Ann Arbor District Library Rule Number 7—What “Dozing” Meant for Homeless Library Patrons During the Polar Vortex
by P.D. Lesko
A Washtenaw County employee told City Council in January 2014 that Ann Arbor’s homeless men, women, children and families could use a variety of public buildings during the day to escape temps. that plummeted to -20F. One of those facilities was the Downtown Library. Incident reports for January and February show that patrons caught “sleeping” were turned out for the day.
IN THE BEGINNING of January 2014, a Polar Vortex descended on Ann Arbor. The weather front brought with it temperatures as low as -40 degrees Fahrenheit. While Mary Jo Callan, head of Washtenaw County’s community and economic development office, assured local elected officials that homeless individuals could visit the AADL library buildings to stay warm, AADL incident reports from January and February 2014 show numerous patrons were “trespassed” out of the library on some of the coldest days because of “nodding off,” “dozing” or “sleeping,” an infraction of Rule Number 7.
Patrons attempted to intervene on behalf of those asked to leave, citing the record-breaking cold weather. In one instance, documented in the incident report above, released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the AADL staffer writes of a patron who pointed out that the weather was “cold outside,” “I informed him that his comment was interfering with my doing my job.”
Citizens Demand Action
In early-January 2014, a group that eventually grew to include about two dozen Ann Arbor citizens, led by Libby Hunter, began sending emails to local elected officials urging them to open City Hall and other government buildings as “daytime warming shelters.”
Ward 5 Council member Chuck Warpehoski, who heads the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice, did not respond to Hunter’s (a constituent) emails.
Instead, he posted a comment to the AnnArborChronicle.com site. He writes, “The Delonis Shelter does offer daytime and overnight emergency shelter, and the city contributes funds for the operation of the Delonis Shelter.”
Ward 5 Council member Mike Anglin sent Hunter an email in which he writes, “…I fully support having those who need a warm place to sleep during these life-threatening weather conditions using City owned buildings.”
Ward 3 Council member Stephen Kunselman, who is running for mayor, was challenged by Hunter after he neglected to respond to a series of emails she sent urging him to ask staff to use city buildings to house the homeless during the stretch of brutal weather. Hunter asked whether Kunselman had received her emails.
The mayoral candidate responded: “Yes, I have reviewed them.” He then added, “I’m afraid this is an issue bigger then the City” and signed off.
Ward 2 Council member Sally Hart Petersen, who is also running for mayor, responded to Hunter’s emails by saying that she (Petersen) “agreed” Ann Arbor needs to do more to house the homeless. Council member Petersen said she was working with City Administrator Steve Powers on a solution.
Months later, in May 2014, an amendment to the city’s proposed 2015 budget was presented to City Council that called for the elimination of $75,000 earmarked for Ann Arbor SPARK’s marketing budget.
The proposal would have shifted that amount to human services. Three of the four mayoral candidates (Briere, Petersen and Taylor) voted against the resolution citing the city’s pressing need to fund SPARK’s marketing budget; Ward 3 Council member Stephen Kunselman voted to eliminate the $75,000 payment to SPARK.
Politicians Respond
In response to Libby Hunter and other concerned citizens, in January 2014 the head of Washtenaw County’s community and economic development office, appeared before City Council with a list of daytime “warming shelters” that included U-M Hospital, as well as the Downtown Library.
A U-M Police Department spokesman subsequently told The Ann Arbor Independent that her department had received no confirmation that U-M had agreed to allow its hospital complex to be used as a day or night warming shelter.
The citizens pushing for an immediate solution shot back with an open letter in response to Mary Jo Callan’s presentation:
Dear Mayor and Council,
The Mayor, with the help of a couple city councilors and Mary Jo Callan, assured us at their January 6 meeting that Ann Arbor city government is functioning just as it should.
However, Ms. Callan was nodding her head when public commentators asked for an emergency shelter. During the last few days as I’ve learned much about our homeless situation. I was told that Shelter Association of Washtenaw County Executive Director Ellen Schulmeister also wants the city to open an emergency shelter. What’s actually needed is an emergency plan for the city. What happens when we have tornadoes, ice storms, or extended power outages?
Jack Eaton was the only CM to speak on emergency shelter needs at council communication time. Several people have echoed my surprise (shock really) that after a public commentary segment full of this topic there was no discussion by council.
I’ve learned there are a myriad of reasons why people are homeless and that while the Delonis Center is fantastic, many simply cannot use that resource. The homeless in A2 are uncountable and surely number in the 100’s at least—including families and children. Camp Take Notice was doing a superb job of housing many who can’t use Delonis. Others camp on their own. Others couch serf or sleep in their cars. But, in extreme situations everyone wants to come in from death’s door. Especially at night.
The list of shelters given by Ms. Callan is misleading because most are small, don’t accept pets, some only accept women (or men or families) and are full. We should not be scrambling to save lives. Right now we have an emergency, almost a disaster. Though our city is small, most of us do not personally know homeless people. But an ice storm for instance could knock out power for hundreds of families. Some could be people we know who are looking for a warm place to go.
The Question: To Allow Patron Napping or not to Allow Patron Napping?
AADL rules forbid “sleeping,” “dozing” or “nodding off” on library premises. In contrast, in May 2014 the University of Michigan library system opened a napping station.
According to reporting posted to The HuffintonPost.com on May 22, 2014: “The University of Michigan is making their libraries official as the home for naps with their new napping stations. The first station was open just in time for final exams with cots and pillows. According to the Michigan Daily, organizers are working to establish lockers so people can keep their belongings safe during their snoozes.”
U-M joined the University of Colorado at Boulder, which opened a napping spot on campus several years ago. Students proposed the idea at Harvard University in 2013.
A piece published in Library Journal explains the medical reasoning in support of U-M’s library nap station: “The nap station was an idea proposed by students. Central Student Government (CSG) representatives started by surveying over 4,000 students, finding out what they valued most in a potential designated nap space, and found that the top priorities were proximity to study areas and classes, making the library a natural partner. CSG also brought in the expertise of U-M professor and sleep researcher Shelley Hershner, M.D., who helped make the case that improving student sleep habits, even in such a small way as providing a designated space to nap, could benefit student health and performance.”
While the U-M nap station is not open to the homeless, library directors across the country are rethinking their approach to dealing with sleeping patrons, including the homeless. According to a 2011 piece in The Chicago Tribune, Chicago-land public librarians decided to stop “throwing the book” at sleeping patrons: “The issue came up in Lombard in part because the library has become a destination for the homeless on Tuesdays, the one night each week when the DuPage PADS shelter is hosted by a church just blocks away.”
Bob Harris is the director of the Lombard library. He said the rule change helps those who are struggling, but it’s intended for other patrons as well.
“If they’re snoring or making noises in their sleep then, no, that’s not OK,” he said. “But if a senior citizen is sitting there and nods off over the newspaper, or a college student who was studying late the night before falls asleep — to say, ‘No, you can’t sleep’ — isn’t that kind of harsh? It’s not caring.”
Harris’s Lombard library decided to consider allowing sleeping after consulting with Warren Graham, a library security consultant from Charlotte, N.C.
In downtown Naperville, Illinois, the Nichols Library, which is near a shelter, allows sleeping “as long as it isn’t prolonged or disruptive,” said John Spears, director of the city’s library system.
The homeless using libraries as dormitories is not only an issue in the U.S. In Britain, a homeless man managed to sleep in the library at St. John’s Working Library, Cambridge University, for six weeks before librarians caught on. The Daily Mail reported that, “It is believed the man was homeless and simply seeking a warm place to spend the night.”
While the Cambridge University homeless man left the library and didn’t return, in 2013 a California homeless man filed a lawsuit in U.S. district court calling Laguna Beach’s citations of homeless people sleeping in public harassment.
That city’s 45 space shelter opened in 2009 after another lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, which criticized the city’s citations of homeless people sleeping in public when they had no other alternative.
“Out for the day”
Ann Arbor’s library system is by no means alone in disallowing napping. In 2013, the Iowa City, Iowa public library’s Board of Trustees approved a sleeping ban.
Library Director Susan Craig explained the decision: “People sleeping for extended periods of time has a negative effect on other people’s use of the library,” Craig said. “We want to be welcome and open for everyone who uses the library and we’re concerned that that’s not the case when sleeping is allowed.”
Likewise, the Chicago Public Library does not permit patrons to sleep on its premises.
But there are human consequences that become clearer when pairing AADL incident reports with weather data.
In January and February 2014 Ann Arbor politicians struggled to deal with citizens concerned with cold weather and the lack of permanent day shelters for the city’s homeless.
The city’s unsheltered homeless population mushroomed from 43 to 166 between 2011 and 2013, according to a survey conducted by local human services groups. The county’s total homeless population is between 3,000 and 4,000 people.
In January 2014, the AADL as a daytime warming shelter became part of what one City Council member referred to as the “political Band-Aid.”
January 10, 2014 was snowy and the high temperature peaked at 21 degrees. At the AADL, a patron had his shoes off and was dozing. The incident report is titled, “Sleeping Irate Patron Out For The Day.” Two of the AADL’s security staffers had spoken to the patron about sleeping and so he was ejected under the auspice of Rule #4 (no shoes) and Rule #7 (sleeping).
Later that same day, two other Downtown Library patrons were ejected and told they could not visit any other AADL branch for the remainder of January 10 for violating the rule against sleeping. The report reads, “Two patrons were found to be sleeping three times and were asked to leave for the day….” The report doesn’t indicate the patrons were creating a disturbance, only that they had fallen asleep on the premises.
Three days later, on January 13, 2014, the high was 42 degrees and the low was 32 degrees. “A patron who told me his name was **** was asked to leave the library for sleeping. This was his third offense of the day,” writes a Downtown Library staffer in an incident report filed that day. “He was told he could not go to any of the other branches for the rest of the day….”
January 21, 2014 dawned frigid—the temperature never exceeded 12 degrees and the windchill dipped to -22.7 degrees. At 6:27 p.m., when a librarian “knocked on” a sleeping patron’s chair to inform the man that “there was no sleeping in the library,” according to the incident report, it was 5 degrees outside with a windchill of -6.9 degrees. The librarian and the security staffer also noticed that the patron smelled of alcohol and was incoherent.
“We escorted him to the porch and witnessed him leaving the library premises,” states the January 21, 2014 incident report.
According to the National Weather Service, frostbite can occur within 5 minutes in temperatures between 0 degrees and -19 degrees Fahrenheit. Hypothermia is also a danger.
Dr. Christopher McStay is chief of service at Bellevue Hospital Center Emergency Department, in New York. He said that it is rare to see hypothermic patients, except for in an area’s homeless population.
“They are, of course, at high risk and doubly so due to a high percentage of comorbid psychiatric and substance abuse,” said McStay.
According to AADL incident reports, in January and February 2014, during a Polar Vortex, over two dozen individuals were put “out for the day,” for sleeping on AADL premises. In January, temps on half of the days hovered well below zero and snow fell on all but seven days of the month.
The AADL incident reports examined do not specify that those asked to leave for the day for sleeping were homeless, nor is it known if the individuals ejected found other shelter.