At one emergency homeless shelter in Britain, residents had to leave every morning and could not return until 5 p.m., when they queued for a bed. No place was guaranteed. A former librarian writing in the Guardian learned this after noticing that a shelter resident hid the book he was reading behind a library chair before leaving each afternoon.
If he failed to obtain a bed, he had to carry everything he owned onto the street. He could not promise that a borrowed book would remain safe, yet wanted to continue reading, so he concealed it for the next day. The library later arranged for shelters or the front desk to hold books. The severity of this queue lay beyond its duration: the result determined not only where someone slept, but whether he could safely keep a single book.