In Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, rehab development is underway on an existing 460-unit multi-building housing project for low-income families. The tenants will share a luxury most of the neighborhood can't get: free broadband.

DSL and cable broadband are generally unavailable in Bed-Stuy, so for the new development, rooftop-mounted Tsunami dishes from wireless networking developer Proxim will use point-to-point wireless connections to distribute bandwidth from a T-1 line that serves the complex. Connectivity comes courtesy of the One Economy Corp. — a group dedicated to empowering low-income residential areas with technology — and the Settlement Housing Fund, a nonprofit developer that is folding the $800 per month cost for the T-1 into the larger operating costs of the project. The group also works with PC partners such as Gateway to provide computers to low-income families.

One Economy's efforts in 12 U.S. cities have inspired rural action elsewhere. The Kentucky Housing Corp. enacted a new policy this month requiring broadband access for homes that get more than half their funds from the KHC. By itself, the rule is largely ineffectual: areas with DSL or cable availability already have “access” to broadband, and homes built outside broadband footprints are only required to include conduit for fiber — not the fiber itself. Therefore, residents who want fiber to the home have to foot the bill, and families with low incomes likely can't afford it. But according to Linda Johnson, president of Kentucky's Center for Information Technology Enterprise, the state hopes to eventually introduce programs to help fund broadband access to low-income families as part of a broader initiative to spur Internet use throughout the state, mimicking the One Economy model.

On the federal level, last spring Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, introduced a bill (S 2479) that would amend the Internal Revenue Service code to include broadband availability as one of the criteria used to select recipients of low-income housing credits. The bill doesn't require broadband access; it just requires that state agencies factor broadband into their decision-making processes. But homebuilders are likely to include broadband capabilities just to be safe.

For One Economy, broadband is a means to deliver the information and services most vital to low-income families. Company-created portals called “beehives” provide money management tips, health care assistance and job listings — in both English and Spanish, tailored for those with limited literacy.

“The only way to make it effective is to make it problem-free for people to use,” said Tom Kamber, director of One Economy's New York program. “And when you've got a 30-minute window between putting your kids to bed and going to bed yourself, the difference between dial-up and broadband is often the difference between getting the job done or not.”