Past Issues :: 2006 May 1 :: Cover Story
Window of Opportunity: One Economy seeks to connect low-income
residents to the city's wireless future
If all goes as planned, by the end of next year, Portland will become one of the largest cities in the nation to provide universal, free, wireless Internet access.
So although not everyone can afford a home in the City of Roses, they can have an address on the World Wide Web: A high-speed community that in some ways is becoming more empowering and liberating for people in poverty than the brick-and-mortar environment they now live in.
That's the promise behind One Economy.
"If you go to the library right now, most of the users at the Internet are homeless," said Marshall Runkel with One Economy, a company connecting people in poverty to Internet services. "There's a reason for that. Because people might not have an address, or they can't afford a cell phone, but a Yahoo e-mail address for a giant amount of storage is 10 to 15 bucks, or free. That's a way people stay connected."
In this new digital community, One Economy might be seen as the progressive developer – working to provide the poor with the same high-speed access as the rich, along with the proper hardware, comprehensive materials, support and training to use the service to its fullest capacity and improve lives.
"One Economy is about changing the ecosystem, changing the way that we work with low-income people," said Rob Bole, vice president of the One Economy office in Portland. "Not to just give lip service to respecting people, but actually to trust them enough and give them power to know what they need and get the services they want."
Bole's and Runkel's network stretches well beyond Portland. Headquartered in Washington D.C., One Economy is an international nonprofit putting broadband service into the homes of low-income families and providing a multilingual Web portal called The Beehive. Its municipal initiatives work with cities to develop digital inclusion plans, and its global pilot projects are bringing the world's poor online in South Africa and the Middle East. One Economy's business model extends far beyond mere connectivity to a digital dialogue about how to better use this massive resource, from shopping for car insurance or health care, to banking online, searching for a job or getting a GED. One Economy also has a vision for liberating an exploited market and making businesses and government agencies more responsive to low-income customers through their online services.
"For low-income people there wasn't anything out there," Bole said. "It was basically a wasteland. There wasn't information at a lower literacy level, there wasn't information that was multilingual, it wasn't local, it wasn't relative to the needs of low-income people. The bigger idea with One Economy is we're going to develop and demonstrate how the Internet can be used to serve this particular demographic in a new way that puts them in the driver's seat. Ultimately, we're trying to change the way people think about how you deliver services. It's not delivering services to people; it's people demanding them and being advocates for themselves. And really taking the lead for their own future."
It's an idea that the Internet doesn't have to polarize the haves from the have-nots, but that properly applied, it could bridge the divide. And the time to do it is now, as the city prepares to lay the infrastructure for universal wireless access. It's imperative that the city plan a strategy of digital inclusion for the low-income and homeless populations, according to Runkel, who worked for years in City Hall as an aide to City Commissioner Erik Sten.
"Now is the time to start thinking about these issues," Runkel said. "If low-income advocates are successfully pushed aside and told, ‘Let's get this wireless network built now and we'll get to the low-income parts later,' Later — how many times have low-income people heard that? ‘Oh, we'll get to you later.' Later is not good enough."
As Lisa Taylor settles in at a terminal in the computer center of Station Place Tower she says hello to new neighbors and logs into her e-mail account. One Economy wired Station Place for broadband Internet access in the center and every residential room. Taylor moved in only a few days before but has been to the computer room regularly. Station Place Tower provides affordable housing to people age 55 and older, and Taylor's fixed income on Social Security made it an ideal place for a home.
"The amenities have knocked me out in this building," Taylor said. "The people are so nice, I've got a great view. But the idea that they had computers, that's just icing on the cake."
A confessed e-mail junkie, Taylor uses the computers to stay in touch with her friends and family. She's also writing her autobiography, and she found Station Place Tower on Craigslist, an online clearing-house of information.
Residents primarily use the computer center for checking e-mails, using the Internet and job searches, according to Hazel Schnider, resident service coordinator with Station Place Tower. "If I'm not here to open it at 8 a.m., I get notes and phone calls," Schnider said. "People have definitely come to count on it."
Interestingly, many of the people using the computer center at Station Place already have computers in their rooms, but they prefer to use the center for its sense of community. People help their neighbors set up e-mail accounts so they can stay in touch with their children, for example. Those who know a little more help those who need to learn. One woman said she is taking care of her uncle and uses the computer to access Social Security and VA services.
"I'm down here two three times a week," she said. "It's like a total quiet vibe. It's a small area but everyone's on the same page."
That comes as no surprise to Bole, who believes in the Internet as the ultimate medium for communication and community.
"Most libraries are jammed full of people because they are warm, friendly community places," Bole said. "If you take a look at community technology centers in affordable housing, they're not really well utilized; it's in a basement or in a side room. They're not really well utilized because they don't build a sense of community. They're just these sterile rooms. At the same time, you can look at a lot of affordable housing that has a computer center, as well as being wired for high-speed Internet in the units, those computer centers are used, because people are coming together and solving problems that they work on in their home."
Oregon requires all new affordable housing be wired for high-speed Internet, as was the case with Station Place Tower. Now as the city moves forward with a wireless program, it needs to have a strategy for including low-income and homeless populations in its potential.
"The people who are most isolated are the people who are homeless," Runkel said. "And that's where you see the Internet being an incredible tool, to keep whatever connections alive with other people and the institutions around them."
The fact that MetroFi offers its services free of charge (with optional subscriber services) might seem like a huge boon to low-income families and individuals. But Runkel and Bole believe that being free is less significant than being responsive and accessible to low-income and homeless families and individuals.
"If you look at who is using the wireless networks in the coffee shops around the city, it's not poor people," Runkel said. "We don't want to recreate that on a broader scale. We really have to think about ways to get people affordable computers. And along with that comes basic training and Internet navigation skills. And then, how does the city intentionally use this as a method to start making its own agencies, its services and information available to people in away that's relevant to them? If we do all this and people get connected to the Internet, they get a computer and they learn how to use that computer just so they can check the Blazers score better, that's not a big victory."
There's power in numbers. For One Economy, it's a nationwide market of 27 million low-income people representing $250 billion in annual purchasing power.
Through its Web presence, The Beehive, One Economy is providing tutorials for viewers to learn how to become better consumers and savvier navigators of the marketplace. The company worked with All State Insurance, which used One Economy to educate consumers about insurance products. They've developed similar relationships with e-Bay, Monster.com and others.
"E-Trade came to us and said, ‘We want you to develop a module about how to bank online because we want to demystify banking online,'" Bole said. "We sold a couple hundred computers to public housing residents through a self-sufficiency program through the Housing Authority of Portland, and we went back and surveyed 92 of them a year later. We found that every fourth household had bought a second computer and more than 45 percent of them banked online in some form or fashion."
Bole and Runkel emphasize that One Economy doesn't pitch products, but works to educate a marketplace in which companies can compete fairly. In fact, Runkel and Bole are very protective of the low-income population that traditionally is exploited by such marketers as rent-to-own centers and high-interest check-cashing operations.
"What this becomes is a way of aggregating the market for people to be able to use their power to access market services at a fair price, instead of always being the people who get the short end of the stick," Runkel said.
Another component of this movement is work force development. The majority of jobs listings are Internet-only – they aren't even posted in the printed media, Runkel said, and eight out of 10 of the fastest-growing jobs in the country require basic technology skills.
"So it's not just about getting on the network because it's a nice thing, or getting a computer because it's a good thing," Runkel said. "These are basic requirements to participate in the modern economy. People need these skills and assets to be able to get a good job. If we're going to continue to attract the kind of businesses here that we want to have, that are environmentally friendly businesses, that are knowledge-based business that pay decent living wages, then we need to have a workforce here that is able to do the jobs."
Without a concerted effort to bring the low-income populations on board with Portland's wireless evolution, Bole and Runkel see the distance between poverty and opportunity growing ever wider.
"You'll have a furthering divide between people who have access to their informational services, access to their government, access to banking. That divide will continue to grow. We're not talking about the digital divide; it's the same old divide between poor and rich. Literally, the wireless stuff bridges between them."