Being Homeless Cost Me $54,000

 Lori Teresa Yearwood, "Being Homeless Cost Me $54,000", New York Times January 2, 2022, p. SR10.

By the beginning of 2015, I had become a woman forlornly clutching plastic garbage bags as she makes her way from food pantry to shelter to public library to park bench.  I had once been a writer who helped to cover the Dalai Lama's visit to Maiami.  I had traveled to Ireland to interview a famous self-help author.  By contrast, my homeless existance was limited to a two-mile radius.

...

He began appearing every morning at teh entrance of the shelter and he would follow me until I got to the public library.  One day he said he would give me a duffle bag to replace my garbae bags and told me I could keep some of my other belongings in a shtorage shed he owned.  When we arrived, he pushed me inside, where he sexually assaulted me. 

COMMENT

The library is a safe space, but also a dangerous space.  The predator follows a homeless woman to the library because he knows that's where she'll go, and makes a false offer of help to lure her into a bad situation.  Librarians are not social workers, and the library doesn't save this woman.  An actual social worker does that, taking her to lunch and helping her sort out impossible medical bills in order to help her get a place to live and resume working as a journalist.