If you don’t think having a SIM card is a “pressing problem” then you don’t have enough contact with homeless people. Staying in contact with those who care is vital for basic things such as:

• having a support network (of professionals)
• being able to call for help
• get information on sources of help
• not getting debanked
• having a support community

You have no idea how hard life on the street is. Plenty of folks there just don’t have a phone because it gets stolen, lost, can’t charge it, falls in the water, breaks or gets thrown to bits because you got wronged again and can’t take it anymore. Maybe you’ll sell it for some cash so you can buy food or get some water for a week?

It all starts with a damn SIM card.

Imagine you can’t do 2FA for your government ID. How can you get a phoen? How are you going to apply to social subsidized housing? How are help providers able to help you if you can’t authenticate to government websites? Social subsidized housing all runs on government eID stuff. Maybe you need to pay 800 euros worth of healthcare bills but don’t know what it’s for and the only way to request it in a timely manner is via authenticating yourself to your insurance company over the internet! Now you can’t!

Basic societal technology needs to work for everyone.

If you are undocumented? Then you can’t identify yourself and thus can’t age verify either. Plenty of homeless people or people with incredible life issues are not and will never be able to complete a government-backed age verification scheme.