Community Voice Mail
for Phoneless/
Homeless Persons City of Seattle
Washington

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Imagine looking for a job or an apartment or trying to stay in touch with family and friends without a telephone. Community Voice Mail for Phoneless/Homeless Persons (CVM) is a personalized telephone message system that allows people without their own telephones to do business or otherwise maintain contact with the rest of the world. CVM clients have a personal seven-digit telephone number and access code to retrieve messages. Using any private or public touch-tone telephone, homeless clients can be linked to potential employers, landlords, or social service providers.

Before CVM, Seattle's phoneless population used homeless shelters and social workers' offices as ad hoc message centers. But that system was unreliable. The homeless often missed chances to find housing or jobs because they couldn't be reached when opportunity knocked. Social workers were often overwhelmed simply trying to reach their clients.

CVM was developed in Seattle by the Worker Center, a local nonprofit organization, which operates the voice mail system in cooperation with public and nonprofit agencies serving disadvantaged clientele. Case managers carefully select clients to receive CVM numbers, requiring them to have a specific objective, such as finding work, housing, or training. Clients typically use CVM for a few weeks to several months.

The program began as a pilot effort in 1991, with funds from the state's Department of Community Development. The first client, a boiler repairman living in a local mission, had made no headway toward finding employment. Within two weeks of receiving a voice mail number, he found a job. Another CVM user printed business cards on which he listed his voice mail number to advertise custodial services; he soon was receiving enough calls to establish a stable business. Of the 148 clients using CVM during its pilot phase, 126 found work and 78 found housing. Thanks to the voice mail system, clients who would typically have spent six months or more in the social welfare system found work or housing in four to eight weeks.

As word of the CVM pilot spread, more social service agencies asked to join the system. The City of Seattle, King County, the Boeing Employees Good Neighbor Fund, and the Active Voice Corporation provided funds to install an in-house CVM system at the Worker Center. This year, the CVM program was broadened to include other clients using the social service system, such as abused women and pregnant teens.

By mid-1993, 26 public and nonprofit agencies were dispensing nearly 300 voice mail telephone numbers (including 30 in Spanish) to their homeless and disadvantaged clients.