Tenleytown Library homeless issue

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12/18/2025 20:28

Subject: Tenleytown Library homeless issue

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Anonymous wrote:As the child of immigrant parents who did not speak English and worked long hours, the public library was my refuge. I spent countless afternoons there reading, studying, doing my homework, and talking to librarians about books and newspapers. It was safe, clean, and welcoming place. That experience no longer exists for many children today, and its loss is a profound social failure.

Public libraries have been radically transformed, not by accident but by deliberate policy choices that elevate the demands of the severely mentally ill, drug-addicted, and chronically homeless over the rights of the working class, poor families, students, and children who rely on libraries the most. This is not a rant about people down on their luck. It is about repeated, unchecked behavior that would be unacceptable anywhere else: aggressive public ranting, overwhelming filth and odor, public nudity, people soiling themselves and then occupying furniture that others will later use, harassment of minors, and the routine conversion of restrooms into makeshift bathing, laundry facilities, and places to inject drugs. These conditions are continually tolerated while staff stand by powerless or unwilling to act.

The result is that law-abiding patrons are effectively displaced from a public institution. No one can concentrate and people do not feel safe. Students are driven away from one of the few remaining free spaces for learning. When libraries become hostile or frightening environments, it is the poorest and most vulnerable law-abiding users who pay the price.

Defenders of this status quo often cloak themselves in the language of compassion. Librarians and outside advocates dismiss legitimate concerns as intolerance. This is not empathy; it is abdication. Compassion does not require sacrificing standards of hygiene, safety, or basic decency, nor does it require turning libraries into de facto homeless shelters or psychiatric wards.

It is a travesty that today, those who disrupt, intimidate, and degrade public spaces are afforded more practical rights than children trying to do homework, immigrants trying to learn English, or students trying to escape chaos at home. When libraries abandon standards, they do not become more inclusive they become unusable. And society is immeasurably poorer for it.

I agree. The city provides shelters and many of the unhoused decline to use them...so they can take over and render unusable any space they want, to the detriment of a much greater number of others? That makes no sense and is also a waste of taxpayer funds. Re the Tenleytown library, I've also stopped using the compost collection station on that corner because of the harassment I've experienced each time I've gone.

You are not better or more important than the smelly homeless person. There is nothing wrong with them sitting there in the warm. The library is just as much for them as it is for you.

DP. The library is open to the public, true. But there are reasonable expectations of good hygiene and socially acceptable behavior at play, too. The PPP beautifully lays all of this out in her post, which you clearly ignore because you have no actual rebuttal and deep down, you know she's correct. Public libraries are for ALL of us, to include women and children - the very same people who are constantly harassed by mentally ill homeless people. But it's clear you couldn't care less about all of those other people who are now unable to use the library as it was intended.

The poster who thinks anyone in an any condition should be able to be in the library apparently does not care about children's safety.

+1 The kind of person who thinks everyone is free to do whatever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want -- rights with no rules or obligations to others.

Stop twisting my words and making stuff up. That is not what I said. I DID say that the homeless have every right to be in public spaces, just like OP and just like you. If they are sitting there trying to stay warm, there is NOTHING wrong with that. I never said they are allowed to do whatever they want. If you are bothered by the smell, check the books out and take them home, princess. I'd much rather that, than the homeless freeze to death.

PP here. I've said before I'm not bothered by the smell. I AM concerned about those who are using drugs and alcohol (which many of them do) and the safety of children (which also should concern you, princess). I'm not twisting words. You're the one who thinks anyone has the right to hang out in any public space. Do you live in San Franciaco?

And again, we are responding to OP's ridiculous whining about the smell. Not drugs or violence. If that actually happened, she would have received sympathy. Instead, she is whining that she got a whiff of a homeless person. Details matter, princess.

Princess, perhaps you haven't worked with the homeless and don't realize the reasons for their being homeless. It's not just a smell. It's usually severe mental illness and/or addiction issues. There's a safety issue for children. You can quit pretending otherwise.

Then start your own thread about those issues. In this one, none of that was mentioned. It was just the smell.

DP. Wrong. The OP mentioned the smell - which I agree, is horrific - and also these:

"the offensive smell and condition in the vestibule from a few homeless individuals that were camping out on the benches.
One of the individuals was also acting in a concerning way that made me question mental stability."

In short, the OP was far more polite in her assessment than I would have been. The library reeks of shit, alcohol, and unwashed bodies. And the behavior of many of these homeless people is something that should never be allowed in the general public, much less among children.