#6: Homelessness and Libraries
North American library leaders convened in May to discuss the impact of homelessness. LAPL's Library Experience Office is a promising practice toward safety for visitors and staff.
In 2023, there were 650,000 unhoused people in the United States and 93,500 in Canada. It is not an exaggeration to characterize it as a humanitarian crisis.
On any given night, there are more than 75,000 people unhoused in Los Angeles, the city I call home. 60-70 percent of the unhoused are unsheltered, meaning they are forced to sleep “in a place not meant for human habitation, such as cars, parks, sidewalks, abandoned buildings” (HUD). Like in most North American cities, homelessness in Los Angeles is accelerated by rapidly increasing rents and lack of affordable housing. An average monthly asking rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles County is now $2,452. To put that into context, it is 2.9 times the minimum wage. Therefore, on top of the people already unhoused, more than 500,000 low- and middle-income residents are just one unexpected car repair or a medical bill away from eviction. Despite large efforts by public authorities, the number of unhoused people in Los Angeles County grew last year by nine percent.
Role and Responsibility of Libraries
Next to the traumatic impact of homelessness on individuals and families, homelessness is challenging public spaces, like libraries. In many cities, libraries are some of the only places where people without a home are welcomed during the day. Homelessness also increases risks for substance abuse and mental health and has resulted in an increase in aggressive and violent incidents. The situation makes many leaders and staff question what is the future of these places and therefore their profession.
On 19-21 May, the Urban Libraries Council convened over 40 North American public library CEOs and City Librarians in Los Angeles to share best practices and to coordinate collective action around homelessness. I was invited to attend the meeting and to reflect what I heard.
I was impressed by the humility and humanity that these leaders exemplified. It wasn't one or two directors who emphasized that we need to see unhoused people as individuals with the right to dignity rather than a problem to be solved. Several of them warned against equating homelessness with substance abuse and mental health problems while recognizing the increasing need for social work and new safety practices. They spoke about the sense of inadequacy and hopelessness many of their staff members experience in the face of human suffering. They shared stories of staff saving lives and witnessing deaths but also of fearing coming to work. Several leaders told stories of staff members going out of their way to help those in need - often breaking the organizational rules, like using their own money to provide a toothbrush, a granola bar, a tampon, or a clean pair of socks. While many of them admitted that they often felt overwhelmed by the situation, what I witnessed were dedicated public sector leaders with a conviction to create a safe and welcoming environment for their employees and to those residents in need.
Four Strategic Questions for Libraries
Based on my research and two days of listening to these leaders, I identify four strategic questions for public libraries in relation to homelessness. All of them build on the library’s core mission while reacting to the crisis in their cities.
1. Partnerships.
At their best, libraries are safe and non-judgmental places. Their commitment to dignity, generosity and self-determination makes them ideal for meeting people where they are.
The meeting made it clear that there is a need for joint advocacy on the opportunities, risks and limits of libraries when it comes to libraries and homelessness. Rather than asking library staff members to be superhumans or having libraries do miracles with their limited budgets, libraries can provide a platform for impactful support through partnerships with housing authorities, social and health services and nonprofits.
To be a predictable and reliable partner while staying true to their core mission, libraries would benefit from easily understandable and codified policies that would lay out their mission as an institution of learning, how they see their role in homelessness, and how they build partnerships. Policies combined with advocacy would increase a sense of control and agency for leadership and staff, function as an invitation for new collaborations and allow funders, partners, governing bodies and the public to hold the library accountable.
2. Sense of Urgency.
In many communities, there is a need to increase the level of urgency on homelessness as a moral and humanitarian issue. One way to do this is highlighting the individuals behind the numbers. Libraries can contribute best not through declarations but building on their core strengths as storytelling, cultural and learning institutions.
Libraries need to do this in a manner fit to a public institution. They can utilize artistic residencies and partnerships in elevating, collecting, and amplifying the voices, needs and experiences of the unhoused through visual arts, film, music, literature, and events. Libraries can also share more more stories of the life-changing and at times life-saving impact their direct support to the unhoused, like in this video by Keith Kesler from Los Angeles Public Library.
Rather than telling people what to think, libraries can create opportunities for learning and human connection. Based on meaningful and equitable engagement with the unhoused, libraries can provide the larger public the opportunity to see unhoused individuals as somebodies rather than a nobodies.
3. Convene Stakeholders for Learning.
Decision makers and stakeholders have highly different theories of the reasons and solutions to homelessness based on their professional and personal experience. One of the key issues I identified in my research at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation on partnerships was the need to start a potential partnership by spending time on understanding and validating differences in experiences before moving to thinking about solutions. Using a broker to help organizations understand each other is often beneficial to create opportunities for equal dialogue. Community or library foundations, nonprofits and professional facilitators have a lot of potential to take this role.
Libraries as non-partisan and widely supported spaces of learning can raise their profile inas conveners of stakeholders and decision makers across the political and policy spectrum to understand each other’s perspectives, to open their minds to new approaches and to align resources for collective action. Libraries can create an environment where we are willing to change our mind based on dialogue and new information without losing our face.
4. Talent Management.
Many staff members are overwhelmed, exhausted, scared or questioning the future of the profession. The situation requires investments in education, more psychological support, new talent acquisition and clearer expectations.
Urban libraries can collaborate with educational providers, like universities, to ensure that graduates to the profession have both realistic expectations and the required capabilities to succeed in a complex urban environment. As the Executive Director of the Las Vegas - Clark County library district Kelvin Watson writes in the Library 2035, “we must broaden our library and information science degrees to include more courses in business, technology, social work, and public policy”.
In terms of current staff, libraries would benefit from investing in trauma-informed training and systematic, immediate support for staff after traumatic or dangerous situations. Understanding the basics of homelessness and your personal responsibility should be framed as a question of professionalism, which the employer both provides and expects from its staff.
Libraries also need new competencies and job profiles. Examples, like those of Denver Public Library or Los Angeles Public Library shared during the meeting are demonstrating the value of a targeted investment in community representatives and social workers. Libraries can join forces with other public agencies to call for more educational investments into social work.
Libraries would also benefit from reviewing their human resources policies, like job profiles, recruitment and onboarding processes and staff recognition guidelines. As employers, libraries need to ensure that the changing expectations for staff are properly laid out and that libraries as employers have ways to reward staff for exemplary behavior.
Promising Practice: Library Experience Office, Los Angeles
One of the responses to homelessness presented during the CEO roundtable was the Library Experience Office of the Los Angeles Public Library. The Library serves the 3.8 million residents of the City of Los Angeles, the largest municipality in Los Angeles County. I talked to Principal II Librarian Karen Pickard-Four, who leads the office, and her colleagues about their work.
In your own words, what is the Library Experience Office?
Karen Pickard-Four: We focus on staff safety and patron safety. Our goal is to be the bridge between patrons, staff, security, mental health, and social service organizations. The funding for the office covers staff training on a trauma-informed approach to serving patrons, new internal staffing of Library Social Workers and Community Service Representatives (CSR), and contracting with outside mental health and social service organizations to assist patrons and staff. The CSRs are not clinicians but community health workers who support patrons in crisis in the library. They work shoulder to shoulder with our staff at Central Library and at several branches. CSRs provide resource linkage to housing, mental health, and substance use support. They help patrons with various needs that library staff cannot, i.e., fill out social security forms, get IDs, or help reunite people with family.
How did the Library Experience Office come to be?
Karen: The Library Experience Office is one of the ideas that came out of a staff-driven initiative to evaluate safety and security at the library. Led by a consultant and staff working group, LAPL staff submitted more than 250 suggestions, many of which focused on prioritizing a safe working environment. They wanted support in working with people who were aggressive and sometimes violent, but they also wanted to reach the people who were perhaps not yet at that level. Our understanding of equity is removing barriers from people who currently can't stay in the library because they are coming in high and have mental concerns, and are being aggressive. The staff members wanted help with skills to do that.
Could you talk a bit more about those experiences from staff and patrons?
Karen: Staff have expressed that they are coming into work not knowing what they will experience and worried about getting hurt. They can be traumatized by the way people speak to them. It’s like opening your door to your home in the morning and letting everyone come in. That's going to be a diverse group of people. Some come for story time, others for help with immigration concerns, literacy, and computer usage, while some come to shelter for the day.
Social Worker Edna Osepans: The unpredictability of working at a public library can lead to anxiety. Not knowing what to expect or how to help a patron in crisis can be scary, especially for someone who is not trained in social work or mental health. This anxiety of the unknown can lead staff to avoid situations, even if they haven’t happened yet. Avoidance is a natural reaction to anxiety.
Community Representative Wanda Young from nonprofit Urban Alchemy: Mental illness is the primary thing. Homelessness and mental illness go hand in hand. You have a lot of people that come into the library who have been traumatized overnight. They come into the library with their only focus on staying safe. When I come knocking, saying ‘can you wake up’, they have been up all night fighting for their life. So they have a tendency to lash out. We see women in the bathroom trying to wash themselves up because they're afraid to go to the free shower on Skid Row downtown. So all of that takes place when they're trying to survive.
What kind of training do you provide for staff?
Karen: We use the Crisis Prevention Institute (CPI) for staff. CPI used to be primarily for educators and people who work in psychiatric situations, but now a lot of librarians are taking their training. It is mainly a verbal intervention class. So far, almost 200 staff members have been trained. We aim to train the whole system, like the Denver Public Library.
Additionally, we have trained 500 staff in Narcan use and 348 in Boundary Training by Melissa Munn. One of our contracts is with Humannovations, which went through the system and conducted listening sessions and surveys to create Library Ally Patron Interaction Skills (LAPIS). We have just completed training 90 staff in LAPIS.
Edna: I just completed one of the Hummanivations trainings, where they describe the relationship with the patron as an alliance. I really liked the way they framed it as an alliance. I think staff walked away with a lot, both conceptual things to think about and practical statements to use with patrons. For example, how to acknowledge someone who is in pain. The point is that staff is not going to solve the patron’s problems. They are not going to solve homelessness. That is not their responsibility; however, during their interactions with patrons, can they become an ally rather than find ways to get out of a situation that is making them feel uncomfortable? Or what else can they do other than call security? It’s about being in that discomfort, the friction you [Tommi] are discussing.
What other forms of support do you have for staff?
Karen: We are always available by phone call/email/chat away, but we also offer weekly office hours as an option as a standing opportunity. People can book 15 minutes or half an hour with us, or we can use the whole hour for a special guest or presenter, i.e., a manager who wants to do a session on his experience with a fentanyl overdose and the reversal or the head of Veterans Affairs for the County of Los Angeles. We offer branch visits and customized support. We refer staff to our Employee and Family Assistance Program for individual or group counseling.
What is the impact of homelessness to the library experience of other library users?
Karen: That depends. There are libraries where we get a lot of complaints from users. Despite our fantastic story time and many attendees, we hear they want to avoid bringing their kids here. But that is not the whole picture. We also see many people who want to be part of a solution. Like in North Hollywood, volunteers at a food pantry at a nearby church are building relationships with people living in a park or an alley in their neighborhood. It is building that connection so you won't put your head down the next time you see Ronnie. You’ll treat him like a human and as a neighbor. That’s what we want for our libraries.
What do you say to someone who complains that it is not safe to bring their children?
Karen: I'm sorry you feel that way. We have many great resources for children. Please try us again. We do everything we can. We welcome and want you, and this is a place of equity. The Library is here for everyone, whether you are starting out or starting over.
What are some of the successes you see from your work?
Karen: Our social workers have a lot of inroads with security, police, and staff. They'll get a call from security: “I got a guy down here. I'm going to kick him out. Do you want to take a crack at him?” And they go down there and sometimes can de-escalate the situation, or sometimes the individual still has to leave. But the fact that we build a partnership with security is essential.
Edna: Staff members have to get used to the idea of calling Edward (CSR), Diana (clinical contractor), or Wanda (peace practitioner) instead of security; however, this takes time.
Karen: When we think about our success, it is really about how many people we touch and how many people get to stay in the library. Creating indicators for success takes time, effort, and a lot of reporting. We just compared incident reports between last year and this year, and there's an increase that doesn’t reflect our work. It’s the city we live in.
We all keep records of how many and how we touch people’s lives. People return and tell Edward they've gotten jobs or reconnected with their mother. For now, those stories and these statistics are the only way we will assess the impact. But we’re new. We only started last year. Luckily, I have a City Librarian like John [Szabo] who wants us to try new things, and if those don't work, we keep trying. He is seeing our successes, and he knows it's not all about numbers.
To conclude, what is one concrete tip you could give to other libraries?
Karen: There needs to be administrative support for what staff is experiencing.
We reach out when there is an incident at the branches/Central and offer support. We call, and we acknowledge their trauma. What I've learned from the social workers is empathy: to say ´I'm so sorry you had to go through that´ and listen to their concerns and do what you can to support them.
For example, the other day, a staff member was walking in, and he saw this lady in the grass in front of the library and asked if she was OK. She said she was fine. Fifteen minutes later, he thought of going and checking on her. And she had delivered a baby. So he called the paramedics. She had delivered a baby on her own, right in the grass in the city. The fact that he thought something was up and went to check on her saved the lives of the woman and the baby. So we called him and said we're here if you need us. Over the next weeks, please reach out. We're here for you. What we did was simple: check if he needed anything and praise his actions.
Edna: We acknowledged that he had just witnessed something traumatic and stressful. We normalized his feelings and let him know that whatever he was feeling was okay.
In Conclusion
Sharing space and resources with others is not easy. Public libraries need to find a balance where they react to the needs of the unhoused without neglecting their other responsibilities. The bigger our differences in needs and expectations are, the more challenging the sharing becomes. In cities like Los Angeles, the stark polarization to haves and have-nots and the disappearance of the middle classes is snapping loose the connecting threads between people.
But maybe some comfort can be found from a reflection that this is not the first debate over who or what belongs to the library. Just in the last one hundred years, there have been fierce debates whether women, non-white people, the working classes, children, popular literature, noise or the internet is destroying the core of the library. Through experimentation, error and constant reconfiguration, these institutions have found their way forward.
Finding a way forward is nothing less than a question of democracy. For people to believe in the possibility of living together across difference, we need spaces, institutions and experiences that remind us of what wonderful things we can achieve through sharing and caring. But we are selling democracy short if we promise people a frictionless public life. Where we can do better is ensuring that both staff and patrons can feel the commitment to making everyone feel respected and supported. When we have the will and the skills to deal with surprising situations and we feel seen, we can join public life with confidence.