Same. The homeless population has unfortunately made libraries where I live pretty dangerous places and I can only imagine how much worse that would be if they were open all night. My city doesn’t seem to care at all about people shooting up and ruining public spaces.
We should absolutely have safe housing for homeless people with UBI and transitional programs. We should also offer mental health and substance abuse treatment – and in extreme cases humane involuntary treatment for people that are a danger to themselves and others.
And none of this should take place in shared, public spaces for the safety and dignity of everyone involved. This is a failure of society and needs to be treated as such. Placing the burden on individuals isn’t the solution. Expecting public spaces designed for other uses to pick the slack of a broken societal safety net is insane.
You can’t have humane involuntary treatment. In cases where somebody is threatening someone else, I would say involuntary treatment is called for. But we shouldn’t decide when its okay to imprison people for exercising their bodily autonomy.
Yeah, nothing against that idea in theory, but in practice, places like that end up full of urine-soaked drug addicts that are high on meth, making it an extremely unattractive place to hang out and socialize.
Denver’s Union station downtown is a perfect example. It’s a “public private” space that tries to stay open late on weekends to cater to the crowd but ends up being a hellhole.
places like that end up full of urine-soaked drug addicts that are high on meth,
You’re putting all homeless into a box. Not all are homeless because they are addicts. Some are legitimately forgotten by the system and for different reasons lost job/domestic abuse/no fam/disability/health issue/financial issues. And even at that : addiction is also a symptom of a shit society. Not the same issue as what causes other homeless people but there can be more than one problem in a poorly designed system that comes up with the same result of being homeless.
Society built on capitalistic ideals for more than just survival as a goal has an extremely narrow scope for who it is interested in serving.
With the exception of your first sentence (me putting homeless people in a box, which I’m not sure if you’re making a pun or not), all of other the things you said are correct and I agree with. The things you said and the things I said are not mutually exclusive.
In other words, not all homeless are the same, not all are drug addicts, and society should do better at preventing homelessness, and you might still have a late-night library filled with urine-soaked drug addicts.
You’re putting all homeless into a box. Not all are homeless because they are addicts.
Are we not allowed to make generalizations at all? I promise you if you open a homeless center in any major city you will find out very quick that psycho behavior comes with homeless people at scale. It’s a guarantee that you will have meth addicts ruin whatever infrastructure you provide them. It doesn’t matter that there are some good homeless people when you are almost guaranteed to face the bad ones.
Crazy idea : let’s use churches to accommodate homeless people since you can find them fucking everywhere, surely they’re not used after 8pm, and that’s basically the point of them in the first place, no?
Then they should provide access to toilets. Where are they going when they want to take a piss? Also isn’t helping the poor in anyway they can a charitable act revered by their religion?
Every major religion reveres helping the needy, for example in Islam, zakat, giving money for charity (if you have enough wealth to afford it) is a requirement.
I get the idea and I think it’s wonderful but have you ever been to a homeless shelter? They need staff to break up fights, protect women, clean up the mess made by drug users and alcoholics, and all sorts of other difficult things your average old lady pew duster isn’t capable of dealing with.
Most churches can’t keep the lights on. For every LDS or RCC there are a thousand places on the verge of bankruptcy. Every atheist I know makes a big deal about the big players but not one has shown me the raw the numbers that proves that if they paid corporate tax rates it would be mean more than a few more cruise missiles used to blow up weddings in Pakistan.
Government can’t do that job either. We already have homeless shelters. I don’t know why people talk like this is a new idea. We have homeless shelters in our society. They’re government funded in some cases, or church-funded in other cases.
We still have homeless people. We do provide free shelter and food to people. And we still have people sleeping on the street.
We’ve been doing extended openings 0700-2200 for several years in Oslo. As do libraries all over Norway. You need to use your library-card or app to open the door, so there’s some control (data lives for 7 days). We have very little problems - maybe there’s some homeless there but they are as welcome as anyone else. We do have security guard, or one that strays between branches. And yes we do have homeless people in Oslo.
Go Norway! I whish we had a library law here in Germany like you do - our places are underfunded and understaffed… a lot of my colleagues are very passionate about their jobs, we could do so much more with our local libraries.
A lot of Norwegian libraries are underfunded as well.
In Oslo public library (Deichman) we’ve been given more money the last 10 years than previously. And we have shown what that money can do.
During Covid shutdown the Library was what kept open except for two weeks - that really showed what kind of back-bone we were for Oslo.
It was very tough on our frontline workers as we were swamped with students ignoring any precautions. Working in libraries are still low paying compared to the education
Restaurants, bars are part of number first one. Coffee shops to me close early. Never seen one open at 10pm+
The library having games and such would be nice. They likely would run into the issue that thoae unfortunate would turn up and try to stay all night every time to get out of the cold/rain/heat.
Bars usually manage to bounce them without issue due to them not being paying customers. Getting bounced by a librarian does sound kind of cool though.
Cafes near me don’t open late a lot of the time. They close at about 5pm. So if you want some place to hang out after work? You have no choice other than a bar.
In the UK they defunded youth centres. Whatever shady shit we used to get up to at those, it was in a safe-ish place which at least one responsible person not far away in the worst case. Our behaviour/activities outside of those places once they were gone, as bored youths in a town of middle age to old people, was much worse.
That’s called a community centre and used to be pretty common. Growing up we had multiple that were run by the local Catholic organizations, and I think there were also some that were run by the youth branch of the various political parties.
But a key component of such a place being success is having a certain kind of open culture. There’s countries where if you throw 10 strangers in a room and return an hour later, you’ll find 10 strangers on their phone, having not uttered a single word to each other.
People also have a tendency to divide into subgroups and isolate from each other. It’s a step in the right direction and better than no community at all. But it can breed resentment and even violence. That’s a common problem of community centres here.
If we constantly tell people that their primary defining characteristic is their race, or their sexuality, or their nationality, and we tell them that those people are the only ones who can truly get them, then it’s no surprise this results in a culture of isolating into little demographic groups.
Our library hosts lounge night and a game night. Lounge night is lofi music and people enjoying themselves with games, movies, books, larping, and writers sharing. Poetry night and writers block aren’t personally my favorite but there’s those as well.
The fuck? Abusing? They are homeless and just trying to survive and doing the best they can. They are making good use of their resources to embetter their own lives and the system allows for it. If homeless people go to the library perhaps the problem is not the homeless people but that THERE IS NO BETTER OPTION FOR THEM.
It is abuse in that it’s misusing the resources for purposes not intended. Public libraries are not meant to be hotels for the homeless, and it ruins the experience for everyone else. Hate me all you want for saying it but its the truth.
by actually taking up the offers of drug treatment they are given. I used to work in a homeless shelter and you’d be blown away at how little they care about anything but getting high. They have resources tossed their way for free and they refuse them because they only care about continuing their life of debauchery and drugs.
We should stop collective punishment because society has failed and left people without homes. We should deprive many people of good things because we don’t want to see the unhoused.
A majority of the homeless people in my local library are drug addicts. They are not people simply down on their luck. And they will continue to be homeless until they stop taking drugs. As long as they are on drugs/drinking there is no way out. And they refuse treatment most of the time.
Drug addict is a disease, not a failing of the individual, we lack the support to aid those with addict to better health.
Also, I am not saying you are lying, but there is often a direct mental association with the unhoused and addiction. A few of them may be addicts and we extrapolate it to the whole group.
You don’t understand how addiction or homeless work. They won’t continue to be homeless until they stop taking drugs. They need support systems to aid in recovery, and support for housing. Often times the unhoused become addicts after they experience homelessness, not the other way around, it’s a stress response to self medicate.
Also, at the end of the day, they are still human, and we should not treat them as anything less. We should not remove services from the whole because we are afraid of the unhoused. So many parks were never built because people were afraid of the unhoused, so many public bathrooms were closed, so many benches removed. We can’t continue on treating them like ourcasts.of society, we need to support them in getting physically and mentally healthy.
It absolutely is a failing of the individual. It can still be a “disease” at the same time.
A few of them may be addicts and we extrapolate it to the whole group.
Oh please, most of them are. Drug addiction is the leading cause of prolonged homelessness, followed by mental illness.
Often times the unhoused become addicts after they experience homelessness,
And often times their addiction caused them to be homeless. I’m not sure what value there is in trying to prove exceptions when the general trends are clear as day.
Society has failed them.
I used to work at a homeless shelter when I was doing some community service work and I can tell you first hand most of them don’t want help. They don’t care. They just want drugs. They get offered treatment opportunities all the time but they refuse because they can’t get loaded.
It has a Café, a movie room, a band room, dj equipment, 3d printers, sewing machine corner, children playground and so much more…the most amazing library I have ever seen
Winter is hitting my little town in Sweden and I have to say that your suggestion is looking increasingly appealing. It’s not the cold. It’s not the rain we get now in place of snow thanks to global warming. It’s not even the darkness. It’s the gloomy all-encompassing grey.
It’s like all life and joy leaves the world until spring hits in May.
And the most popular one: the podcast studio. I’d like to point out that the other 20-ish libraries we have besides of Bjørvika are amazing too! You should see the one we open in Holmlia dec 1st. It’s even got a separate youth-library next to the normal one.
Not sure where you live, but I have actually been to a fair few libraries like this in the US. Usually if you want a really cool library, you’ll have to go to the main one in the state. If not that, the highest reviewed one. Of course, it all depends where you are, as different regions seem to care about having nice libraries at different amounts.
when i was a kid i would go to the library all the time until 10, which was late for me at that age. i wasn’t a big reader, but it was a perfect excuse to escape family.
Many libraries in Denmark do stay open to 9pm. They even have tables and invite people to hang out there. Although I må not sure if you’re allowed to drink or eat there they do want you to just hang out. They have boardgames that you can borrow or play there and they even have boardgames nights where you can play against other guests. Some libraries even have gaming computers and playstation 5 with sofas and all. It’s pretty cool! Some of them also let you borrow things like baking forms, instruments, and tools!
I’ve worked in a public library and we were fine with food as long the patrons cleaned up after themselves and it wasn’t something like a full pizza. We got salty when folks just left trash on the tables.
NL here. One of the libraries in my city has a café on the ground floor, as well as space for more noisy activity or higher traffic volume, like music practices or a polling station. While for calm you do need to go up the stairs, the function of the third place does exist in there.
Such a construction, as far as I can tell, is pretty uncommon among libraries in the country though, the cultural sector has been criminally underfunded and disrespected for quite a while. This was a happenstance thing where several local cultural organisations teamed up to make this happen.
sell coffee etc. to pay the bills. all the cool kids are doing it. Libraries are looking for more visitors. Install a Starbucks with tables near the gaming PCs. books and chairs in the corner. Checkout counter is already done, Re: bars, Why do they all have parking lots? AA without the chanting.
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