How can I get my mail when I’m always moving around?

There are mail forwarding business that provide people who are transient  (often RV dwellers who are on the road rather than living in one RV community) with a street address.  The mail forwarding business will either scan the incoming mail envelopes and post them in a secure online private box for you to look at over the Internet or they will bundle the mail and physically ship it to you. Even though you get a street address through a mail service, you do not automatically get to claim that location as your legal residence. State laws about residency typically require you to be physically located in the state for a particular number of days each year. The list of mail forwarding services at the bottom of this page identifies two that will help you to register your vehicle and establish residence in their states.

Here is how the mail scanning services generally work: The company scans the envelopes that come for you. You go online and view the envelopes in your password protected online box and identify any that the service should open and scan. The service will then scan those documents straight into your confidential online box.

These services charge minimal flat rate fees, typically by the month or the quarter, to receive your mail. Depending on the company and the range of services you select, they may charge an additional per-page scanning fee for any documents that they take out of your envelopes. In other words, your flat rate can include just the envelope scanning or it can also include the document scanning as well. Of course, you do not have to register for the scanning service. If the mail service is in your city you can go there to get your physical mail every couple of weeks or once a month or on whatever schedule you establish with the mail forwarding service.

Examples of companies that provide mail forwarding and mail scanning services:

http://www.yourbestaddress.com/ (also provides vehicle registration services)

http://www.texashomebase.com/texasdomicileinfo.html (includes information about vehicle registration and establishing legal residency in Texas even if you are only there for part of each year)

https://travelingmailbox.com/

https://www.escapees.com/

https://www.earthclassmail.com/solutions
See the cities in which Earth Class provides street addresses https://www.earthclassmail.com/addresses

If you work at day labor or another occasional part-time work that pays you in hand and does not ask about your address, do you have to accept any amount of pay they give you?

**** The information written here is not legal advice and the author of this blog is not your lawyer.  These posts merely contain ideas to help you plan and organize your legal research and identify potentially helpful sources of law. ****

The Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Workers Protection Act[i] does allow for the possibility that temporary and transient agricultural workers can be paid “by the piece” (more likely by the bushel or section of a field), but generally the answer to this question is no, you do not have to accept any amount of pay an employer gives you.

The federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)[ii] requires that every worker be paid at least a certain hourly rate known as “the minimum wage.” Even the piecework rates in temporary agricultural jobs have to pay at least as much as workers would get at the hourly minimum wage rate.  The minimum wage rate is set by the Wage and Hours division of the U.S. Department of Labor. You have to get at least the minimum wage for working up to forty hours in a single week. Your state might have an even higher minimum wage than the federal rate.[iii]

If you work for the same employer for more than forty hours in one week, you are supposed to get paid fifty percent more (per hour or other pay unit) than the rate you earned for the first forty hours. Even if you are paid in cash and the employer does not know your last name, let alone where you sleep at night, you are entitled to earn these rates of pay.  Whether you have an address also has nothing to do with your right to be properly credited for the full number of hours you have worked.[iv] Even though the IRS and the Social Security Administration don’t require temporary and day labor employers to report workers’ addresses to them (because those employers do not have to withhold income tax or FICA payments), they still have to follow the FLSA and the regulations that go with it.

The Department of Wages and Hours has a “Fact Sheet on the Construction Industry”https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs1.pdf listing some of the common ways employers in that industry, which frequently employs homeless temporary workers, try to avoid giving full credit for work time: failing to record time, claiming work over forty hours counts only as comp time instead of paying the 150% wage rate, requiring overtime hours to be held aside in a time bank, not paying for travel time to job sites, etc… All of those actions are illegal.

The Wage and Hours Division advises workers to contact the nearest DOL office[v] if work hours have not been properly credited or if they have not been paid the minimum wage. The office that you contact will investigate your situation and enforce the Fair Labor Standards Act.It would also be wise to contact an attorney for representation. Private law firms can sometimes donate their services to help homeless people get their proper pay.[vi] If none are available, contact the nearest legal aid office.[vii]

Whether your legal help comes from only the DOL office or that office along with your lawyer, you should have a log of your hours and names of witnesses who worked with you. You should also be prepared to tell every possible detail about how and where you were recruited and to name and the individuals who supervised you. Those kinds of proof are necessary to demonstrate that you truly did work at that job for the claimed amount of time.

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[i] The Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Workers Act is at 29 U.S.C. 1801 and the sections following 1801.  An entire Web site about that law and the regulations that go with it. http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/mspa/index.htm

 

[ii] The Fair Labor Standards Act is at 29USC 201. The Dept. of Labor regulations that go with it are at 29 CFR §510-794. Those laws and plain English fact sheets and other explanations about the FLSA are online at http://www.dol.gov/compliance/laws/comp-flsa.htm.

[iii] State minimum wage rates are published online at http://www.dol.gov/esa/minwage/america.htm. If that site is unavailable contact your state department of labor or navigate through its Web site. http://www.dol.gov/esa/contacts/state_of.htm

[iv] A Dept. of Labor Fact Sheet explaining how employers are supposed to count workers’ time as work time (i.e., how to know when you should be paid for breaks, waiting periods, etc…) is at http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/whdfs22.htm.

[v] The Dept. of Labor offices are listed at http://www.dol.gov/esa/contacts/whd/america2.htm and in the blue pages of the phone book.

[vi] Example: The Washington (D.C.) Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs matches private law firms with indigent clients whose civil rights have been violated. Summaries of some of their employment cases, along with the complaints they filed in court, are at http://www.washlaw.org/news/n_case_decision.htm.

[vii] Legal Aid Offices are listed at http://www.lawhelp.org/. You can also get contact information for local legal aid offices from the public library. A recent class action case was brought by day laborers who weren’t paid fairly after being transported from Maryland to Mississippi to clean up debris from a hurricane. Marroquin v. Canales, 236 F.R.D. 257 (D.Md. 2006). Find other cases by looking in any books published by Thomson West Publishing using the topic “labor and employment” and key numbers 2210 and up.

Do you need an address to get access to government services such as Welfare, Food Stamps, Medicaid, and Social Security Disability?

**** The information written here is not legal advice and the author of this blog is not your lawyer.  These posts merely contain ideas to help you plan and organize your legal research and identify potentially helpful sources of law. ****

Government agencies have to verify residency and citizenship when providing ongoing services to clients. They realize, however, that residency for people who are homeless is in places like lobbies, halfway houses, bus stations, churches, and other people’s houses.  When people have those kinds of non-permanent residences, the agencies have a variety of ways to confirm that somebody is who he claims to be and that he generally resides in the place he claims.

The Social Security Administration, which provides financial support for people who are elderly and disabled, has detailed policies in place for verifying an applicant’s identity.[i] Because that agency is one of the country’s official registrars of citizens,[ii] it has an enormous database of identifying facts about each person here. Using that database, the staff can ask applicants to state their social security number and then answer simple questions including date of birth and parents’ names to establish their identity without having to show an ID card with a street address.

When determining where an applicant can usually be located, Social Security staff are required to “assume that transient or homeless individuals need assistance in providing evidence of their living arrangements.”[iii] This means that the staff will make note of the shelters and other services and places where the applicant reports spending time and will rely on verification from witnesses who regularly see the claimant at any of those places.

There is a specific provision of the Social Security Disability regulations asserting that people are still eligible for the benefits when they are in a homeless shelter.[iv]

Food stamps, Temporary Aid to Needy Families (a.k.a. “TANF” or “cash assistance”), and Medicaid are federally funded public assistance programs that are administered through state agencies rather than through federal branch offices located in those states. All of these are available to homeless people but, because they have state administration, do not follow exact federal identification rules the way the Social Security programs do. Instead, the public assistance or welfare office in each state makes its own rules about how claimants can prove that they are homeless and lack sufficient financial resources to pay for their own food,[v] healthcare, and other basic needs.[vi]

The United States Code has a basic standard for states to follow in establishing their public assistance eligibility requirements. “The State shall require…that each applicant for or recipient of benefits under that program furnish to the State his social security account number and the State shall utilize such account numbers so as to enable the association of the records pertaining to the applicant or recipient with his account number.”[vii] In other words, if someone does not have a street address, his social security number will be used as the fall-back I.D. validation.

Supplemental to that, the Department of Health and Human Services declares in its fact sheet about Medicaid prescription drug coverage for the homeless that “a Post Office Box, an address of a shelter or clinic, or the address where the individual receives mail (e.g. social security checks) may be considered the place of permanent residence.”[viii]

The United States Department of Agriculture, in its regulations about how states can verify the residency of food stamp applicants says that if a homeless person does not have documents showing that he is affiliated with a street address, “the State agency shall use a collateral contact or other readily available documentary evidence…Any documents or collateral contact which reasonably establish the applicant’s residency must be accepted and no requirement for a specific type of verification may be imposed. No durational residency requirement shall be established.”[ix]

The State offices tend to follow these guidelines with minor variations.

Sample laws:

In California, the residency regulation for food stamps says that the welfare department “shall not require an otherwise eligible household to reside in a permanent dwelling or have a fixed mailing address as a condition of eligibility”.[x] If a California applicant declares a shelter as his residence, the local food stamp office has to confirm that the shelter primarily houses people who are homeless, limits the amount of time that people can stay there, and does not have any kind of lease arrangements with people who stay there.[xi] If a California applicant is not affiliated with a shelter, the food stamp office will decide, after interviewing the applicant, what proof of residency to obtain.New York’s regulations merely declare that an application for food stamps will be accepted even if it only has the applicant’s name and signature and no other information, not even an address. Those regulations do not tell how the department will confirm that an applicant is truly homeless.

In Illinois, only one application is needed when requesting cash assistance, medical assistance, and/or food stamps and that application simply asks “Are you homeless? Yes / No”.[xii] The Illinois Administrative Code explains that homeless people applying for assistance through the Department of Human Services can use a friend or relative’s address or the address of a social service agency or the closest DHS office.[xiii]

To find a state’s food stamp address requirement, look in the state health and human services department’s regulations.  Here is a link to a site that lists administrative codes https://www.llsdc.org/state-legislation. Look in the administrative code’s index under “food stamps” or else look to see if there is an entire section or volume of health and human services regulations. Another way to find these regulations is navigating through the state health and human services department’s Web site. http://www.acf.hhs.gov/

Since an address is not merely used for benefit applications, but is also necessary for ongoing correspondence between clients and government agencies, the agencies might recommend that clients who are homeless identify a caseworker or social service agency as their contact person or “authorized representative.”[xiv] That way, there will be a consistent place where mail can be sent and where the client who is homeless knows to check-in. Someone who does not want to deal with an agency can use an address service instead. Here is a post about address services.

Serving as the authorized representative is often a basic job duty of someone who works in a shelter.[xv] Another possibility is that applicants can designate someone to serve as a “representative payee” to receive and deposit checks and generally manage their funds. That relationship clearly involves more than simply providing an address, but that is because it is available to claimants, not on the basis of homelessness, but because they cannot or don’t want to manage money.

A Pennsylvania case cautions about deciding which street address to list when applying for government services. The plaintiff in this case, who later became homeless, had applied for unemployment benefits at an address far away from where he now spent most of his time. He was not allowed to pick-up his benefits check at the office closest to his real location and was instead required to make the long, expensive, time consuming trek to the office near the original address.[xvi] There may be more efficient ways to change an address with a government agency now, and more understanding of the difficulties that homeless people have in documenting their actual whereabouts, but the caution is still worth noting.

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[i] Social Security Administration, Program Operations Manual System (POMS)- Section SI 00601.062. The POMS is available online at http://www.ssa.gov/regulations/.  See also the Fact Sheet on Supplemental Security Income.

[ii] See the background note at the beginning of the Social Security Administration POMS- Section RM 00203-001. “Over time, the SSN has increasingly been used as a multi-purpose identifier by government, business, and other organizations.”

[iii] Social Security Administration, POMS – Section SI 00835.060

[iv] 20 CFR §416.201. Note that this regulation is part of a broader rule stating that people in the care of institutions are not eligible for the benefits. Since homeless shelters do not provide care, they are exempted from that rule.

[v] U.S. Dep’t. of Agriculture, eligibility for the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program.  http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/eligibility  How to apply in each state: https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/apply-to-accept

[vi] U.S.Dep’t of Health and Human Services, http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ofa/programs/tanf/about  Here is the link to the States’ programs: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ofa/help

[vii] 42 USC §1320b-7(1)

[viii] U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, What Do I Need to Know to About Medicare Prescription Drug Coverage to Help My Homeless Clients?, http://www.cms.hhs.gov/HomelessnessInitiative/Downloads/HomelessFactSheet.pdf

[ix] 7 CFR Ch.II §273.2

[x] California Dep’t of Social Services Food Stamp Regulations 63-401.5

[xi] California Dep’t of Social Services Information Notice # 1-04-04. Available at http://www.dss.cahwnet.gov/getinfo/acin04/pdf/I-04_04.pdf

[xii] Application available at http://www.dhs.state.il.us/page.aspx?item=33698

[xiii] Ill. Adm. Code tit. 89 §10.210 (2006).

[xiv]U.S. Dep’t of Agriculture, An Introduction to the Food Stamp Program, http://www.cms.hhs.gov/apps/firststep/content/foodtips.html ; Wash. Admin. Code 388-408-0050 and 388-460-0005 available at http://apps.leg.wa.gov/wac/

[xv] See, New Hampshire’s homeless resources list http://www.nhhealthykids.com/homeless-resources and the Massachusetts Legal Help list of SNAP facts about ways for homeless people to access food stamps. http://www.masslegalhelp.org/income-benefits/fshomelessness

[xvi] Regoli v. Commw Unemployment Bd. Rev. Unemployment Comp. Bd. Rev., 427 A.2d 1275 (Pa. Commw. Ct., 1981).

Is anyone else allowed to open and read your mail before you do?

**** The information written here is not legal advice and the author of this blog is not your lawyer.  These posts merely contain ideas to help you plan and organize your legal research and identify potentially helpful sources of law. ****

It is a federal crime to intercept mail. Opening and reading someone else’s mail is a crime above and beyond that.[i] Even though most federal crimes are investigated by the FBI, those relating to mail are handled by the postal inspection service. The crimes are identified in Title 18 of the U.S. Code Chapter 83

That section, titled “Obstruction of mails generally,” states that anyone who “knowingly and willfully obstructs or retards the passage of the mail” will be fined and/or imprisoned for up to six months. Section 1702 says that taking mail out of a mail box or from a mail carrier, “before it has been delivered to the person to whom it was directed, with design to obstruct correspondence, or to pry into the business or secrets of another, or opens, secretes, embezzles, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.”
These sound like clear crimes, but they become convoluted if someone is having mail delivered to another person’s address and the address holder feels some degree of responsibility to watch for checks or important messages. If there has been some agreement between a homeless person and an address holder giving the address holder permission to open and preview mail, then there probably won’t be anybody filing a complaint to the postal inspector alleging that the mail has been obstructed.
The person with the right to file that kind of complaint would be the person named in the mail. This is an example of when it can be very helpful to have a written agreement identifying responsibilities and expectations. In fact, an address holder would be wise to get written permission if a homeless friend has asked that mail be opened. That way, if there is ever a legal complaint that he was obstructing correspondence or prying into secrets, the address holder can prove that he was not opening the mail for those reasons, he was opening it to only satisfy the request of the homeless person.
The federal law against “theft or receipt of stolen mail matter generally” supports the right of homeless people to get their mail even if they have arranged to have it sent to an address where they don’t live and they have authorized someone to open it and see what’s inside.  That law, in Title 18 Section 1708 forbids taking or trying to take mail or even one item contained within a mailed package or envelope. An address holder with written permission to open mail who does open the mail, but then uses something in that mail for his own benefit or simply doesn’t hand it over, has committed a federal crime.
If any of these obstruction or theft of mail crimes seems to have occurred, there are two ways that a victim can file a complaint with the Postal Inspection Service: 1. by making a report in person at any post office, which will involve completing a form and then being available for the postal inspector’s follow-up investigation or 2. by completing the complaint form available on the home page of the Postal Inspection Service.

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[i] http://assembler.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sup_01_18_10_I_20_83.html

If you arrange to have your mail sent to someone else’s house, is that homeowner responsible for letting you know you have mail waiting?

**** The information written here is not legal advice and the author of this blog is not your lawyer.  These posts merely contain ideas to help you plan and organize your legal research and identify potentially helpful sources of law. ****

Doing someone a favor can create a legal obligation under contract law, but only when the favor is repayment for something or when the recipient of the favor has made a promise to do something in exchange for the favor.  So law about doing the favor of receiving mail would generally come from contracts cases.[i] In limited circumstances, the crime of mail theft might apply.[ii]

Undoubtedly, the legal remedy of suing in court comes about too late in problems caused by not finding out whether mail has arrived. If mail containing a big check or a job offer or a housing opportunity has not gotten to the intended recipient, the chance to benefit from that mail content has just been lost and some slow court dispute with the address holder is not going to bring it back.

As in most contract law situations, the way to use the law effectively is to make a good clear agreement in the first place, rather than hoping that the court system will solve anything later. If a homeless person wants an address holder to get his mail to him, he has to make that expectation perfectly clear in the agreement and, ideally, should contribute some effort toward assuring that he gets his mail.

For example, he could promise that he will personally come to that address every Thursday to ask for mail or he could arrange to be available in a particular location every evening in case there is mail that the address holder needs to give him. The address holder also has to make his interests very clear in the agreement. He might want to obligate himself for a limited time only or he might want the homeless person to use his address just for Social Security mailings and nothing else. Certainly, the agreement should detail how the address holder and the homeless person are going to communicate with each other because communication is the primary task involved in getting the mail from one person to another.

Contract law does not require that agreements be written down, but the process of writing down the separate responsibilities and intentions, especially when both parties doing the write together, assures that the address holder and the homeless person both know their own and each other’s obligations. Writing makes it a serious deal, more than just a casual notion. And having the writing enables both parties to point to the document as a reminder to the other if anything starts to go wrong.

If things do go wrong and the parties end-up fighting in court over a failed mail delivery, the written contract will make the court process simpler because the judge won’t have to figure out what promises the parties made to each other. Instead, the court will try to determine whether someone breached the agreement and whether any reparable harm occurred because of that breach.  The court will consider how much of the contract was fulfilled and how the parties interacted up to the point of the breach. The person filing the lawsuit has to state what remedy he is entitled to if he successfully proves a breach.

It will be tempting to claim that if the undelivered mail could have led to riches and contentment. The hopes and possibilities that could have ensued from getting the mail (i.e., the income from the job that was advertised in that envelope, the lottery winnings that might have come from using part of the check in that never-given envelope, the bountiful benefits that could have begun by getting into the housing program that was offered in that mail…) cannot be claimed as contract damages. Those possibilities are only guesses. Most of the time, if anything, a court might only order repayment of real losses that can honestly be counted, such as the amount of a check that should have been passed along.

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[i] State contract statutes are usually about sales of goods, insurance policies, financial matters, and sometimes employment.

 

[ii] Title 18 US Code Section 1708.

When can you use a post office box instead of a street address?

**** The information written here is not legal advice and the author of this blog is not your lawyer.  These posts merely contain ideas to help you plan and organize your legal research and identify potentially helpful sources of law. ****

In general, a post office box can be used instead of a street address when establishing a place for people to send mail, but not when someone needs to identify himself to the government. For example, street address is normally required for obtaining a government-issued photo I.D., registering a car, and applying for jobs.

Here is one handy work-around that works when the post office has competition from another nearby delivery service:

Post office box customers can use the post office’s street address as their street address and identify their P.O. Box number just within the zip code of that street address. The rule explaining this is at Section 4.5.4 of the Domestic Mail Manual, under the topic of “competitive P.O. Box services.”  http://pe.usps.gov/text/dmm300/508.htm#1141179 The phrase “competitive P.O. Box services” means that the post office in that neighborhood has to compete with a UPS store or a similar private business that offers package delivery services. So, if somebody has post office box #1234, and his post office is located at 100 Main St. in Long Beach, California, he can tell everyone that his street address is 100 Main Street, Long Beach, California, 90808-1234.

Applying for a job doesn’t sound like communicating with the government, but the communication is indirect; employers are required to make payments to the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service on behalf of employees. They have to identify each employee by name, social security number, and address in order to make those payments.

When registering to vote, it is permissible for a homeless person to give the street address of a relative or an agency he or she is involved with. But it is also necessary to identify where you reside or expect to continue residing (name the park, bridge, or other location specifically) because the voting system is intended to appoint representatives for populations according to their geographic designations. The National Coalition for the Homeless has a full explanation, resources for registering or even coordinating a voter registration event, and advocacy materials available at  http://nationalhomeless.org/campaigns/voting/.

There is not merely one law stating that people have to give the government their street address. Instead, there are minute regulations, many separate hard-to-find requirements by government agencies, declaring when and where addresses are to be used in each agency’s conduct of business.

Criminal law requirements for homeless contact information are generally stricter than the procedures in the social services codes. Probation rules and sex offender registries, for example, require that offenders provide a street address where they can be located if an officer comes looking for them; living on the street is simply not an option. A homeless shelter or halfway house address may be used if the offender truly resides there, but the probation and sex offender registry rules additionally require that offenders report to an agent on a regular basis and immediately notify police authorities of any change in their whereabouts.[i]

The agencies involved with housing and health and income services, for example HUD (Housing and Urban Development) and HHS (Health and Human Services), which routinely interact with the homeless population have ways for people to access their services by communicating through channels other than mail or by having the mail sent to places where clients do not live, but can at least check-in.

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[i] Sample sex offender registry statutes show the variety of ways states verify street addresses:
California “Beginning on or before the 30th day following initial registration upon release, a transient must re-register no less than once every 30 days thereafter.” Cal. Penal Code §290(c)(1).

Connecticut “the Department of Public Safety shall verify the address of each registrant by mailing a non-forwardable verification form to the registrant at the registrant’s last reported address. Such form shall require the registrant to sign a statement that the registrant continues to reside at the registrant’s last reported address and return the form by mail by a date which is ten days after the date such form was mailed to the registrant. The form shall contain a statement that failure to return the form or providing false information is a violation of section 54-251, 54-252, 54-253 or 54-254, as the case may be. Each person required to register under section 54-251, 54-252, 54-253 or 54-254 shall have such person’s address verified in such manner every ninety days after such person’s initial registration date.” Ct. Gen. Stat. Ann. §54-257(c).

District of Columbia “The procedures and requirements [of the offender registration agency] may include….(1) Verify address information or other information at least annually, or at more frequent intervals as specified by the Agency;(2) Return address verification forms;(3) Appear in person for purposes of verification;(4) Cooperate in the taking of fingerprints and photographs, as part of the verification process; and (5) Update any information that has changed since any preceding registration or verification as part of the verification process.” DC Code §22-4008(a).

Florida “Each time a sexual offender’s driver’s license or identification card is subject to renewal, and, without regard to the status of the offender’s driver’s license or identification card, within 48 hours after any change in the offender’s permanent or temporary residence or change in the offender’s name by reason of marriage or other legal process, the offender shall report in person to a driver’s license office”…. “A sexual offender who vacates a permanent residence and fails to establish or maintain another permanent or temporary residence shall, within 48 hours after vacating the permanent residence, report in person to the sheriff’s office of the county in which he or she is located.” Fl. Stat. Ann. §943.0435 (4)(a)&(b).