If I told you that last week Susan and I took our kids to a place that was overrun with smelly homeless people and was being patrolled by armed police officers, you might think that we were bad parents. But what if I told you the place was the downtown Oklahoma City public library?<\/p>\n

The last time I visited the downtown library was back in September of 2009, when Mason was asked to stand up by a security guard<\/a>. On that trip, there were maybe half a dozen homeless people hanging out inside the library. This past weekend, now that it’s turned cold, there were at least thirty.<\/p>\n

Essentially all the public seating areas were being taken up by homeless people. Many of them had their sleeping bags and backpacks piled next to them. Others were sitting using the computers (or at least pretending to). The chairs at the end of each row also had people camped out in them. I wouldn’t be quite as bitter about it if any of them had been reading. They weren’t. Not a single one of them had … wait, I take it back — one guy did<\/i> have a book. He was using it to cover his face while he slept. <\/p>\n

There was also a line of people at the front service desk, apparently making free phone calls from the phone at the front desk. We saw at least three different people doing this — every time we passed the desk, in fact. It’s like Kinko’s for the homeless.<\/p>\n

The only area off-limits to the homeless population is the children’s area. There’s no real physical barrier keeping people out, but I’ve been told that homeless people without kids will be “asked to leave the area” — which is kind of like being told “this cabin is definitely<\/i> off limits to the serial killer.” The children’s bathroom requires keycard access, and librarians accompany kids to it to make sure homeless people aren’t hiding out in there. <\/p>\n

In the rest of the library, which includes all non-fiction books (the entire second floor), you’re on your own. I don’t want to make it sound like some sort of zombie horror movie in which hoards of toothless bodies were chasing us around, but it was at best an uncomfortable experience. At no time did I feel free letting the kids out of my sight.<\/p>\n

Since our visit someone informed Susan that Oklahoma City has a “public smell law”, which means if someone has offensive body odor they can be asked to leave a public place. The entire library smelled like unwashed feet, so narrowing down the stink to a single person would have taken keen olfactory senses. Additionally, it would take me going to the librarian, pointing at a homeless person and saying, “that person smells — please remove them from the library.” Not really my style, thanks. And even if it were, I’m sure I’d have a confrontation with a stinky (and now cold) homeless person waiting for me just outside the front door. Again, no thanks.<\/p>\n

I hope this didn’t come off as a rant against the homeless. I realize most homeless people are not dangerous, but many of them are mentally ill<\/a> and the majority of them have drug and alcohol addictions<\/a>. <\/p>\n

There simply has to be a better place for them to hang out all day than where I take my kids to borrow books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If I told you that last week Susan and I took our kids to a place that was overrun with smelly homeless people and was being patrolled by armed police officers, you might think that we were bad parents. But what if I told you the place was the downtown Oklahoma City public library? The last time I visited the downtown library was back in September of 2009, when Mason was asked to stand up by a security guard. On that trip, there were maybe half a dozen homeless people hanging out inside the library. This past weekend, now that… (read more)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2977\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}