Resources

The programs, frameworks, and research below informed the development of VOICE and represent communities of practice whose work is directly adjacent to this program.

Operating across 45 U.S. cities through a network of 2,000 social service agency partners

A national program providing free personal voicemail boxes with real local phone numbers to people experiencing homelessness. At peak, it served 40,000 people annually and reported 70 percent of participants achieving their stated goals. It shut down around 2015. The Solid Ground retrospective “Disconnecting the Line” and the National Health Care for the Homeless Council's “It Begins With a Connection” document both its design and the circumstances of its discontinuation, and are worth reading together for any program working in this space.

New York, NY. coalitionforthehomeless.org

Provides approximately 1,500 people experiencing homelessness with a stable mailing address for benefits, employer correspondence, and government communications, and serves as an access point for other services. A durable model for what it means to provide a stable contact point independent of housing status.

San Francisco, CA. miraclemessages.org

A 501©(3) operating a hotline, app, and volunteer phone-buddy program that matches people experiencing homelessness with volunteers for weekly calls and texts. Volunteers use a secure virtual number through a Dialpad partnership, and the organization hires people with lived experience of homelessness as community ambassadors. A well-documented example of using volunteer communication infrastructure for connection as much as for service navigation.

London Borough of Lewisham, UK. Social enterprise

Assigns people experiencing homelessness a stable alias postal address linked to vacant properties, updateable online, by email, or by text. Funded by local governments. An internationally relevant example of providing a stable, durable contact point outside the traditional shelter or service provider model.

Chicago, IL. mrelief.com

SNAP screening and enrollment via web, text message, and voice, with document submission to state agencies by fax or email. One of the few documented examples of a nonprofit handling the full fax-and-document submission step on behalf of applicants, removing a specific friction point that benefits applicants often cannot navigate alone.

National Digital Inclusion Alliance. digitalinclusion.org

Planning worksheets, sample interview questions, training materials, job descriptions, and program-design guidance for implementing a digital navigator program. The 2021 Salt Lake City Public Library pilot toolkit is a companion document that describes how the model was adapted for a library context, including for shelter residents.

everyoneon.org

Guides for connecting under-resourced communities to affordable internet, devices, and digital skills training, with a capacity-building toolkit aimed at program designers and community organizations.

benton.org

Archives and analysis of the FCC Lifeline program, including documentation of enrollment friction, proposed rule changes, and the consequences of verification requirements that reduce enrollment completion. Benton's research on the drop-off rate when applications fall to manual review is particularly relevant to designing enrollment support processes.

direct.mit.edu (Open access)

An examination of who designs systems, who benefits from them, who is harmed, and what design looks like when it is led by and accountable to the communities most affected by its outcomes. The Design Justice Network Principles are a living document maintained at designjustice.org.

ABCD Institute, now at DePaul University. nurturedevelopment.org

The originating text for asset-based community development (ABCD), which frames organizing around existing community gifts and capacities rather than deficits. Scholarly critiques note that ABCD can understate structural barriers and internal power dynamics, and argue it is most useful when paired with distributional and anti-oppression analysis.

detroitdjc.org

Community mesh networking and digital stewardship work rooted in the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition's framing of technology as “a method by which people build other relationships.” The Digital Stewards curriculum trains community members to build and maintain their own network infrastructure. Its insistence that community members rather than outside experts should own and operate community technology infrastructure has been influential across the digital inclusion field.

doi.org/10.22269/140609 (Open access)

A wide-ranging examination of the public library as a form of social infrastructure that has historically served as a reading room, social service center, community knowledge commons, and communication hub simultaneously. Eric Klinenberg's Palaces for the People (2018) extends the social infrastructure concept more broadly.

doi.org/10.1038/s41746-021-00413-8 (Open access, PMC)

A foundational argument that digital access belongs in the same category of analysis as housing, food security, and healthcare access as a determinant of health outcomes. Surveys the mechanisms by which digital exclusion affects healthcare access and benefits enrollment.

doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14121535 (Open access, PMC5750953)

Free PDF via Community Legal Services of Philadelphia

An issue brief documenting how ID.me's facial recognition and smartphone requirements create systematic barriers for people without stable housing, devices, or documents. One of the clearest primary-source accounts of the identity verification problem this program and others have attempted to address.

Free PDF via NELP

Maps the full landscape of identity verification barriers for people without stable housing or documentation, including the finding that ID.me's in-person UPS store option still requires a computer kiosk. A policy companion to the CLS Philadelphia brief above.

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. store.samhsa.gov

Establishes the six principles of trauma-informed care: safety, trustworthiness and transparency, peer support, collaboration and mutuality, empowerment and choice, and cultural, historical, and gender responsiveness. The principles have since been widely adapted for technology design, service delivery, and organizational practice.

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