Resettlement groups adapt to new reality

When it comes to serving an ever-changing population such as refugees, resettlement agencies have found it’s necessary to constantly reassess their needs.

That process has become even more important since President Donald Trump took office and began limiting refugee resettlement in the United States.

Much of the agencies’ funding depends on how many refugees they resettle. When Trump scales back on the number of refugees admitted into the country, the agencies must scale back, too, or find other funding sources.

petty offenses such as panhandling and open container violations.

Holbrook, 58, is an agreeable fellow but a likely source of some frustration in Franklinton.

The Franklinton Board of Trade met Wednesday to discuss Franklinton’s homeless population and the problems it creates for area businesses. Business owners say the homeless scare their customers, threaten employees, litter and publicly urinate and defecate.

Similar complaints have arisen Downtown, where the Capital Crossroads Special Improvement District has conducted a public education campaign that discourages giving to panhandlers.

And on Thursday, the Columbus Metropolitan

Library’s board of directors tweaked library policies to ban certainsized items, limit the size and number of “bags, backpacks, boxes, carts, wheeled conveyances” brought inside, and require that all food consumed in the library must be bought there, unless it is being eaten in reserved conference rooms.

The new policies begin Dec. 1.

Regular patrons of the Main Library Downtown probably know where the library board is coming from. Homeless visitors sometimes bathe in the restrooms and drowse in common areas with their belongings at their side. Earlier this year, a man identified in court documents as homeless shot another man during a confrontation inside the building. If the library pledges that it is “Open to All,” it also has a responsibility to offer a safe and pleasant

visit to all those who come inside.

Yet there was a ring of truth to the comments made at the Thursday meeting by a homeless woman who didn’t give her name. She said she was asked to leave the library recently because she had come in with her belongings in a shopping cart, even though no policy at the time prohibited it.

“You just can’t pick and choose who can be in the library,” she said. “Either we’re all welcome, or none of us are welcome.”

You also can’t dismiss as unreasonable the complaints from small business owners trying to keep their customers happy and their livelihood afloat despite the guy relieving himself in the street out front.

But pushing the homeless hither and yon does nothing to end homelessness.

Holbrook is proof of

that.

Originally from a rural village west of Columbus, he said he ended up on the streets after a falling-out with his family.

“They dropped me off at Faith Mission and that was it,” he said. “They said I drink too much. But they drink too much too.” He said he doesn’t like it on the streets and hopes to secure an apartment soon through the treatment center Maryhaven.

We can push central Ohio’s Thomas Holbrooks off corners, tear down their tents and haul them to jail again and again. But unless we do consistently better on those thornier issues, like the treatment of addiction and mental illness, we’re not accomplishing much.

And when it comes to people, we’re not at our moral best when we settle for the policy of out of sight, out of mind.

Like bartenders at last call, rousting stragglers from their stools and sending them off into the night with an admonishment:

You don’t have a home to go to, but you can’t stay here.