Libraries as Affordable Housing Partners?
Once upon a time, the Internet was expected to lead to the end of libraries. A 2004 Economist article, for example, began with a statement that “Public libraries will be redundant by 2020 [based] on current trends.” But instead, as NPQ has noted, libraries’ importance has gone up, driven largely by their increasingly vital role as community centers. NPQ’s Ruth McCambridge gave a few examples: “The Chicago Public Library offers a free ‘Maker Lab’ with access to 3-D printers, laser cutters, and milling machines. Washington State’s Lopez Island Library lets people borrow musical instruments. The Library Farm in Cicero, New York, even lets patrons interested in organic gardening borrow plots of land.”
In Next City, Jared Brey further observes that in many cities libraries “already provide crucial services to people experiencing homelessness, job-seekers, and victims of opioid overdoses, as well as the millions of students and readers who make up their traditional constituency.” Brey asks, “Could they help create housing in competitive urban real estate markets, too?”
At least one San Francisco supervisor thinks they might, in part because one branch library has been doing that for over a decade now. As Brey explains, the city’s Mission Bay Branch Library opened in 2006 as part of a mixed-use development that includes “retail space, a community meeting hall, a health center, and around 140 housing units for very-low-income seniors, some of whom were transitioning out of the nearby Laguna Honda long-term-care hospital.”
Learn more about plans to expand this model!
Click this link: Libraries as Affordable Housing Partners? To read the full article written by Steven Dubb, a senior editor at NPQ.
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