One thing that prevents the homeless from moving out of homelessness is the weight with which the government and certain businesses place on a permanent address to define legitimacy. I understand the historic position of a person's address denoting their findability and therefore trustworthiness in society, but in today's age of everyone carrying trackable GPS telephones on them, I wonder if those policies can be relaxed to provide a pathway back into society.
The government won't send mail to a PO Box. This means a person cannot get a new license if they don't have a home. If a person doesn't have a valid driver's license, often times businesses won't hire them. Other places (such as gyms) won't let a person use their facilities if they don't have a valid address.
Can we develop an official communication channel for homeless people? Could we have a federal e-mail address? Also, can people have options apart from a permanent address that could build trust with a community?
A car rental business explained to me that the reason their customers had to pay them with a credit card was that the company was then assured to have multiple options to find customers and to charge them in case the car was damaged or disappeared. Having cash or a debit card was a dead end to them.
People don't trust the homeless. Church programs and religious communities often provide a network of trust to homeless people. This is often a route for success for a homeless person and it works if that homeless person believes in the same God. Could we build something like this in the secular sector?
I think if a person wants to get out of their unstable situation and become trustworthy, they shouldn't have to ascribe to a religion to do it. This country has been putting a lot of its ills on the backs of religion and I think it's time for other communities and organizations (to include government entities) to step up and offer solutions. The churches seem overworked.
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