Library's 'problem populace' needs cooperative city to find solution

One cannot help but be impressed, walking down Fourth Avenue in downtown Seattle, with the way in which the city's new main library is taking shape. It promises to be an architectural jewel amid a cluster of buildings that, with the exception of the Rainier Tower and Benaroya Hall, don't have much to commend themselves.

Seattle's citizens voted to tax themselves to the tune of $196 million to construct the new main library and rebuild or refurbish every branch library in the city. An additional $77 million is being raised from private gifts to meet important interior needs that the tax money cannot cover and to add to the library endowment. All this suggests a city that takes its libraries seriously -- as essential to the vibrancy and well-being of Seattle as are its hospitals, schools, parks and police.

There is a problem, however, as anyone who has used the temporary downtown library (in the Washington State Convention and Trade Center) can attest. To a very noticeable degree, the library's facilities serve as domestic space for some of the city's transient, mentally ill and homeless populace. The chairs and tables in its reading rooms are occupied by (mainly) men engrossed in conversation or taking naps. The restrooms are places for far more than personal hygiene; a member of the library's executive staff tells of encountering a man in the hallway who had just emerged from the men's room and who inquired as to where he might find a plug for his iron. (It seems he had a job interview and wanted to spruce up his shirt. To her credit, the librarian took the man to her office.) In brief, the library serves as an institutional substitute for home -- for people who do not have one.

Several decades ago, as downtown Seattle was beginning to raze so-called SROs or single-room occupancy buildings where men -- often older and frequently retired -- lived on meager pensions, someone made the astute observation that bars served as the living rooms for these downtown dwellers. Their rooms provided a place to sleep, dress and store their belongings but the bar offered a place to gather during the daytime -- with friends and with a TV -- where one could engage in the activities that those of us who have homes do in our dens or family rooms.

The disappearance of the SROs to make way for upscale condos (in one of which truth-in-advertising or some other such regulation compels me to acknowledge that I live) was lamented for this very reason; together with the bar, it was part of a residential complex that made life possible for people whose resources are few. Now, it seems the public library fills the need that the bar once satisfied. During the day, it provides a place of warmth and comfort much more preferable than a park bench and does not offer one the prospect of being hassled that the local coffee shop presents.

In addition to the homeless, the library has also become a daytime residence for a small segment of the city's populace who are either mentally ill or are fighting off addictions of one sort or another. These are the people who, at one time, were served by state institutions, before we bought into the notion of "normalization" and before the feds -- which as we all know have much more urgent priorities these days -- slashed funding for mental health, drug rehabilitation and other social services on which these people depend.

It's clear that the city has a problem and it shouldn't be one for the library to resolve. It's doubtful that Seattle citizens made such a sizable investment in libraries to provide daytime space for the homeless and the mentally ill. At the same time, unless alternatives are found, such use is not likely to diminish. And lest it sound as though the library is not a "safe" place to be, all of its frequent patrons know otherwise -- the library, in spite of uses for which it was not intended, is as tranquil a spot as one might wish.

Seattle is a smart and sophisticated town that has any number of people who might go to work on finding a creative, workable answer to this situation. Here's something important on which the City Council and the mayor's office, which are having a difficult time seeing eye to eye on anything these days, might usefully get a group of the city's citizenry to work. Surely an answer can be found that will work to the benefit of library patrons, its "problem populace" and the city at large.

Hubert G. Locke, Seattle, is a retired professor and former dean of the Daniel J. Evans Graduate School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington.

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