I am at my local library fairly regularly. It's a spot frequented by our local homeless people, a population which draws a lot of ire from locals on my neighborhood Nextdoor page. A friend of mine shared this article about how the Dallas Public Library has changed their approach to the same issue, and shifted from not just tolerating homeless people who use the facility, but welcoming them and making it a safe haven.
Oh, how we can we all benefit from seeing each other's humanity.
Screenshot from keranews.org.
"The downtown library has taken down all the "no" signs: No eating, no drinking, no sleeping have been replaced with signs that say things like "respect others.""
"“They are concert pianists or they graduated with an engineering degree," Lowe says. "It’s really impressed upon me and staff here across the library that the only thing standing between any of us and homelessness is a social safety net and a bad circumstance, some sort of catastrophe.""
Screenshot from keranews.org.
Go forth and get to know one another. Our humanity depends on it.