Half of Homeless San Franciscans Have No Internet Access. Meet the Volunteers Working to Change That.
By: Michael Ethan Gold
Tags: San Francisco, Equality, Cities, Internet, Homeless

Half of Homeless San Franciscans Have No Internet Access. Meet the Volunteers Working to Change That.

Photo: LordHenriVoton/iStock/Getty Images Plus

Navigating the system as a homeless person in San Francisco is notoriously time-consuming and painful, consisting of long lines, paperwork, and confusion as to what services you’re eligible for and what’s needed to actually receive them. For that reason, it’s often said that being homeless can be a full-time job.

Part of the problem: Half of San Franciscans who are homeless have zero access to the internet, making it even harder to look up information they need. In the heart of Silicon Valley, that’s an issue that should be solvable. And there’s one nonprofit — with mainly volunteers from the tech industry — trying to do just that.

ShelterTech, founded in 2016, exists at the intersection of Silicon Valley innovation and the vulnerable populations of the Bay Area. The organization’s main mission is to get unhoused people access to the internet as well as provide an easy-to-use system with up-to-date information on what resources are available.

“Innovations from Silicon Valley have produced great prosperity and connected billions but have also exacerbated challenges with affordable housing and digital equity,” says Bill Soward, ShelterTech’s executive director. “As an all-volunteer tech nonprofit, we offer tech workers the opportunity to leverage technology and technology skills to bring digital connectivity and critical services to those most in need.”

Historically, one of the main ways homeless people have been able to look up resources is through a physical directory of charities that the nonprofit Homeless Advocacy Project (HAP) published every two years up until this year. It stopped because the directory was filled with information that becomes “outdated the minute we publish it,” says Julie Rosenthal, HAP’s director of social services.

Now, HAP focuses on partnering with ShelterTech to maintain one of ShelterTech’s main programs: SF Service Guide, an online directory that can be constantly updated. It guides people facing homelessness, food insecurity, domestic violence, Covid-19 scares, and other issues, directing them to what they need by prompting them with questions to narrow down their specific problem and lead them to a list of organizations most able to help.

Photo courtesy of ShelterTech

ShelterTech hosts regular “datathons,” where throngs of volunteers work alongside members of the homeless community (who are paid for their time) to verify and update the database of services. When I attended an in-person datathon in pre-Covid-19 times, I was struck by how structured and rigorous the exercise was — an indication of its Silicon Valley pedigree. Yet there was no attempt made to paper over the very real struggles of many of the participants; when asked to go around and describe something good that happened that week as a kind of opening icebreaker, one homeless man named Garrett said, “Just seeing the sunlight every day.”

Over pizza, volunteers went through traces of data to verify details like phone numbers and operating hours at organizations in the guide. Every change was documented on shared spreadsheets, including information that couldn’t be vetted (disconnected phone lines, dead websites, etc.), which were then used to update the site.

The datathons, co-sponsored by SF tech companies like Uber, Lyft, Twitch, Salesforce, PagerDuty, and others have now gone virtual as a result of the pandemic. Since their inception, they’ve drawn over 600 volunteers, including 250 in a completely remote capacity, says Soward.

The collaboration goes against the stereotype that tech companies and their workers are apathetic to the issues going on in San Francisco.

“The response among tech workers has been amazing. Our theme — ‘built by the community, for the community’ — has never felt more true,” he says.

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ShelterTech’s bottom line is this: They believe connectivity is a right — and essential for people to get on a path to become housed once again.

“There’s this misconception that people facing homelessness don’t need connectivity,” says Lauren Hall, director of Delivering Innovation in Supportive Housing, a nonprofit that runs several shelters in the city. Some of their shelters have been outfitted with free Wi-Fi by ShelterTech. Hall estimates that only about one in five people in their shelters even own a mobile phone: “If we could provide a good Wi-Fi connection to every resident and give them their own device, we could do much more for them,” she says.

Using technology to help people find services represents a shift for the nonprofit sector in San Francisco, which can struggle to reach its intended audience. “We can’t provide help simply based on ‘you know the right person,’” says Barry Roeder of the San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development. “Connecting people with services is really challenging.”

Photo courtesy of ShelterTech

As an indication of its reach, ShelterTech’s SF Service Guide receives over 2,800 unique visitors per month, a number that Soward expects will increase as Covid-19-related relief programs come to an end.

In some ways, the virus was a catalyst for progress: When it first struck, the city moved thousands of vulnerable homeless people into newly vacant hotels. Unfortunately, however, the city is reportedly planning to move these residents out due to funding issues.

Aaron Mendez, a former shelter resident and a ShelterTech advocate, says that a portal like SF Service Guide provides options for people facing housing insecurity that they may never have considered previously. “All you need is a cellphone to start the process of getting back on your feet,” he told me when I visited him in his SoMA single-room occupancy residence in the days before Covid-19.

While ShelterTech’s current leaders hail from high-tech backgrounds, its founder is anything but the typical Silicon Valley luminary. Darcel Jackson, an Oakland native and former construction worker, conjured up ShelterTech after he became homeless due to suffering a minor stroke in his mid-fifties and then losing his job and apartment. The idea gained momentum when he met a crop of techies with ties to the Global Shapers Community, a World Economic Forum initiative to nurture civic-minded young people.

As ShelterTech began taking shape, however, Jackson’s personal situation worsened to the point where he could no longer continue living in San Francisco. Money was a perennial issue, especially as his health deteriorated. Eventually, he moved to Texas, where he scaled back his involvement with ShelterTech and gradually cut ties.

By the time I discovered the organization recently, it had been years since anyone had heard from him. This was particularly disconcerting since from everything I’d read and heard, Jackson was a rabble-rouser in his heyday.

“Darcel is really a connector — every time he went to an event, he would end up with 15 business cards of people who wanted to have something to do with him,” says Hicham Sabir, one of the early ShelterTech crew. “He would say if you’re a Black male in San Francisco, you’re basically at the bottom of the list of priorities — I think it took him six months to see a social worker.”

After some digging, I was able to find Jackson at the Good Samaritan Rehab and Care Center in Stockton and was able to go before the pandemic would make such a trip impossible. I joined the residents watching a movie in the common room, where I was told to wait while Jackson finished a dialysis treatment. Eventually, he joined me for an interview, and I was struck by his condition. He was not doing well.

I told him how well ShelterTech is doing, how much difference it’s making in the lives of homeless people in San Francisco. His eyes lit up, but he didn’t say much.

As we finished, I asked him if he had a cellphone or other way to reach him. He handed me a slim black device from his bedside table, but I couldn’t turn it on — the phone was dead. I asked the attendants if they had a charging cord, but no one seemed to have one handy, and Jackson didn’t remember the number.

I absorbed the irony — that technology often doesn’t serve those it should and that my connection with Jackson would remain insecure without a digital crutch. He could vanish into thin air the same way the people on the streets he was so keen to help seem to do night after night, off-the-grid in ways that require much more than a single app to address.