Trying to get an ID can be a high-stakes test of endurance
WASHINGTON: Patricia Brown couldn’t prove her identity. On a Saturday morning in May last year, she rushed into the basement of Washington, D.C.’s Foundry United Methodist Church, frantic that she would miss its I.D.Ministry hours.
She took deep breaths as she reached the bright-yellow room crowded with narrow tables, where people sat poring over papers. Without valid identification, she couldn’t get housing or work, her food stamps or medication. She sat in a metal chair beside me, wiping away sweat from her forehead. The volunteer across from us looked concerned as Brown reviewed an intake checklist: Social Security card? No. Birth certificate? No. ID? Expired.
“So, we don’t have anything?” the volunteer asked. No. Nothing.
I’d seen situations like Brown’s many times. I volunteered at the I.D. Ministry from January 2015 to March 2016. Two Saturday mornings a month, I would help the ministry’s poor or homeless clients navigate the bureaucracy of acquiring government identification. For most people, replacing a lost driver’s license or other ID is an inconvenience but not an ordeal. For Foundry’s clients, however, the path to an ID is more like a high- stakes test of endurance and resourcefulness.
Brown, 61, a former receptionist, had taken three buses from north- east Washington to the church, but it was clear she had been on a longer journey. After her mother’s death in April 2014, Brown lost the apartment they had shared. She returned from the grocery store one day to find her belongings on the sidewalk. She had been evicted.
“I tried to ... salvage what I could, but I was by myself,” she said. Her Social Security card and birth certificate were among the things lost that day. Since then, she had been floating from couch to couch among acquaintances, paying her hosts what she could and trying not to overstay her welcome. When I asked about her current housing, she said only, “It’s not a good situation.”
Brown had spent a month visiting D.C. government agencies, looking for guidance on how to regain her identification without success. A nonprofit steered her to Foundry, where she hoped to secure the trinity of documents she needed: Her birth certificate, a Social Security card and a valid, governmentissued photo ID. Like many of the other people who visit Foundry, she was, by the time she arrived, frustrated and desperate.
Washington isn’t the only place where acquiring identification can be difficult. As of 2006, according to New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, up to 11 per cent of US adults had no governmentprovided photo ID.
Since then, federal requirements for IDs have grown tougher, contributing to a loop that can help keep people trapped in poverty.
For poor Americans, IDs are a lifeline - a key to unlocking services and opportunities, from housing to jobs to education. And in states with strict voter ID laws, the lack of an ID can hinder voting.
“This is a huge issue for people who are homeless and poor in general,” says Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty. “Without an ID, basically you don’t exist.”
The Reverend Ben Roberts, Foundry’s director of social justice ministries, oversees its ID operation. When he took over the nearly two- decades- old programme in 2013, he renamed it Imago Dei, Latin for “image of God.” Tall and bearded, the 31-year- old has a skepticism of government efficiency that’s rooted in experience. Without obstacles, the ID process could take about two weeks, but for many clients, he says, it lasts two to three months. “It mostly has to do with finding the time, energy and motivation to go to places and be told, ‘No,’ constantly,” he explains.
For Roberts, identification is a moral and religious issue. “If you’re not allowed to have a job because you don’t have an ID, then that’s a serious theological problem,” he argues. “You’ve said not only do they not exist on paper, you’re denying them their piece of the image of God.”
Roberts and I have been friends for several years. He led me and my wife through I.D. Ministry volunteer training in 2015, when - because of sharply rising demand - the outreach programme increased its hours. ( Full disclosure: I’m communications director for Meals on Wheels America, a nonpartisan non-profit that works with vulnerable populations.
I wrote this story in my other professional capacity, as an independent journalist.) My fellow volunteers consisted of retirees and young professionals - capable, enthusiastic people operating with limited resources.
Computers are scarce, so volunteers work mostly with pen and paper, a spotty filing system of folders and plastic bins, and binders thick with identification procedures for each US state and Washington, D.C. To raise money, volunteers collect donations after Sunday services once a month.
Each month, Foundry assists about 130 people. Aside from providing instructions on what to do, offering encouragement was perhaps my second-mostimportant task - and the hardest.
Many clients arrive needing their IDs immediately, for a job or housing opportunity that expires within days. They are largely unaware of the timeline they may face, instead believing they can get documents on the spot. Many leave so discouraged that they abandon the effort. “They’re trying to do the right thing, and they can’t,” Roberts says.
Families with infants come in, and so do couples who need IDs to get married. Last year, 66 mothers sought help for themselves and, in total, 90 children. Without a way to prove kinship, parents can’t enroll their kids in child care or school, or apply for housing, nutrition assistance or health care. Some fear, wrongly, that they will be arrested on the street without proper identification.
This is a huge issue for people who are homeless and poor in general. Without an ID, basically you don’t exist. Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty
While working on this article, I interviewed dozens of people trying to get their nondriver ID, or “walking ID,” as many call it. The poor and marginalised can easily disappear, and they often do. Phones get disconnected; people move unexpectedly, leaving no forwarding address, or they become homeless altogether; often, they’re swallowed up by the criminal justice system.
Roberts recently received a returned Foundry check with a letter from the daughter of an elderly client who died before he could recover his identification. The church regularly destroys unclaimed documents of individuals who go silent. I didn’t know it then, but Patricia Brown would become one of the disappeared.
That Saturday, though, she listened as the volunteer described what the District would require for an ID. First, a person like Brown who had no documents would need a physical exam and a signed medical record. ( There was a free clinic in Adams Morgan.) The signed medical record would allow her to get a Social Security card, which would be mailed to her within two weeks. She would then have to take the card and a Foundry check for US$ 23 ( RM104) to the District’s Vital Records office to get her birth certificate. Vital Records could issue it based on the card alone, but the office reserves the right for its staff to request more documents to establish identity. Without a valid photo ID, the office recommends three original documents, among them: Census records, probation papers, voter registration and an employee ID.
Once she had the Social Security card and birth certificate, then she could go to the Department of Motor Vehicles. The DMV requires proof of residency. Utility bills, leases and mortgages count among the qualifying documents.
Without one in her name, Brown would need her host to supply a document to the DMV, with a photocopy of a valid ID and a signed form allowing Brown to claim the address.
Otherwise, Brown would have to visit one of a handful of approved non-profits or the D.C. Department of Human Services to be certified as homeless. Only then could she get her ID, which costs US$ 20, and which Foundry also covers.
Brown rested her head on her fist. “I remember a time when it was real easy to do this,” she said. The volunteer nodded in commiseration and handed Brown a proof- of-residency form. Brown said, her voice trembling, “You’ll probably have to go through the homeless verification process.” She left with two envelopes full of instructions, forms and cheques.
Later, when I called the number where Brown said she was staying, another woman answered. She had no idea where Brown had gone, she told me and, furthermore, didn’t care.
Foundry receives client referrals from case managers at nearly 100 social- service groups, including D.C. agencies such as Vital Records, the DMV and the Mayor’s Office on Returning Citizens Affairs ( MORCA), which helps ex-inmates resettle. The MORCA referrals especially frustrate Roberts.
“You would think that government agencies would have a way to do this themselves, since they are the ones issuing the documents in the first place,” he says.
The official steps Foundry clients must take to obtain identification are only the half of it, he explains. Paying for child care or public transportation, or taking time off from an hourly wage job, can prolong the process or stop it altogether.
Roberts wants more coordination among city offices and notes, as an example, Virginia’s practice of including birth certificate services at its DMV locations. “At this point, you’re getting your identity verified at three, maybe four different places, one of which is a doctor’s office,” he says. “How in the hell is a doctor supposed to know?”
The office of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, D, says that the DMV and the Health Department are coordinating to expand options for electronic birth certificates - which presumably would make access to birth certificates easier - but security and system requirements are delaying the changes. Last year, D.C. Council members David Grosso and Yvette Alexander introduced a bill to waive birth certificate and DMV fees for those eligible for Medicaid and food stamps. It passed unanimously.
The mayor’s fiscal 2018 budget doesn’t include a line item to fund it, but Bowser’s office told me that existing resources will cover the implementation. —