The Library Roof Is Leaking, and Washington Pays Six Cents of the Bill
Summary
GAO's first national survey of library building conditions in decades found 70% of U.S. public libraries — about 11,200 of them — carrying a deferred-maintenance backlog, and 6,200 owing more than $100,000 each: at least $620 million in unmet repairs. Local property taxes funded 90% of library building repairs from 2020 through 2024; federal money funded 6%.
A count nobody had run in decades
built a nationally representative sample of the country's 16,391 public libraries — every state, D.C., and four territories — surveying 692 of them for a 436-response, 63% return rate, and visiting 23 libraries in seven states and territories in person. What it found: an estimated 38% (about 6,000 libraries) have at least one building system — roofing, HVAC, electrical — in poor condition; 61% (9,800 libraries) have at least one issue classified as a potential health or safety concern, including mold found at 8 of the 23 libraries its staff visited in person; and about 7,000 have physical barriers to accessibility. Nearly a third of all public libraries were built before 1964, and 16% before 1924.
None of that is cheap to fix. 's site visits turned up repair estimates running from $60,000 for a single HVAC replacement to more than $225,000 for asbestos removal and related construction work at one library alone.
The backlog, counted
Seventy percent of libraries — about 11,200 — told they are carrying some deferred-maintenance backlog today, and that share is expected to hold or grow: 70% of libraries expect the backlog to stay the same or get worse over the next three years. Within that group, draws a sharper line: 6,200 libraries, 39% of every public library in the country, carry a backlog exceeding $100,000 each. Multiply the floor of that range by the count and the arithmetic is unambiguous — 6,200 libraries times a $100,000 minimum is at least $620 million in unmet repairs, before counting a single dollar above that floor for any of them. did not publish a national total; this is the lower bound its own counts require.
View data as table
| GAO-surveyed public libraries | 16,391 | population, 50 states + D.C. + 4 territories |
|---|---|---|
| No backlog reported | 5,191 | derived: 16,391 − 11,200 |
| Backlog under $100,000 | 5,000 | derived: 11,200 − 6,200 |
| Backlog over $100,000 | 6,200 | GAO-reported: 39% of all libraries surveyed |
Who's paying for it
also asked libraries which funding sources they'd drawn on for building repairs and construction between 2020 and 2024. Libraries could name more than one source, so the shares don't sum to 100% — but the ranking is not close. Ninety percent of libraries used local government revenue, the property-tax base that already funds most library operating budgets. Just 6% used any federal source at all — the smallest share of any funding category tracked, smaller than state government (37%), private donations and fundraising (36%), the library's own revenue from fines and fees (33%), or private grants (21%).
View data as table
| Local government revenue | 90% | share of libraries citing this source |
|---|---|---|
| State / territory revenue | 37% | |
| Donations and fundraising | 36% | |
| Library revenue (fines, fees, etc.) | 33% | |
| Private, non-governmental grants | 21% | |
| Federal sources | 6% |
Asked what stands between them and fixing the buildings, 71% of libraries pointed to the same two things at once: construction costs — labor and materials — and limited funding availability. That is not a coincidence. Ninety percent of the bill already lands on local taxpayers; the same survey found rural and high-poverty communities, with the smallest tax bases, reporting the hardest time closing the gap.
View data as table
| Cite repair costs & funding as a top obstacle | 71% | of libraries |
|---|---|---|
| Have any deferred-maintenance backlog | 70% | ~11,200 libraries |
| Have a health or safety concern in a building | 61% | ~9,800 libraries |
| Have a building system in poor condition | 38% | ~6,000 libraries |
| Carry a backlog exceeding $100,000 | 39% | 6,200 libraries |
The people inside the buildings
The libraries counted are staffed by people, not just held up by concrete. Nationally, 142,100 people worked as librarians or library media specialists in 2024, across public, school, academic, and special libraries alike, earning a median annual wage of $64,320 as of May 2024, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They are the ones who show up to a branch with a leaking roof or a failed HVAC system and keep it open anyway — 's site visits found mold at more than a third of the buildings its staff walked through, not a hazard confined to a report table.
The takeaway
- The backlog is common, not exceptional. Seven in ten public libraries carry some deferred-maintenance backlog, and 6,200 of them each owe more than $100,000 — a floor of at least $620 million in unmet repairs nationally.
- Local taxpayers already cover the largest share. Ninety percent of libraries drew on local government revenue for building repairs from 2020 to 2024; only 6% drew on any federal source.
- The libraries expect it to get worse, not better. Seventy percent project their own backlog will hold steady or grow over the next three years, with construction costs and funding availability cited as the top obstacles by 71% of libraries nationwide.
's figures are survey-based national estimates drawn from a sample of 692 libraries (436 valid responses), not a census of all 16,391 public libraries, and carry the margins of error inherent to any sample survey. The $620 million figure is BlackLeaf's own floor calculation from 's published counts, not a total. librarian employment and wage figures cover all library settings nationally, not public libraries alone.
Sources
- U.S. Government Accountability Office, Public Libraries: Many Buildings Are Reported to Be in Poor Condition, with Increasing Deferred Maintenance (-26-107262, Dec. 18, 2025) — the national survey behind every backlog, condition, and funding-source figure in this piece. gao.gov/products/gao-26-107262
- U.S. Government Accountability Office — full report PDF, including survey methodology (16,391-library population, 692 sampled, 63% response rate) and site-visit findings. gao.gov/assets/gao-26-107262.pdf
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Librarians and Library Media Specialists — national employment (142,100, 2024) and median annual wage ($64,320, May 2024). bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/librarians.htm
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Congress asked the Government Accountability Office to find out how bad the country's library buildings actually are. Nobody had counted nationally in decades. The answer, published December 18, 2025 as GAO-26-107262, is that most of them are carrying repair bills nobody has budgeted for — and the level of government that funds the least of it is the one that asked the question.