At San Francisco’s main branch, a balance of outreach and keeping a lookout
By Jeremy Miller
June 29, 2016
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| People wait for the San Francisco Public Library to open. The Main branch of the library, where hundreds of homeless people spend their days, is the first in the country to keep a full-time social worker on staff. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez) |
When Mark Hall began as an entry-level librarian at San
Francisco Public Library’s Main Branch 28 years ago, he was simply looking for
something outside the corporate world. Hall was well suited to the job, and
over the years, he’s come to know almost every corner of the Main Library. He’s
weathered budget cuts, changes in management, and the controversial 1996 move
into the airy building at the corner of Hyde and Grove Streets, in Civic Center
Plaza. In spite of the shifts, there is a simplicity and timelessness to
library work that has kept him grounded. “It is a profession where you are
helping people,” Hall explained, “not trying to sell them things they don’t
need.”
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| Frank Chavez is a longtime library patron. He often sets up his “office” in the true crime section. |
In a city known for innovation, tolerance, and liberal
social policies, homelessness has proven to be an intractable problem. Two out
of three of San Francisco’s homeless residents are not living in shelters but
on the street, according to federal statistics. That trend, says Hall, has
manifested itself inside the library. “There certainly weren’t as many homeless
patrons when I began,” Hall said. “But there also weren’t the housing shortages
and the income disparities and the issues with injectable drugs. The city
really has changed a lot.”
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| Carl Cohen has only started visiting in the past year, but has already taken advantage of the library’s outreach program. |
The Main’s staff of librarians and special outreach workers
are not just taking a punitive approach. They are also reaching out to homeless
patrons. The question is whether the SFPL can balance the important civic roles
of offering a historically safe place for scholarship and learning while also
providing a haven for the city’s homeless population.
Acute as the situation has become, it’s not exactly new.
Katherine Ets-Hokin, an archivist at the SFPL, recently found a black-and-white
image from the 1930s showing a large group of out-of-work men — all clad in
suits and hats — sitting on the neoclassical steps of the former Main (today the
site of the Asian Art Museum). Over the decades, familiar laments about the
main library’s apparent decline have also been repeated. “I am ashamed to take
tourists to see our Civic Center because of the fringe of bums and winos
decorating the Main Public Library,” reads one letter to the San Francisco
Chronicle. It was written in 1960.
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| Thomas Alvin recently relocated to San Francisco looking for work. Discouraged with his housing and work prospects, he is planning on catching a bus back to Denver. |
In 2013, Dowd created a presentation titled “A Librarian’s
Guide to Homelessness,” which he first delivered at his local public library in
Aurora, Illinois. He expected it would be a one-off. Since then he’s traveled
extensively, giving the talk at dozens of libraries across the country and in
other countries, including Canada and Estonia. (A version of the presentation
is also available on YouTube.)
“What I heard a lot of was, ‘How do we serve our homeless
patrons better?’” said Dowd. “That surprised me. It was not about minimizing
the disruptiveness or destructiveness of homeless patrons. It was about how to
reach out to that demographic and serve them better.”
To that end, the SFPL has built a staff of librarians for
whom social justice is an important calling. One of those staffers is Northern
California-native Andrea Davis, who began working at the SFPL last August.
Davis, 36, holds a Master’s degree in library science from Simmons College in
Boston and has worked at a number of libraries in the U.S. and abroad. She says
that the SFPL, like other large urban public libraries, serves the “broad brush
of society.”
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| Homeless men sit along the original San Francisco Library building, 1937. |
In spite of the job’s difficulties, Davis remains upbeat.
She says in this age of creeping privatization, urban libraries are vital
institutions. “Libraries are these democratic outposts where anyone is
welcome,” she said. “People who want to work in an urban public library must
have some awareness of social justice. It’s not just working in a warehouse
full of materials. It’s helping a wide range of people with information in all
of its forms.”
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| Homeless men rest alongside the current San Francisco Library, 2016. |
Indeed, the SFPL’s mission goes beyond connecting people with books and research material. In 2009, it was the first library in the country to hire a full-time social worker. Today, its staff of seven Health and Safety Advocates, or HaSAs — all of whom were once homeless — monitor the library’s six floors and bathrooms, offering resources on shelters, food kitchens, and clinics across the city to homeless patrons.
The idea for the HaSA program came about around 2000, just
four years after the completion of the new $126.5 million main branch. At the
time, homeless patrons in the library had become much more visible. “We had
this beautiful new library, and we were hearing from patrons that they were
uncomfortable coming there,” remembers the former chief of the main, Karen
Strauss. “We set out to create a bridge between the people who come to the
library as a safe and welcoming place and the resources that they might not
know are available.”
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| Vietnam veteran Phil Means has spent many hours at the library over the past 5 years. He is well liked and prefers to spend time in the quieter side reading rooms. |
Esguerra has done just that, creating a new model of outreach based on empathy and personal relationships. Her job includes not just counseling the homeless, but consulting with staff about how to interact with their neediest patrons. The library has also partnered with the non-profit Lava Mae, which operates a bus with showers outside the library two days a week. (Since its program was introduced in 2009, several public libraries across the country — including in D.C. and Denver — have followed the SFPL’s lead, hiring their own in-house social workers.)
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| Wayne Schwoob is a long time library patron and San Francisco resident. At one point in his life he was a regular extra on Nash Bridges. |
Jerry Munoz is one of the Main’s six HaSAs (rhymes with
“casa”). Stocky and clad in baggy blue jeans and a black T-shirt, Munoz zigzags
a well-worn path, monitoring activity on computer terminals, scouting the desks
along the margins of the stacks. In a single day, Munoz and the other on-duty
HaSAs make three or four rounds through each of the Main’s six levels. He looks
for telltale signs, like large bags stowed under tables or bottles of
prescription medication scattered across desktops. Once he reaches the first
floor he checks the men’s bathroom, to ensure that no one is using the sinks as
showers or getting high in a stall.
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| Champion is new to the library and has yet to take advantage of the HaSA program |
As we walk the first floor, Munoz sees an elderly man in a
dirt-stained Golden State Warriors jacket sitting in a chair, his head slumped
awkwardly forward. Munoz knocks on the wall just above him.
The man’s eyes snap
open. “Sir, you can’t sleep in the library,” Munoz says, polite but firm. Munoz
asks if he can help with anything — a place to get a meal, somewhere to sleep.
The man shakes his head, staring ahead blankly. Munoz leaves him in peace. In
this job, he says, it’s important to know when to push and when to back off.
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| Jerry Munoz holds his thick binder stuffed with forms and information about the various San Francisco social services library patrons can potentially take advantage of. |
In spite of the challenges in the city at large, their work
appears to be paying off. Between July and December of 2015, the team provided
resources to more than 2,500 patrons (Esguerra personally performed 437
assessments). Since the program began in 2009, around 150 clients have been
placed in permanent housing. The new code of conduct introduced after mayor
Lee’s visit also seems to be having a positive impact. In 2014, there were a
total of 3,382 reported incidents; i
n 2015 — after introduction of the code of
conduct in October 2014 — there were 1,694. (Although, the library does not
track whether the infractions were committed by homeless patrons or not.)
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| Jerry Munoz makes his rounds around the library. He estimates does as many as eight trips a day. |
“We are a small effort here,” said Karen Strauss, pointing
out that the SFPL social work team’s overall impact isn’t easily distilled into
numbers. “It’s about providing resources, yes, but it’s so much more than that.
It’s about connections.”
The American Association of Libraries seems keenly aware of
this responsibility as well. Its Library Bill of Rights states that a “person’s
right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age,
background, or views.” More recently, the ALA has further defined the social
justice role of libraries, going so far as to say that it is “crucial that
libraries recognize their role in enabling poor people to participate fully in
a democratic society.”
Source: Timeline.com
