Homeless to get free voice mail program assists in search

The voice mail also will be available to those in emergency situations

By Rick Armon
Beacon Journal staff writer

Leeland Jones knows it can be tough to get ahold of him.

He doesn't have a phone.

He doesn't have a place to live.

He's homeless.

So anytime his boss or anyone else wants to touch base, they have to call the Haven of Rest shelter in downtown Akron. If he's there, great. If he's not, he hopes someone takes a message and passes it along.

It's not the ideal situation for anyone trying to make the difficult transition from a shelter to a permanent job and housing.

That's why Jones, 39, and homeless advocates are excited about a new program being launched by Info Line Inc. later this year that will offer free, private voice mail to the homeless in Summit County. Modeled after existing programs in other cities nationwide, the Community Voice Mail project will provide a telephone number to homeless people so they can set up personal mailboxes and receive messages from potential employers, landlords, doctors and case workers.

The voice mail also will be available to those in emergency situations, such as victims of domestic violence who are forced to leave their homes.

''It would be a beautiful thing,'' said Jones, who is working as a roofer and trying to straighten out his life after problems with drugs. ''This will help out a lot.''

Community Voice Mail, which has been discussed here for about five years, will cost $110,582. The money will pay for a manager and create 500 voice mailboxes. The county government is planning to contribute $15,000 to the effort, with the remainder being paid through grants, donations and a fee of $1 a month per mailbox for agencies whose clients use the service.

''If we're able to take that homeless person out there and get them connected and get them into housing and get them health care and get them a job, it's a cost effective way to deal with the problem,'' said Sue Pierson, vice president of programs for Info Line.

The voice mailboxes will be given to only those homeless who are consulting with case workers to obtain a permanent job and housing, she added, and the use will be monitored for any potential abuse.

Summit will become the 46th community in the U.S., and only the second in Ohio, served by Community Voice Mail, a Seattlebased nonprofit started in 1992 that offers the service nationwide. Other communities include Cleveland, Detroit, New York City, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Chicago.

Community Voice Mail began after two employment counselors jokingly wondered why the homeless didn't have voice mail because it would be easier to alert them about potential jobs. The pilot program involved 145 people, and 70 percent of those given voice mailboxes found jobs within two months. Jennifer Brandon, executive director of the Community Voice Mail national office in Seattle, said she's excited to see more midsized cities like Akron offering the service because the need is great there as well as the major metropolitan areas. An annual homeless census held here in late January estimated that there were 733 people sleeping in shelters or outside.

''We feel pretty comfortable with a community our size. We'll have no problem in offering this to 500 people,'' Pierson said.

The voice mail should solve an ongoing problem in the homeless community: staying connected with case workers, employers, landlords and doctors.

Some homeless people use cell phones paid for by family or friends. But those minutes run out and sometimes the phones themselves or chargers are lost — not to mention they don't have a place to recharge them, advocates said.

There also is a stigma associated with handing over a telephone number of a shelter to a potential employer or landlord, advocates said. And getting a message is dependent on being at the shelter.

''It's a good project,'' said the Rev. Ben Walker, director of the Haven of Rest. ''Anything we can do to help the homeless to get out of the crisis circumstance that they are in, we want to do that.''

The voice mail system can be used to alert homeless people about job openings or food giveaways through systemwide messages. It also was valuable, for example, in notifying the homeless where to seek shelter when Hurricane Ike swept through Texas, Brandon said.

The Partners for the Homeless in Memphis, Tenn., has offered the service for about 10 years and has about 400 voice mailboxes. Executive Director Pat Morgan, who was not working with the agency at the time the program started, said she initially ''thought it was a complete crock.''

The service has sparked some controversy in other communities when it first started, as some critics called the expense a waste.

But Morgan said the effort has proven to be successful in helping people get jobs and, at $600 a month for her agency, isrelatively inexpensive.

''For those who want to be in touch, it works,'' she said. ''If they don't want to be in touch and they don't want a job or don't want to get clean or sober, they don't take advantage of it.''

For more details about Info Line, call 330-315-1349 or go online www.cvm.org