The problem is similar to what happened when low income housing (the "projects") concentrated the poor into economic ghettos.
If they're "poor", don't they have to rent or buy low income housing, and so "concentrate into economic ghettos"?
There is no policy concentrating the poor with each other, any more than there is a policy that concentrates the rich with each other. The market makes available different products, and different economic market segments purchase different products. With a policy, or without a policy, the poor will live with the poor.
And form "economic ghettos".
I prefer it being a homeless shelter, its cold as hell in chicago right now. It would be nice for them to have some some space there.
Whenever there is a cold wave we all wonder whats happening to the ppl left out there. It would be nice for them to have one more option. give everyone else peace of mind, lol.
They adapted and drew in new users. How awful.
I myself have been coming in and out of their space trying to job hunt.
(Turns out a common trope is people don't want to socialize with someone who "lives with their parents" or is un/under employed.)
So picture you're trying to study for OSCP, and you can't find a space that's quiet. In a library.
And what you'd think would happen is someone would go "oh, you're in IT? I know someone looking for that" and solve the issue.
And then instead, they treat it like a game -- or worse, start acting purposefully othering.
That is my core complaint -- that both those spaces and those resources in the monetary sense divert disproporionately to folks who, frankly, sometimes interact in ways that make me question why they strive so hard to interact with teenagers all day.
(Also, it was often not new users -- just bigger, more elaborate programs for the same rich kids from the suburbs who used to pay for special camps and programs... but now having them held in spaces those who couldn't afford them used to do self education.)
I hope taking the time and energy to type that out helps.
Someone else commented that the library is one of the last noncommercial spaces... I honestly don't have that impression at all. I got the sense if you're not using it to do remote work, or as a community center, but to... check out materials and use them... you are unwelcome unless you're buying stuff (coffee, supplies etc) or part of one of the groups that makes substantial donations when they're not making noise.
(I haven't been to the SF public library in a while, but the few times I went in as a Mozilla intern the staff were so rude I ended up buying books and selling them at a used bookstore when finished rather than be treated rudely by folks who were within a year or two of me, from the same department I graduated from. Maybe there's a reason people don't respect that space, and it's not just because they're mentally ill and/or down on their luck.)