Ok, well then don't be surprised when we don't use the library, and instead use a cleaner, better comercial space.

You can’t rehabitate someone who doesn’t want to rehabilitate himself. The simple but politically incorrect fact is that the presence of these people makes public spaces dirtier, less inviting, and less safe for the rest of us. Saying the public library is just as much for me as it is for Fenatyl Joe is like saying the underside of the interstate is just as much for me as it is for Fenatyl Joe.

Small town libraries are lovely. Urban libraries in places that don’t have an uncontrolled vagrancy epidemic are probably fine, too. In cities like Seattle and SF, exclusive, commercial spaces are significantly more inviting than public spaces.

Safe for who? I'm friends with a number of librarians in my city, and every single one of them has been verbally harassed by patrons and more than half of them have been physically assaulted. It's not always by people with mental health issues but unfortunately it usually is.

(Nannies are particularly nasty when it comes to verbal abuse, I'm told. Sometimes they get barred for a while, usually they don't.)

Homelessness and mental illness are real, hard problems that have been rehashed to death here and elsewhere and I'm not even going to pretend to suggest that I have an answer. But I do know that the answer is not "Hope your MLS degree prepared you to deal with a guy literally taking s shit on the circulation desk while screaming at you for being a godless cunt dyke whore."

Guess what? An MLS degree does not train you to deal with that. Librarians are not professional mental health care providers or social workers. Dumping your city's homeless population on them because you are unable and unwilling to deal with the problem and saying "get over it" is irresponsible both to the librarians and the communities that they serve.