Convenience Big Store: Emails show Turner, Central Library strategizing to limit homeless presence

January 9, 2024

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Good morning, Houston.

Hey y'all! As Cat DeLaura departs this newsletter, I'll be taking over writing the 713 Morning. My name is Yasmeen Khalifa — you may recognize my name and face, as I have filled in for Cat on several occasions. Cat has built an excellent newsletter and a relationship with many of you readers. I hope to do the same, so please, feel free to email me any time with feedback, suggestions, comments or concerns.

A few things about me: I've lived in Houston for about two years now, I'm obsessed with cats, and my favorite pastime is exploring all the Bayou City has to offer.

Now, here's the news.

☁️ Temperature check: High of 55; low of 40. Justin's insight: A strong cold front that brought 40 mph wind gusts has prompted the National Weather Service to issue a wind advisory. Read more here.

Yasmeen Khalifa
Audience Engagement Producer
yasmeen.khalifa@houstonchronicle.com

Best of the Bayou

Today we're talking about the Houston Public Library and the homeless...

If you read one thing: The decisions to crack down on volunteers who provide free food outside the Central Library and to stop designating the location as a place where people could escape excessive heat were tied to a desire to reduce the homeless presence at the library, a June email exchange between the library and then-Mayor Sylvester Turner shows.

What is Turner and the library's response?

"We are losing the library," Turner writes in a conversation that referenced a reported altercation between a homeless man and his girlfriend.

When asked for comment, the library and city framed the decisions as a matter of public safety. Food Not Bombs volunteers, who provide free meals outside the library four days a week, questioned attempts to reduce the presence of a vulnerable population in a public space.

"The City doesn't provide other places for the homeless to exist," said Nick Cooper, a longtime volunteer with Food Not Bombs, in an email. "So of course they chose to go to the library."

What did the email say?

On June 21, following a heat emergency plan that ended June 19, Saima Kadir, Central Library's chief, emailed the library system's chief operating officer, Ricardo "Rick" Peralez. "This week, Central has been inundated with homeless patrons due to the extreme heat in Houston," she wrote in an email obtained through a public records request.

What do police records show?

Police records show no incidents while the library was used as a cooling center.

The library's communication team said that the decision to exclude the Central Library from heat emergency plans was based on an increasing number of incidents that were occurring outside of heat emergencies. The library has not yet responded to a request for the time period over which incidents increased or whether they have since subsided, but said off-duty police officers had been hired to supplement city-assigned security officers during operating hours.

Read R.A. Schuetz's full story here.

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Stay safe in the strong winds today, folks.

— Yasmeen Khalifa