 All right, everyone, welcome back. Let's take our seats. We're actually gonna kick off our series of panels. We're gonna be starting with serving unhoused members of your community. As public libraries have become a refuge for the unhoused members of the community, they serve as a place of shelter, safety, rest, facility usage and informational resources. In this panel, we will explore different ways that Bay Area libraries are serving and engaging this population. This panel will be moderated by Abby O'Neill, Library Services Manager of Contra Costa County Library and she will be joined by Kimberly Buckley, Senior Community Library Manager of the Contra Costa County, Gia Paulini, Senior Community Library Manager of the Contra Costa County Library and Derek Wolfgram, Library Director of the Redwood City Public Library. If you would like to learn more about the panelists on this panel and later panels, I encourage you to look at the brief bios provided with the agenda. Thank you. Good morning. I'm Abby and we're gonna start. I'm delighted to be here with this esteemed panel and we will leave time at the end of the panel discussion for questions. So if you have any, please let us know when we get to the end. Our first question is for Kimberly. What organizations have helped navigate in assisting and managing the influx of unhoused individuals? Well, hi everybody. I am Kimberly. I feel like to answer this question, I need to go back a little bit and talk about when I first started working at the library that I managed, which is the Concord Library in Contra Costa. And when I started there, we have a very large homeless population that actually I think Concord has the largest population in the Contra Costa County. So when I got there, the culture was basically, we don't talk to them, we don't acknowledge them, we don't do anything with them. And if they do anything that we don't like, we call the police on them. And that just didn't sit very well with me. So I spent several years, and I think it was about two to three years trying to figure out ways that I could work closely with our unhoused and help them and make them feel more welcome. So what happened, it happened by accident that I had someone from Shelter Inc., which is an organization in Concord, asked me if they could rent our meeting room and I thought to myself, yeah, sure, you can rent our meeting room. Can I talk to you and find out ways that I could help our unhoused folks in the library? And so we had a conversation, we talked, they introduced me to their operations director. And so we talked more and we came up with a plan, we were going to collaborate together and we created a forum for homelessness awareness month which was in November. And through that, I was able to meet with more organizations. I met someone from our, it's health housing and homeless and it's in the Contra Costa County, they called the H3 who was, she is an amazing person. She knows so many different like service providers and different resources. So through there, I was able to meet more and more people and so it really helped to have these resources and different types of providers so that I could, like our staff and myself could start like offering this information to our unhoused patrons because like I said, we were just not even acknowledging that they were there and I just felt that that was just not, that was just not okay. So I feel like I'm gonna save, have lots more to share but I'm gonna save that and like we'll go on to our next question. Thank you, Kimberly. Next question is for Derek. What are the common issues facing libraries, community members and partners in managing the ever growing unhoused population? Thank you, good morning everybody. I'm Derek Wolfgram from Redwood City. Yeah, I wanna start just echoing something that Kimberly said, just in a slightly different way that I tend to think of our unhoused population, people that were trying to help in that way rather than as a population to be managed as humans to be assisted. I think that that's a really important framework going in and these are broad issues that are, we have our own unique sets of things that we talk about in the library and we'll deal with that but these are pervasive societal issues. They affect every department of government. It affects police, it affects fire, it affects public works, it affects parks. It's happening across the city. All of the nonprofits in the community touch homelessness in some way because it's about hunger, it's about economic opportunity, it's about mental health. There are just, all of these things are completely pervasive and there is nothing that we can do alone to remedy this terrible issue that our communities have. And so that collaboration like Kimberly talked about and as we'll talk about more, I think is really what's essential. In San Mateo County where Redwood City is located, our county is super ambitious. They have a plan that they are really trying to at least functionally end homelessness and in addition to the county having bought a few hotels to provide individual living spaces, the county is in the process of building a navigation center that's going to have 240 individual rooms in it for people to live in, as well as all of the mental health services and wraparound social services that are needed to help people once they have a place to live start moving forward with improving their lives in other ways. And so we're all part of that effort and I hope we get there. Thank you, Derek. Question number three, Gia, what are some building issues such as on-house patrons using the bathroom to bathe or wash or change clothing? And how does that get managed? And again, I think Derek's point about the word managed is really, really hit a significant point. So thank you. Thank you. My name is Gia and I work at the San Pablo library in Contra Costa County. Our city is about between 30 and 40,000 people currently. I think you said it very well when you said manage. Every person here who works in a public library or has been in a public library is very aware of the issues that you can be experiencing as library staff, visitors, community members when you're dealing with trying to manage a situation with your restrooms, your public restrooms and things that can happen in there. It's always a tightrope of having compassion for the folks that need the services that they need the bathroom and the community members who have expectations of the use of the bathroom. And they're also trying to use the bathroom of the staff members who have expectations about what they're gonna be doing as far as managing restroom issues and being able to really hear your staff, hear the community and hear the people who need the bathrooms. And yeah, it's just managing and just being aware and listening to your staff, listening to the public, listening to the needs of the people that are using the bathroom and paying attention. Nobody is expecting anybody to manage the bathroom or stand outside. But it's just a lot of just being aware. Sometimes just if you can stick your head in the air and just make sure everybody's doing okay. Like, are you all right? Do you need me to call someone for you and just having compassion for them? What's your name? I've seen you here before, are you okay? Sometimes people answer and sometimes they don't. And the other thing too that was really helpful for us is just really getting to know the cleaning crew and the cleaning staff and just asking them, like, are there, you know, how's stuff going? Like, let us know if anything is going on in there that we need to know about. And they tell us, you know, and there are things sometimes that they bring to our attention that have been really invaluable and really helped us problem solve and work backwards to offer things to folks, especially we started with the ant flow project where we've been offering free menstrual products to the community. And that's been a learning curve for everybody because some people in the community are not interested in that or they're been abusing it. But I would say overall, it's been really positive. But yes, again, it's just managing. Can I add onto that? I just want to say part of the tool that a lot of libraries have for this kind of management is a behavior policy of some sort that sets guidelines. And we recently did kind of an equity lens review of all of our policies. And I was surprised to find how much stuff we had in our behavior policy that was really written as if it was targeting unhoused people. And so we really tried to create a document that provides a welcoming atmosphere but still manages the things that need to be managed. There were three examples in there that I can think of off the top of my head. One was we had a prohibition against bringing shopping carts onto the library property. Well, first, outside that's unenforceable anyway by law. We can't do anything about it. But functionally, the reason we can't have shopping carts is because it blocks access to things. It blocks access to furniture, to pathways, to collections, to spaces. And so we just made our policy say you can't have anything that blocks access to spaces. That's true of somebody who brings in a big computer setup. That's true of somebody who brings in a shopping cart. It's all the same. We also found that we were enforcing our no sleeping policy inequitably. If it was a student that fell asleep, probably nobody was gonna bother them. If it was somebody that looked homeless, somebody probably was gonna bother them. And ultimately, if it's not disrupting the library experience of somebody else, who cares? So we took sleeping out of the behavior policy. Sleeping is fine if you wanna sleep at the library as long as you're not impacting someone else's experience in a negative way. And then the last piece of language, which I hate to point out while we're here at the wonderful San Francisco Public Library, but I realized when I went into the restrooms here that the language we changed was language we had originally taken from San Francisco's behavior policy, which talks about laundering, bathing, shaving, or other inappropriate uses of the restroom. There's no need for that judgment. The word inappropriate doesn't have to be there. Just specify the behaviors, my thoughts. Thank you. Kimberly, what types of programs have you initiated to engage the unhoused in the library? And what were some of the results? Thank you. This is actually somewhere where I feel it's like very exciting for me because I had been doing all that work and making all those connections. And so I had been following Dallas Public Library. They had been working, they had received a grant and they had been working on something called their homeless engagement program and they called it Coffee and Conversation. So I started talking with our Shelter Inc collaborators and the H3 collaborators. And so what if we did a program like that at the Concord Library, would you wanna do that with me? And they were like, yes, we would love to do that with you. So we basically kind of just launched off of what Dallas was doing and we thought we would just do it the same way but a lot of what Derek was just talking about was kind of what we wanted to kind of preface in this engagement program was, look, we can help you get housing. We can connect you with people who can get you clothing and food and if you need to go somewhere and get showers and that type of thing. So I was really, really hoping that it would work out. So our first idea was to actually be just like Dallas and we called it Coffee and Conversation too. Talk about like just not reinventing the wheel there. And so what we did is we had our person come from the H3 and they were gonna do, just kind of give like a, you know what, kind of like a little talk and then, you know, our goal was to try to get some of our unhoused patrons to come in and stay. So we offered donuts and coffee and that first one was interesting. We actually got two people to come in and for us that we were like, yes, we scored, you know, like two. A couple of came in and got some donuts and left and, you know, we were excited about that too. So, but for some reason, we felt like that wasn't really, but it didn't really stick. Like, is this really what they need? Like, do they need to talk about something? And so then we had an idea because a lot of different service providers wanted to come to this meeting too. So we're talking about people who, you know, there's people called White Pony Express who deal with clothing. And then we had people from the mobile shower unit and we just healthcare for the homeless. We just, it's just started kind of like being a big group. And so then my, I love, cause my collaborator, Jamie, said, let's put everybody together with who they need, where they need help and who they need to talk to. And she called it, she says, it's kind of like speed dating, but not, right? But anyway, it turned out to be like such a great thing so that at some point within a few months, we started having like maybe 15 to 20 unhoused folks show up and then 15 providers and service providers and resource. So, and so we were doing this once a month and we were getting people from all over the county coming and it was, it was really amazing. It was a very exciting time. Even the city was coming and they were bringing the mayor. I mean, it was really great. So we kept that going until, until March 2020 and then it got shut down. And so we haven't been doing it since, but I do want to bring it back. And then I just want to say that there were several other libraries that we ended up initiating that. And it had, it went well. So I don't, but that's the, that's what I've, where I've gone with the programming and I think it really can work and it can really make a difference. And I learned so much and met so many different people and another thing about when we're talking about, you know, bathing in the restroom or sleeping in the library, and we really need to know what these folks are going through. And I learned a lot about that. I met people who had been homeless and living on the streets for like eight to 10 years. And they told me, they said, this is what we need. We don't need you to like give us a big, big bag of stuff that we're never going to use. You know, we need these specific items and we, and we just want to come in and we just want to rest for a little bit because we don't sleep at night. We do not sleep at night, no one of us sleep at night. And so, you know, it was, it was a pretty, I think for me and my staff, it was pretty amazing to be able to like start bonding with our unhoused folks and start seeing them all the time and then see a smile on their face when they come in like, hi, how are you? Like, and they feel like that's a, that's a great thing for us to be able to do that. So I, I'm, I would love to continue that program. I think that other, I think anyone else that can do it to try to do it as well because it doesn't take a lot to do it. And that kind of segues into our next question with Derek. For libraries with staff, specifically social workers or staff trained in benefits navigation, what has been the impact and effect? Thank you. Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna start with following up a little bit on what Kimberly said and then work my way around to it. Yeah, I think that's hugely important about the actual communication and the actual engagement and, you know, avoiding the misguided efforts. I'll never forget 25 years ago when I was a brand new reference library and the Denver Public Library main library was around Thanksgiving time and had a gentleman who appeared to be homeless came up to the reference desk with a frozen turkey and said, do you know any place I can cook this? So, you know, sometimes the disconnect between people that are trying to help and the realities of the people that need the help doesn't work out. So we took, we were exploring the idea of a social worker a few years back and we weren't able to come up with the money for it. So we took a different twist on kind of the program that Kimberly described. We had an open session that we called social service office hours that I connected with a number. There was a collaborative of organizations serving people who are homeless, people with mental illness issues, people with substance abuse issues. And, you know, none of us could afford a full-time person but each of those agencies could afford a couple hours a week. So we set regular times and we set up that the library was essentially an outreach venue for all of these other agencies. We're used to going out and tabling at community events but it actually works really well to have others come and do their tabling inside the library. And, you know, we saw some great results from that. Never forget there was a time that I had, I went and talked to one of our regulars that was sitting in the reading room and asked him how he was doing because he looked a little, he looked a little, you know, out of sorts. And he said, well, I'm really happy but I'm really sad. And I said, why is that? And he said, well, I met with Life Moves at the social service office hours and they found me a place to live. I'm like, well, that's fantastic. That's wonderful. And he said, but it's in East Palo Alto so I'm not gonna be able to come and spend every day at the Redwood City Library anymore. Which, that was the sadness, was he was gonna miss the caring that he was shown at the library. So I thought that was beautiful. So you don't need the full budget to do everything. You can do something a little more grassroots. I do think the libraries that have done work with social workers, San Francisco is one of the, is one of the early leaders in that and they have done just tremendous work to get people connected with benefits and to get people connected with housing. And I've heard Leah Iscara who started the program talk many times. I know she's talked at some other PLP workshops and just the fact that they built up that program leading with compassion, leading with empathy and really trying to put some power and some money behind helping people get assistance really has made a difference. Thank you, Derek. Gia, how do police departments and or security play into, again, the word managing incidents? So, the police department that for our city are actually pretty proactive, engaged police department. They did show up to our coffee and conversation for the first few rounds of it that we had until I had someone from the group approach me afterwards and say, why did you bring the police here? Was it to watch me? And I was like, well, no, it's just so that you can talk to them about any issues that you're having with law enforcement. He was like, well, I'm not coming back. So it was like, oh, okay. So that was kind of a tough one. It was, we lucked out though, because the police decided that they were gonna be engaged elsewhere during that time. So they actually kind of quit coming. And then we actually got some more attendance to the program. So just kind of checking in with your police department and checking in to make sure that the folks who, if they're coming in to do activities with you, just make sure that the people that you're serving feel safe around the police. And get to know your beat captain, get to know the chief of police, try to engage with city council and your community partners to make sure that everybody's on the same page and that they know where you stand. Because if there are incidents where we have to call the police, sometimes it's kind of a push and pull where they're like, I know that person, do you want us to get them out of here? And it's like, well, for the day. And they're like, well, we'll tell them. They go outside and they're like, never come back here. And I'm like, well, we can't do that. So it's just kind of making sure that the police know the rules of the library. And in Contra Costa County, we're not allowed to actually suspend people forever. We just hand them suspension papers if that's necessary and let them know this is your end date. But we don't tell people don't ever come back here. And I always try to tell people if we're having a problem, hey, man, you just need to stay out for a week. And then after that, you're welcome to come back in. We're still friends. Everything is good. We just need a break from each other for a week and just try to be sympathetic with folks because they're having a bad day. And sometimes you just need to draw those boundaries and just make sure the police understand that because there's so many times that I've had to talk to somebody and just tell them like, don't tell them they can never come back because that's not the point of this conversation. And then the same thing will often go with our security because they're a contracted company. Sometimes we see a different person every single day. So we just try to make sure that we have a good conversation with whoever is our security staff that day and make sure they understand the rules of engagement as well. And they do pretty well. Sometimes they do stand back a little bit too much and we have to kind of like encourage them to come to engage with us and just make sure that they're supporting the staff. And just having an open line of communication with the security company as well is really important because that can kind of make or break your ability to serve that community is if you have a positive relationship with security and the police. And I know in Gia's case, her staff also feels empowered when things aren't going well. There was a security officer there who was not engaging well with pretty much all of the patrons at a certain point. And that staff person called me and I said, we'll get somebody new out there. So that's truly important as well. It's not just leadership who feels that level of comfort with security and police, but it should be the entire staff feeling that autonomy and empowered notion to be able to react to things when they're not going well and then not just with our customers. Kimberly, how did you start teaching a course on serving on-house patrons for the San Jose State University MLIS program? Thank you, Abby. Here's another great story about how I kind of fell into something. I hit my colleague and I decided that we were gonna present at the CLA, I think it was the 2019, and we were gonna present about coughing conversation and talk about all the things that came about and how great it was and how kind of lay down and how everyone could do it. It was really fun. So through that, someone from San Jose State and the master's library program contacted me and said, we really like a class here on serving homeless patrons in the library. Could you do that? And I was like, I guess so. I've always wanted to teach and went into library studies instead. And so I thought, hey, I'll give it a shot. So it was gonna be a four-week course. I designed it and I went through every thought that I could think of that would be helpful for someone in library school to know before they went to work in a library. Cause I know my first experience in the library when we had someone who came in unhoused and I had a coworker just start screaming at them and saying, get out, get out. And I was thinking of that when I was doing this because I really don't think that, sometimes you just don't know what to expect. So I talk a lot about the barriers and the challenges that they face. We talk a lot about different things that will happen in the library and a lot of things that we've been talking about here already. And then the final part of the end of the course is for them to plan their own homeless engagement program. And so the sense of state was like, yeah, that sounds great. Let's do that. So I taught my first class. I think it was right around when the pandemic began and I had more than 60 students and it's all online. And that's for me was just, I was like, whoa, that's a lot of students. But to think about that they will all at least be somewhat prepared or knowledgeable and have that understanding before they even start working in a library, I think is really important. And so I'm still teaching it and I teach it in the spring and the summer. And I just wanted to add on to that too that I think an important piece that I always kind of direct most people to is Mr. Ryan Dowd's book, The Librarian's Guide to Homelessness. I think that that is a crucial book for everyone to read even if you're not in library school. It's very helpful. It talks about a lot of different approaches. And so I'm gonna probably talk a little bit later about the staff training but I really feel that that book is really important in our work. Next question for Derek. Do you ever have to balance frustrations among community members and our staff that might not think favorably of the unhoused in the library? And if so, how do you deal with that? Yeah, I'm gonna talk about one individual in one situation. The individual is a crusty old guy that is a former mayor of Redwood City. And to use his language, every time I see him at a community event, he tells me that he's not gonna come to the library's events and he's not gonna give us any money until we do something about the bums in the library. And I just tell him that we're gonna have to get by without his generosity or his charming company because we welcome the bums to our library. This is a place that is a haven for them in our community. And so if you don't like it, you can take your privilege elsewhere. One interesting situation that we had over this past summer was we had an encampment that grew up in the park next to our library which started with a couple of people very quietly pitching tents and sleeping there. And we barely noticed that they were there and based on conversations with our police department, they actually, they were very uncomfortable with the idea even as we got things got a little crazier with the idea of removing people because there are court cases that basically assert people's right to be on public property 24 seven. But I had people immediately when we had these two tents in the park that it's gotta go, it's bad, it's scary, children can't come to the library and have to see this horrible thing which is people that our resources have not been able to care for is in my opinion, the horrible thing that children were seeing. But people were scared and there were things on next door and there were things on social media and we actually did not engage with the social media. We just sort of let those conversations die out and let the encampment remain over a period of a few months. It did actually get to the point where it was problematic. It grew to the point where it was about 20 people. We were having a lot of needles left laying around. We were witnessing incidents of domestic violence. People who were in the encampment were making really unfortunate comments to our library customers as they were walking by. Sometimes racist, sometimes sexist or homophobic. It was pretty brutal. And so we decided that we did need to work in with our homeless coordinator for the city and our police department that we needed to evict the encampment. And fascinating the community reaction and the staff reaction. There was a mirror in both that there were people who were like, yay, good, make it be gone. We don't wanna have to look at it anymore. And then there were people who said, don't you have any compassion? Why are you forcing these people to move somewhere else? They don't have any place else to go. Why would you be so heartless? And we just had to explain that balance that we had existed peacefully side by side for as long as we could. But once the issues got to be more severe and we got worried about safety, they started, some of the campers started having regular fires there. And there's a 100-foot redwood tree that they were burning their grills underneath, which would fall on the library if something happened to it. And so we had to move them along, but it was really interesting in that moment to see that balance of people who, and the same discussions happened with other encampments in Redwood City, that we should have compassion, we should leave people alone, or we should not have to look at this. And then there are all sorts of people that are on the middle of the spectrum as well. Thank you. We are gonna have one more question for the panel and then open it up to audience questions. Hajiya, do we see a long-term or proactive solution to helping the on-house or are we mostly reacting to these circumstances? Before I get into that, I just have been thinking, listening to us all here. I think everyone who's listening to us talk in your own library, you have an image of the people that you're helping and the people that are maybe causing issues and they're highly visible. But I just don't want us to forget about the invisible homeless that we are seeing every day that we may not know are homeless. I feel like in my community, we have a core group of about 15 guys, ladies, gentlemen, who we know and we're used to, they're used to us, they have a routine, we have our routine. But the people that are, and this leads into this question a little bit, the people who are precarious, the people who are suddenly finding themselves on-house, this is happening so much more than it used to happen in 2019, 2020, 2021, hit my community so hard. Just blue people who are kind of precarious, just straight out of the water. We have a woman who has been staying with us for about three weeks now. She showed up and I just noticed that she had a child, like an eight-year-old with her during the day. And I was like, hey, what's going on? Why isn't this kid in school? Her car broke down in Hayward and it destroyed her. She couldn't get to work. Her landlord kicked her out and now she has an eight-year-old in there in the library all day. So it's the folks like that. I think that we're trying to really narrow our focus in and make sure they're being cared for, that the kid is getting fed and that they're being directed towards resources that we have and that they know that they can safely be with us during the day while they're looking for resources. We have so many people who come in and I'm like, why are you here all day, every day? Like, you know, somebody who's wearing the same outfit every single day, the person who's just struggling on the computer for eight hours every single day. Like just keep an eye on those folks because they may be experiencing something that you're not queued into. They may not have a whole lot of belongings. They may not have everything that you might trigger your head that they're having a problem finding housing. But those are the people I'm finding that we're having more of and they're harder to spot. But I feel like that's the potential to get on top of the problem which like leads into this question of being proactive. And like I said, watching people and observing people, what are their cues that they're giving to you? What are the things that they're saying to you? Do they have an ID? Like that's an old crinkled piece of paper. Like where are they getting their ID from? Just like little cues when they come up to the desk to ask questions, just like watch people and do it, take care of people individually because that's where you'll head them off at the past before they get into trouble. We've had community groups come in and just give us a card like, oh, hey, I can kind of help people with paperwork. Okay, so I make a few copies of that and I just slide it on the table like, hey, you're having trouble with your ID. Here's somebody here that can kind of walk you through getting your driver's license back. Just little things like that can head people off at the past and sort of stem a tide so that you're not just being reactive because that's where the problem is if you're not watching and if you're just kind of letting this stuff happen to your community, letting it happen to your library, it's harder to deal with than if you're being proactive and watching your community, getting to know people. Hey, how's it going? My name's Gia. What's your name? You know, oh, hey, I just like, hey, do you need some snacks for your child? The school district has been really great about bringing us food during the day to give to kids and sometimes we break that out early for some of the kids who are not in school for some reason. We just try to connect them. So just being proactive, instead of just letting stuff roll over you every single day is really helpful. So it's like the library has become the resource, not just the resource seeker and that's really significant part of this experience with the unhoused and many of our customers. We don't have any time for our questions because we want to provide you with some time if you'd like to ask any questions to the panel. So I'm just gonna come around with a microphone, I believe. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. So one issue that we have at my library is that when we try to connect a patron to a service such as shelter or a drug treatment program, they often require a reliable callback number and they may not call back for several days, if at all. And of course our reference line is staffed by different people throughout the week. So how do you assist patrons who do not have their own phones with a sense of consistency? That's a really good question. That's a good question. I mean, I haven't had anyone that hasn't had a phone that I can think of, but in my county, we have a group called CORE and we could call them, like the library can call them and they can come over and they can meet face to face if the person didn't have any contact phone, but I don't know where you at. Yeah, I was asking, where are you at? Sunnyvale. You're in Sunnyvale. Do you know if there's anything like that in Sunnyvale where there's a group that maybe is with the county and they're, what do they call that? Do you have the outreach? I forget what it's called, sorry. Anything like that? We do have a group that comes by and meets with people in person, but my understanding is that some of our regulars, they either had bad experiences or they just for whatever reason, specifically don't want to work with that group. And so, and the shelves are a hotline that we have. They do require a callback number. Right. There are some cell phones, some ways where they can get a cell phone and there's like programs to get free cell phones as well, I think, but I haven't had that come up. And I'm gonna maybe move over to you. Do you have something you want to say about that? Yeah, if we can, we tell them, we just give them the library public line and just have that person sit there for a while, which I know isn't possible. And if you have a larger, busier branch, because that's just gonna be terrible for the staff trying to deal with that. But I give out the library number and say, hey, this person is just gonna be chilling with us for a few hours and just call us back. So. Yeah, I mean, I think in our community, well, first I think it's a conversation with the service providers. Like, remember who you're serving here. They may not have those resources and you may need to figure out an alternative way to contact people. You know, I think in our community, it's likely that our homeless outreach team would be willing to, you know, go to where the person is to relay a message to them because they tend to know where, at least the people who are known, you know, where they're staying, whether it's in an encampment or elsewhere. You know, and that's recently changed for us. It's recently gotten better that we've hired a bunch of outreach workers who are more peer navigator. Previously, our entire homeless outreach team was all police officers and they're actually all, they're all great humans. They're all great police officers that are very empathetic and very caring. But as we've discussed earlier, not every encampment wants to visit from a police officer even if they're coming to help. Thank you. Thanks. If I could, I'm just a mic runner, but I just wanted to add that in Pleasanton, I heard that some of the churches are allowing people experiencing homelessness to use their address as a residence and then as like an address. And then they also were taking probably phone messages for some people. So maybe your local churches might offer some insight into that. So Gia, this question is for you. With the eight year old that's been in your library during the day, I guess it is. What have you done about that? If you try to get in touch with the school district because at all library, we try to make sure that the kids are in school and whatnot, so. It was a rough one. It was really hard because the ladies, the girl's mom did not want to send her kid to the school that they had assigned her. She was like, that's not a good school. So she kept the girl with her for a couple of weeks and then finally we had just like a mini staff meeting and I was like, hey, Precious can't sit here all day. What are we gonna do? So we kind of, one of my librarians is married to a school teacher in the district and then he kind of did some searching and they got somebody from the school district actually came out to talk with Precious's mom and figure out a school that would work for her. So it was a little dicey. Like, yeah, she was leaving Precious alone in the library too long and it was just not a good situation. And I tried to keep my hands off of it as much as possible because we don't want a kid to get taken. That was just kind of our prime directive is like, what is the worst and best case scenario that we can come up with here if we call the school district, is this child gonna be taken away from the only person that she knows? So we had to be really, really, really careful. Fortunately, like everything kind of came together at the same time and she's in school now, which is great. Unfortunately Precious's mother is still looking for housing. So we're just kind of doing the best we can with that situation. This is about library card policy. So for us right now you have to have a photo ID to get a library card. And so for unhoused patrons that come in that either don't have a photo ID or can't prove where they don't have a proof of address. It's more of maybe a case by case like library or maybe giving them a card for a day or something, but it's nothing streamlined that we're kind of wanting to have just a streamlined library card that anyone can get. But that would mean changing our library card policy. So do you have any policies in place that are very friendly for unhoused patrons that might not have a photo ID specifically? Say I can start with that one. One of the things that we've done again through that equity audit of policies that we did was we added a whole bunch of things to the list of acceptable ID that it didn't have to be a government issued ID that basically very generous with anything that has a photograph and an address or two separate pieces of ID that have a photo and an address to try to make the full card as accessible as possible. And then we do have for people with absolutely zero ID. It's not perfect, but we will issue a card that allows them to check out three items and to access everything. And so that is some access. It's not full access without the ID, but it's something. Yeah, and then also what we do if a person can't manage anything, any kind of way to get a library card, we let them take whatever they want from the friends of the library. And then the friends are really sweet, really nice guy. So he's like, yeah, absolutely. So we just are like, there's a box, take what you want, take what you want from the shelves and people are happy to get that too. And my previous library system, I was part of an initiative to figure out how to manage the library cards and not unlike Derek's system, take out three items, have access to the internet, provide at least some sort of availability and access to both books and technology. And that has probably been one of the more common approaches across the country, because we did a bunch of research early on prior to that and found that, as opposed to just, as you mentioned out there about just giving temporary passes. And it also gives somebody a sense of connection to the library and sort of helps support what we stand for in terms of our access. Can we do one more question in front here? I want to throw out one more thing. We also will take the shelters address as their address and I've made many a card like that. So that's a very helpful thing too. I'm sorry, we're getting the, just like the Academy Awards, the music is going to play us off. Thank you everyone. Thank you, panel. Yeah. Thanks. Thank you.