Andrea Hansen-Miller, a licensed clinical social worker who helps homeless
people, runs her office out of the Minneapolis Central Library, offering
visitors snacks, warm clothes, assistance finding housing, and
mental-health support. “The police regularly clear the city’s streets of
encampments, but officers don’t run unhoused people out of Central,” Paige
Williams explains
<https://link.newyorker.com/click/35479095.991350/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubmV3eW9ya2…>
in
this in-depth, on-the-ground report from Minnesota. “As long as they follow
the rules, any patron—and everyone at the library is called a patron—can
stay all day, every day.” Such policies make the library a natural place
for social workers to meet individuals where they are likely to be—but not
everyone who works there has the training or skills necessary to assist
unhoused people, many of whom are in crisis. “A lot of people come into the
public library, or go into librarianship, and are shocked by the fact that
it’s not their childhood library,” one librarian at Central explains. “It
can be exhausting to see so many people who need so much, or who have so
little.” In these ways, as Williams explores, the library is a mirror,
reflecting our shared social distress, while also offering insights into
how we must adapt to better support those in need.
