
Internet access is quietly changing Seattle’s tent cities - DoreenMichele
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/internet-access-is-quietly-changing-seattles-tent-cities/?michde
======
DoreenMichele
The article doesn't say as much as I wish it did about actual impact on the
day to day lives of homeless people.

For me, internet access while homeless was a means to keep myself occupied so
I wouldn't go crazy, a means to have social contact and meaningful discussion
even though I wasn't very presentable, a means to do research to problem
solve, access to online banking and other financial stuff, access to reward
programs that helped keep me fed and so much more. Having a virtual life made
a huge difference in my quality of life while homeless and eventually helped
me get back into housing, in part by leading to earned income, in part by
allowing me to find a place I could afford.

This was vastly different from the homeless people I saw sitting at the park
all day doing nothing while their social skills, self esteem and self image
deteriorated and their only means to make money seemed to be recycling and pan
handling.

With internet access, a cell phone and mailing address, being homeless is much
less of a hardship than if you have none of those. You aren't simply cut off
from society, news, information and the power to make plans and build a
future.

I don't know how to express how incredibly empowering the internet can be for
a homeless person. I always thought of it as if it were a kind of magic. It
helped me feel like a whole person. It kept hope alive by keeping options open
in a way that simply wasn't previously possible.

Today, a homeless person can go online and look for information and
communities for van dwellers, digital nomads, remote work and other things of
that ilk that open up the opportunity to see yourself as simply living an
alternative lifestyle rather than being straight up a social outcast. That
makes taking adequate care of yourself so much more feasible and makes a path
back to a more conventional life vastly more navigable, even if you don't
qualify for any programs, many of which are aimed at specific populations,
like addicts or single parents.

~~~
darawk
This actually poses an interesting idea I haven't seen previously discussed:
Providing internet access and cell phones to the homeless as a way to help get
them integrated back into society. Do you think this would be a cost effective
program, relative to others?

~~~
DoreenMichele
Ideally, I think it needs a bit more support, like a class or information
packet or link to one or more websites to help clue them about some things.

It takes time to develop an online income or do research to find a cheaper
place to live etc. Long term solutions don't happen overnight. While working
on them, people who are destitute still need other services to stay fed,
clothed, etc.

But I think it is a lightweight means to support long term goals that many
programs currently actively undermine. If you have to stand in line for two
hours to get a free meal and do this three times a day to stay adequately fed,
it's incredibly hard to job hunt, research what other services exist, etc.

A phone with internet service can potentially allow you to work on things like
that while standing in line at a soup kitchen.

Even without the additional support that I would like to see, just having a
phone number makes it easier to do things like job hunt. This is critical to
getting your life back. Standing in line at soup kitchens keeps body and soul
together. It doesn't help you find your way back to a middle class life. It
can actively be a barrier to finding your way back.

So, yes, I think it has a lot of potential. A lot of current programs intended
to help homeless people get back on their feet aren't terribly effective from
what I gather and are much more resource intensive.

------
dennisdamenace
There was a post on HN some time ago by a homeless woman. One thing she said
would a lot is wireless access. She said a great deal of time and energy would
be spent moving from the camp to internet availability.

Source
[http://whathelpsthehomeless.blogspot.com/2017/09/a-virtual-l...](http://whathelpsthehomeless.blogspot.com/2017/09/a-virtual-
life.html?m=1)

------
robotrout
I would love to see some sort of city-wide wifi, that would allow people to
buy small amounts of data with bitcoin. You would connect to the access point,
send bitcoin/altcoin to the address generated, and get access to the internet
until you had transferred the amount of data you had purchased.

Non-homeless people would use such a service as well, but it would be
especially valuable to homeless, who could be given bitcoin/altcoin or perhaps
obtain it from crypto ATMs.

Not having a physical address is a huge impediment to functioning in our
society. Without a physical address, you can't have a credit card or a bank
account. Without a credit card, you can't have a cell phone for internet
access, or a gym membership to take a shower.

But shower facilities or gyms that allowed you to buy one month at a time with
crypto, coupled with internet access that could be purchased with crypto,
would allow people to function pretty normally in this society without a
physical address. Neither of these would need to be specifically for homeless,
nor would they need to be tax payer funded.

~~~
lph
What purpose does cryptocurrency serve in this scenario that ordinary payment
methods could not?

~~~
travisjungroth
Guaranteed payment, low transaction cost and available to all. A homeless
person often can’t get a credit/debit card, so cryptocurrency would be great
for digital payment.

~~~
paulie_a
Except Bitcoin is anything but low transaction fee

~~~
travisjungroth
I agree, Bitcoin fees are too high for this use case. There are other assets
with faster/cheaper transactions.

I just wanted honestly answer the comment about why cryptocurrency is better
in this case (even if it’s not all cryptocurrency).

I could also say why it’s worse: price instability (that $100 you had to your
name is now $70), no way to force a refund, not widely used, and you have to
manage keys. I’m sure there are more.

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ocschwar
The comments on the article are a fucking cancer. THere are so many people out
there who have nothing better to do with their time than to actively call for
making life worse for people worse off than themselves.

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devmunchies
It’s hardly quiet if it’s in the Seattle times and on the front page of HN.

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ObeyTheGuts
im internet connected homeless rightnow, youtube.com/angriestcat

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question_that
How large is a single camp that they'd need 11 APs? Couldn't you just have a
few on poles? Why do 50 hotspots cost 300k? Are they rugged units bundled with
GPS units and solar panels?

~~~
crowbahr
Seattle is #3 in homelessness in the USA and has more homeless per capita than
one of the other two (LA I think?). The tent cities get large and only get
broken up when deaths of women and children start occurring.

See The Jungle:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle_(Seattle)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle_\(Seattle\))

------
wallace_f
>The library has set aside 50 hotspots just for Seattle’s homeless camps,
funded in part by $305,000 from Google

This must be a mistake, somehow. That comes out to $6,100 per hot spot, which
was still apparently not enough, alone, to fund them.

~~~
lsc
for how long? yeah, that'd probably cover setup... but remember that the wifi
hotspots need internet access themselves, and usually you can't just hook them
up to your comcast home connection.

On top of that, you've got ongoing maintenance, abuse, etc... dealing with
that bullshit costs money, and even more if you allow anonymous connections.

~~~
wallace_f
This here is probably one of the problems with helping the poor. When people
are spending other people's money to help other people, they don't spend it
very well.

As for the cost... For the record, I've lived over a year around the poverty
line... In Australia--An even more expensive country. I also did a loop around
the country, saw and went everywhere I wanted to go, spent most of my time at
the beach or mountains, and surfing... and oh yea, had internet the entire
time. Even amortizing that cost over ten years, this is still double what I
spent on wifi.

~~~
robotrout
You got down-voted because you dared to say that tax money gets wasted by
bureaucrats. HN people worship government wealth redistribution programs and
will never admit that they are often corrupt and wasteful.

~~~
p49k
He got downvoted because he has no understanding of how expensive it is to
build a network of public wi-fi hotspots, and compared it to sticking his
router beside his window and sharing his home broadband connection.

Literally everything about public wifi, from the wiring and build costs, to
the hardware and antennas, to the bandwidth itself is significantly more
expensive. $6,100 per point sounds completely reasonable.

~~~
wallace_f
This is just wrong, and missing the point.

The article states they are providing up to 834 people with internet access
with 50+11 hot spots.

I shared a 20$ data plan with two+ travelmates while on gap year in Australia,
and it worked extremely well. $7/person cost. Give or take for US data rates
and inflation since then.

Even with generous assumptions, these wifi hot spots are at least 50x, and
coule be 100x, that cost.

So worst case scenario, just buy them all smart phones and data plans for a
small fraction of the cost of this current setup.

~~~
def_true_false
Not sure if it applies here, but cell towers also have limits. Especially if
the area is somewhat remote (think music festivals, etc).

