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Comment by switchbak | Hacker News Reader

The last two libraries I’ve visited have been taken over by homeless … err, the unhomed. The first one had one dude watching porn and farting an impressive amount. The second one has been taken over because it’s close to a homeless encampment - becoming more of a secondary housing site and less of a library. This is in two separate cities in the PNW.

I can’t even really enter into the debate about librarians since the library experience has been so entirely off putting for me. It’s most certainly not a place I’ll take my kids, even though it consumes a significant percentage of my municipal taxes.

I’m envious of the folks who have a maker space-like experience, that sounds nice!

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Places have been passing laws that prohibit people from sleeping and hanging around outside.

Shelters usually close during the day, also.

> it consumes a significant percentage of my municipal taxes.

That's interesting, I assumed it was only a small percentage everywhere. What percentage does it consume? I live in Seattle (King County) and our library system only costs 3.5% of our property taxes.

https://kcls.org/library-funding/

And that is enormous.

I hope you meant "enormous" as in "commendable" because it's a fantastic bargain compared to what they get for that money.

$151,360,905 of King County's property tax revenue in 2024 went to the library.[1]

From Wikipedia[2]: "KCLS consists of 49 branches, one standalone book locker, the Traveling Library Center, ABC Express Vans, a mobile TechLab, and 11 bookmobiles."

"As of 2023, the library system serves a population of 1.6 million residents and has 3.7 million items in its collection . . ."

"Circulation 21.5 million"

And according to their 2025 budget, employs 842 people.[3]

I encourage you to review those statistics, and then look at the library system's website[4] for a sample of the events, access, and services they provide.

1: 2024 Property Tax Distribution for King County, Washington: https://cdn.kingcounty.gov/-/media/king-county/depts/assesso... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_County_Library_System# 3:https://kcls.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2024/12/2025-KC... 4: https://kcls.org/

$151 million / 842 employees is $179,000 per employee. And have you visited many branches? They are mostly empty except for drug addicts and the mentally ill.

The books promoted by the King County Library system on its website are almost universally far left on the political spectrum. My tax dollars are being used to fund opinions I hate. This is forced speech of the worst kind.

The money isn't all going to salary. There's building maintenance. Heating and cooling. Power. The stock. Cleaning up all the homeless excrement.

I just read the second of your paragraphs.

Get out of my city.

I posted the King County Library System's budget in the comment you're responding to. In 2024, they spent roughly $84,897,000 on personnel expenses, including benefits. As another poster pointed out, libraries have to do more than just pay salaries and benefits, but you can find out where the rest of the money goes by looking at the budget.

You should contact the library to see if they would promote books that you don't hate.

I'd recommend trying to understand what the libraries do as fully as possible before deciding how it should be changed. You could even start your research with the help of a librarian: https://kcls.org/ask/

sounds like you and everyone around really let go of any community life.

like most gentrified places.

It's not so much "let go" as mid-century progressive legal reform (the CRA, SCOTUS undermining covenant law, etc.) made it effectively illegal to exclude destructive people from public spaces

sending more police will make it better /s

Not really, there’s three cities in close proximity, only one has these progressive policies. The other two are fine, it’s only the more liberal one that has these kinds of issues.

It’s a tough problem with no easy answers, but one of their main solutions is to put up solid fencing around the encampment. Just ignoring or pretending it’s not a problem does not make the problem go away.

One of those cities gentrified decades ago. Their problem is now more to do with all of their residents dying off. Also an interesting problem, and a bit of foreshadowing to what much of the western world will have to deal with fairly soon.

I’m a recent resident of this city, so you can’t really blame me for its state. And I’d place the blame mostly on city policy, not people “letting go”.

> And I’d place the blame mostly on city policy

I'd bet it's most because of sending police to every thing than being liberal or not.

Old thread, but why not put real effort into a response instead of these low effort quips?

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