Homeless at Starbucks: Why the Coffee Chain is Bringing in Social Workers

[intheflow]

8. The public library where I work is organized

under the Department of Health in the City's budget chart. We are a 9-branch library system serving a population of 155,000, and are the poorest city in New England, and in the country for comparably-sized cities. We have begged them for a social worker, we have written grants that organizations wanted to give us money for a social worker, but the City keeps turning down the grant. I'm pretty sure this is because of optics; can't publicly acknowledge homeless people are in the library every day so the few wealthy white people who we court for fund-raising won't be put off. It pisses me off no end!!!