Anonymous
12/16/2025 10:59
Subject: Tenleytown Library homeless issue
Anonymous wrote:I've been to the Cleveland park library on CT a few times and didn't notice a significant homeless problem. I may be immune to noticing them, tho. But I thought it was a very nice library.
Correct. The Cleveland Park library was built without a vestibule having benches that can accommodate loitering.
Anonymous
12/16/2025 10:58
Subject: Tenleytown Library homeless issue
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I’m surprised to learn that homeless people have finally entered NW DC. The rest of us have been dealing with this issue for decades.
Oh cmon. Cleveland Park and Tenleytown have had homeless people for decades. I grew up there in the 80s and 90s and encountered homeless people multiple times a day.
OP, there is no grounds to say they can't come in the library. Sorry.
I never said that they shouldn’t be able to come to the library. I said that they shouldn’t be able to impede on other people’s experiences. In the Tenleytown library vestibule, you literally cannot go in without walking by the benches where they’re sitting in their self soiled clothing, acting erratically, or just causing visceral reactions by the by the smell. I would love to be able to send my child down the street to the library to pick out a book, to browse, but I can’t because I’m afraid of what might happen or what they will experience.
Anonymous
12/16/2025 10:56
Subject: Tenleytown Library homeless issue
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I’m surprised to learn that homeless people have finally entered NW DC. The rest of us have been dealing with this issue for decades.
Oh cmon. Cleveland Park and Tenleytown have had homeless people for decades. I grew up there in the 80s and 90s and encountered homeless people multiple times a day.
OP, there is no grounds to say they can't come in the library. Sorry.
There’s grounds to say that can’t sleep in the vestibule or use it as housing. I guarantee that they wouldn’t tolerate it if they did this at the National Gallery of Art. But somehow our public libraries, which are more frequently used by young children, are just ceded to people with mental illnesses? No. We can do better.
Anonymous
12/16/2025 00:47
Subject: Tenleytown Library homeless issue
I've been to the Cleveland park library on CT a few times and didn't notice a significant homeless problem. I may be immune to noticing them, tho. But I thought it was a very nice library.
Anonymous
12/16/2025 00:40
Subject: Tenleytown Library homeless issue
Anonymous wrote:I’m surprised to learn that homeless people have finally entered NW DC. The rest of us have been dealing with this issue for decades.
Oh cmon. Cleveland Park and Tenleytown have had homeless people for decades. I grew up there in the 80s and 90s and encountered homeless people multiple times a day.
OP, there is no grounds to say they can't come in the library. Sorry.
Anonymous
12/15/2025 23:21
Subject: Tenleytown Library homeless issue
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I don’t understand why there can’t be day homeless shelters. Set up a facility so homeless can go to the bathroom and hang out in instead of using libraries and public transportation.
People need to have more sympathy for the poor/working class who use public transportation and want to use libraries. They should have a right to use these public places without vagrants interfering with their quiet enjoyment
As someone who's worked with the unhoused for years, I can tell you many don't want shelter. There are almost always significant mental health challenges that contribute.
Police used to arrest them for minor offenses, when others find them to be inconvenient and call 911, like the smell and blocking people when walking into to a public facility (merely being there isn't trespass but blocking public right of way is). But that is a bad "solution" for a lot of reasons. Not the least of which is they are back on the street in a matter of hours. So what was the point other than to give them a criminal record?
It's a mental health issue butting up against multiple constitutional issues. And there truly isn't an easy answer.
Yep. Most of these people could benefit from a serious tune-up at St. E's.
Anonymous
12/15/2025 23:10
Subject: Re:Tenleytown Library homeless issue
Pro-tip: some libraries are less accessible by public transportation than others. We choose based on that. Some of our favorites (in MoCo but close to DC) do have Ride-On bus service but it only goes by 2x an hour.
Anonymous
12/15/2025 22:58
Subject: Tenleytown Library homeless issue
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.
Why will tax-payers continue to fund libraries if they are de-facto homeless shelters?
As a friend of mine said about the new wing of the AMNH, which is literally just a big hangout zone, not an education wing, there are no exhibits but just a big set of stadium seats -
"It reflects the co-opting of public space for private use".
I think it reflects the breakdown of civic space and now has to be privatized.
People who used to hang out in the public park or the public areas outside of the museum now find refuge in the controlled space of the AMNH atrium. The uncontrollable behavior of the homeless and any number of free-spirited public malcontents now can be safely exempted by hanging out in the museum's atrium where there are security guards to shoo errant guests away.
The libraries have failed so now the museums step in to provide the space for meeting, sharing or reflection without foul odors and the possibility of harassment.
We reflexably assume taht nobody hangs out in public parks unless they have issues. Consider how we studiously calculate the danger levels of someone sitting on a public bench. Don't make eye contact but check out if there are lots of bags around them, are their clothes tattered, are they muttering to themselves, do they look like they are waiting for someone or treating it like their living room, are they way too comfortable on that bench... we spend more and more time unconsciously sizing up potential behavior problems with people loitering in public spaces than just a few years ago.
Aw shucks, why bother hanging out in the park when someone might harass you for money or just harass you in general, pay a small admission and hang out in the safe public zone of a museum.
Anonymous
12/15/2025 22:35
Subject: Tenleytown Library homeless issue
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.
Why will tax-payers continue to fund libraries if they are de-facto homeless shelters?
+1 Excellent post and so very true!
Anonymous
12/15/2025 22:29
Subject: Tenleytown Library homeless issue
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.
Why will tax-payers continue to fund libraries if they are de-facto homeless shelters?
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.
Why will tax-payers continue to fund libraries if they are de-facto homeless shelters?
Anonymous
12/15/2025 17:48
Subject: Tenleytown Library homeless issue
I live in a suburb in Texas and we have the same situation at our library. It is everywhere.
Anonymous
12/15/2025 17:42
Subject: Tenleytown Library homeless issue
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:OP, if you consider yourself to be a Christian or a member of any faith community, now would be a good time to stop.
Here’s a good litmus test of morality for anyone, regardless of faith. Imagine that you are saying the words you are about to say in front of Pope Leo. Do you still need to say them? Do you need to say them a different way? If you said them, what do you think he’d say back to you?
And I say this as not a Catholic.
OP here -
Thankfully I no longer consider myself a Christian because I have been able to break away from years of indoctrination and recognize hypocrisy when I see it. The treatment of people in religious communities (particularly the Catholic one I grew up in) is awful. I don’t think I need to explain much more about that.
Maybe Opus Dei who owns many properties in Tenleytown would be interested in welcoming these individuals to come stay with them.
I actually do pride myself on staying in the city with a family, showing them different cultures, and putting them around people of different faiths, colors, backgrounds, and needs. But no, I do not think I should have to expose them to the things they experienced this week in order to use a public space.
No other library I am aware of has such a prime vestibule for this sort of activity.
Really? I had no idea. How do you know this?
https://opusdei.org/en-us/article/contact-information-for-activities-in-various-u-s-cities/
All over Tenleytown
Anonymous
12/15/2025 15:26
Subject: Tenleytown Library homeless issue
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:OP, if you consider yourself to be a Christian or a member of any faith community, now would be a good time to stop.
Here’s a good litmus test of morality for anyone, regardless of faith. Imagine that you are saying the words you are about to say in front of Pope Leo. Do you still need to say them? Do you need to say them a different way? If you said them, what do you think he’d say back to you?
And I say this as not a Catholic.
OP here -
Thankfully I no longer consider myself a Christian because I have been able to break away from years of indoctrination and recognize hypocrisy when I see it. The treatment of people in religious communities (particularly the Catholic one I grew up in) is awful. I don’t think I need to explain much more about that.
Maybe Opus Dei who owns many properties in Tenleytown would be interested in welcoming these individuals to come stay with them.
I actually do pride myself on staying in the city with a family, showing them different cultures, and putting them around people of different faiths, colors, backgrounds, and needs. But no, I do not think I should have to expose them to the things they experienced this week in order to use a public space.
No other library I am aware of has such a prime vestibule for this sort of activity.
Public spaces are for...the public, OP.
If you don't like the FACT that there are many people without homes among the public; many people without access to showers among the public; many people facing unemployment among the public; or people facing among the public, then vote, get involved, donate, or DO SOMETHING about it.
Too bad for you that "the public" means everyone, not just those who you deem to be worthy of dignity.
That's all.
I keep debating which person on this thread is the most awful, most insufferable, most obnoxiously sanctimonious. You're in the lead.
+1 And doubtfully lives near a homeless encampment.
Anonymous
12/15/2025 15:24
Subject: Tenleytown Library homeless issue
Anonymous wrote:It triggers me seeing them in libraries. I was routinely accosted, flashed (and I mean completely flashed), and touched by the homeless in a library when I was about 14. I was volunteering to tutor younger kids until I couldn't take it any more. It still bothers me that the library allowed that to happen and didn't protect kids.
+1 Inexcusable that it was allowed to happen to you.
Anonymous
12/15/2025 15:22
Subject: Tenleytown Library homeless issue
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:OP, if you consider yourself to be a Christian or a member of any faith community, now would be a good time to stop.
Here’s a good litmus test of morality for anyone, regardless of faith. Imagine that you are saying the words you are about to say in front of Pope Leo. Do you still need to say them? Do you need to say them a different way? If you said them, what do you think he’d say back to you?
And I say this as not a Catholic.
OP here -
Thankfully I no longer consider myself a Christian because I have been able to break away from years of indoctrination and recognize hypocrisy when I see it. The treatment of people in religious communities (particularly the Catholic one I grew up in) is awful. I don’t think I need to explain much more about that.
Maybe Opus Dei who owns many properties in Tenleytown would be interested in welcoming these individuals to come stay with them.
I actually do pride myself on staying in the city with a family, showing them different cultures, and putting them around people of different faiths, colors, backgrounds, and needs. But no, I do not think I should have to expose them to the things they experienced this week in order to use a public space.
No other library I am aware of has such a prime vestibule for this sort of activity.
Public spaces are for...the public, OP.
If you don't like the FACT that there are many people without homes among the public; many people without access to showers among the public; many people facing unemployment among the public; or people facing among the public, then vote, get involved, donate, or DO SOMETHING about it.
Too bad for you that "the public" means everyone, not just those who you deem to be worthy of dignity.
That's all.
What utter BS and drivel. No, we don't have to put up with the homeless urinating and defecating in public spaces and on public transportation. They can seek help from their families, churches, synagogues, and provate sources. If they choose to not take advantage of available resources or lack the cognitive ability or mental stability to do so, then our govt services need to house them with supervision.