The Public Library as an Asylum for the Homeless

Somebody writes Atlantic Free Press: Welcome to the Salt Lake City Public Library. Like every urban library in the nation, the City Library, as it is called, is a de facto daytime shelter for the city’s “homeless.”

We are complicit. No matter how conscientiously and compassionately we try to treat our mentally disturbed users — and at the Salt Lake City Public Library we work very hard to be fair, helpful, and tolerant — librarians often have no good choices and, in the end, we just call the cops.”