Nearly all of my life I have enjoyed going to hour Coronado Library as a place to read and research, a place for our children to learn, yet in recent times I have noticed marked changes that are making my visits less and less enjoyable.
It seems that Coronado Library is maybe the one library in the County of San Diego that is open with set scheduled hours all seven (7) days of the week. While other county libraries are “dark” or “shortened on operating hours,” Coronado’s library is open to all including the massive influx of homeless people journeying from across the bridge. I feel that our library is under assault by the homeless who are using our building as a temporary shelter where they can bathe, use the restroom sinks as wash-machines for their clothes, eat, and sleep. In reality, it is turning our Coronado library into a de-facto “Hygiene & Daycare Homeless Center.”
Each time I visit our library there appears to be an increasing number of homeless people arriving on the #901 bus from downtown San Diego whose first stop upon arriving with their gargantuan duffel bags, is the library’s restrooms. And if you’re unlucky enough enter the restroom during or right after their usage, well, it can turn your stomach. . .
Some cities around the country have or are attempting to have “Public Library Regulations” which ordinance, “Hygiene Regulations,” would prohibits sleeping in the chairs and at the tables, eating, using restrooms for bathing and “offensive bodily hygiene that constitutes a nuisance to others.” These ordinances are generally, quickly challenged by groups such as the ACLU, who consider such rules & regulations to be a direct attack on the homeless population. Yet, the concept of “get enough sleep, eat and bathe before they begin to peruse the shelves,” seems fair enough to me.
And consider the children, are we are supposed to have them go to our library directly from school, where there are homeless people loitering around who have no intention of using the library for its educational resources. I don’t know of many parents — in this day and age — who are going to allow their child go to the library if they know that there is a possibility that their child will be exposed to strangers approaching and/or harassing them.
As for violence at our library, I have only witnessed one physical attack which was an altercation between two “#901 riders” who wanted to be “first in the door” when the library opened. With the cooler seasons approaching, I believe there will be a definite increase of the homeless library visitors and, an increase in the aforementioned. If no changes are made, I believe it will be only a matter of a short time before we have either a Coronado police officer or a private security guard enforcing “rules of conduct” that library officials may have let slide, and this, is definitely something I do not want to see.
The other “side of the coin” is that “we all are two paychecks away from being homeless.” There are many homeless people who go to libraries who want and need a quiet place to pass time reading or working on the library’s computers to track down crucial job leads. These are the people who respect the library’s “code of conduct” and generally speaking, are not in association with those who use the restrooms to drink, bathe and de-louse, who slumber for hours, play online video games on the library’s computers, and who smell of boozy vapors and stagger around drunk.
With all of this being stated, I am sure that many readers may be upset with what they view as my insensitivity toward “my fellow man,” yet my overall belief is that our library should not be a daytime homeless shelter. I would really appreciate some informed feedback from other residents of Coronado with their varying views on this subject.
