Randall Paul Jenkins, Esq. » Blog Archive » Reason #239781 Why I Love Google.

Today Google gave all homeless persons in San Francisco a free phone number and voicemail. I have always been a pretty big supporter of Mayor Gavin Newsom (even with that whole affair scandal, he handled it pretty well) and the strides “The City” (On the west coast, this means San Francisco) has made as of late, but this one definitely tops the list. San Francisco also gives out tokens to the homeless allowing them to use the public French style bathrooms whenever they need (which a few of them also use to take showers in, since the bathrooms are self cleaning), and recently launched an effort led by Mayor Newsom to use less bottled water and take advantage of the tap water (which is amazingly pure up in those parts) by giving all gov’t employees a reusable bottle and banning bottled water from city sponsored events.

You can find a full write up about Google’s move over at msnbc.com, but here is a brief pull:

MSNBC

“How do you communicate as a homeless individual? ” Newsom asked. “How do you expect your life to turn around if you can’t even get information or if someone can’t even get in touch with you?”

“It just seems exactly like any other voice mail,” said Craig Walker, senior project manager of Google. “There’s no stigma attached to it that ‘hey this is a temporary thing’ or ‘this is an 800 number.’ It’s really just a local number owned by the user.”

One man who used to be homeless said the right message can raise the spirit.

“Having your family, friends and loved ones being able to say ‘here I’m thinking about you, I love you, I want you to know you’re mine, and I miss you,’ can have a monumental change in one’s behavior.”

Well done Google, Well done Mayor Newsom.

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