Have you seen the homeless people in San Francisco? Do you really think that a lack of voicemail is what's holding them back from getting a job?
You can give 'em a phone, a shower, a shave, a set of clean clothes, and even some lessons on interview skills, but you can't convince them that working for a living is better than begging passersby for money.
edit: Of course most of 'em aren't lazy, they're mentally ill. Voicemail doesn't help much there either.
The ones who aren't mentally ill are hooked on drugs. Do not toy with heroin. It 0wns you.
A girlfriend of mine once worked as a counselor at a homeless shelter. It was a somewhat stressful experience, since the drug dealers line up outside the shelter to tempt the people coming in and out -- it's a good way to get return customers.
She reported that, actually, one of the big problems with chronically homeless people is that there's an immense amount of red tape associated with signing up for housing assistance, signing up for free healthcare, scheduling interviews with social service agencies, drug rehab, potential employers, etc. She spent the majority of her time helping people fill out forms, send emails, and use the phone. That's kind of what social work amounts to.
And, of course, these people have no permanent address, so it's hard to get agencies and employers to call them back. Hence, voicemail could be a tremendous help.
You can imagine what it's like to try to fill out IRS forms while you're in heroin withdrawal and being tempted by dealers every time you go out. It really puts my caffeine-withdrawal headaches in perspective.
Incidentally, the large majority of homeless people are in and out of homelessness as fast as possible. Nothing inspires you to action like being in a homeless shelter... where, among other things, other homeless people will steal all your stuff. Almost nobody stays homeless by choice.
Well, that depends on your definition of "home". This guy apparently slept in Kinko's. How he got away with that, I don't know, but if we define "home" as "a place where you can sleep without being arrested, robbed, attacked, or frozen", then he had a home.
I should mention that I live in the Northeast. Here, being homeless is a much bigger deal than in California because of that whole "frozen" factor.
...but how will the homeless people check their messages? How is this better than a homeless applicant getting a pay-as-you-go phone to get a job?
I understand that the go-phones are not free, but there is no contract or long term commitment, and that way they will actually have a way to get to their voice mail.
This reminds me of a story a little while back about a man who voluntarily limited himself to $25 and the clothes on his back, worked his way to an apartment, a truck, and a decent amount of savings in less than a year.
Congratulations Google et. all. I hope this project works out well.
"This reminds me of a story a little while back about a man who voluntarily limited himself to $25 and the clothes on his back, worked his way to an apartment, a truck, and a decent amount of savings in less than a year."
But seriously, this is something that could actually help homeless people get jobs, etc, so good for Google.
Hopefully the numbers are untraceable back to this initiative, so there's no chance of discrimination against homeless...