Does it help the homeless to turn them into Wi-Fi hotspots?

The idea of homeless people as hotspots is unpalatable until you consider the opportunity for them to become content providers
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Clarence, a homeless man participating in Homeless Hotspots, gives a rundown of the project

Turning homeless people into internet hotspots, as they're doing at the South by Southwest Festival (SxSW) in Texas this week, has a certain ring of familiarity to it. A woman who was running a gymkhana once asked me to supply her with 10 Big Issue vendors to clean up the mountains of horse droppings she was expecting.

I tried to explain that selling the Big Issue was not some unskilled piece of labour. It was a highly complex task. You had to develop many of the abilities of a marketeer, and a diplomat, with the hope that many of these new-formed skills could get you off the streets.

Shovelling manure might not have the same career path. So why would I want to encourage people to do something that would lead nowhere?

At a time when homelessness has gone up by 14%, and organisations like the Big Issue are having to cope with more people in need, a big advertising business has a bright idea: turn the homeless into antennae. Turn them into the modern version of the phone box. Make them sit, or stand, or lie; so long as they stay within range and a website can tell everyone where they are.

Institutionalising the homeless on the streets by giving them tasks is not unlike what the Victorians did with them. They gave them signs, posters, billboards and sandwich boards. So 200 years after the birth of Charles Dickens here's a novel idea that is far from novel – simply going back to the days when the homeless were seen as the movable furniture of the streets.

The press release from BBH, the advertising agency responsible for the initiative, said it was modernising the concept of Street Papers, the network of papers that the Big Issue helped to set up, worldwide. What is so modern about turning someone into a piece of technical kit, you might ask?

But reading more, one realises that this has the potential at least to be more than just "manure". What BBH is advocating, and I hope it stays true to its words, is that this could be the beginning of a new form of work for the homeless that is not demeaning.

BBH suggests that modern technology can be harnessed to help the homeless to help themselves by turning the hot-spotting into something bigger. Homeless people could be given the means to communicate, using the latest equipment. They could be seen as suppliers of information, offers and all manner of things; rather than simply being a glorified aerial, they become content providers.

You might begin to see the homeless as sources of richness. As sources of local knowledge, modern-day town criers if you like.

Coincidently we are working on a project that utilises the skills learned on the street. That is the skills the homeless have to develop in order to survive. They keep their eyes and ears open, and at times have local information that we could all use. Whether that is shops, cafes, libraries or hospitals that the stranger might need in an unknown high street.

We should not see the homeless as simply immovable pieces of the background, open to exploitation. Rather we should see them as guardians, guides and informers who understand the local area in a completely different way.

I suggest we turn BBH's plans into a new form of street smartness, and begin to turn street people into news and information providers.


And that means less of the manure-shovelling and less of any gimmicks that leave homeless people stuck exactly where they are.

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