The Mercury‘s new location is already paying off: This morning, Steve messaged me to tell me to look out the window, because “There’s some weird rolling book thing down there.” When I went down to investigate, I met Laura Moulton, who handed me a business card reading “Street Librarian,” and explained that she recently received a RACC grant to fund a project called Street Books, a mobile library that provides books for the homeless. (Or “people living outside,” to use the website’s wording.) The bike-powered library has a small trailer full of 40-odd books—an impressively diverse collection skewing slightly toward regional authors (Jim Lynch, Benjamin Parzybok, Kevin Sampsell, Tom Robbins). While we spoke, Moulton shuffled through a stack of neatly labeled index cards, cataloguing a book that had just been returned—yes, cue nostalgia, she uses a card catalogue system. She told me that although she started the project with “no expectation that books would be returned,” she’s had about 6 books returned of 25 or so lent out since the project began in early June.
But the project is more than just a useful service for homeless people itching to read Bastard Out of Carolina: There’s a documentary component, where Moulton photographs or video-records willing library patrons, and posts their story and book selection on the website. One gent recently swapped in Portland Noirfor a copy of A Common Pornography—Sampsell’s a hit with the homeless, apparently. Readers can also share book reviews, as well as their own stories from the road.
If you’d like to support the project, there’s a PayPal account accessible through the Street Books website, where you can sponsor individual books that’ve been requested. You can also check out the cart in person—from 10-2 pm Wednesdays at the Skidmore Fountain, and Saturday 11-2 in the Park Blocks, on Salmon.
Hit the jump for a snapshot of Moulton’s small but quality book collection.
Portland – there’s nothing we won’t do to get more homeless people around here.
If we give homeless people books, what incentive will they have to get jobs and buy books like decent citizens? We should deprive these people of as much as possible, because to do otherwise just encourages them to go on existing. Maybe if we all try just a little harder to make their life more of a living hell, they’ll go away and we won’t have to (not) deal with them.
Drop a large can of yams on your toes, D.
“Moulton photographs or video-records each library patron…” Well, I hope she gives them an opt-out on that.
Apropos of “opt-out,” I was sent through one of those newfangled millimeter-wave scanners at the Philly airport last week. No, I didn’t opt out…you think I want to get on some kind of list??!? So now a TSA screener has seen me naked. (Lucky devil!)
Nice work, Laura! Mult Co Library has a similar program that donates books to transitional housing and shelters [http://www.multcolib.org/los/shelters.html] but you have to be a tenant or pay to enter some of these shelters. It is nice that Street Books is there to offer an entirely free option to those without a permanent address.
Oh yeah, she does give them an opt out, it’s not mandatory. I should clarify that.
cool?
I see you are catering to the drug infested homeless camp to your left in the photo. might as well, clean and safe picks up their garbage every morning, Saturday Market scrubs up there poop and piss, drug dealers make deliverys to them as well as the Ned Flanders style Christans who bring them sandwiches and coffee. The only time they leave is to go to the liquor store up the block. God forbid they would have to go to the library to get a book on there own.
D, I just donated $10 in your name. Thanks!
@scottm:
Many of them do go to libraries to read, and people like yourself are just as offended by the sight of them there as anywhere else. Generalizations like yours about drug abuse are always a nice touch.
And by the way, next time you’re near a library, check out a dictionary.
Good on her for doing this but I’m confused….MultCo library cards are free, what’s wrong with those? Can’t return books on time/can’t pay late fees? Forgive me if I’m missing something obvious here but it seems like this is kind of redundant.
Wow. What an oblivious asshole. Maybe next a writer with nothing to do can pass out scratch pads and pencils. Get over yourself, lady. These people are living through hell.
Wubbles, because to get a card you usually need proof of residency in MultCo, like a utility bill.
If I was homeless I would be insulted, you just don’t want to share library with the stinking homeless that’s going to spread odor to the building, don’t you. Be Honest!
You have to have proof of residency in most places (and I”m assuming Mult Co) to check out Library books. Which makes this a brilliant idea.
@scottm:
You couldn’t be more spot on, seriously! I so hope “The Mercury” gets a better view of the street trash in the area, as they enjoy being inside an office. Perhaps the merc could extend some compassion and invite them in? Feed them lunch, I mean that’s what “good” people do right? I mean, why are you even pretending to not think these people attribute nothing useful to society!
Homelessness is an industry! The more of them, the more grants, and fundraisers, and useless book carts that do shit to solve any real problem.
Yay Portland, the city I once loved, as I grew up here.
Thanks!
I am so surprised by the acrimony in many of the posts. Does no one believe in the power of good literature to inspire and move people to deeper self-knowledge and perhaps motivation to change their lives? To, at the very least, help create a rich inner life that moves people to break free from patterns that may not be serving them any longer? I hardly believe that offering people literature on the streets is going to move them to “get Jobs” but feeling deep emotion and empathy, which can and does happen when one reads great writing, may inspire the beginning of yearnings for something more. And we all know the power of yearnings…
books and reading, the opportunity to influence and change, no telling how that will happen, possibility for everyone
Hey Wubbles–last I checked, to get a library card you had to have an address. I don’t know if this has changed.
I have two takes on this:
First, offering ANYONE access to cultural tools (books, in this case) that will broaden their horizons or soothe their souls is a good thing.
Second, when did it become wrong to do right? When it inconvenienced downtown merchants? I’m a shop owner too, in an outlying neighborhood. I can’t say I love having the local loiterers smoke under my eaves; we have smoke-free workplace rules and I’m allergic to smoke, so I boot all of them whether they’re wearing Prada or the Bins. And the ever-drunk, brain-pickled woman who brings her dog for our free treats a couple of times a week does not smell good. But I can’t get behind solutions that dehumanize people further, or criminalize their situations. And I can’t get behind people putting this young woman down. She may not have the answers to the large problems of poverty, homelessness, and damaged people (willfully or otherwise). Do you? She’s just trying to do a small thing to share one kind of solace and wisdom with people who might benefit from it.
Sure, it’s free to take books out of the county library, but you have to have an address to sign up for a library card.
Homelessness isn’t the piece of cake some commenters seem to think it is. Think of an endless camping trip, only there’s no toilet, there are no showers, you could be rousted and chased away from your campsite at any moment, and you have to deal with disdainful stares and comments from many of the people you encounter. You need an address to apply for most jobs, not to mention that you’ll need to get yourself cleaned up before you can interview. You have no secure, safe place for your belongings so you have to carry everything with you at all times and chances are high that you could be a victim of theft or violent crime. Then there’s the question of how you’re going to eat.
I know too many people who were sure homelessness could never happen to them until it did. If you have a home in Portland to go to at the end of the day, you are LUCKY. Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of taking that luck for granted and scorning the folks who weren’t so fortunate, you could do something to share your good fortune with people who need a little help?
Now watch the Street Books movie! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgSlp4yckvg