Salt Lake library attracting homeless

By Brady Snyder
Deseret Morning News
Published: Wednesday, March 9, 2005 9:29 a.m. MST
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Homeless people, like the rest of Salt Lake City's population, are flocking to the city's main library in record numbers.

Especially during the day, the library is filled with the homeless, who sometimes bother other library patrons with their odor, intoxication or noise level.

"We tend to be a de facto shelter during the day for a lot of homeless people," library systems administrator Chip Ward said.

And while librarians stress they don't want to ban the homeless from the building, they also don't want leery residents to be fearful of enjoying the city's pristine new library.

In search of a solution, the city library system is launching a new civility campaign designed to teach the homeless, children and others how to behave while in the library.

Library administrators also plan to begin a new era of communication and collaboration with social service providers to discover how the library is expected to fit in with the city's social service providers.

"If there are appropriate roles for the library to play, we want to do that — but we're also not a social service agency," library systems director Nancy Tessman said.

Tessman maintains there isn't much for the homeless to do during the hours of 9 a.m.-5 p.m., so many end up strolling to the library. The library, Tessman said, is a barometer for the rest of the city. So, if the library is seeing an increase in its homeless population, that means there are more homeless in Salt Lake City.

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"We're going to at least acknowledge that we're a barometer, and the barometer shows that we need, as a community, to do some additional work," she said. "We know that the numbers (of homeless people) are increasing, and the needs are not being met."

In a speech to the City Council on Tuesday, Mayor Rocky Anderson said the needs of the homeless and others who depend on social services will persist if President Bush's administration continues to cut social service grant funding.

Like other cities across the nation, Salt Lake City's Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding was cut this year. The city's grant money fell 5 percent to $4.6 million.

"The Draconian cuts to funding and elimination of the CDBG program will undermine our efforts to meet our city's affordable housing needs, social service requirements and the neighborhood infrastructure improvements essential to the well-being of our moderate- and low-income residents," Anderson said.

President Bush has proposed doing away with the CDBG program next year in exchange for his "Strengthening America's Communities" initiative.

Social service providers and city officials maintain the new Bush initiative will decrease the nation's funding for community grants by $1 billion. Housing and Neighborhood Development director LuAnn Clark said the Bush plan would trim the city's available grant dollars by 30 percent and also may restrict cities from using the dollars on social service programs.

"The Bush administration does not understand the importance of investing in communities such as ours," Anderson said. Federal grant money, he said, "has an important role in preventing large-scale, extreme poverty and the many unfortunate social consequences caused by it."

E-mail: bsnyder@desnews.com

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