[Turing_Machine]

"Isn't the purpose of a public library to collect, preserve and disseminate information freely to the public? Please explain how a homeless person "destroys" those purposes when they participate?"

By destroying books and furniture, screaming loudly when people are trying to read and becoming violent, among other things.

Next question.

[bogomipz]

>"By destroying books and furniture, screaming loudly when people are trying to read and becoming violent, among other things"

Really are all homeless people acting that way? I have seen plenty of suburban teenagers in libraries do some of those same things. Why is it different if it's homeless?

By the way your "next question" comment is quite a display of arrogance. Seriously who goes around saying that?

[Turing_Machine]

"Really are all homeless people acting that way?"

No. The ones that aren't, aren't a problem.

If anyone has proposed ejecting homeless people who are behaving in a civilized manner, I haven't seen it. Have you?

"By the way your "next question" comment is quite a display of arrogance."

Your feigned ignorance of the fact that crazy/drunk homeless people disrupt the library deserved it.

To expand:

If a homeless person (or any other person -- I don't actually care if the guy is homeless or Bill Gates) can comport themselves in the library in a civilized manner, they are welcome there as far as I'm concerned. If they can't, they aren't.

That would include:

1) Not shitting and pissing in the book stacks, or littering them with used condoms and needles.

2) Not yelling obscenities or incoherencies, whether due to intoxication, mental illness, or both.

3) Not pulling weapons on the other patrons or staff, trying to fight them, or making verbal threats to them.

4) If using the public computers, not engaging in public masturbation, playing loud porn videos, etc.

Should there be a place for people who can't control themselves to this minimal extent to go? Yes. Should that place be the library? No.