I just read a really smart short article on mobile phone use in the homeless population in Washington, D.C.
“Having a phone isn’t even a privilege anymore — it’s a necessity,” said Rommel McBride, 50, who spent about six years on the streets before recently being placed in a city housing program. He has had a mobile phone for a year. “A cellphone is the only way you can call to keep up with your food stamps, your housing application, your job. When you’re living in a shelter or sleeping on the streets, it’s your last line of communication with the world.”
Advocates who work with the District’s homeless estimate that 30 percent to 45 percent of the people they help have cellphones. A smaller number have e-mail accounts, and some blog to chronicle their lives on the streets.
I know most of you didn’t need convincing on this topic — but this article is even more eye-opening than the first one we read!
The homeless are a very invisible group in our society, especially in NYC where under the Giulliani administration they were made to disapear. People are completely unaware of the reality and daily goings of the lives of homeless people. You are a part of society even if you are homeless. It is interesting that so many saw a homeless person possessing a cell as a privilege that the homeless person shoud not have rather as an instrument that the person was using to stay connected to society and to assist him or her in becoming a full part of society again.
there is no laws stating that the homeless cannot use the cellphone. As today, the technology was expanding to many levels in the socitey, people quickly approach to it and used it as the necessity. Homeless cannot afford to buy house, but cell phone can help them have jobs, at least, they can contact with their friends, or families. This article changed the way people often think that the cell phone is just for the rich ones, not the lowest level. Everybody is equal, and they can integrate together through the technology.
Cell Phones were seen as a luxury when they first came out. Only the rich would have them, and they were seen as a status object. Then years later they became segmented, nicer, more technologically advanced phones became a sign of luxury and there was a line for the middle class. However today, cell phones are carried on by almost anyone imagineable. From the rich to the middle class to the poor people. Thye are an extremely helpful utility which is almost a necessity today. They help connect people, be it rich or poor.