In another branch, the library is putting in a shower and a washer/dryer for anyone to use for free.

But yes, they took away a few benches because of problem people rather than calling the cops.

What have you done to help the homeless?

As I said, if they had somewhere else to go to safely use, they wouldn’t be doing it on library benches. That who the NIMBY comment was directed toward, the councilmen or whatever that vote to remove those benches, but are almost certainly against having the actual solution because NIMBY

The thing is that you can give people every resource and they still will go where they feel like it. Whether because they don’t care or because they lack the mental facilities to make reasonable decisions due to mental health issues. There may not be a very good and safe answer for dealing with some folks.

Absolutely should give the resources, but be aware that won’t ensure they use those resources instead of doing things a way that is unsafe and/or unfairly inflicting problems on folks.

If only we had some real life data to see if things like safe injection sites work… oh well I guess we’ll just have to make assumptions instead.