Fighting Homelessness, One Smartphone at a Time | Hacker News Reader

Fighting Homelessness, One Smartphone at a Time

nytimes.com

20 pointsnkzednan17 comments

I live in New York City and every day on my way to work I pass a public library in midtown with a line of people waiting for it to open (~10 - 20 on most days). At the city gym I go to I also sometimes see shopping carts full of belongings parked outside while (presumably) the owners are inside showering and washing their clothing in the locker rooms.

In my (limited) experience, I found that those that live on the streets and the working poor are incredibly resilient and resourceful. Unfortunately, the ones that look a little rougher often appear to have some kind of mental problems that make helping them difficult.

NYC also has a cell phone give away program [0]. My impression is that these types of programs are used by those that are more resilient and self-reliant rather affecting their intended audience of the most vulnerable.

[0] http://www.freegovernmentcellphones.net/states/new-york-gove...

The thing is that the current economy throws a number of otherwise competent people onto the streets. And those people are indeed resourceful and able to deal with the situation.

The problem is that the experience of being homeless - lack of sleep, lack of privacy and lack of self-respect, will drive a substantial number of them insane and then things get harder.

The thing is, when there are relatively few jobs and many of those jobs pay marginal wages that keep people at the edge of homelessness, just spreading resources around more efficiently won't change the basic situation. Essentially you have a tread mill that encompasses more and more people despite these people's willingness and ability to take advantage of existing resources.

There are so many obvious critiques to make here (as the article does, with august), but this initiative succeeds in at least one very important way: it treats people with innate dignity. It recognizes that even, yes even, homeless people may desire a small slice of "the good life", which is increasingly just part of functioning within society, not as an outsider looking in.

I agree with this initiative and think anything that assists people in an often small step up from a tough situation, is something all communities than can do... should do.

The only concern that comes to mind however is one of perception, as demonstrated 3 years ago at SXSW - http://www.wired.com/2012/03/the-damning-backstory-behind-ho...

I'm not passing opinion here on the right/wrong element of BBH Labs in this instance, more commenting that with vulnerable sections of society, trying something new can be so problematic and potentially brand damaging that it puts people off in taking a risk or trying something new. The comments here are all valid, I just think some consideration should be given to those brave enough to take the risk. The SXSW backlash caused many people / companies to 'back off' from these sorts of issues, which surely can't be a good thing.

Where I life (smallish city in Western Europe) there are lots of shops offering computer with internet access for as little as 0.5€ per hour. Public libraries offer similar deals. It seems to me that investing in these kinds of offers would be more cost effective than donating smartphones, doing more good for the same money.

Not that I am complaining, I'm glad they are improving the lifes of people.

Here in my part of Australia, public libraries offer free internet access. But there can be queues to use the computers and I think there are time limits. I'm not sure you could guarantee they're malware free either.

Cellphones aren't just about internet access - it can be realtime notifications, like a text message if a room suddenly becomes available at a shelter. Or if you're applying for a casual job, they might need your cellphone number so they can call you to come into work (eg if someone's off sick and they need someone else to come and take their place). Without a cellphone you could miss those kinds of opportunities.

And the best way to learn how to use technology is to play with devices in your own time & practice. I would think most jobs now assume smartphone familiarity & wouldn't provide training, could be an intimidating hurdle to someone who isn't familiar with them.

I'd love to see tech to power something like a raspberry pi 2b + eink + light wifi using kinetic energy (walk, handcrank,...).

I thought of this problem from a different perspective. A lot of disadvantaged people, and middle class people in developing nations, already have 'dumbphones'. How could we allow people to do more with basic phones?

I built a little service that does translation over text. If you text "<language> <text to translate>" to (917) 832-1965 it'll reply with the text in the language you requested. You can read more about it here:

http://smstranslate.divshot.io/

Or just give them the money so they can buy what they think that they need the most?

It's probably easier to get a charity or a philanthropist to buy few thousand phones to give away to poor people than to convince someone to just give $200 each to the same number of people. In the first case, you are solving a specific problem(homeless people don't have phones, therefore they can't even start looking for a job, or shelter), while in the other case you would have a hard time convincing someone to do it. And even if you did, someone else would come along, just like you did, and ask - why not give this money to a shelter, which knows what is better for those people/can provide more food/beds, or whatever? The thing is - people will ALWAYS have a better idea what to do with someone's money, and I think we should appreciate all actions like this, even if we don't personally agree with them.

You are right that I should have been more nuanced in my critique, and you're probably right that it's easier to give away stuff than money.

But I think we should try to always show trust in people who are vulnerable due to the situation that they are in, and by giving money instead of things we show that we trust that they will do what is best for them with the money. By giving things we signal that we know better than they do.

The main reason why people are homeless is after all that we built a society where we accept that people don't have a place to live. We prioritized other things, and left these people on the streets, sleeping in cars, etc.

There's different solutions to this problem, but I don't believe that we should accept in 2015 that people in the EU, the US, etc. do not have a home.

I'm not really in vehement disagreement with you -- I like the way you're looking at it. But, once a person has no cell phone, address, home, facilities for personal hygiene, bank account, credit, or income, getting those things with money alone is tremendously difficult. Many of them require at least one of the others. You'd end up giving them a lot more money just to get the things they need anyway.

For example, cell phones: if you have no address to send a bill to, no bank account, and no credit, what kind of options do you have for service? You're a lot better off getting access to a service designed especially for your situation.

...and, much as I'd like to sidestep this point, the reality is that a lot of homeless people don't have the best financial judgement. That's not to say they're bad people or will spend money they can't afford on drugs or alcohol (I don't think either of those is as true as most people seem to think it is), but prolonged homelessness is rarely caused by a single bad decision or stroke of poor luck.

Humans as a species don't have the best financial judgement, which is one of the reasons we have homelessness to begin with.

Even if everyone had an ivy league degree, with a cell phone, and was physically healthy, we'd still have unemployment as our economy isn't producing enough jobs for humans.. And unemployment + time with no savings to burn through eventually equals homelessness.

Is your point that everyone has the same financial judgement, or that homeless people as a group have no better or worse financial judgement than anyone else? Or something else?

That our collective financial judgement has produced homelessness, more so than the "poor decisions" of any individual.

Let's also consider that it's probably more difficult for a homeless person to get a cell phone contract without a deposit.

I was able to buy a cell phone from walmart with service for $40 for the phone, $30 for 1 month unlimited service. Paid cash, didn't have to show ID.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com