by Chris Stubbs

Created on: December 22, 2009

Cell phones can help a person build a life from the ground up. It only makes sense for a homeless person to put the first of their income toward one these wonderful pieces of technology. If they manage to get a phone with GPS or Google, they then have the ability to find any job within a mile radius of where they are standing. They can make a quick phone call before they even waste a step in the direction of a dead lead. They can keep in touch with their job contacts, and maybe even people that would give them rides if something works out. It doesn't make much sense at all for a homeless person not to have a cell phone. Without one, no one could get back with them with important information that would allow them to get up off of the streets. Aspiring writers (like me) have the access to a portal of future opportunity with phones that allow them to create and edit articles. The opportunity ends only where they let it.

Survival? Well I don't know about that. This country is too rich, with too many resources, available to everyone, for anyone to suffer more than a couple of hungry days in the cold. And that would only be because they didn't know where to go for free shelter and food. Cell phones allow that person to go from being a dead weight to society to a productive citizen.

So should we hand out cell phones too the homeless? Certainly not! The difference between someone surviving with a cell phone and someone using a cell phone to create a life is in the individual. You hand them out, and you destroy another example of progress for them - much the same way as handing out jobs, based on race, creates ghettos. Teaching someone how to seek out opportunity is more important than giving it to them. Teach them how to fish, and they will never go hungry.

You'll always have the blatant ignorance that creates those thoughts of envy and spite toward people that appear to be taking advantage of the system. There are those that may feel like their petty tax dollars are at risk when they see a homeless person with a cell phone, or even feel the need to make sure that a bum doesn't have a cell phone before they hand him change. It is that same failure to seek opportunity in their lives, but instead find fault, that leads a person to be homeless. The advantages that a cell phone provides someone who is homeless should put a smile on the faces of someone who witnesses them using one. It is one more effort they have put toward bettering their lives.

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