Digital TV may bypass the poor; Low-income people who lack addresses recognized by the census can't

[AndyTiedye]

Steve Richardson, who goes by the name "Gen. Dogon" on the streets of L.A.'s skid row, is the kind of person federal regulators had in mind when they created the digital-television transition's subsidy.

Richardson's job at a civil rights group leaves him with barely enough money for food. He can't afford a converter box to keep his antenna-equipped TV working on June 12, when stations across the country turn off their analog signals and start broadcasting solely in digital. But when he applied for a $40 converter-box voucher, he was turned down because he lives in the residential Sanborn Hotel.

"I already feel like a caveman in there," he said of his small downtown apartment. "I don't have a working phone in there, and I don't get half the channels. But now TV is being taken away from me, and there's nothing nobody is going to do about it."

A glitch in the Commerce Department program that administers the coupons has left Richardson and many other poor Americans unable to receive them. The problem lies in where they live.
Single-room occupancy hotels such as the Sanborn, which is operated by the Skid Row Housing Trust, are classified by the federal government as business addresses, not residential, and therefore are ineligible.
<snip>
http://www.contentagenda.com/articleXml/LN933726983.html?industryid=45174

[hlthe2b]

1. Damn... there must be lots of folks who got coupons who don't

need them or don't need both of them... Can't someone organize collecting these to distribute to folks like this?

[ZombieHorde]

2. Why is the government buying people TV equipment?

[msongs]

3. ummm because the government is RESPONSIBLE for the switch to HDTV? nt

[ZombieHorde]

5. How are they RESPONSIBLE and why would that matter? nt

[Fire1]

6. Uh, you missed several dozen discussions about this weeks

ago. Too late!

[ZombieHorde]

7. Too late for what?

eta: I didn't start this thread, I just posted in it.

[moundsview]

4. Hell, I'm still waiting for my 8-track conversion bailout.

It's getting harder to find free matchbooks to stick under the cartridges.

[Bluenorthwest]

8. I saw a homemade converter

Made from a small board, some coathangers and a couple of connectors from Radio shack. Ultra cheap and it worked. Apparently the insturctions are on You-tube.