Drugged Transients Overrun Austin Library

[Elderberry]

Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog 7/7/2026

As a teenager middle schooler discovering science fiction, I used to love going to the library. (That was, of course, before the Internet, and before I bought a house to store my own library in.)

However, it’s doubtful Austin children will be able experience the joy of discovery in Austin’s main library, as this Savanah Hernandez report shows it overrun with drug-addicted transients.

•  It’s a $125 million, 200,000 square foot library that took 10 years to build, but now every one of the six floors seems overrun with the homeless. “Causing what is quite frankly a terrifying environment to patrons of this library.”

•  “I was in the library two minutes when some homeless person on drugs jumped on [my elevator], and they were clearly having some sort of a mental breakdown.”

•  A few months ago, a homeless man sucker-punched a 62-year old patron using a computer, then stomped on his head. The Austin Chief of Police [Lisa Davis] ended up arresting him, because she was already there at the library for a meeting on how to make the library safer.

•  A 50-year old homeless man shot a library patron in the bathroom last year with a gun he had already shot someone with on the bus. “This guy had a rap sheet a mile long….For some reason he was still on the streets of Austin.”

•  “This is the kind of environment every single child is subject to every time they come to the Austin public library.”

•  Homeless people “come in here and sit all day and many of them are clearly on drugs.”

More: https://www.battleswarmblog.com/?p=72285

[rustynail]

Turn the AC off?

[mountaineer]

Libraries have attracted the bums for decades. Cool, quiet, and no one ever seems to roust them from their slumber.

[Wingnut]

Libraries have attracted the bums for decades. Cool, quiet, and no one ever seems to roust them from their slumber.

Best they can do is give the bums a loud Shush.

[DefiantMassRINO]

That's liberalism for you - feces and urine in the card catalog.

How does the Dewey Decimal System categorize poop in the Children's section?

[mountaineer]

I used to visit the library near my workplace on my lunch break. Invariably, most of the chairs in the section where they had magazines and newspapers were occupied by transients. It was not a pleasant olfactory experience to be stuck in the only available chair next to one of those patrons.

[Cyber Liberty]

I used to visit the library near my workplace on my lunch break. Invariably, most of the chairs in the section where they had magazines and newspapers were occupied by transients. It was not a pleasant olfactory experience to be stuck in the only available chair next to one of those patrons.

They always smell like urine....