Cyberspace Comes to Skid Row

“Who was Jeff Bee-zos before the Internet?” David asks, referring to the founder of Amazon.com. “The guy has built a billion-dollar fortune selling online what you can find in any bookstore.”

“It’s not Bee-zos,” Randy points out. “It’s Bay-zos!”

“You sure? I’m pretty sure it’s Bee-zos.”

They banter like this for hours, babbling about hyperlinks and e-commerce strategies, sounding like the masses at any trendy breakfast bar in Silicon Valley.

And for the better part of the past year, they have ended most days by logging off Internet terminals at the Los Angeles Central Library and walking back to their beds in a homeless shelter on skid row.

In a sign of how swiftly technology is spreading into every corner of society, the down and out are logging on.

Technology may have widened the gap between haves and have-nots, with study after study showing that computer and Internet usage rise in lock-step with household income. But at society’s very bottom, among those who would be thrilled to have a household or an income, barriers to access are crumbling.

Hundreds of homeless shelters across the country have installed computer labs in recent years that would be the envy of most high schools. Librarians in Los Angeles and other cities say that on some days up to 75% of the people using free Internet terminals are homeless. Organizations in Seattle, Montreal and other cities have even opened “cybercafes” for the homeless.

For better and occasionally for worse, the homeless are taking advantage. Free e-mail has been a boon to thousands of homeless people who would otherwise be unreachable by phone or letter. Some search online classifieds for jobs. Others use free Web-hosting services to set up scams.

One homeless man in Los Angeles was recently admitted to college and awarded financial aid based on applications he submitted online. Another is wanted by the Los Angeles Police Department for allegedly conning consumers out of at least $18,000 through phony online auctions.

“You might be surprised by the people who go online,” says Randy Lamar, 35, who was correct about the pronunciation of Bezos. “I’m surprised by some of the people who don’t.”

Lamar, a garrulous, 240-pound former salesman, is one of 30 or so homeless Internet aficionados who spend hours each day logged on to terminals at the Los Angeles Central Library.

Many of them come simply to surf the Web or send e-mail. But others have e-commerce ambitions. They see the Net as any entrepreneur would--a stream of money flowing from one computer to the next--and try to divert what they can.

One resident of a downtown shelter runs a site, https://www.bicycle-tools.com, where he hopes to sell parts he bought from a local bike shop that was going out of business.

The site’s creator, Mauricio Tellez, 32, has yet to take an order. But by taking advantage of free online service, Tellez has equipped his site with features that include a virtual shopping cart, a customer fax line and a credit card payment system.

“I still have to set up some other partnerships,” he says. “But the site is already merchant-capable.”

Others have found ways to make money without having an actual product. Alex Trestrail, for instance, says he pocketed a few thousand dollars this year running a site called Videosunlimited.com.

He had no inventory, but customers desperate enough for his “hard to find” titles--including porn--sent checks to his post office box anyway. In turn, he simply ordered the films from other obscure sites that did carry them, pocketing a few dollars on each transaction.

“I sold about 2,000 movies,” said Trestrail, 24, who recently moved out of a skid row shelter into an apartment with a relative. “But I spent the money as fast as I counted it.”

Of course, technology remains a distant consideration for most of the estimated 650,000 homeless people in the United States. By definition, they are more concerned with finding food and shelter than with logging on.

But even if most homeless people aren’t seeking technology, technology is increasingly coming to them.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the skid row section of Los Angeles. The area is home to dozens of shelters, soup kitchens and low-rent hotels. At night, many of its sidewalks resemble cardboard campgrounds.

But sprouting up amid this squalor are carpeted, air-conditioned, computerized rooms that could easily be mistaken for Silicon Valley software labs. At least half a dozen skid row shelters have opened computer centers in the 1990s to teach homeless people everything from remedial math to basic computer skills.

“We’re not out to make people computer experts,” said Chris Gambol, director of the computer center at the Union Rescue Mission on San Pedro Street. “But these days, even a shipping and receiving clerk better know how to operate a mouse.”

Union Rescue Mission operates one of the largest shelters in the world. The five-story, 225,000-square-foot facility sleeps 1,000 people, has a full-size gymnasium, operates medical, dental and legal clinics and serves 2,500 meals a day.

It also has one of the largest computer centers, with 35 PCs lined up along one wall in a cavernous room on the fourth floor. Spending two hours a day in the learning center is a requirement of admission to its yearlong rehabilitation program, just like attending sermons and signing up for kitchen duty.

The center, funded by a grant from the Bank of America, graduates a few hundred residents each year. Most will go on to enroll in further vocational training or find blue-collar jobs. But a few use technology to pursue entirely new paths.

Wayne Keefer, for instance, checked into Union Rescue 18 months ago. He was broke, divorced and struggling with drug and alcohol addictions that started when he was 12 years old.

The former restaurant worker says he was always scared of computers. “All I knew was that they crashed,” he says. But at the mission, he learned quickly. He used e-mail to reconnect with estranged relatives and scoured the Net for information on the type of melanoma he had been diagnosed with. And when he decided to pursue a career as a drug and alcohol counselor, he applied online.

This fall, at age 43, Keefer started classes at Cal State Dominguez Hills, covered by $8,000 in financial aid he also applied for online.

“I haven’t been in school in more than 25 years,” he said. “It’s a long road, but I hope it will be worth it.”

Rehabilitation Through Computers

Turning to technology marks a fundamental change for rescue missions--most of them privately funded religious institutions that for more than a century relied on a menu of “soup, soap and salvation.”

That software came to be added to that list stems from, of all things, the advent of crack cocaine.

For more than a century, homeless shelters mainly catered to middle-aged alcoholics for whom getting back on their feet was largely a matter of giving up the bottle.

But in the 1980s, crack flooded shelters with men and women in their 20s who were not only racked by addiction but utterly uneducated and unemployable. Beyond detoxification, these people needed to learn how to read and write.

Computers running tutorial software seemed a promising solution. But technology was omething few shelters could afford.

The Los Angeles Mission was the first to build a computer center, largely because it was also among the first shelters to embrace modern marketing methods. Mass mailings, tear-jerking ads and other programs boosted its annual budget from just $750,000 in the mid-1980s to $13 million by decade’s end.

Flush with cash, the mission built a massive shelter at Wall and 5th streets. Its crown jewel, a dazzling computer center, opened in 1991 with a ceremony attended by First Lady Barbara Bush.

“We wanted to create an atmosphere where when men and women came in off the street, they knew they were appreciated,” said Mike Edwards, chief executive of the L.A. Mission. “I know colleges that don’t have learning centers like this.”

Indeed, the center looks a bit like a high-tech orchestra pit, with 34 computers arrayed in half-circles around the tri-level room. About 350 people go through the program each year, 25% of whom are illiterate when they enter. Half of those who start drop out within a year, said David Almond, coordinator of the center. But those who stick with it, he said, typically improve three or four grade levels.

The program, and the fund-raising methods that financed it, are now emulated by hundreds of shelters across the country. Of the 270 shelters that belong to the International Union of Gospel Missions, for example, more than 100 now operate computer centers, and officials say that number is growing rapidly.

In fact, catering to the computer needs of homeless shelters has become a $1.5-million-a-year business for Ron Gonzales, president of Innovative Learning Systems of Dallas.

Gonzales once lived in the Los Angeles Mission and saw an opportunity while helping to set up its computer center. His company is now the leading maker of tutorial software used at more than 80 homeless shelters around the country. For some shelters, Innovative Learning handles everything, buying the hardware, training the instructors, even arranging the desks.

“This year we will have set up 14 missions, last year it was about nine,” Gonzales said. “It’s been growing like that every year, and it’s going to get a lot bigger.”

Online Offers Homeless Anonymity

But as impressive as these centers are, true homeless techies tend to avoid them. In shelters, computer time is structured, supervised and usually limited to a few hours a day. In libraries, there aren’t such restrictions, and computer time is unlimited as long as you keep signing up for hourlong slots. For that reason, libraries are often where you’ll find the hard-core homeless Internet users, from entrepreneurs to scam artists.

Los Angeles police recently issued a warrant for Shawn Strickland, a homeless man who is accused of cheating people out of at least $18,000 by using computers at the central library to run phony Internet auctions on Yahoo.

One of his ads, allegedly placed under the guise of a fictional company called Halogen Computers, offered a computer system with a monitor and speakers. The ad promised a three-year warranty and free shipping for bids of $1,000 or greater.

At least 17 people took the bait, mailing checks to Strickland before receiving the merchandise, according to Det. Greg Mahony of the LAPD. Strickland, 27, has since disappeared.

“The day he received his last check,” Mahony said, “he was gone.”

Strickland’s case may not be the most uplifting example of how the homeless are taking advantage of technology. But it does underscore a quality of the Internet that many homeless people appreciate: its anonymity.

On the Net, “it doesn’t show if you haven’t showered for three days,” said Anitra Freeman, a former homeless woman who now runs a Seattle writing workshop and an online mailing list for homeless people called StreetWrites.

“You can go down and log on at the library and send people your resume,” Freeman said. “And you don’t have to say that you’re homeless.”

In that way, she said, the Net sometimes helps to obscure class distinctions.

Enabling homeless people to escape online, however briefly, is a primary reason organizations in some cities have opened cybercafes that provide free or cheap Internet access in skid row neighborhoods.

Anonymous chat is the most popular online activity among homeless people who use the 12 Internet terminals at a center in Montreal operated by the newspaper L’Itineraire, a publication that homeless people sell on street corners.

“They talk with people all over the world without the stigma they have when they are on the street,” said Eric Cimon, a spokesman for the center. “There’s a woman here in her 40s who goes into chat rooms every night, posing as a 20-year-old. She just likes to be a young girl again.”

All of which means that homeless people aren’t much different from the rest of the Internet population, which is filled with people who log on to escape their everyday lives, apply to college, send e-mail to relatives, run scams and hatch e-commerce dreams.

After ending their argument over the pronunciation of Bezos, Randy Lamar and David Alexander headed back to their Internet terminals at the downtown library to tinker with their Web sites.

Lamar admits that an alcohol problem and a penchant for gambling unraveled his career as a salesman a few years ago. He said he had never been online until he arrived on skid row last year. But he took to technology quickly.

A consummate opportunist, he started out charging other homeless people $5 to help them set up free e-mail accounts. Now he spends the bulk of his time running a Matt Drudge-style site, https://unclerandy.pyar.com, where he dishes tech industry gossip and news mostly culled from other online sources.

That he has amassed 2,700 subscribers to his Uncle Randy mailing list delights him no end. “Here I am, a guy so poor I’m putting bus fare on layaway,” he laughed, “and people are listening to me.”

Lamar recently moved out of a shelter and into a hotel with a woman he met in a skid row sandwich line.

He has also begun using his mailing list to advertise his services as a consultant. He charges a $100 fee to help Web sites get higher rankings in Internet search engines.

He says he already has nine happy customers. “They have no idea,” he said, “that I’m running this from the public library.”

Alexander, 42, is a former oil refinery worker from Long Beach who admits he has battled a crack addiction. He could probably find refinery work again, he says, but doesn’t see much point because whatever money he made would have to be turned over to the IRS and assorted other creditors.

So he’s pinning his Internet hopes on https://www.alexland.pyar.com. The site is emblazoned with pictures of piles of money and offers “complete Internet business solutions.”

What that means is that he has stocked his site with lists of various free Internet advertising and marketing services that he has come across and that you could find yourself if you had the patience. But he’ll save you the trouble if you shell out $10 for the “Uncle Dave’s Handy Dandy Webguide.”

In a way, it is exactly what homeless people have always done, scouring their surroundings for things they can get for free--a watch in a dumpster, maybe--that other people might pay for. Except Alexander does his scavenging online and says he’s pocketed $700 so far.

“That’s the beauty of this medium,” Alexander said. “It’s available to everybody.”