New York has more than 75,000 homeless people living on the streets or in shelters, according to a federal report released recently. That number is on the rise despite national totals being in decline. With the holiday season upon us, the New York tech community is trying to help out. We took a look at two tech companies tackling the issue from two very different perspectives.
WeShelter is a mobile app that allows you to donate someone else’s money to homeless people with a simple tap. The app is aimed at people who want to help the homeless, but aren’t sure about handing cash to a stranger on the street. “The City officially advises people not to give money directly to the homeless,” WeShelter cofounder, Ilya Lyashevsky said. "We thought we could provide a solution using mobile technology.”
The idea is that a WeShelter user sees a homeless person on the street, taps the app and a small donation is sent to a homeless charity from a corporate sponsor.
Every time a user taps the donate button, the sponsor’s brand is displayed and roughly 5 cents is donated. The sponsors are typically local New York tech startups, like Moovi, which is currently running a campaign. Users can tap as often as they want and Lyashevsky (pictured left) says that yes, some people make hundreds of consecutive taps.
WeShelter takes 10 percent of the donation for operational costs and the rest of the money is split evenly between three homeless charities: Goddard Riverside, Breaking Ground and Urban Pathways.
If you see a homeless person in a particularly bad way, you can tap a button that will call 311 and automatically connect you to a homeless outreach operator. Additionally, if users see someone who appears homeless they can tap a button on the app that uploads the location to a new mapping feature. This creates a map of the city’s homeless, which homeless outreach groups can use to locate people who need them most.
For Thanksgiving week WeShelter partnered with #Hashtaglunchbag, a movement that brings packed lunches to the homeless. Volunteers at the event used the new mapping feature to help them feed homeless people in various locations around New York.
Since launching the iOS app at the start of 2015, WeShelter has received more than 35,000 donations. Thanks to Prolific Interactive who donated their developers time, an Android app was launched last month and as a result Lyashevsky is expecting a surge in donations over the holiday season.
Rather than helping existing homeless people, SumAll hopes to stop people from becoming homeless in the first place. SumAll.org is the non-profit arm of SumAll.com, the big data firm that is already helping the likes of Starbucks and National Geographic with their social media analytics.
SumAll.org runs a number of projects analyzing global trafficking and prostitution as well as a partnership with the City of New York to try and predict homelessness.
SumAll analyzes data (court records, shelter history, and demographic information) from the New York City's Department of Homeless Services to develop a tool that predicts which evictions are likely to lead to homelessness. SumAll’s software provides eviction prevention advice to the most at risk people.
"Identifying families at risk of becoming homeless early in the eviction process presents a huge prevention opportunity. We are in the process of creating the algorithm that helps find these families in need and detect future homelessness hotspots in New York City," said Stefan Heeke, Executive Director of SumAll.org.
