Homeless in Mass. Sue Over Library Policy

Wednesday, August 9, 2006

 

By ADAM GORLICK

The Associated Press

 

WORCESTER, Mass. — Robert Bombard has always been a voracious reader. He worked at the city library as a teenager and was a volunteer there as an adult. Even when he served two years in jail on a drug charge, he did his time working in the lockup’s library. 

 

“I revere books,” Bombard said. “I treat them very well. I wouldn’t even put an open book down on the table because I don’t want to hurt the binding.” 

 

So when Bombard went to check out more than two volumes after spending a day as a volunteer at Worcester’s main library branch last summer, he was shocked when they told him no. 

 

“They said ‘Oh, no _ you live at a shelter,’ right in front of everybody,” he said. “It made me feel like a second-class citizen.” 

 

Bombard, who now lives with his father, isn’t the only one who’s taken offense at the library’s three-year-old policy allowing shelter residents to check out no more than two books at a time. 

 

Several complaints have led to a lawsuit against the library and the city, brought on behalf of three homeless people and two social service agencies by the Legal Assistance Corp. of Central Massachusetts and the American Civil Liberties Union. 

 

Advocates for the homeless say the policy is just another example of the city declining to improve conditions for the homeless. 

 

Penelope Johnson, the city’s head librarian, said the policy was imposed because more and more items were not being returned by borrowers who could not be tracked down through a permanent address. 

 

Because of the pending lawsuit, Johnson said she couldn’t say how many items borrowed by homeless people were not returned. But she said the library’s lending policy _ which lets people with a permanent address check out as many as 50 materials at a time _ was not intended to discriminate against the homeless. 

 

“We are exploring ways to ensure that the borrowing policies are fair and equitable,” Johnson said. “But we need a system that allows us to track and retrieve items.” 

 

John Reinstein, legal director for the ACLU in Massachusetts, said it’s uncommon for libraries to develop policies that put restrictions on the homeless. 

 

“To my knowledge, this is not a typical problem across the country,” he said. “My experiences are that librarians are great people in making their facilities accessible to everyone.” 

 

Local advocates for the homeless say they’re hopeful the Worcester library will change its policy so the case won’t have to be hashed out in court. 

 

“Our biggest concern is whether some of the city’s policies are linked in a deliberate way against the homeless,” said Grace Carmark, executive director of the Central Massachusetts Housing Alliance, which runs a transitional housing facility for homeless families and is one of the plaintiffs in the library lawsuit. 

 

Many of the city’s social woes aren’t hidden. On any given day, homeless people and drug users spend hours hanging around at a shelter not far from downtown. 

 

Home to several colleges, including Worcester Polytechnic Institute and the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester has plans to redevelop its downtown and bolster its economy by attracting biomedical and bioengineering businesses. 

 

In an effort to address some of the city’s problems, Mayor Timothy Murray appointed a task force to review the city’s social services. The group released a report last year urging the providers to voluntarily notify officials and neighbors before starting a new program in a residential neighborhood. 

 

But some of the social service providers say that policy is unfair _ and possibly illegal _ because it gives residents a chance to rally for keeping the facilities out of their neighborhoods. 

 

Philip Mangano, executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, said Worcester is making strides to combat its homeless problem, but the library’s borrowing policy shows how much the city needs to create a better dialogue around homeless issues. 

 

“The homeless use libraries as sanctuaries. They spend time there and they want to read and borrow books like anyone else,” he said. “The appropriate way to respond to homelessness and libraries is to have policies that are based on individual people, not an entire subpopulation.” 

 

© 2006 The Associated Press