Communities Wired! Eden Housing’s initiative to address a modern-day necessity

Jennifer Reed, Director of Fund Development and Public Relations, Eden Housing, Inc.

Challenge: Low-income households, people with special needs and minorities with limited English often have little or no access to broadband services, making it difficult to monitor their children’s school attendance and progress, access bus schedules, pay bills, search for work and access services in their local communities.



Two years ago, Eden Housing recognized that a majority of its residents, including 50 percent of families and up to 60 percent of seniors and those with special needs, had no access to broadband services. In many cases they did not know its importance, could not afford the monthly fees or did not have a reliable home computer. This put them at a huge disadvantage in today’s world.

In response, Eden created Communities Wired! a portfolio-wide initiative that builds on over 30 years of experience providing residents with access to technology through on-site computer labs and training. This initiative provides those most in need, including low-income seniors and families, people with special needs and limited English speaking minorities; with computer training and low cost options for computer equipment and Internet service, with the goal of supporting them to use broadband access at home.

Over the past two years, Eden integrated Communities Wired! into our existing programs, building on the success of our “Digital Connectors” youth program (promoting digital literacy, leadership, community service and access to higher education) and our “Generation Exchange” program (youth teaching computer skills to seniors).

Eden partnered with the California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF) and received $100,000 in funding for this initiative. We used the funds to assess current resident broadband adoption rates, obtain information on resident technology needs, develop promotional and educational materials, train staff, identify additional partners and provide technical assistance.

We also partnered with external providers to deliver technical assistance to residents. In 2015, we wrote grants and received commitments for $433,689 in funding from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to create the infrastructure to provide free Internet access at 11 housing sites — one farm-worker family housing site, four family sites and six senior housing sites. CPUC is also funding digital literacy programming at eight housing sites. 

Eden worked with Digital Connector teen volunteers, senior resident leaders and local special needs service partners to develop a Communities Wired! Digital Literacy Tool Kit to use as part of the program.
 
Currently Eden offers free broadband at 24 sites, totaling 1,983 units. At one of our senior housing sites, Cottonwood Place, nearly 100 percent of the residents access the Internet as compared to the portfolio average of less than 40 percent for senior residents. In their apartments, residents must use their own computer or tablet, but Eden also offers a computer lab on site for use by all residents.

In addition to our efforts to acquire infrastructure and equipment, over the past two years, 756 residents subscribed to low-cost broadband services as part of the Communities Wired! program. Eden also reached 1,200 residents across the portfolio with their digital literacy training. Topics included help with email, searching the Internet, social media, Internet safety and online bill paying.

While implementing the Communities Wired! program we learned several lessons: 

1. The monthly fees cause a severe hardship to many residents and in some cases a basic need could go unmet to pay the bill. We realized we need to find ways to provide free wireless access to residents.
2. We needed to figure out how to address infrastructure and equipment costs. For new properties, we build this cost into the development of the community, but for existing properties, especially in rural and high-need areas, we are seeking funding from a variety of sources such as the CPUC. Eden is working to partner with local Internet providers to negotiate affordable fees to ensure long-term sustainability of the program.
3. We learned that we must provide residents with a minimum of 1.5 mbps of bandwidth because less than this doesn’t provide enough speed for basic tasks and leads to frustration. We also learned that bandwidth needs to be allocated to each unit rather than as a shared pool. This is more equitable and prevents one resident from slowing the service for others.
4.  We need to further expand our curriculum to assist residents using the Internet to support their daily activities. We are also developing tools to measure the impact of our technology efforts.

Eden’s goal is to find partners to help us provide wireless access at 100 percent of our properties.  We believe this is a critical infrastructure necessity, like bringing electricity to homes in the 1930s, that will support residents’ basic needs today and for years to come.