Voice Mail Program Offers Hope, Dignity To the Homeless

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By BOBBY ROSS JR.

Associated Press Writer

DALLAS (AP)

For 18 months, Mel Cornelison has slept in shelters and on sidewalks, relying on soup kitchens and strangers' kindness.

Now, though, the 40-year-old Dallas man has a new job - and hope that he might soon be able to afford weekly rent at a motel, if not a more permanent home. "A lot of employers don't want to deal with somebody on the street. They are leery," said Cornelison, now making $5.68 an hour at a Goodwill Industries warehouse. "I was glad somebody put me to work."

He credits a program that provides free voice mail to the homeless and other "phoneless" people, offering them a connection to potential employers, social service agencies and relatives. Dallas - along with Denver - last month joined a growing list of cities offering Community Voice Mail. The Seattle-based national program started in 1991 when two social service agencies there could not find a homeless boilermaker an employer wanted to hire.

The service has grown to 37 cities in 19 states, helping more than 47,000 people find jobs and housing last year, according to Community Voice Mail officials.

Hilary Terlouw, a 45-year-old woman from Bellingham, Wash., said she was living in an abandoned trailer with no electricity, no friends, no relatives and no job when she learned about Community Voice Mail three summers ago. Now she no longer eats in soup kitchens or showers at the YMCA. She lives in subsidized low-income housing and has a service dog and even a computer, she said.

"It just saved my life," said Terlouw, who battles mental illnesses and physical disabilities. "It really did. If I didn't have a telephone number to have doctors' offices or clinics call me back, I don't know what I would have done. I was truly at the end of my rope at that time."

With the help of a $2.5 million grant awarded last year by Cisco Systems Foundation, national organizers plan to expand the program to the nation's 50 largest cities by 2008.

"The intangible that Community Voice Mail provides is hope," said national spokeswoman Patricia Bonnell. "No one e-mails you to tell you you've got the job. They call you. Without a phone number on your resume, you can't get a job."

Before getting voice mail, Cornelison put The Stewpot, a ministry of the First Presbyterian Church of Dallas on his applications. But the last thing an employer wants to do is call a homeless shelter or a soup kitchen, say advocates of voice mail for the homeless.

"A lot of shelters have a pay phone that's in the community area," said Shannon Stewart, executive director of The Employment Project, which offers voice mail to the homeless in Chicago. "When you ask if John Doe is available, you hear the phone being thrown down and the screaming down the hallway."

Community Voice Mail gives each homeless person a phone number and each records a message. The numbers can't be used for outgoing calls, but people can check their messages from any regular or pay phone. The service costs the providing agency as little as $7 per number per month.

"It just makes people feel a lot better about themselves," said Larry Sykes, Community Voice Mail director at The Stewpot, which hopes to offer more than 2,500 voice mail lines in Dallas within three years. "Unless they tell somebody they're eating at The Stewpot or sleeping under a bridge, nobody knows it."

In Cornelison's case, Goodwill Industries was aware of his plight but used the voice mail system to contact him and offer him a job. His hiring has inspired others who frequent The Stewpot.

"I think that it is like a domino," said Pamela Nelson, an art teacher at the downtown ministry. "I mean, that uplifted everybody here. We've been with Mel a long time, and now he's out of it."

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