Homeless Colony Found In Love Library

Story by Greg Bright 

| Published Oct 26, 2010

Years of researching why there are large numbers of homeless on UNL’s city campus came to an end yesterday when a homeless colony was found in Love Library’s basement.

Members of the colony have, apparently, been living as nomads in the library for almost five years, changing locations every couple of months.

The leader of the group, known by many students as "the creepy black guy who always watches Beyoncé music videos," said the colony started with just him and one other homeless man.

“We started with just me and another guy. You all know him, he’s the weird guy on his bike who is always collecting cans. We just wanted somewhere to stay inside and realized it was really easy to sneak into the library when they close,” the leader, who wasn’t sure of his own name, said.

“It got a little out of hand near the end though. We kept growing and growing and eventually we had almost the entire homeless population of Lincoln, 200 strong, living in the library.”

When discovered, the colony seemed to be extremely self-sufficient. Every member had his own job -- many looked for food, some begged for money, but most went around the outskirts of the campus looking for half-full alcoholic beverages.

“You’d be amazed at the amount of beer that students throw away. I mean, the dumpster by Abel has enough alcohol on Friday morning to keep us drunk for a whole week,” one colony member said.

UNL police are still unsure of what to do with all of the now actually homeless homeless.

“Obviously we can’t let them just free-load off the campus like that, but we don’t really have the facilities to deal with it. I think we may just get them a one-way bus ticket to Kansas City,” UNL police chief Carl Oestmann said. "They can deal with the problem much better than we can.”