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Comment by moondowner | Hacker News Reader

> The homeless centre told them Ronnie needed an address to get a job, Rob said, but "to get an address, you need a job".

> "That's the Catch 22 that loads of homeless people are in."

Breaking this systemic barrier would make life easier on a lot of people.

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Yes, it's not just homeless people with this bootstrapping problem. When I first arrived to the US in the nineties as a student I needed a social security number, for this I needed a P.O. Box (they did not accept the dorm house as address). For the P.O. Box I needed a social security number. Most international students ended up breaking the deadlock by making up a social security number.

I had a similar issue living abroad. My wife had a work visa (which was the reason we we moving) and I was allowed to go being a spouse, but once there getting a permit to work for myself was impossible without a job, and a job was impossible without a work permit.

There were ways around it, but it took finding a job at a really big company to make it work - they had dealt with it and had HR people that specialized in it. Once "on paper", I was pretty free to move around. I would not be surprised if their method was just putting in all zeros in the system or something until the permit number came back.

Similarly, you need ID to get an ID. You also need proof of address to get an ID. And you need an ID to get an address or a job.

If you look for an evil of the world, it is often written down in the rules and laws.

You'd be hard pressed to find someone more callous than an old bureaucrat.

Yes. I’d like to think having a mobile phone would be enough but there’s still how work can write you a check and how you can deposit it. Not sure if any bank will go without a fixed address.

A reasonable solution is to get a free "address" from the post office with optionally phone notifications for mail

Well the only problem here is that general delivery is still not eligible for any of the main things people need an address for, like ID, tax docs, etc. Even if you want to pay for a PO box (which also doesn't satisfy those requirements), you need an address to register for one.

I really wish there would be more work to try to at least add some kind of alternative path here, given America's growing homeless population. Leaving things to the goodwill of family or friends seems to me like a dereliction of duty by the state.

The post office would identify you on access and hold mail for an appropriate amount of time.

Like for some deliveries you need to sign a receipt that will be legally binding, the post office would take the role of handling those.

When we were making a long move and temporarily without a stable address I looked into getting a PO Box and it seemed impossible without a real address.

I ended up finding some kinda sketchy-feeling services aimed at people RV living, and not much else. I wasn’t able to find an official solution to the problem of “I need to receive mail but have no address” (there may be one, but in solid 60-90 minutes of searching I didn’t find it, but did find a lot of people complaining about the problem)

I'm not sure if you need an address to sign up for a private mailbox at places like UPS Stores.

But a lot of people might receive mail at a friends' address with permission. But, you still need to have a friend or family with a stable address who is willing to help.

In the past this was pretty lax (I've had a long-term box at a Mail Boxes Etc. that then became a private mail boxes place that then became a UPS Store) and they didn't really care when I first opened it. Now there's a push for KYC also; we got a sheet the other day asking to verify our physical street address, something I never personally got in the years I've been there. Apparently new regulations or something, they said.

The homeless centre should be able to be used as a home address for a job.

I wonder why they require it?

Systemically & historically, the US favors landowning white men and discriminates against others wherever possible.

Neat. How does that apply to a homeless man dealing wth the system in the UK?

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