A little over a year ago, I wrote a blog post on San Francisco’s budget cuts creating make shift drop-in centers for the homeless. General Hospital’s waiting room becomes a warm and dry place to be with a television to watch, the 24 hour Safway at Church and Marked provides a bathroom and a place to be, and the San Francisco Main Library subsititues for a quiet place to nap for those unable to obtain a shelter bed the night before.

Over the past year San Francisco’s main library branch, located at Civic Center Plaza, has employed a social worker to talk directly to patrons in order to link them with social services.

“What we found out is that a lot of the homeless people who come here, they come to get away from being homeless and we found that a lot of folks we spoke with didn’t really want to engage with an outreach worker at that point,” Dr. Raj Parekh, a psychiatrist without the city’s health department, told KTVU2 News yesterday.

The need for such services is not just limited to San Francisco. Libraries in major cities across the country have called San Francisco in hopes creating their own similar programs.

As budget cuts slash our country’s publicly funded safety net, more and more newly employed and recently homeless people are turning to public libraries for help. The New York Times wrote about it Wednesday.

In San Francisco we’ve been seeing this for years. San Francisco Main Library substitutes for a quiet place to nap for those unable to obtain a shelter bed the night before, General Hospital becomes a warm and dry place with a television to watch, even the 24 hour Safeway at Church and Market provides a bathroom and a place to be.

None of these places are drop in centers with trained social workers in place to provide adequate care.

“Until this country develops a sound housing infrastructure and a sufficient homeless service network, then hospitals, law enforcement, emergency services, and libraries will become the de-facto homeless service system.” Said Joel Roberts, CEO of PATH Partners, yesterday on his blog.

St. Anthony’s provides basic services for those who’ve fallen through the safety nets of personal and public support. As our numbers grow and our resources are strained, it’s no surprise that the numbers are growing in other, less equipped places as well.

Ohayo, San Francisco! Konichiwa from Tokyo, Japan! The picture to the left is of me at the Sensoji Temple in Asakusa, Tokyo.

Like many spiritual communities found in large U.S. cities, the Sensoji Temple has a long history of caring for the less fortunate. The Sensoji Welfare institution was opened in 1958 and for over 50 years its many programs have evolved to include free legal aid, medical care and educational classes for those out of work.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

It’s nice to know that even though Tokyo, a city as rich as San Francisco, has communities of faith looking after its poor and homeless residents.

It would seem that this spirit of compassion is universal.