Rochester Brings Back Free Pay Phones for the Homeless

When Rochester, New York removed its last pay phones two years ago, something unexpected happened. Libraries and community centers were suddenly flooded with people desperately needing to make calls.

Eric Kunsman, a photography professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, had spent years documenting pay phones as they disappeared across the city. He noticed a troubling pattern: the last phones to survive were all in the poorest neighborhoods.

These weren't relics gathering dust. People without reliable cell phone access, especially those experiencing homelessness, depended on them for everything from calling potential employers to reaching social services.

So Kunsman teamed up with digital librarian Rebekah Walker and researcher Janelle Duda-Banwar to do something about it. They launched the GoodPhone Project, converting old pay phones to run on internet technology and making them completely free to use.

The need was even greater than they imagined. Each of the six phones they've installed gets hundreds of calls every month. About 20% of those calls go to social services, which is why those calls have no time limit (regular calls max out at 20 minutes).

The phones offer something else crucial for job seekers: voicemail. Users can set up their own extensions, giving them a real phone number to list on applications.

The project focused on neighborhoods that lost pay phones when they needed them most. One phone runs entirely on solar power because the location had no electrical access.

The Ripple Effect

What started as one photographer's documentation project is now reconnecting people to opportunities. When someone can call about a job opening or reach a caseworker, a single phone call can change the trajectory of their entire week, or even their life.

The phones represent something bigger than free calls. They're a reminder that as technology races forward, some people get left behind not because they don't want to keep up, but because they can't afford to.

Six phones might seem small, but they're proving that simple, practical solutions can address real community needs without requiring massive budgets or complicated systems.

Communities everywhere are watching Rochester's experiment, and that matters for people who just need to make a call.