In Medford, the downtown library location has offered social services for people experiencing homelessness, including social worker appointments, meetings with nurses and camping gear rentals. For some, the services are a beacon of hope for people dealing with dire situations. But others in the city say that the location is now experiencing problems. City officials and the police department agree that the library has been flooded with calls, from putting out fires to drug use in the bathrooms. Buffy Pollock is a reporter for the Rogue Valley Times and wrote about what’s happening in the city. She joins us with details of her reporting.
Note: This transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.
Geoff Norcrosss: This is Think out Loud on OPB. I’m Geoff Norcross, in for Dave Miller. Last year, the downtown Medford Library expanded its social services for people with mental illness or housing and food insecurity. For some, the services are a beacon of hope, but others in the city say the services have created problems at that location. Buffy Pollock is a reporter with the Rogue Valley Times and she has been reporting on what’s happening at the library. She joins us now. Buffy, welcome to Think Out Loud.
Buffy Pollock: Hi. Thanks for having me.
Norcross: Thanks for being here. Can you give us a sense for what kind of social services the library is offering beyond just checking out books?
Pollock: Last January, they started offering a social service referral program, [that] was their initial intent, they got some grant funding to hire some on-site social workers. The director told me that it started with having a pair of shoes available so that it wouldn’t keep someone from being able to use the library, and it kind of evolved into a food pantry, and then they had a clothing outreach. And then we heard that patrons were able to use their library cards to check out camping gear, like get a tent and heater, rent meeting rooms. Some of the meeting rooms were being rented with a library card by homeless individuals after hours. They have a weekly event where homeless patrons can come in and use the restrooms to get cleaned up, and there’s like an on site street nursing program that provides foot soaks and health checks and that sort of thing. It’s a pretty wide range of services.
Norcross: What happened that made the library think they needed to start providing all these services?
Pollock: I didn’t get a sense for that, just that they felt there was maybe not enough in the community. We’ve got a large homeless population, it’s really grown over the last few years, and I guess they felt like the library was kind of a safe place instead of the usual agencies or law enforcement reaching out. Maybe they felt like a neutral party that could just offer a little bit of a refuge.
Norcross: You spoke with some of the people experiencing homelessness who use those services that you laid out. How are they feeling?
Pollock: The homeless people that we talked to during the story, most of them felt like there was a small group of individuals that were causing some of the law enforcement issues.
Norcross: Law enforcement issues. Like what?
Pollock: We heard from the chief of police that there were over 400 calls for service to the police department last year. They had homeless patrons overdosing in the restrooms, a pretty significant number of those individuals having sex in the restrooms, property being vandalized. There were fires outside of the library. While we were working on the story, there were a couple of different calls that were dispatched for fires outside the library. We went over there twice and there had been a fire in one of the restrooms so it was closed. Just kind of a broad range of things. We heard from some patrons that said a homeless person had exposed themselves from outside the window of the children’s library. There were some pretty shocking stories.
Norcross: What has been the police response to all of that?
Pollock: The city manager says that it qualifies as a nuisance property, which is a property that has 12 or more calls for service. The library had over 400. I did hear from a lot of officers that said that they feel pretty unwelcome at the library, probably from some frustration coming from both sides. They’re there a lot. The city seems to be kind of focusing on coming up with some solutions. They do meet the criteria as a nuisance property. They said that if it were a private business or another property, they probably would have shut it down, but it’s the library so it’s kind of weird to think of shutting down the town library.
Norcross: Yeah, that’s not gonna happen. I’m wondering what you’ve heard from patrons who are using the library for their traditional services, who are there to get books?
Pollock: The patrons that I spoke with, most of them said that they had stopped using the Medford library over the past year out of safety concerns. I interviewed a woman who was accosted in the parking lot with her three children, was chased by a woman who she assumed had probably some mental health issues. Another mom told me that her daughter was almost bit by a homeless person’s dog inside the library. A mom who was with her two children, one of them was potty training so they had no choice but to use the bathroom, they went in to find an overdose victim on the restroom floor. Similarly concerning things.
Norcross: What has the feedback been like after your reporting? What are people in the community saying now that all of this is happening at the library?
Pollock: The feedback has been mostly positive. Even the readers who appreciate what the library is trying to do with the services have acknowledged that it’s gotten pretty out of hand, and that there’s some pretty serious safety issues that need [to be] dealt with. The director expressed to me that they’re taking the concerns pretty seriously. She said that the problem didn’t develop overnight, so it’s gonna obviously take more than a few days to get everything figured out.
They met on Monday, and they have implemented some changes effective immediately. They started with a new security firm on Monday who’s there during operating hours, they’ve increased their janitorial services, and they’re looking for an offsite location that they would be able to offer some of their social services. They said that they’d also created a capacity issue, that it had been more popular than they expected. Some of the services that they offer have just been pretty well attended. There’s a lot of unhoused patrons that spend the day in the library, but then they have times during the week, like on Wednesday, where I talked about those other services where they can get their feet looked at or they can pick up some clothes or some camping gear.
Norcross: This is part of a much bigger story, especially in Oregon, cities all over the state are trying to figure out how to balance necessary social services with safety in public spaces. And I’m wondering what the experience of the downtown Medford Library over the past year could teach other communities?
Pollock: I’m not sure how to answer that one. I don’t know. I think they’re trying to do a good thing. I heard from a lot of city officials in the police department, even the city officials felt like they’re trying to do a good thing here, but it’s important to have the people that are equipped to deal with the problems that can come with offering certain services. If they’re not equipped to deal with the problems that could come with it, then it’s probably not a great idea to offer those on-site.
Norcross: Buffy Pollock, thank you so much for this.
Pollock: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
Norcross: Buffy Pollock is a reporter with the Rogue Valley Times.
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