Introduction:

The introduction of information and communication technologies (ICT) on a global scale has
been labeled as the quickest revolution the world has ever seen, possessing “extraordinary
rapidity” (Keniston, 2003). Kenneth Keniston, professor of human development at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) places this speed into context by comparing the
radio, which took 38 years to reach a global scale, to the world wide web which only took 4
years to match. Unfortunately, the amount of time it took for ICTs to reach the globe, while
seemingly impressive, is a misleading statistic. By the time of this source's creation, ICTs had
only reached 5% of the global population (Keniston, 2003). Even with the near 19-year
difference between the previous source and today, there is still a considerable difference of
access to ICTs among global populations. This can be seen in modern terms with 41% of U.S.
adults who annually make less than 30,000 dollars don’t own a desktop or laptop computer
(Pew Research Center, 2021). This difference in access is commonly known as the digital divide.
The digital divide, while continually decreasing over the years, never actually closed. Due to its
lack of closure, the divide was exacerbated in recent years by the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of
its effects include a widespread decrease in academic performance among racial minorities and
low-income individuals who don’t have consistent access to ICTs (The Hunt Institute, 2020).
Another, more widespread, effect of the pandemic can be seen in the unemployment of more
than 590 thousand people in Los Angeles alone (Los Angeles Times, 2022). Luckily, however,
pandemic restrictions are beginning to come to an end and with this end comes the availability
of job positions in the U.S. workforce. This is especially good news for the communities of
people who were made homeless during pandemic, or who were previously homeless before
any restrictions. To clarify, this paper defines homelessness as simply lacking a stable shelter
and includes people living on the streets, moving between temporary shelters, including houses
of friends, family and emergency accommodation. Peculiarly enough, however, the rate of
homelessness hasn’t gone down in some places like California whose homeless population has
consistently fluctuated between 150-160 thousand people even before the pandemic (United
States Interagency Council on Homelessness, 2020) (World Population Review, 2022). This lack
of hiring among California’s homeless population raises the question of “why homeless
communities aren’t receiving the same hiring rates as other communities in the U.S.” As this
question isn’t a particularly one, many researchers have already done their own studies on the
subject.

Legal requirements and barriers:

This situation has gone as far as to complicate relations between different religious
denominations of Christianity, as well as the relationship between religious institutions and city
legislatures. The change in relations came to be due to St. Brendan’s Catholic church's decision
to house a homeless community within their property (Goodheart, 2014). This act was seen as
“violating city zoning laws” and “centered on the issue of religion” since a Heritage Christian
School didn’t want to operate near a homeless shelter. Issues such as these prevent homeless
communities from being able to have a place that they can call a home, which not only has
sentimental value but also job seeking value. As indicated by a trial attorney for the U.S.
department of Justice Sarah Golabek-Goldman in “The Yale Law Journal,” most employers
expect their potential employees to list an address in their applications or their resumes. Failure
to meet this expectation due to homelessness has left potential employees to be placed under,
“pervasive negative stereotypes” (Golabek-Goldman, 2017). These negative stereotypes led to
the development of the “Ban the Address” movement which, as the name suggests, calls for the
removal of address requirements on applications. Being homeless, or even associated with
being near a homeless shelter, has been reported to leave more than 70% of homeless
individuals surveyed by the National Coalition for the Homeless feeling,” they had been
discriminated against,” (Golabek-Goldman, 2017). Although both sheltered and unsheltered
homelessness is discriminated against, the main source of discrimination is the stigma of
homeless individuals possessing, “poor appearance, attire, behaviors, and hygiene,” (Golabek-
Goldman, 2017). These problems, in theory, give sheltered homeless communities an
advantage in the job seeking market, however slight that advantage may be. Unfortunately,
there are not enough facilities within California to give unsheltered communities a chance to
improve on these aspects (Bertrand, 2020). One of the key factors restricting the building of
new shelters is, “The California Environmental Quality act” which has recently been,
"repurposed […] into a weapon […] by preventing the construction of new and affordable
housing where most needed,” (Bertrand, 2020). The act works by forcing potential residential
projects to be placed under a rigorous set of reviewing standards, which can then be
anonymously denied approval later.

Technology between classes:

As previously mentioned, businesses have had a great amount of impact on the employment of
homeless individuals with their viewing of homelessness as, “a black flag on your resume,”
(Golabek-Goldman, 2017). In more recent times, business owners have discriminated against
potential employees by using artificial intelligence. Before an employer personally reads any,
applications are sent through a system that scans for certain key words that dictate whether
the application is sent to the employer or thrown away (Moss, 2021). These systems have been
known to particularly target physically or mentally disabled communities by misinterpreting
their “micro expressions” that only computers can see as they tend to happen within fractions
of a second. This use of artificial intelligence reflects a greater shift of employers, as with many
other institutions, growing to be dependent on technology that some homeless communities
simply don’t have access to. Within the social and cultural science journal “Javnost”, it is
claimed that “society is ever more dependent upon digital systems,” and that as technology
progresses, so will our dependence upon it (Javnost, 2017). This also means that as technology
progresses, those who don’t have access will be continually left behind. This finding seems to
disprove both findings in the introduction that argue the digital divide was closing before the
pandemic. Looking further into the literature of the Journal of Urban affairs, it is proven that
both sets of findings actually support each other. Within the study, it is found that 44% of an
unsheltered homeless community possessed cell phones and 62% of an adolescent homeless
community possessed cell phones (Reitzes, et al, 2014). These findings suggest that as time
passes, younger generations are gaining more access to technology at a similar rate that society
is developing new technology to depend on.

The Unhoused:
Following the trend of technology moving through homeless communities, research focusing on
technological access and usage among communities has been conducted as well. Similar to
what is stated by Reitzes, this researcher proposes that the appropriate question to ask is not
“who can find a network connection” but rather “what are people able to do when they go on-
line"(DiMaggio, 2001). This is because a significant number of homeless communities already
have access to some sort of ICT. The author eventually concludes that more in depth research is
needed as technology develops to, “explain important dimensions of digital inequality,”
(DiMaggio, 01). Some more in-depth research has been developed by a research team with a
doctorate in sociology since the previous sources creation that explores what qualities a person
needs to have to be able to use the internet to their advantage effectively. It was concluded
that,” income, social status, geographic location, ability and age” (Kularski, 2012) tend to be the
guiding factors quality of technology usage. These factors place homeless communities at a
significant disadvantage for developing digital literacy and the skills necessary for ICT usage.
Another example of the “in-depth” research that was previously called for examines how the
inability to use ICTs prevents homeless communities from “confronting antipoverty activism”
(BC Studies, 2017) that may be serving to improve their conditions. By being unable to use one
of the largest modern platforms for activism in the modern world, spreading the message of
their personal experiences made it difficult compared to other movements.

Gap:

Based on the findings presented so far, a gap in present research can be identified. With the
restrictions placed on employment efforts due to the COVID-19 pandemic being relatively
recent, no other researchers have been able to cover this topic while taking this factor into
account yet. Another portion to the gap is seen with the large increase in unemployment across
the U.S. With jobs reopening, there should be a theoretical increase in hiring among homeless
communities which is not currently being seen. Furthermore, there is minimal coverage of an
area that incorporates both suburban and urban unhoused communities with most of the focus
on one setting or the other. The gap further constricts with the focus in research being
restricted to Contra Costa County, which is near one of the leading developers of technology on
the planet, Silicon Valley. Several sources have researched the digital divide in faraway
locations, yet very few have observed access within an area that is already assumed to have
incredible amounts of access. Combining all these factors leads to the development of the
research question and method with which to answer said question.

Purpose and Method:

Keeping the gap in research in mind, the researcher will be answering the question of how the
digital divide has impacted the amount of access homeless communities have to job
opportunities within post-quarantine society in Contra Costa County. The primary purpose of
this research question is to explore the connection between lacking experience with technology
and the ease of access for obtaining a job within the constraints of a post quarantine society. To
fulfill this purpose, a mix of qualitative and quantitative versions of content analysis were
implemented. Qualitative content analysis is the collection and analysis of descriptive data
within data sets. Qualitative content analysis, in this case, involves observing the structures of
several websites and detailing the key components of their structure. Quantitative content
analysis is the process of obtaining numerical data that can then be analyzed to reveal trends in
a set of data. The quantitative data to be collected will include counting popularity ranking of
multiple websites and counting the pages within each site. It is hypothesized that the digital
divide is a leading factor for the lack of hiring among unhoused populations and that it has
gotten more difficult for unhoused communities to get hired within post-quarantine society
because of it. This decision is based on the idea that the trend of discrimination, like address
requirements and the use of artificial intelligence mentioned in the literature review, will
continue to progress.

Procedure:

Before analyzing websites, deciding which locations will be chosen needs to come first. Each
location will have a maximum of a 10-minute walking distance to any one shelter located within
the county. This ensures that potential unhoused communities who do apply to any one of
these locations can reach the location in a timely and reasonable manner. Google maps will be
utilized to determine which locations are a 10-minute walking distance from shelters. Once
each location is chosen, the next step is to determine whether the locations possess a website
in the first place. It is understood by the researcher that there are some businesses willing to
hire all groups of people that will not possess a website. While this is true, the purpose of this
research is to measure the impact of the digital divide, and therefore any analysis must involve
a disparity of access among digital technologies. While other options may be available, they
bear no impact on this research. This study chose 9 locations to analyze because all other
previous options were invalidated either due to lacking a website or lacking the ability to hire
people of any skill level. It is imperative that only locations that can take entry-level employees
are chosen because any more requirements would potentially divide the unhoused community,
the group being studied, based on skill or education level. To analyze each website in the same
manner to reduce discrepancies in results, a set of questions was created to ask of each site. By
utilizing the same questions for each site, no one site will have varying amounts of information
recorded about it compared to another. The process of developing each question was not
inspired by past research. Instead, the questions were created by dissecting every step it takes
to reach the application portion of a website, and then developing a question based on that
step that can be viewed as potentially limiting for those lacking in digital technology skills.

It is important to remember before detailing the analysis process that overall ease of access for
people who lack experience with digital technologies is what is being measured. This means
that what may be considered as easy access for a person with digital experience may be difficult
for a person lacking in experience. When analyzing the quantitative data, the first step is to
compare each result to other locations within the data set and record any outstanding trends.
Identifying trends like this allows the researcher to gain an idea on how to rank what
possibilities, or limits, are present for unhoused communities and furthers the development of
a response to the research question. An outstanding trend can include a unanimous or a
majority result. Another example includes a unique amount that is not seen in any other
results. There is a unique circumstance when measuring the steps it takes to reach the
application portion of a website where numbers are obtained instead of a binary response. This
data still requires the acknowledgement of trends, but also marks a value of 3 or more as being
detrimental to the job seeking process, and anything less as being supportive. Analysis of
qualitative findings follows the same process of observing trends for the same justifications.
The only difference in the process is that deciding what is determined as easy or not is based on
a case-by-case basis. An example of this can be seen in listing the requirements each
application asks of the applicant. If an application were to ask for only a resume and a phone
number, it would be ranked as easy because both resources are easy to obtain for anyone. If
the application asked for a resume, multiple phone numbers, and an email address, it would be
ranked as difficult. This is because unhoused communities likely do not possess multiple phones
to list and creating an email address is a self-guided process that many likely do not experience
because they have limited consistent access to digital technologies. By compiling all the
experiences considered difficult and easy, an answer to the research question regarding ease of
job acquisition can be uncovered.

Equipment:

The equipment and resources needed to conduct the research included a computer to access
each website and to store findings for future analysis. A research database with access to the
results of past research was also a necessity. The questions used to probe each website can be
viewed within each of the 4 figures within the findings section.