Tacoma’s poor on wrong side of digital divide

Logging on to a favorite website or filling out a job application online is more than a point-and-click affair in Kalina Miller’s household.

First, the 34-year-old mother of two has to leave her Salishan home.

Former neighbors had allowed her and her two boys, ages 5 and 12, to share their wifi signal, but they’ve moved.

Now Miller, an intern with the Pierce County juvenile court system, often walks 10 minutes to the Salishan Family Investment Center to use the computer lab. But the center limits computer use to essentials like paying bills or looking for a job, so she’s become practiced at finding free or cheap Internet access elsewhere.

“That’s where family and friends come in,” she said. She regularly visits several family members in Tacoma who have service. She also looks for free wifi at businesses. “If they sell coffee, I go in and buy a dollar coffee.”

Like thousands of unconnected Tacoma families, Miller is on the wrong side of the digital divide — the term for the gap between those who have Internet connections and those who do not.

That divide is figuring prominently in the ongoing debate over the fate of Click, Tacoma’s city-owned cable and Internet system.

The Tacoma Public Utilities board and the City Council are deciding whether to keep it in city hands or lease it to an outside company. Proponents of each option see their plan as a way to improve Internet access for low-income Tacoma residents.

“If we can move people up the economic ladder, we are all going to be better,” CEO Brian Haynes said in April when his company, Rainier Connect, announced a bid for Click that included a pledge to provide families in need either free access to some websites or unfiltered connections at a low cost.

ACCESS WORST IN POOR AREAS

Federal studies show nearly every home in Tacoma has access to an Internet connection — if residents can afford it.

The top reason people do not have an Internet connection is that they simply don’t want one, according to a 2015 Federal Communications Commission report on the progress of broadband availability. The second reason is that access is too expensive.

Black and Hispanic residents are more likely than white or Asian households to rely on a hand-held device as their only link to the Internet, according to recent Census information.

About 15 percent of Tacoma Power residential customers who live in the city said in a survey earlier this year that they do not have a home Internet connection. That’s roughly 30,000 men, women and children.

The digital divide is greatest in Tacoma’s poorer neighborhoods. Miller’s community of Salishan is one of the most racially diverse neighborhoods in the county — and also the poorest. Census figures in the five years leading up to 2013 pin the median household income at $14,390 — far below the city’s median of $50,503. Citywide, 18 percent of people live below the poverty line. In Salishan, it’s triple that.

Salishan and parts of the Hilltop have the fewest home connections in the city: between 40 percent and 60 percent of homes lack an Internet connection. Compare that to the more prosperous North End, where less than 20 percent of homes lack service, according to data reported by Internet service providers to the FCC two years ago.

The Tacoma School District, where almost two-thirds of nearly 30,000 students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, operates on the assumption that families don’t have Internet service at home.

Shaun Taylor, chief information officer for the Tacoma School District, said teachers are careful to not assign homework that requires online research, but inevitably students with Internet at home have an advantage in completing assignments.

“That does give them an information opportunity that other kids don’t have,” Taylor said.

Click’s competitor, cable giant Comcast, offers a $9.95 monthly plan with a wifi router and 10 Mbps connection — fast enough to browse the Internet and watch streaming video — for families with children in the school lunch program.

Walter Neary, a spokesman for Comcast Washington, said Comcast’s Internet Essentials has connected 1,861 Tacoma School District families to the Internet. The service began in 2011 as a condition of Comcast’s merger with NBC-Universal.

SMARTPHONES THE ANSWER?

City Councilman Marty Campbell doesn’t need Census figures to tell him where pockets of poverty are. On a recent drive through the East Side, he parked on the side of the road and swiped the screen of his city-issued iPad to search for a wifi signal.

“When I’m in the North End, I open wifi networks and see 10 to 15,” he said.

On this day in Salishan, one of the densest neighborhoods in the city, there are only five wifi connections visible on his screen. Campbell said if there were a neighborhood this dense in the wealthier North End, he thinks more than 30 would be visible.

Bill Gaines, who oversees Click as Tacoma Public Utilties director, has said those who choose not to pay for Internet service for their homes can use their smartphones instead.

“The idea that there’s a big divide may be a bit of a red herring I think,” Gaines said in July. “I’m not sure there’s a big lack of access issue.”

But for Councilwoman Victoria Woodards, smartphones are not the solution.

“Not everyone has a smartphone with a data plan,” she said. “The digital divide is real. People’s access to the Internet or lack thereof is real.”

Jason Boyd, who was at the Moore Library in Tacoma’s South End last week to look up information about manufacturing jobs and check his email, said smartphones don’t work for things like job applications.

“Your phone would prevent you from seeing the whole page. It’s just difficult,” Boyd said. “If someone calls you it might back you out and you’d have to start over.”

Smartphones aren’t always an option for another reason: spotty cell coverage. Campbell held up his cellphone in one hollow on the East Side to show there was no service.

TPU board chairman Bryan Flint says getting more homes connected to the Internet should be a key consideration as officials decide Click’s path.

He thinks the city could do more if it keeps Click than an outside company would, but the details would have to be worked out. His board is expected to decide by the end of the year whether it wants to keep Click or lease it.

“It’s just an essential part of modern life,” Flint said. “To me, if we want to be an equitable city, making sure people have part of that digital world, there’s an important role to play.”

This story was originally published November 16, 2015 at 4:29 AM with the headline "Tacoma’s poor on wrong side of digital divide."