Thomas Breen photo
Timothy Fields at the downtown library’s computer lab Tuesday: Looking up spaghetti sauce recipes.
“Mr. Daniels” works two barely-more-than-minimum-wage jobs, and spends most nights sleeping outside downtown.
A newly funded full-time social worker position at the city’s public library is geared towards helping patrons like him find safe places to live as they climb out of hard times.
“Mr. Daniels,” who asked not to use his full name or have his picture taken for this article, spent Tuesday afternoon sheltered from the winter cold in the basement computer lab at the New Haven Free Public Library’s main branch at 133 Elm St. downtown.
The main library branch at 133 Elm St.
While he leaned back in his chair, watched videos on his phone, and took the occasional “cat nap” in one section of the building, city officials, library leaders, and downtown social service providers gathered in the adjacent program room to tout an expansion to the national award-winning public library system’s offerings.
Tuesday’s library press conference.
Thanks to a $46,155 grant that the library system recently received from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) American Rescue Plan for Museums and Libraries program, the city and the downtown homelessness services nonprofit Liberty Community Services (LCS) will be able to fund a full-time social worker to be stationed at the library’s main branch five days a week.
The grant will also help fund a part-time social worker to be placed at the Fair Haven and Wilson public library branches on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.
For the past six years, the library and Liberty Community Services have partnered to have a social worker stationed part-time at the downtown library branch only, four days per week.
This federal grant-funded expansion went into effect Nov. 1, and will extend through the end of the fiscal year on June 30.
Liberty Communities Services Program Director Silvia Moscariello.
“We’re talking about service literacy, housing literacy, employment literacy, healthcare literacy,” LCS Program Director Silvia Moscariello said during Tuesday’s presser.
The library-stationed social worker will provide case management services primarily for people struggling with homelessness, mental health issues, and unemployment.
The number one question that LCS’s current social worker gets from patrons at the library is, “Where am I gonna sleep the night?” Moscariello said. “That’s really the biggest, scariest issue.”
She said library-stationed social workers respond by doing everything from connecting a person with a warming shelter to helping them find more permanent housing to providing them with bus passes so they can get across town to a safe, warm place to spend the night.
It’s important that “people feel better after talking with us,” she said. The goal is to “be honest” and “remove layers” that people run up against when trying to obtain life-saving social services.
City Librarian John Jessen.
“We’re helping around 500 folks a year” with the current social-worker offering at the library, City Librarian John Jessen said. This new grant-funded expansion should help the library and LCI help even more people in need, especially as the library has become the “front door” (as Moscariello put it) for many New Haveners seeking social services.
“A Hard Couple Months”
“Mr. Daniels” in the computer lab on Tuesday.
New Haveners sitting in the library computer lab next door responded warmly when told by this reporter that the library is bringing in a full-time social worker for the main branch and a part-time social worker for Fair Haven and the Hill.
“That should work out,” said “Mr. Daniels,” a 33-year-old New Haven native. He said it will be most effective if people in the library, and people on the Green outside of the library, know that the service is available.
He said he’s currently working two jobs: an overnight shift at the Goodwill on State Street in Hamden, and a day job at the Target retail outlet in North Haven. The first pays $13 an hour, he said, while the latter pays $16 an hour.
After finishing an overnight shift at Goodwill, he said, he often comes to the library — as was the case on Tuesday — to relax in the warmth and quiet of the computer lab.
When he’s not working an overnight shift, he said, he usually sleeps in “a little spot up the street” downtown.
“I don’t like to ask people” for a place to stay the night, he said, because even friends and family sometime find that ask invasive — or ask for money he doesn’t have in return. “I’ve got to get my own space,” he said. Right now he’s focused on one thing: “Survival.”
He said his best chance for getting out of this current rut is finding a better paying job. “I don’t want to go to another $13 an hour job,” he said.
“It’s been a hard couple months.”
The library’s basement computer lab.
A 54-year-old New Havener sitting at a nearby computer responded more enthusiastically to the prospect of a full-time social worker at the library.
He’s currently “flopping around at friends’ places” in Hamden, he said. (He also declined to share his name or his picture for this story.)
What would he ask a social worker for help with?
“Probably clothes,” he said. He’s able to find food easily enough. And, while his housing situation is not ideal right now, he is able to find a place to stay each night.
Why was he at the library on Tuesday? “Today’s my [late] aunt’s birthday,” he said. When he remembered, he decided to go on one of the library’s computers and look up a picture of her.
Timothy Fields was also in the computer lab Tuesday, and also welcomed the notion of a new full-time social worker at the library.
“It’s a good thing,” he said.
Why was he at the library? “I like to look up stuff,” he said. Today’s he’s been clicking around online to look up lottery numbers. He also spent a little while looking into spaghetti sauces that do not use tomatoes.
While a social worker charged with helping people find housing and jobs is a good thing, he said, he predicted that that newly funded role will be more helpful for others at the library.