Las Vegas, Orlando, and other cities have made it difficult, even illegal, to give food to homeless people in public places. Tulin Ozdeger, an attorney with the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, is critical of such punitive ordinances:
The latest trend of restricting groups that share food with homeless people is truly baffling. Clear gaps exist between the needs of homeless and poor people and federal, state, and local government efforts to deal with homelessness. Instead of embracing private efforts to fill those gaps, cities are now trying to punish those private actors for their good deeds … Instead of wasting law enforcement resources on enforcing these laws … cities should be looking for more constructive ways to grapple with the real challenges facing them. Removing a crucial food source … will not solve the problem. Jailing a homeless person for sleeping or resting in a public space will not make that person go away.
In Steamboat Springs, Colo., two men were recently sentenced to six months in prison for removing food from a garbage can:
Giles Charle, 24, of Sumersworth, N.H., and David Siller, 27, of Wayne, Pa., ... were on their way to the Rainbow Family’s annual gathering when they were arrested in June and charged with felony burglary and misdemeanor theft. Authorities said they took five cucumbers, four or five apricots, two bundles of asparagus spears and a handful of cherries from a garbage can at Sweet Pea Produce. The two pleaded guilty to misdemeanor trespassing Wednesday and the felony charge was dropped.
Hunger is increasing in the United States. According to America’s Second Harvest, food is the second-largest family expense and the use of emergency food assistance is growing:
America’s Second Harvest / The Nation’s Food Bank Network provides emergency food assistance to more than 25 million Americans—including nearly 9 million children (36.4%) and 3 million seniors (10%)—annually. Since 2001, the number of clients the America’s Second Harvest Network serves annually has increased by 8 percent … 70% of client households served are food insecure, meaning they do not know where they will find their next meal. 33% of these households are experiencing hunger, meaning they are completely without a source of food.
In June 2002, the Center on Hunger and Poverty at Brandeis University published “The Consequences of Hunger and Food Insecurity for Children: Evidence from Recent Scientific Studies.” The report (PDF) notes, among other things:
Even moderate nutritional vulnerability, the kind often seen among 13 million high-risk children in the U.S., can impede cognitive development and impair their capacities over a lifetime. For youngsters whose natural abilities and talents are diminished, the cost is obvious. But the cost also extends to our nation in terms of higher rates of school failure, poorer returns on our
educational investments, and weakened workforce productivity when children reach the age of employment.
How can libraries address hunger? Many sponsor “Food for Fines” drives (which a simple Google search will reveal). In 2001, Amy Ford detailed the Williamsburg (Va.) Regional Library’s efforts in “Food for Fines Drives: Positive PR That Works!”:
We made our Food for Fines system very simple: For each nonperishable food item a patron brings in, we waive the accrued fines on one overdue item, no matter whether it is 5 cents or $15 … We benefit by getting back some late and lost books. Plus we get our delinquent patrons to come back. Many of them feel bad about owing money to the library that they can’t pay back … they do come back, and they feel good about doing something meaningful for their community in the process. We also gain respect from other community entities, which are continually amazed at the countless ways that the library contributes to the public good. Our local nonprofits and charities are very grateful for the help they receive from us. Staff morale improves, and now circulation staff receive far fewer complaints about fines.
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On September 9, the St. Paul Public Library celebrates the grand opening of its Rondo Community Outreach Library.
The unique facility, which features three floors of mixed-income housing, will serve an ethnically diverse population, including many recent immigrants and low-income families. Rondo’s collection includes
an expanded Black history collection with original Rondo Oral History recordings; a Southeast Asian history and culture area; more adult learner and language learning materials with over 500 titles in Spanish, a large selection of Somali music and in-depth resources for English Language Learners; [and more].
The name Rondo memorializes St. Paul’s Rondo Avenue and its legendary African-American neighborhood, displaced and destroyed by the construction of Interstate 94 in the 1960s.
In the 1930s, Rondo Avenue was at the heart of St. Paul’s largest Black neighborhood. African-Americans whose families had lived in Minnesota for decades and others who were just arriving from the South made up a vibrant, vital community that was in many ways independent of the white society around it.
Three Rondo resources worth noting:
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ALA Policy 61—Library Services for the Poor was adopted in 1990. It promotes, among other things, “the removal of all barriers to library and information services, particularly fees and overdue charges.”
This spring, The Christian Science Monitor published an article titled “Is the Lifting of Library Fines Long Overdue?”. Writer Marilyn Gardner observes,
As libraries face competition from the Internet, Amazon, and bookstores, some are looking for ways to be more customer-friendly. At the same time, book-lovers point to Netflix and Blockbuster, which have eliminated fines for overdue movie rentals, and suggest that libraries do the same. Yet tight municipal budgets are making many libraries more dependent than ever on revenue from fines—so dependent that some even hire collection agencies.
Librarian.net’s Jessamyn West and readers of her site share anecdotes that illustrate the variety of issues at stake, not least of which is a patron’s ability to pay fines. West writes,
I did outreach for a public library and found that, almost without exception, the teens I met who did not come to the library stayed away because they believed they had huge fines and were, in some way, no longer welcome. Our library fines were steep—twenty cents per day for books with no grace period, one dollar per day for DVDs and videos—and once you hit five dollars you could no longer check out materials or use the library computers …
Members of the PUBLIB list have been discussing these matters of late, with a particular interest in how fees and fines—and the language used to describe them—impact a library’s public image.
Bill Crowley, a library-science professor at Dominican University, made explicit his concerns about low-income patrons in a post titled “Fines, Counterproductive Service, and Problematic PR.” His post is reprinted here with permission:
The cheerful march to raise fines may be well received in wealthy communities but have any of the libraries involved actually studied the potential impact on discouraging use by those on, near, or below the poverty line?
Before continuing the discussion I would suggest going to [www.laurabushfoundation.org] (which hosts the presentations from Laura Bush’s White House Conference on School Libraries) and clicking to “The Role of School Libraries in Elementary and Secondary Education” [PDF] by Dr. Susan Neuman (former) Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education United States Department of Education.
Do not let the title fool you. The presentation is actually devoted to comparing public library use by children in Philadelphia’s middle class and poor neighborhoods. The account of how the fear of fines and lost book charges affects borrowing in poor neighborhoods is discouraging. In-building use seems to be unaffected.
So, before one happily raises fines outside of wealthy communities, one might want to consider how poor kids or adults can “work off” the fines and keep both their self-respect and ability to borrow library books.
Here, I should note that prior to teaching in a graduate program I had 23 years of real life experience in public, state, and cooperative libraries, including stints in public relations.
Susan Neuman’s brief (six-page) paper, which Crowley cites, provides research findings that no doubt apply to many other cities—evidence that should prompt improved service to low-income populations.
Despite similarities in budget allocations, there were striking differences in the quality of school libraries in schools across [Philadelphia]. Children in poor areas had mediocre to poor libraries, no librarian on site; further the libraries were often closed during the week, compared to those in middle-class schools in the same city … School library funds were designated as discretionary to be used for computers if the instructional leader chose to do so. Thus, many of these schools in poor areas had no libraries, but computer labs, often empty of anything but the technology itself.
Finally, Martina Kominiarek at Bucks County (Penn.) Free Library contributed an equally well-informed PUBLIB post on fines, which you can read here.
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Every two years, the Economic Policy Institute releases a Labor Day study that “sums up the problems and challenges facing American working families” and “examine[s] the impact of the economy on the living standards of the American people.” The State of Working America 2006/2007 is now available. A fact sheet sample:
The United States bills itself as the land of opportunity, where someone from the humblest roots can, with grit and determination, climb the economic ladder. Some even say that concern about growing inequality between the top and bottom of the income pyramid is misplaced because of our high income mobility. In a chapter new to this edition [EPI] finds that rags-to-riches stories, despite their wide appeal, are the exception, not the rule, and that for most people in America today, where you end up is increasingly a function of where you started out.
Our colleague AV forwarded Robert Reich’s biting commentary, “How to Reduce Urban Poverty Without Really Trying” (Aug. 30, 2006):
It’s an old story, really. Areas of any town or city where the infrastructure is most ignored—like [New Orleans’] Industrial Canal levee that burst on the morning of August 29 a year ago—have the lowest property values. So that’s where the poor live. When there’s a flood or a leak of toxic wastes or any other calamity, these places are the first to become uninhabitable. Which means, the poor often have to leave. Then the political and moral question is whether anyone cares enough to help them return and rebuild.
This year marks the tenth anniversary of “welfare reform,” enacted by President Bill Clinton in 1996. Robert Scheer, however, believes that “Clinton Ended Welfare, Not Poverty” (Aug. 30, 2006):
The ex-president gloats over the large decrease in the number of welfare recipients as if he is unaware of the five-year limit and other new restrictions which made it inevitable. Nor does he seem bothered that nobody … assess[es] how the families on Aid to Families with Dependent Children fared after they left welfare. The truth is we know very little about [their fate], 70% of whom are children, because there is no systematic monitoring program … The best estimates … indicate that at least a million welfare recipients have neither jobs nor benefits … For those who found jobs, a great many became mired in minimum-wage jobs—sometimes more than one—that barely cover the child-care and other costs they incurred by working outside the home.
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YouTube hosts a variety of videos featuring homeless people.
Some clips are sophomoric, exploitative, and cruel. Others represent earnest attempts to document life on the street and to capture first-person stories. (Note to well-meaning auteurs: please dispense with the saccharine background music.)
The site includes two clever, 30-second scenarios: “Box” and “Scaffold.” Original high-def versions are available on the New York Coalition for the Homeless homepage.
CFTH offers substantial information for anti-poverty advocates and publishes an annual Resource Guide for low-income New Yorkers, including a searchable electronic version. Check it out!
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