NEWSBYTED IOBST

As discussed in my last post (and its comments), to the surprise of many there is no absence of technology in the homeless community. In fact, cell phones and computers have proven to be lifelines to critical services and resources for many homeless individuals and families. But technology's impact on the homeless doesn't end with signing up for food stamps and searching for jobs, at least not if you live in Canada.

Daniel Cross, a documentary filmmaker who focuses on social justice and the homeless, has created Homeless Nation, a forum where Canada's homeless community can share their stories with each other and the world. It calls itself "the only website in the world created by and for the street community." (Worldwide, it's worth checking out the International Homeless Forum and, in the U.S, We Are Visible for web tutorials.)

The goals of the non-profit effort include building and strengthening street communities, both virtual and actual, across Canada; providing training and access to the internet for the country's homeless population; and recycling and re-purposing technology for use by homeless people.

Homeless Nation currently boasts almost 5,000 users on its online forum. There, users can upload audio and video, post blog entries and comments, search for missing persons and access resources. Even better, the online presence is complemented by the organization's outreach staff, who work with the homeless community throughout Canada, improving access to computer equipment and assisting those who want to have their voices heard.

Regardless of the intent of those who recently posted images of homeless men using laptops, a discussion has emerged around the more-common-than-one-might-think bewilderment at how a homeless person could possibly (1) acquire a technological device and (2) benefit from one.

To many, a homeless person with a laptop might evoke the assumption that the laptop was acquired through illegal means (stolen, purchased on the black market, etc.). But Moore's Law would suggest otherwise. The exponential rate of technological improvement has yielded $50 cell phones and $150 laptops — and that's just retail price. In addition to charities that give away electronics, wholesalers and secondhand stores often sell used computers and other items for pennies on the dollar. (Of course, computers and other gadgetry can also be among what little is "left over" for people who were recently housed.) Beyond being affordable, technology can even provide an income stream for the homeless.

Technology's benefits to the homeless are even more apparent than its affordability. The advent of email, cellular phones and blogs has helped improved the plight of many homeless individuals as they attempt to move off of the streets and into permanent housing. Although providers of homeless services sometimes furnish mailbox and/or telephone services to their guests, email allows homeless individuals to have a permanent means of contact no matter their housing situation. Free computer and internet access at local libraries allows for reliable, written communication even without a permanent address (just ask some bloggers and commenters on this site). For things like obtaining food stamps, inquiring about housing, and understanding other essential services, cell phones have proven to be extremely useful tools.

When I wrote about Washington, D.C.'s impending winter housing crisis last month, I did so with what one might call "a shred of optimism." It appears that shred might have been misplaced. It's been more than a month since D.C. officials promised to improve the city's efforts to house homeless families during hypothermia season. Yet, as hypothermia season stands less than a month away, the District appears unprepared.

There are two key drivers of the city's lack of preparedness: a failure to recognize and a failure to act.

Failure to Recognize: The District's failure to recognize the magnitude of the situation has the potential to have an incredibly negative effect on the city's homeless families. The number of homeless families has already increased by over 10 percent his year. Given the economy, it is likely that figure will continue rise. The number of families already in shelters before winter begins  is also significantly higher than in years past.

According to city officials, instead of building additional family shelter space, they are going to focus their efforts on getting families into transitional housing. The relatively modest transitional housing stock (185 units) combined with the smaller "cushion" of space in family shelters makes this approach difficult to say the least. Further, municipalities adjacent to D.C. are cutting their own homeless services in a good old fashioned "race to the bottom," forcing D.C. to cope with a greater influx of homeless individuals from neighboring areas. Any one of these factors would be a cause for concern. Taken collectively, they suggest imminent, serious problems for the city's homeless population.

Although it's been only days since Autumn began, it's never too early to start thinking about winter, especially if you're the District of Columbia Department of Human Services. To comply with city law (and, more importantly, to prevent its most vulnerable citizens from getting hypothermia), the Department maintains a network of warming shelters open to anyone in the city from November through March.

When the D.C. General shelter was grossly overcrowded last winter, it became apparent that this network needs improvement, specifically with respect to sheltering homeless families. According to district officials, a "perfect storm" of conditions — mainly a brutal winter and the effects of the Great Recession — resulted in a number of homeless families that no one could have predicted. However, a quick look at the list of warming shelters reveals an alarming problem: there is only one warming shelter for families (there are eight and six  for men and women, respectively).

The fact that more substantive forecasting and additional shelters — or perhaps more common sense — would have alleviated the problems faced by homeless families at the D.C. General shelter is clear. As a result, the city recently promised it will be better prepared for this winter, building more units at the shelter and bringing in a new contractor to run it.

According to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, over 100,000 veterans are homeless on a given night. That's almost one-fifth of the homeless population, and doesn't come close to representing the 1.5 million other veterans who are at risk of homelessness. But organizations in New Jersey and Indiana have recently stepped up to do something about it.

Community Quest, a low-income housing developer, will break ground on affordable apartments in Ocean County, New Jersey, as part of a major initiative to provide housing to some of the 6,500 homeless veterans throughout the state (there are currently 200 beds for them statewide). The 24-apartment facility, Tucker's Walk, is the first military-and-veterans-only facility to be built in New Jersey and is scheduled to begin providing housing within a year.

Elsewhere, ECHO Housing Corporation proposes building 27 apartments for homeless veterans with disabilities in Evansville, Indiana (by current counts, the city has over 100 homeless veterans). The project, named Lucas Place II, is a prime example of the immense amount of coordination required to get even a modest-sized housing development off the ground in the current economy. City and state governments, for-profit companies and community donors are among those contributing substantial sums to help those who have defended our homeland and are now without a home. Homeless vets, one of the largest subgroups of the homeless, are also one of the most politically correct to help.

It's a Census year, and that seems to have made Americans acutely aware of the importance of demographic surveying — if for no other reason than to ensure adequate representation, guide distribution of federal funds and to provide some much needed job creation. However, housed residents are not only population that needs counting. In fact, counting them is the easy part compared to accounting for the (unfortunately growing) homeless population.

As we explained earlier this year, counting the homeless population is no easy task. We know this is true because the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requires bi-annual counts of the homeless population to ensure equitable funding for homelessness services. To meet this requirement and get the most reliable, comprehensive count involves a tremendous amount of coordination among government agencies, non-profits and volunteers willing to look under bridges, in empty buildings and wherever else people might be living.

Putting statistical reliability and cost-effectiveness aside, point-in-time counts might come close to being comprehensive, but they are far from optimal. However, they are currently the best most cities have. Although statisticians might advocate spending more time to get the numbers "right," cities and regions around the country seem to want to spend more time on providing services and solutions for the homeless and less time counting them. Can you blame them?

Raising money for the homeless has always been a trying endeavor. Throw a recession into the mix, and you've got a nightmare for people looking to fill budget gaps in both the public and private sector. In times like these, public officials and non-profit fundraisers alike are getting creative with their fundraising efforts.

One idea that has come to the forefront in Nashville, Tennessee: parking meters. Inspired by similar programs in Denver and Miami, Nashville Mayor Karl Dean plans to set up five parking meters to collect donations for the homeless as part of the city's "Adopt A Meter" program. Each meter will have a corporate sponsor, and any change deposited will go to Key Alliance, a local Housing First group.

The recent popularity of programs like Nashville's has created a buzz among city governments trying to balance budgets and provide essential services at the same time. Orlando, too, has proposed using 15 recycled parking meters as "donation meters." Here's the catch: the plan allows cities to cut down on panhandling and raise money for homelessness prevention programs in one fell swoop. As homeless blogger SlumJack wrote here in April about the parking meter initiative in Santa Cruz, California: "This could be a fairly expensive and elaborate way to invest in mainly discouraging panhandlers that truly costs the public a lot more than just handing cash directly to those who need it." The problem is that the money collected might not go to those who are being displaced, leaving many homeless people singing the blues in Music City.

It's safe to say that when most folks think of homelessness, the first people that come to mind aren't part of a traditional family of four. But according to the recently-released 2009 Annual Assessment Report to Congress (pdf) from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the number of homeless families is a substantial — and growing — portion of the homeless population.

In 2007, just over 130,000 families spent time in homeless shelters. The number rose to 170,000 families in 2009 — an increase of 30+ percent in just two years. Unfortunately, anecdotal evidence from a recent article in the New York Times, suggests this trend is likely to continue, despite the federal government allotting to states $1.5 billion over three years for rapid re-housing and homeless prevention programs.

Being homeless is incredibly difficult for anyone but can be especially trying for families. A major difficulty for many newly homeless families is finding a shelter that will accept all members together. In addition to the common challenges faced by those staying in shelters — cramped quarters, curfews and (sometimes counterproductive) anti-loitering policies, among others — families often face an additional set of challenges.

The days of the United States being a net industrial exporter are long gone. In 2008, the U.S. trade deficit was almost $700 billion. But despite the United States' vanishing competitive advantage in manufacturing, the country continues to export science and technology. Judging from a recent article in Australia's National Times, the United States exports  not only products stemming from "hard" sciences like pharmaceuticals and military technology, but it also exports "soft" science knowhow — including (you guessed it) homelessness and housing policy.

In Melbourne, Australia, a new $47 million facility for the homeless opens this month, and the developers have made no secret about where they got their inspiration: New York City's Common Ground. Minister of Housing Richard Wynne took a trip to New York City and brought back with him the holistic, wrap-around approach (a.k.a. supportive housing) that has made Common Ground so successful.

In addition to adopting an effective social services model from New York (Common Ground boasts a 0.9 percent eviction rate), Wynne also brought back a unique — albeit sometimes controversial — economic analysis as well. According to reports, Wynne believes in Malcolm Gladwell's "Million Dollar Murray" theory.  That is, that all-encompassing homeless policies actually provide net financial benefits for governments and communities that invest in them. San Diego just instituted a policy to target the city's 25 most costly homeless, with this concept in mind.

Innovation prizes are (re)gaining popularity. Although they've been around since the eighteenth century, incentives for technological advancement have become more mainstream than ever as of late. The X Prize Foundation, a clearinghouse for large innovation prizes, promotes entrepreneurial competitions with the goal of achieving a specific objective that has the "potential to benefit humanity." For example, the foundation currently promotes the Progressive Automotive X Prize, which challenges teams to build a car that gets 100 miles per gallon and is capable of being mass-produced.

Most innovation prizes are geared toward technological development, but that shouldn't lead us to believe that they are only good for encouraging new gadgetry. What if instead of offering millions of dollars to the first team to reach the gray area between the Earth's atmosphere and space, we offered an equally enticing sum of money to the first team to draft equitable, easy-to-understand zoning rules? A contest like that would certainly help governments avoid public policy nightmares like the one Philadelphia is currently experiencing, in which the homeless are being evicted from Hope Outreach Church.

Organizations serving the homeless are already using incentives to spur action. But they often use incentives to spur creative fundraising instead of creative planning and policymaking. Take the Great Lemonade Stand Challenge, for example. The program encourages children in New Haven to raise money for the homeless by selling lemonade in their neighborhoods. The child who raises the most money wins a savings bond and a pool party. Although the scale of the program is relatively small, its mere existence illustrates that incentive programs can help the non-profit sector too.