It's the perfect excuse. Once you have no registered address it is only a matter of time before you gain the accumulated 'benefits' that come with having no status at all. Essentially you become an un-person, and your life is just about forfeit. [1]

I take it that you have not experienced homelessness?

> It's a human interest story.

Yes, indeed. So take an interest in how these situations could be avoided rather than blaming the victims of the system, it should be fairly obvious that she's making a significant effort to regain her status as a documented citizen.

Also note how IDs tend to expire and that if you have no registered address you may not be able to apply for a new ID.

[1] http://forum.schizophrenia.com/t/homeless-person-has-a-life-...

Now, imagine you also had to choose between your next meal and paying your mail forwarding service bill.

I live in an RV and travel mostly full-time, and I use a mail forwarding service, myself...but, even with that, it's sometimes a pain in the ass to deal with the government. And, it's also not all that cheap. I spent about $400 last year on mail forwarding for my personal account, and about the same for the business.

Look, I don't want to diminish your experience here. You've been there, to some degree, and I'm glad you got out of homelessness. But, just because you've shared some of the experiences of being homeless, it doesn't mean everyone who deals with this can follow the path you followed successfully.

Polish proverb: I thought I was as low as I could get and then I heard knocking from below.

What reasons are there for the system to be structured such that obtaining an ID is difficult?

It isn't a reason that it should be byzantine or difficult.

What does it mean, to be disinterested in "human interest"?

Drivers licenses do expire, generally at 4-6 year time frames. Assuming you're still at the same address (which she was), most states allow one to renew it through the mail.

Checking a box, signing a card, and paying a nominal fee once every four years does not seem particularly onerous to me. Though if it were up to me the fee would be entirely eliminated.

...and paying a fee. Given that the article is about being poor, that's a non-trivial omission.

She was evicted from her previous address!

> If she had a license/state ID and answered the expiration mailer she would have had one.

That assumes she had one to begin with. I know lots of Americans that don't even have a passport or driving license.

Anyway, you're a cold one to stick to your theme of victim blaming, take into account that not everybody is able to navigate the bureaucracy as well as you or I and that there are other factors (for instance: analfabetism) that can land people in very difficult situations which even an expert would have a hard time to reverse.

And in case it wasn't clear to you yet: And it shouldn't be that way, if you're a legal citizen of a country and you lose all your identification due to theft, fire or some other reason and/or you are homeless then your government should go out of its way to help correct the situation. Because it is the decent thing to do.

As to the process of reestablishing a new set of identity docs. It's clearly overly onerous and just like everything else in life, even more so when you're poor.

The decent thing to do for the government isn't just to make the edge case of the destitute easier. It's to make the general case easier. Getting an ID or renewing one should be so easy that there is no excuse.

Your 'personal responsibility' works well for you given your background and status in life. But it's an easy argument to make when the results are not your problem. It does handily allow you to ignore the fate of those that are not as fortunate as you are, after all, if they had taken their responsibilities seriously then they would have nothing to complain about, case closed.

Am I to interpret that as a threat, a la "If you said that to my face and I'd punch you in yours!"?

If so, I'd expect more from what I presume to be a grown man.

> At a guess you're young, well educated and compared to the lady in the article filthy rich.

In the interests of preserving pseudo anonymity I won't confirm or deny any of those guesses.

The addition of "filthy" in the third piece of that does show more than a hint of inherent bias though. There's nothing virtuous or vile in being poor or rich, and discounting someone's opinions based on your presumptions of their economic status can only end badly.

> Your 'personal responsibility' works well for you given your background and status in life. But it's an easy argument to make when the results are not your problem. It does handily allow you to ignore the fate of those that are not as fortunate as you are, after all, if they had taken their responsibilities seriously then they would have nothing to complain about, case closed.

Not once did I say the situation is not unfortunate nor did I say things should be this difficult. I merely pointed out that it could also have been avoided and she had ample opportunity to do so.

If resources are to be dedicated to helping out someone in this situation (which they should!), then they should also be dedicated to preventing it in the first place. A key part of that is acknowledging the personal responsibility component. Otherwise you're stuck repeatedly curing situations that could have otherwise been prevented.

> If so, I'd expect more from what I presume to be a grown man.

Strawman ignored.

The real world is full of a lot more variance than you seem to believe. It is possible to do everything possible within your power correctly and still fall victim to this kind of misfortune.

You're trying to force the world to fit your model. Instead, you need to fix your model to allow for non-100% ID coverage, because reality is always going to have complications, errors, mistakes, and unexpected interactions.

It's like medicine, a ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.