[krapp]

>but it still feels false to wax poetically about the educational and societial benefits of what is effectively a homeless shelter.

Bridges and overpasses also shelter the homeless sometimes, but their other benefits remain intact, and not all libraries are "effectively homeless shelters."

[stale2002]

Indeed those things are both homeless shelters and provide other societal benefits.

The fact that there are homeless people living under bridges, does not take away from the value that the bridge provides.

This is not the case for libraries. For the ones that do act as homeless shelters, you may as well just throw away all the books, and everything, because you aren't going to be getting much work done there.