When it comes to the right trade-off for the housed and the unhoused in terms of email service, I'm skeptical that the solution is regulatory. It seems like there is a large number of email providers that already offer what the homeless need. The problem is simply setting them up with the correct provider and user settings.
This seems like a job for people that work with the homeless.
But, look at that: the federal government already provides the homeless with cell phones. Yet instead of arguing that the government should also provide free email—which of course costs far less than cell service—the poster argues that existing commercial services should better serve the homeless.
Which, of course, would be nice! But my point was that this kind of argument seems to reflect a mistaken perception of free online services as some sort of social service, with commensurate obligations.
It seems like we basically agree.
Can governments (not necessarily the federal government) run a public service internet system? Sure, and probably more easily than we can, as another poster suggested, regulate tech companies into providing the right tradeoffs for housed and unhoused users.