Dear Editor:
In many American cities, public libraries â once quiet, safe places for ordinary citizens to read and study â have been converted into de facto homeless shelters. When libraries allow, or even encourage, hygiene-challenged bums, vagrants, drug addicts and mentally ill derelicts to âuseâ their facilities, they âbatheâ in the restrooms, watch porn on the computers and sleep while pretending to read, surrounded by their plastic bags of detritus. For ordinary citizens, the library becomes unusable.
The Blount County Public Library appears to be headed down this same road, proposing to âpartnerâ with a newly created nonprofit organization for the homeless that will be based in the library.