Mail was not supposed to run today but we got mail today, wrapping up two weeks of living on pins and needles and more than four years of tremendous stress. Both my sons now have proper ID after years of one of them having an out of state ID and the other having no ID at all.
TLDR: I was able to get my son state ID using the same documents I had four years ago that were insufficient at that time. State guidelines have changed and it's nothing short of a miracle for us.
We need to do a better job of making it possible for poor people to access ID in the US. I was told they drop the fee from $54 to $5 if you go to DHSH and get papers.
So if you are poor and disabled and etc, you CAN jump through hoops to get a break on the cost of ID. I don't know how to fix this, but jumping through extra hoops is extra challenging if you are extremely poor -- possibly to the point of being homeless -- and possibly unwell or disabled in some way as a root cause of your poverty.
I have serious health problems and jumping through hoops is often a bigger problem for me than money, even though money is a chronic source of stress in recent years and there is never enough. It will likely take me a few weeks to fully recover from the logistics involved in arranging ID for both of them, but the worst of that should be behind me and the lowest point was probably a few hours ago.
I can't overstate how much of a problem it is to be unable to get ID because you don't have the money or there are too many hoops to jump through. This actively denies people access to a normal life and has the potential to push people into criminal behavior as their only means to survive because legitimate channels are not available.
My son was not forced into a life of crime in part because he still lived with family, so it wasn't essential that he in specific have a bank account, etc.
Two other things I would like to see:
There is a long human history of friction between settled peoples and nomadic peoples. Currently, if you are wealthy enough, you can live a jet set lifestyle and everyone is okay with that but people who aren't crazy rich get treated like a mobile lifestyle is some kind of evidence of nefarious intent.
Some people are able to work the system and, say, make money online while doing the Digital Nomad schtick. Others get crazy barriers thrown up to moving around at all.
We need to stop acting like people have to be rich to be allowed to float around as they see fit. That simply works better for some people and our current default assumptions are doing tremendous harm.
For example, we have a serious housing shortage globally because while we don't want poor people to come stay in SRO's for a summer job, we are FINE with someone buying a house to rent it out for the summer to rich tourists. So people are snatching up houses in prime locations to make a mint via AirBnB or similar, meanwhile locals who live there year-round can't find housing, even if they make good money.
Then we wonder why the lower classes have no place to live and act like it must be some kind of personal problem.
No, it's not. It's systemic.
Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!I think I have a note on some homeless blog that never got fleshed out and published about how the US needs some kind of internal amnesty program to help homeless people and others get ID again. If you have no ID, you are kind of like a refugee within your own country only there is no place to deport you.
TLDR: I was able to get my son state ID using the same documents I had four years ago that were insufficient at that time. State guidelines have changed and it's nothing short of a miracle for us.
We need to do a better job of making it possible for poor people to access ID in the US. I was told they drop the fee from $54 to $5 if you go to DHSH and get papers.
So if you are poor and disabled and etc, you CAN jump through hoops to get a break on the cost of ID. I don't know how to fix this, but jumping through extra hoops is extra challenging if you are extremely poor -- possibly to the point of being homeless -- and possibly unwell or disabled in some way as a root cause of your poverty.
I have serious health problems and jumping through hoops is often a bigger problem for me than money, even though money is a chronic source of stress in recent years and there is never enough. It will likely take me a few weeks to fully recover from the logistics involved in arranging ID for both of them, but the worst of that should be behind me and the lowest point was probably a few hours ago.
I can't overstate how much of a problem it is to be unable to get ID because you don't have the money or there are too many hoops to jump through. This actively denies people access to a normal life and has the potential to push people into criminal behavior as their only means to survive because legitimate channels are not available.
My son was not forced into a life of crime in part because he still lived with family, so it wasn't essential that he in specific have a bank account, etc.
Two other things I would like to see:
- More availability of inexpensive rentals that are flexible (month-to-month instead of a long lease, for example), like SROs.
- More flexibility for having a bank account without tying it to a specific address.
There is a long human history of friction between settled peoples and nomadic peoples. Currently, if you are wealthy enough, you can live a jet set lifestyle and everyone is okay with that but people who aren't crazy rich get treated like a mobile lifestyle is some kind of evidence of nefarious intent.
Some people are able to work the system and, say, make money online while doing the Digital Nomad schtick. Others get crazy barriers thrown up to moving around at all.
We need to stop acting like people have to be rich to be allowed to float around as they see fit. That simply works better for some people and our current default assumptions are doing tremendous harm.
For example, we have a serious housing shortage globally because while we don't want poor people to come stay in SRO's for a summer job, we are FINE with someone buying a house to rent it out for the summer to rich tourists. So people are snatching up houses in prime locations to make a mint via AirBnB or similar, meanwhile locals who live there year-round can't find housing, even if they make good money.
Then we wonder why the lower classes have no place to live and act like it must be some kind of personal problem.
No, it's not. It's systemic.