I was, for 4 weeks, and my local libraries wifi is what helped me stay in touch with my parents when my phone data was shut off for nonpayment. It helped me secure a job back at home.
You need to rethink your idea of what homelessness is. It's not antisocial drug users. It's also LGBT kids thrown out of their home. It's families being evicted because the parents lost their job. Even if they were antisocial drug users, sympathy, support, and assistance do more help than turning a blind eye and hoping they go away.
Is there real political backlash against the transient homeless population?
The problem is the library wants to kick out an inconvenient, occasionally dangerous, group of the chronically homeless. A group that reduces utility of that public good to everyone else. They don’t have the tools to do so directly. So they use a broad-brush approach.
After today seeing 4 (customer-less) kiosks scattered across my medium-sized AZ town attempting to give away free cell phones, free tablets, and free cell service (presumably to those who qualify on the basis of need, presumably funded by the Federal Government), and then returning home and reading this thread in which it is frequently claimed that open WiFi is providing more or less the last comm link between homeless people (who evidently have phones but not cell service?) and the wider world and the possibilities it might offer, I find myself wondering "[why] don't the homeless qualify for these free [cell phones and] cell services?" Is this simply an oversight by Federal legislators (i.e. requiring a recipient to have a fixed mailing address (or: documentable proof of poverty?)) If so, why is nobody mentioning a need to agitate to remove the legal requirements preventing those most needing this help to be eligible to receive it? Simply providing free (voice & data providing) SIMs (which the Federal Govt already seems to be willing to provide) to homeless persons should obviate this entire sub-issue? Or would this (essentially handing out SIM's to anyone who asks for one) risk destabilizing the entire for-pay cell-service industry sector?
In this case that service is being deliberately sabotaged for one of the most vulnerable groups in society.
Internet access is so necessary in modern life that it should be considered a citizen or human right.
Even if you subscribe to the ideology of the homeless being lazy leeches, the counter-effectiveness is quite obvious. Homeless people could be using the WiFi to access online banking, job, and housing applications. Things that would help get them off the street.
They are paid for by taxpayers. If the people funding the projects are unable to use them or they are being abused, then it makes sense to ensure that those that pay for the service are able to use them.
Correct, it's a service for everyone - including the homeless. A world where library doors are closed to some people is a world that has lost its way.
Do homeless people have the same rights as everyone else? Granted, they may not readily afford lawyers, but some of the restrictions you're implying trample in the freedom of movement.
In your hypothetical example, if you were inebriated, aggressive, and unhygienic, I'd strongly support you being removed from the subway circuit, because you'd similarly be denying access to it to others.
It just feels somewhat inhumane to take something away which is a marginal cost and at best and doesn't cause harm.
I mean, Libraries themselves do not need to exist, they are a service, they don't earn money, under pure capitalism they can't exist. But we know as a society that it improves social mobility and education.
and I mean, you can't do a lot these days without access to internet.
Don't get me wrong. I think we should make massive investments in trying to solve the homeless problem, but giving away our public commons is utter stupidity.
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.” ― Anatole France
The cleverness of Anatole France's famous quote is that he framed it in a way that the answers to those questions were automatically obvious, by emphasizing the massive difference in agency and scope of action between the haves and the have nots.
I grew up in a very bad place in the UK and I knew many homeless people (different than homeless people in the US for sure, much lower propensity for mental health issues for example) but they avoided shelters because many homeless shelters aren’t safe. Any possessions you have will be stolen while you sleep. Women are molested and raped. Lice are all over. There are limited beds so giving up your "sure-fire" place in an underpass for a potential bed is not ideal.
You have to leave at 7 am and can’t return until 5pm at the earliest, and they’re first come first serve. Some shelters make you attend religious services.
Some shelters will "encourage" you to pay a fee to go to them.
It's very easy to become homeless and very difficult to get out of it (I mean, who has the finances to have 2 months rent, a deposit and enough to cover a failed background check), so it's not good to tar all homeless people with the "drug-use" brush.
I think you mean give them away exclusively to one group. The point of public services is to give them away.
Because one group denies it to others. In New York, the potent image is that of a homeless person obviously going through a mental health issue, who hasn’t bathed in what smells like weeks, sitting in a subway car on their own. (When I was younger and naïve, I went into one such car and tried to talk to them. I had a handful of what I’ll pretend was a smelly sauce tossed my way.)
Genuinely curious: how is the mental-health and drug addiction nexus dealt with when one has an unwilling participant?
I don't know–I'm asking what "other developed countries" do.
The problem with the status quo is it’s going to prompt a backlash which results in losing libraries.