In the US, that job may not offer the person any net quality-of-life improvements. Flipping that burger for 30 hours a week does not give them enough money to find housing. Now they're still broke but they're also tired, smelly, and angry.
How do you establish that you are a citizen and are legally able to take a job if you are unable to safely store your documents?
How do you get health care, inclusive of mental health care, if you are unable to pay for it?
If you are without a secure residence, how do you know when to wake up, how do you clean up, put on fresh clothing, and get to work?
If you rely on public transit, how do you reliably get to work?
How do you establish residence if you have no reasonable credit or references?
How do you save your deposit, first month's rent, and last month's rent, if you are unable to even get a bank account?
For any complex problem there is an obvious, simple, and totally incorrect answer.
"The homeless should just get a job and get a place to live"
Most of the problems you stated are not problems for the type of labor that is offered to homeless people. Jobs for construction, landscaping, moving etc. with a truck that picks you up and drops you off. Usually done by illegal immigrants so cash pay is not a problem. From the business owners I know who have tried to hire homeless people to do daily labor, none of them are interested.
Instructions like
1) leave your stuff some place out of your control
2) somehow get to a parking lot where people pick up day workers
3) hang out with day laborers hoping to get a job
4) get in a random truck on the promise that someone will pay you
5) get driven some place to do a job
6) do the job
7) assume they'll take you back where they got you
8) assume they'll pay you what they promised in cash
9) get back to my stuff, hope it is still there
10) hope that I can store my cash some place safe
11) of course, don't forget you're doing this with basically no sleep, unhealthy food, no good place to poop, no reliable place to wash, etc. For months at a time.
And of course do that for a couple months or years without having anything terrible happen to you until you save up enough to rent a place?
That doesn't seem like a realistic plan.
(1) There's churches nearby that offer lockers for the homeless
(2) They don't need to go anywhere, these jobs drive around looking for them
(3) See #2
(4) Illegal immigrants do this every day, and they often don't even speak the same language
(5) Seems OK.
(6) Seems OK.
(7) Seems reasonable the business operator will want to continue the arrangement if they did a good job, so this seems very likely.
(8) See #7
(9) See #1
(10) This is probably the most difficult part
(11) Shelters in my city are underutilized almost all of the year except during inclement weather. They offer showers, cot beds, and basic food.
I'm not saying that it's easy being homeless, or that making the transition into suburban homeowner is easy or even practical for them. But the problem is not a lack of available jobs (the jobs are there) or shelter (homeless shelters are underutilized). I'm fine with spending money on a compassionate solution, but only if we're solving the right problem.
Homeless folks on the other hand don't have this (and that's why they homeless, and usually they burned all their bridges before they ended up on the street because the aforementioned mental health problems).
There are plenty of people who will hire you without asking for proof of citizenship.
In CA, you get Medi-Cal. And food stamps.
Waking up, I guess you're on your own.
Not trying to say it's easy, but those obstacles you mentioned are of the convenience variety.
You simply sign the back and take it to the bank and they will give you cash.
>How do you establish that you are a citizen and are legally able to take a job if you are unable to safely store your documents?
I honestly have no idea.
>How do you get health care, inclusive of mental health care, if you are unable to pay for it?
The answer is to get a job which is an obvious catch 22.
>If you are without a secure residence, how do you know when to wake up, how do you clean up, put on fresh clothing, and get to work?
I think there are a variety of viable answers here ranging from family, church, charity, shelters and gyms that this is a challenge but not insurmountable for a motivated individual.
> If you rely on public transit, how do you reliably get to work?
By using public transit? I don't understand the question.
> How do you establish residence if you have no reasonable credit or references?
This is a huge issue, imo. The only real option is paying in advance but that is obviously much more difficult.
> How do you save your deposit, first month's rent, and last month's rent, if you are unable to even get a bank account?
The answer is cash but the next question is how does a homeless person keep thousands of dollars in cash safe.
I think you've gone out of your way to add solvable problems to your list to make the issue seem insurmountable but you've definitely included two issues which I think are massive and one that's less difficult but also easily solved.
Starting with the solvable problem, banking, add basic banking services to post offices. It makes a lot of sense, imo.
The healthcare problem is a big one and I think the most popular answer to that question would be socialized medicine, which I support, but I'd also be open to hearing other solutions.
The biggest problem, I think, is housing. Not just because of cost but, as you mentioned, credit and rental history are going to be a major problem. Perhaps some sort of temporary (but long term enough to allow a history of payments to be shown, like 12 months or so) housing that could be offered to those in need to get back on their feet. Possibly even a requirement that apartment buildings make a unit available for this kind of renter.
> You simply sign the back and take it to the bank and they will give you cash.
If you do not have an account there, they will charge you a fee to cash a check. The amount of the fee is typically ~$8, but it varies by bank. Some checks are issued by banks that don't have local branches, this is more common with larger companies. Government checks are also a tricky situation. It's really not as easy as 'go to the bank and they will give you cash'.
>...Documents... >I honestly have no idea.
You don't need to. You don't need to present a social security card to an employer, as long as they know their SSN. The SSA will help them verify for free: https://www.ssa.gov/employer/SSNcard.htm Otherwise, it's storing a plastic card for ID. It's likely they have one, as state ID cards are permanent. If they don't that is a problem that can be solved.
>...Health care... >The answer is to get a job which is an obvious catch 22.
In the US, they qualify for Medicaid. Medicaid includes mental health services.
>...public transit... >By using public transit? I don't understand the question.
Public transit costs money. Where I live, 1/2 off or ~ $31/month for a Medicaid recipient.
>The biggest problem, I think, is housing.
The biggest problem is getting people into the system so they can get assistance. Once they get a case worker and start getting aid, they can more easily get back on their feet. People are homeless for different reasons, some are more easily solved than others.
Plenty of people use public transit to get to work. (If public transit can’t reliably move people, that’s much more than a homeless problem.)
But now they still have $420 (based on CA's minimum wage of $14) more in their pocket?
I last had my pay deposited onto a prepaid card in 2009, so the laws may indeed have changed. Back then those fees were overly restrictive and quickly ate into my meagre take home (unless, ironically, I withdrew as much as I could with my single allotted fee-less cash withdrawal per pay period)
I'm having trouble finding the source, but my recollection from a planet money podcast is that they're free to withdraw if you use their network of ATMs, but otherwise charge you a few dollars per transaction. As for whether it's better, maybe? It's certainly worse than a no-fee banking account at a local credit union (but with limited ATM access) or a big bank (but with a fee and/or minimum deposit requirements), but it's better than holding a wad of cash on your body.
I can't argue with that!
Getting to a teller window when they were open, or searching down an ATM that gave out 10's just wasn't in the cards considering my schedule at the time.
I’ve also reviewed some of these accounts and payroll apps, and many are downright predatory: extraordinary fees for a no-frills debit account, tie-ins to payday loan companies, and connections to “micro investing” (read: gambling) are rampant.
Debit cards have pins. You can't just steal someone's debit card and go drain all the money. Sure there are other really hard issues to solve with homelessness. But their debit card getting stolen isn't one of them.
But even that misses the point: not everybody has the means to wait 5-7 days for their bank to mail them a replacement card, even if no money is actually taken from the account. This is compounded when you consider that most of the companies that offer cheap banking accounts don’t have great branch service.
The gyms near me in NYC all require a permanent address, NY state ID, and a credit card.
I'm not trying to be pedantic. I'm just pointing this out for anybody reading this who may find themself in a situation like this in the future.
If gyms are cracking down on this use case then that is a shame.
I wonder if you could retro-fit a 53’ tractor trailer into shower(s) + laundry stall(s) on wheels and bring it close to the “customer”? I wonder how that could work.
it is v sad
W-4 is the payroll withholding form (from employee to employer). W-2 is provided by an employer to the employee (and the IRS) at the end of the year.
Are we comparing the upper end of what you can earn via pan-handling with the lower end of what you can earn via a minimum wage job here? That might be responsible for the apparent disparity. Apparently LA has around 65k homeless people. I'm skeptical that even half of that (32.5k) can all earn an average income of $400/week panhandling.
You do need to be a person who views working productively to better themselves, as net positive quality of life.
And to be fair, they need a place to shower and wash clothes. Those services should be provided, and certainly in LA and SF plenty of money has been set aside to provide that.