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i work with unhoused people fleeing domestic violence, and i have a client rn whose driver's license expired in 2024, and she needs a new id to apply for apartments. ok, cool. problem is, she lost all her documents due to the domestic violence

so we call the dmv. dmv needs a birth certificate. like i said, she lost her birth certificate. she needs a new one. her birth certificate is from out of state

we look up how to get a new birth certificate. the birth certificate needs an id to order it. cool cool cool

ok then what about secondary options? well, she needs two secondary sources of identification to order a replacement birth certificate, and she only has one, because for everything else she needs an id. fishing license? need an id. fucking park pass? id. she could have her 18+ child use their birth certificate to vouch for her, except her abuser won't let her talk to her children, so that's a no go

ultimately we land on social security card. this is where we're at in the process rn. ofc she doesn't have her ss card, so we need to order that. social security also requires an id to request a new card, but they'll take a health insurance card with a picture attached (god fucking bless them). she has medicaid but doesn't have a physical copy of the card, so we have to figure out how to get that. then once we do that we have to upload it to the social security website, and if that doesn't work, we have to, god forbid, call the social security office (takes literal hours) and then make an appointment. she doesn't have transportation or cell service, so we would have to figure out a way to coordinate me getting her to the appointment in order to present the document

then we wait 10+ days for the replacement, that has to be mailed to me bc she is unhoused and doesn't have an address

then we need to submit her request for a new birth certificate, which we have to figure out how to pay for, bc it is not free. they're at least a month behind on requests, btw, so we are probably looking at may at the earliest for that to arrive

then we need to take the birth certificate to the dmv

dmv also requires two pieces of mail not from a po box. she doesn't have an address, she is unhoused. she can use the homeless shelter in town, but we will need to mail her stuff there and have her receive it first, and also then the homeless shelter address will now be on her new id, which landlords will recognize and may discriminate against her for

during all of this she is sleeping in a garage. it was negative one degrees this morning. also, forgot to mention, she is terminally ill. some days i legitimately don't know if she lived through the night. every day is a toss up

the absolute soonest she will have an id is probably late may. forget voter registration--most rentals won't let her apply without it. she won't be offered section 8 housing without it. she can't apply for ssdi without it. she is blocked at literally every corner without it, and the absolute soonest she can get it is late may. the dmv literally has her old card on file, and she knows the number by heart, but it doesn't matter. it doesn't count if it's expired, as if she's somehow become someone new

and that's all with the help of someone whose job it is to do this shit. imagine if she didn't have a caseworker. she has a ten year old donated iphone that only works on wifi, she can't even do her own research bc she doesn't have internet half the time. how the hell is she supposed to get anything done on her own?

Bitter sarcasm aside, I'm gonna go ahead and risk sounding a little paranoid here:

I want to show people what food/financial assistance forms have been asking since trump was elected. They've refined the questions now -at the beginning of 2025 the first question was "Do you use any pronouns?"[sic]- and I feel like that's worse, since at the beginning at least it let you know immediately who was asking and why. The way it sounds friendly and supportive now is even more sinister.

I cannot stress enough that these questions were not asked before 2025. The first time I renewed since they went into effect was over the phone, so I was able to ask point blank why they needed to know, and was told that it was now required by the government -so no, this isn't just a liberal state trying to be more inclusive. There isn't and never was a legitimate need to know this information in order to provide benefits. This is solely to keep track of queer people. I'd also like to point out that they are required to list your assigned sex, and you cannot edit that field. So even if I listed myself as boy/man without stating that I'm trans, it would out me, and that's the intention. There's also a huge detailed list of race and ethnicity options now that really do everything to try to get hyper specific answers out of you, including if you're jewish and what kind (I'd recommend not answering any of that either, btw)

They also waited until the forms were fully filled out and being submitted before informing me (in a footnote) that sexual orientation is protected on a state level but not federal. Not just gender identity, orientation.

The absolute mildest ramifications of collecting this data could be the administration using it to claim that queer people are disproportionately draining government resources and add more fuel to our persecution. The fine print states that this info can all be requested and accessed by various government agencies for several purposes including making arrests. I'm begging all of you to refuse to answer any demographic questions you can on forms like this, no matter how tempting or validating it seems to have such detailed options to acknowledge your identity, because it is purely a trap. The government DOES NOT need to know how you identify, and there is no plausible benefit to telling them.