We have a large homelessness problem that has been exacerbated by COVID-19. Our citizenry in some cases are unable to afford the housing available, in other cases have untreated or undertreated mental illnesses that lead to landlords being unwilling to house them, and in yet other cases children are kicked out of their homes by their parents (and, of course, myriad other factors and reasons contribute to this issue). This exceedingly complicated issue has many solutions of varying efficacy and we can argue about how to solve the underlying issue, but in the meantime these people do not have a "permanent address." You need a permanent address to be able to apply for many jobs, especially ones of higher payscales. Many types of government assistance programs are difficult to apply for without a permanent address.

The ideal would be to house the homeless in varying ways, but that is a difficult and slow process, while our houseless citizens need to be able to apply for assistance and jobs today.

My idea is to allow groups, probably mostly homeless shelters, but also community centers and apartment complexes that wish to help their community, to register with the government with more "permanent addresses" than they have apartments to allow our local houseless community to receive mail and apply for jobs and aid programs, as well as anything else requiring a permanent address. Getting the logistics right would be a bit complicated, as many houseless people don't have official identification, but getting a picture or a pin number/password on sign-up could be alternate methods to ID's.

This is an early idea and I am not in real estate, law, or economics, so it needs to be fleshed out in ways that I am probably not thinking of. Also, it would need to be implemented in such a way to protect against abuse, such as a central database to make sure people aren't signing up multiple times or using it to create aliases, as well as denoting it separately from actual housing to keep landlords from claiming more residents than they have for whatever reason. Still, I think it could be a quicker fix to helping people get into jobs and live their lives while the larger housing efforts continue to be implemented.