Crossing the Digital Divide for Unhoused Portlanders
The Village Coalition, Futel, and Freewire are thrilled to announce the completion of the first stage of our goal of providing internet and communication services to unhoused Portlanders with the provision of a 10Mbps Enterprise Internet service to the rest stop Right 2 Dream Too. The rest stop, located at 900 N. Thunderbird Ave, is operated by houseless and formerly houseless people and provides refuge, resources, and community to hundreds of houseless people per year.
Using hardware provided by Futel and networking services by Freewire, residents of and visitors to Right 2 Dream Too now have one more path to staying in touch with friends and family, accessing governmental and medical services, organizing volunteers and donations, and building networks of advocacy and resource sharing with other villages. The normal cost for this service is $300 per month plus an installation charge, all of which Freewire is donating. “Freewire is fortunate to have this unique opportunity to serve our community by delivering reliable dedicated internet access to our neighbors at Right 2 DreamToo. Our company appreciates the importance of Village Coalition and we take great pride in partnering with them on this project” says Christopher Scalera, Freewire’s General Manager.
The next goal for the project partners is to provide the same service to Portland’s other transitional housing communities.
Org Profiles
The Village Coalition is a network of formerly houseless people and their allies working to provide low-cost housing to all Portlanders who need it by restoring relationships between unhoused and housed people and by increasing the resilience and adaptivity of our local neighborhoods.
Futel is a social service and arts organization dedicated to providing communication tools for all communities. Futel installs public telephones, provides telecommunications services for houseless support organizations, and develops extremely accessible interactive art installations. Futel installed its first public telephone in August 2014, and has continued to expand its services with the support of many volunteers and contributors. Recent funding has come from the Regional Arts and Culture Council and the Precipice Fund. Futel uses salvage payphones, thrift store landlines, obsolete IT hardware kept alive with open source firmware, rented cloud computers, and bulk telephony services paid for by the minute.
Freewire is an expert in delivering premium connectivity solutions for businesses in the Pacific Northwest. They provide Dedicated Internet Access using Fixed Wireless technology, offering 99.99% uptime and availability. Since 2005 Freewire has installed over 1000 Fixed Wireless connections in the Pacific Northwest, and are proven experts in Wi-Fi & SD-WAN solutions as well.
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