Technology built the cashless society. Advances are helping the unhoused.

WASHINGTON — John Littlejohn remembers the time when many people had a few dollars to spare to buy a copy of Street Sense, the local newspaper that covers topics related to the homeless and employs unhoused individuals as salespeople.

Nowadays he notices that there are fewer people walking around with change. Even well-meaning individuals who want to help are likely to check their pockets and apologize, he said.

“I would spend six or seven hours here and not get more than $12 to $15,” said Littlejohn, 62, who was homeless for 13 years. “People say, 'I don't leave the house with cash.'”

But just as technological shifts helped create the problem, further developments are now helping charity groups and advocates for the homeless reach those most at risk of being left behind in a cashless society.

A special Street Sense phone app allows people to buy a copy electronically and have the profits go straight to him. Thanks to Social Security and his income from Street Sense and other side gigs, Littlejohn now has his own apartment.

One of the bigger shifts in Western society over the past twenty years has been the decline in cash transactions. It started when more and more people used credit cards to pay for things as trivial as a cup of coffee. It accelerated as smartphone technology advanced to the point where paying cash became the norm for many.

This shift is clearly felt in street-level charitable giving – from individual donations to beggars and buskers to the Salvation Army's red donation kettles outside supermarkets.

“Everyone now just has cards or a phone,” said Sylvester Harris, a 54-year-old Washington resident who works near the Capital One Arena. “You can tell those who really want to help you, but even they simply have no money left.”

The cashless world can be particularly intimidating for those without a home. While electronic payment apps like PayPal or Venmo have become ubiquitous, many of these options require things beyond their reach: credit cards, bank accounts, identification documents, or permanent mailing addresses.

Charities have difficulty adapting. The Salvation Army has created a system where donors can essentially tap the kettle with their phone and pay immediately.

Michelle Wolfe, development director for the Salvation Army in Washington, said the new system is only in 2% of collection pots in the greater Washington area, but it has already resulted in increased donations. The minimum cash donation is now $5, and donors can routinely make up to $20, Wolfe said.

At Street Sense, similar developments were needed to keep pace with changing consumer habits. Around 2013, executive director Brian Camore said he started receiving “anecdotal reports left and right” from sellers saying people wanted to buy a copy but didn't have the cash. Each seller buys the copies from Street Sense for 50 cents and sells them for $2.

“We were losing sales and had to do something about it,” he says. “We recognized that times were changing, and we had to change with them.”

Eventually, he heard about an affiliated newspaper in Vancouver that had developed a cash payment app and licensed the technology. Sellers can now redeem their winnings at the Street Sense offices.

Thomas Ratliff, director of supplier employment at Street Sense, interacts directly with the newspaper's approximately 100 vendors. He cited the COVID-19 pandemic as an additional factor that made life difficult for his team.

For starters, it has discouraged people from using cash for fear that exchanging paper money would be a vector of infection. But the most damaging part was the permanent reduction in the number of people working from downtown offices, cutting off Street Sense's core customer base.

“Commuters have always been the best customers compared to tourists,” he says.

But without that steady stream of high-profile commuters, Ratliff says his vendors have had to expand their territory. Instead of focusing on the downtown business district, Street Sense vendors now often travel by subway to places like Silver Spring, Maryland, to find commercial areas with regular foot traffic.

Ratliff now does technical support for its suppliers, helping them navigate the complexities of a modern online presence. Among the most common problems: “Changing emails, losing or forgetting passwords, losing your documents.”

Certain payment platforms like Venmo and Cash App are more home-friendly because they don't require a bank account, just a phone number and email address. But even that can be daunting. Ratliff said many of its vendors often change cell phone numbers, and a landline phone number can be a key element in verifying your identity in these apps.

Others have taken the technology a step further by developing apps that aim not only to enable cashless donations to the homeless, but also to direct them to support systems that can help them get off the streets. The Samaritan app takes a highly personalized approach by allowing donors to help sponsor an unhoused person without using cash.

The program currently operates in seven cities, including Los Angeles and Baltimore, distributing special cards to unhoused people. These include a QR code that allows individuals to donate directly to someone's account. The app itself contains dozens of mini-profiles of local unhoused individuals describing their situation and immediate needs. Donors can give money to fund specific needs, from groceries or a deposit for an apartment to clothing suitable for a job interview.

“It's a lot harder to walk past someone if you know even 1% of their story,” says Jon Kumar, the founder of the Samaritan app. “It personalizes the person in need: their personality and the tangible specificity of their needs and goals.”

Kumar licenses his app technology to charities, and recipients can redeem their donations by meeting with a case manager — which serves as a route to provide other services, such as counseling or rehab. In addition to the direct donations, recipients can also receive a $10 or $20 bonus for reaching certain benchmarks, such as meeting with a case manager, submitting a job application or even contacting an estranged family member.

“No one is going to pay their rent through street donations. But if our platform helps someone find a home, look for work and strive for recovery, those things have much more impact,” said Kumar.

These attempts to bridge the cashless technology gap have involved trial and error over the years. Wolfe said the Salvation Army originally tried a system using a QR code that “proved too clunky and took too long.”

Kumar's early efforts included an experiment that gave people without homes Bluetooth beacon devices that allowed app users to see which beacon holders were in their area and donate to them. But the beacons required regular battery replacement and the model was eventually abandoned.

None of these solutions are perfect and many people are still left behind. Ratliff said many people simply don't have the temperament or personality for the job.

“You have to have guts to sell a newspaper and bring in customers,” he said. Others are disabled or weak and 'cannot cope with the physical stress of selling there'.

Kumar, the Samaritan app developer, said many people without homes “are not well suited for these types of interventions.”

Some have deeper mental or emotional issues that make the level of structure the program requires impossible to navigate.

“Many of the people we are trying to serve need more intensive, perhaps permanent, mental health support,” he said. 'These people are constantly abandoned because of the polychronic nature of their problems. behind.”

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Associated Press writer Gary Fields contributed to this report.