Poverty
MLK Library can help itself by helping the homeless
The days of metal detectors and risky bathrooms seem a thing of the past at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library, but one thing has not changed. The library remains a destination for the homeless and lost souls of Washington.
Man at MLK Library with his possessions in a trash bag. Photo by the author.
In a city brimming with specialized research libraries, university libraries, and governmental libraries, the DC Public library is the people's library. 24 branches, many newly built or renovated, serve residents in neighborhoods throughout the city's quadrants, while the flagship MLK Library serves the whole.
With the Board of Library Trustees meeting on Wednesday to discuss the future of the MLK Library, now is the time to also think broadly about the building's immediate needs. One key issue is that the library must acknowledge and reach out to its most loyal but underserved patrons: the homeless.
Library has little recourse against problem patrons
"There was some man outside of the children's section talking loudly about killing children," an unsettled mother with a young child in tow told a library police officer one Sunday earlier this year, as she hastened to make her exit. "There he is," she said, pointing out a diminutive bearded and disheveled man simultaneously making his way out of the building.
While the woman and her child exited the library, the officer quickly stopped and questioned the man. As with incidents of lewd sexual acts, drunkenness, drug use, threats against staff and even occurrences of patrons destroying and defacing books, the library police have but two options: 1) call the Metropolitan Police Department and 2) issue a subsequent ban on that patron from re-entering the library for a certain period of time.
A staff member who spoke on the condition of anonymity said, looking out over a room with no less than a half dozen patrons sleeping, "There is literally nothing we can do. Don't get me wrong, we have people who have been coming here for years. They read, don't bother anyone. Some copy passages out of books. They might use the bathroom to clean up and that's it. Every day is the same. But then we have some people who really need help. This is not where they should be."
Other cities have social workers to help the homeless
DC is not unlike other cities whose downtown libraries serve homeless populations, but unlike other cities, the DC Public Library does nearly nothing to address the constant concerns of staff and patrons. According to administrative sources, the DC Library has a roving case manager on staff but he or she is rarely, if ever, seen at MLK, where there's a large homeless concentration.
The DC Library administration could follow the lead of the San Francisco Public Library system, which has "turned the page" on dealing with the homeless who patronize their main library. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, in late January 2009 the San Francisco system became the first in the country to address its longstanding problems (no different than what goes on at MLK) with homeless patrons by bringing on a full-time psychiatric social worker.
Through an inter-governmental partnership with the San Francisco Department of Public Health, the library hired the social worker to be "on hand five days a week handling complaints from staff and patrons about people's behavior, and calling in security only if things get really ugly."
Along with helping homeless patrons to find other services in the city, including housing and food assistance, job training, substance abuse treatment, mental health counseling, and literacy tutoring, library workers received training in responding to unpleasant behavior.
Not stopping there, the San Francisco system instituted a 12-week "vocational rehabilitation" program for the library's homeless and formerly homeless population. Upon completion, graduates are hired to work in the system. The DC Library already has a similar program in place, Teens of Distinction, which trains city youth to work in low-level administrative support positions, often the teenagers' first job experience.
UPO van on its daily pick-up outside the MLK Library. Photo by the author.
Without an organized city effort local universities, non-profits and church groups regularly perform service outreach projects at the library. For example, on many evenings hot meals and backpacks stuffed with personal hygiene products and new socks are distributed at the corner of 9th & G Street underneath the shelter of the library's Mies Van Der Rohe designed arcade.
While the American Library Association has released information on how to serve homeless patrons, the DC library administration appears uninterested. By not addressing this need, the current library administration enables a culture of dependency among its homeless instead of a culture of self-improvement, and turns away other potential patrons who are intimidated by the homeless presence.
 | John Muller is a local journalist and historian. His first book, Frederick Douglass in Washington, DC: The Lion of Anacostia, was published by The History Press last year. John is now at work on Mark Twain in Washington, DC.    |
Comments
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by charlie on Sep 18, 2012 10:52 am • link • report
PS - I am having serious difficulty with the captcha. It sometimes takes me 5-6 tries to get my comment to post, even though my answer to the question is always correct.
by Rebecca on Sep 18, 2012 10:55 am • link • report
by Thayer-D on Sep 18, 2012 10:59 am • link • report
Not sure if your comment was meant to be serious, but this is a public library. It is open to everyone, as long as they abide by the rules of the facility. Preventing someone from entering based on anything other than their behavior would be illegal and wrong.
by Rebecca on Sep 18, 2012 11:04 am • link • report
by Phil on Sep 18, 2012 11:17 am • link • report
by spookiness on Sep 18, 2012 11:19 am • link • report
The population of homeless using the library wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for all the shelters around the city dumping them there daily.
by JeffB on Sep 18, 2012 11:22 am • link • report
Goodies aren't for everyone.
Now, on to removing those damn kids from Gallery Place.
by charlie on Sep 18, 2012 11:36 am • link • report
Sorry, if you can't take your kid there without some mentally ill person shrieking that he's going to kill them, it ain't "the people's library". There should be a "one strike and you're out" policy for adults: if you can manage to behave yourself, you can use it. If not, you're banned for life.
Untreated mental illness is a tragedy, and the greater society should be doing more to compel people to be treated, but I'm a bit tired of urban Americans being forced to shoulder all the burden of homelessness and mental illness.
by oboe on Sep 18, 2012 11:40 am • link • report
by oboe on Sep 18, 2012 11:47 am • link • report
Forgive me for saying this, but it's supposed to be a library. That is the function of this particular facility. The homeless must be relocated elsewhere.
by Crickey7 on Sep 18, 2012 11:53 am • link • report
check the "Save my name and email address on this computer so I don't have to enter it next time, and so I don't have to answer the anti-spam map challenge question in the future." below the comment field.
Voila, no more captchas to deal with going forward.
by NikolasM on Sep 18, 2012 11:59 am • link • report
I agree that something must be done to meaningfully address the issue of homeless people at the library, but I'm not so sure about the use of the word "patron" to describe people who generally just loiter, sleep or panhandle at the library.
If homeless people came into the National Gallery of Art to sleep, you would not call them museum patrons, would you? What about if they came into a Starbucks to sleep?
by Scoot on Sep 18, 2012 12:06 pm • link • report
One key issue is that Gallery Place must acknowledge and reach out to its most loyal but underserved patrons: violent teenagers.
:)
by oboe on Sep 18, 2012 12:10 pm • link • report
FWIW, in 2007, I led a visioning effort for the Foggy Bottom Assn. wrt development issues in the West End. One of the things I suggested was a conference on dealing with homeless issues at the library, because it is as much an issue at the West End branch as it is at MLK. The DC Library Renaissance Project was interested in pursuing this, but the conference never came off.
It's true that it isn't fair that DCPL has to deal with this, but they have to because it affects their patrons, and other DC agencies should be tasked with helping them address this.
Years ago, when I suggested that the MLK library be opened with extended hours into the late night hours, the first thing that librarians mentioned in response was that later hours would make the homeless problem there even worse.
by Richard Layman on Sep 18, 2012 12:35 pm • link • report
Also, letting the homeless treat the MLK bathroom as a place to clean themselves up should never, ever be tolerated either.
by Fitz on Sep 18, 2012 12:59 pm • link • report
Loudoun would have no problem instituting Charlie's ideas for preventing the homeless from entering the library if it came to that. DC pays a price for its bleeding heart. Not saying that's necessarily a bad thing but it's a fact that compassionate policies have a cost.
by Falls Church on Sep 18, 2012 1:15 pm • link • report
Because this is a democracy, and everyone has the same right to access public services as you do. Don't like it? Move to China.
by Matt on Sep 18, 2012 1:22 pm • link • report
In terms of equal protection, I'd argue that even under a strict scrutiny standard it might pass.* I really don't know which standard to apply, but under a rational basis standard it would easily pass muster.
* for instance, preventing homeless from using public buses might not pass strict scrutiny.
by charlie on Sep 18, 2012 1:36 pm • link • report
by renegade09 on Sep 18, 2012 3:52 pm • link • report
by Mike on Sep 18, 2012 3:57 pm • link • report
San Francisco has the worst homeless problem per capital in the country, because of pleasant weather, its counter-cultural reputation acting as a magnet, and its generous social services.
If they, of all cities, are able to reduce the impact of their huge homeless problem on their public library, then by all means we should copy them.
by Matt C on Sep 18, 2012 5:37 pm • link • report
My feeling is that the library should have clear rules: no taking up more than one seat, no loud or threatening behavior, no damaging books, etc. If you break them, you're out (for the day or longer) or the police get called--regardless of who you are. I've certainly seen non-homeless folks act obnoxiously in the library, whether it's the wealthy-looking lady chatting on her cell phone in the branch near Eastern Market or a bunch of kids roughhousing near the computers in Shaw, and I want them to leave if they can't behave more than I want to stop some homeless guy from spending the afternoon reading magazines.
by sb on Sep 18, 2012 6:22 pm • link • report
by Turnip on Sep 18, 2012 7:13 pm • link • report
I'd support MLK becoming the world's most architecturally important homeless shelter and a monument to how DC cares about its homeless. Shift DC's homeless administrative offices to the site, add a jobs training center but limit the number of people allowed in (and close it at night -- a daytime shelter only) and make it so anyone with bad behavior is banned and must use a different shelter.
Then move MLKs library facilities to a low cost functional building but one thats modernized from the inside. Then put up a plaque at both buildings explaining how and why this came to be.
by Falls Church on Sep 18, 2012 7:18 pm • link • report
The staff know exactly who the occupiers are but they choose not to stop them from coming in. What we are talking about is 'loitering' or 'creating a public nuisance', which I realize are legal gray areas. I"m not a lawyer, but I'd be interested if there is any precedent for excluding people on these pretexts. Alternatively, is it possible to exclude people of no fixed abode? As another alternative, set a limit that no person may use the library for more than two hours, and then selectively enforce it. As another alternative, limit the size of bags that people can carry to one small bag.
by renegade09 on Sep 18, 2012 7:32 pm • link • report
I suspect oboe's suggestion that UPO take the homeless to suburban libraries instead is tongue-in-cheek but since DC contributes roughly 10% of UPO's budget they ought to be able to convince them to stop compounding the problem.
by thm on Sep 18, 2012 10:19 pm • link • report
A new library somewhere else in the inner core is likely to face the same issues. There's no reason orgs won't want to drop-off there. It's also likely to have maintenance issues--much like new libraries such as the one in Shaw where either the wrong materials were chosen for some areas or the wrong maintenance has taken place. Replacement of the MLK building is a solution looking for a problem. There is adequate space and the open floor plan can easily be modified.
DC's homeless problems are complicated--an incompetent mental health system doesn't help. When the vans come to Franklin Square I've noticed that they all come from the suburbs and from places with plenty of poverty of their own (Temple Hills, Clinton, Alexandria, Manassas among others). perhaps if they noticed their own backyard, there would be fewer homeless people in DC. Turning the library into less of a destination for homeless orgs would help. So would reshuffling the layout, so that patron services fill the first floor and the lecture space is somewhere else as it would be in a branch. The list goes on. Even if structural issues like community mental health don't get fixed, some incremental things in existing space could make a significant difference.
by Rich on Sep 18, 2012 10:19 pm • link • report
A couple of things: 1) Just because someone has really poor hygiene doesn't mean they are homeless. There are a lot of really good intensive outpatient tx teams (ACT teams) helping put chronically homeless with severe and persistent mental illness with co-occurring substance dependence issues in permanent supportive housing. The teams then work extensively to keep them housed and work to help with self care, medication management, money management, job searches etc etc.
2) An incompetent mental health system? You are saying that on what basis? Many folks work very hard for little money (I did it for over seven years). Folks are extremely professional, frequently assaulted at work, and the work is very demanding. In spite of all that, much of the work and models used in DC are considered to be leading the nation. And typically the chronically homeless with SPMI who are placed with an ACT team are able to maintain their apartments at a 90 percent success rate, which is an incredible success. Keep in mind this model was developed because it is much cheaper to provide a housing subsidy adn supportive services to these high users of services than to have them cycle through the extremely expensive use of ERs, psychiatric hospitals and jails.
by H Street LL on Sep 19, 2012 8:04 am • link • report
2. You require anyone who is going to enter and use the library facility to register and obtain a photo library card. You don't have to require an address, but at least you have a name associated with a face. That card then has a barcode that must be swiped for access.
3. If an individual violates the code of conduct, their privilege is revoked for a period of time. Since they must swipe their card, their access will be denied if their privilege has been revoked.
4. For those who are determined to "help the homeless," then one room can be set-aside for non-restricted access and staffed by a social worker.
by EH on Sep 19, 2012 10:15 am • link • report
Perhaps this dangerous practice could be effectively addressed if cyclists started receiving traffic tickets for running red lights, just as automobile drivers do.
I find this unlikely, given that drivers rarely ever are cited for running stop signs. Granted, cyclists and pedestrians are far more likely to be ticketed in an enforcement operation than drivers, but still, there just aren't enough cops out there.
by oboe on Sep 19, 2012 1:27 pm • link • report
If you don't want cyclists to ride on the sidewalk then give them somewhere else better to ride.
If you don't want the homeless to hang out at the library, then give them somewhere else better to hang out.
by David C on Sep 19, 2012 4:25 pm • link • report
So who pays for these ID's assuming if just 50% of the Districts population goes to a library just once per year and had to get an ID that would be millions and if you charge for the ID's get ready for a discrimination suit
by kk on Sep 19, 2012 10:27 pm • link • report
I like the swipe card idea. I like the bus them to Loudon idea even better, especially if its one-way.
Best would be to eliminate the bum-feeding programs and have the cops get really strict on pan-handling, public drunkenness, urination & the like. Thank god we defeated a homeless shelter at Georgia & NH Ave or my hood would be overrun by them.
At least we have winter to drive a few homeless away for a few months. But overall, I have no love for those that disrespect our city. Not even sympathy or empathy.
And to call them patrons? Paleeeze!
by Wayan on Sep 25, 2012 11:07 pm • link • report
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