So with the new regime executive order declaring it essentially illegal to be unhoused, people at risk might be thinking, “how do they classify me as homeless if I am surfing between friends or family or shelters?”
One of the big answers to this is the practice of debanking. If your financial institutions catch wind that you don’t have a stable address, they will try to close your accounts and send your balance as a cashier’s check to your last legal address. At-risk people understand the many, many scenarios where even just this process could be devastating.
Some unexpected ways you can get de-banked:
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your apartment doesn’t have a legal address
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you lose home owner’s insurance or your coverage changes and your bank decides it doesn’t like that
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your building’s owner defaults
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fire
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flood
You may be at risk and just now realizing it. If you have an MH diagnosis and you don’t have two back-up legal addresses, you are on this Ex O.
Anyway, do not get debanked. Have legal address back-up plans EVEN IF YOU TRY TO FLEE THE COUNTRY because you do not want the regime classifying you as someone they want to put in the camps.
Sorry for another US-centric post.
According to the sources in the Wikipedia article, in the US at least, the term de-banking wasn’t even in popular use until some right-wing nutjobs started claiming that the government was using it to shut down conservative “tech” companies, and then latched onto by people like Joe Rogan and Elon Musk to scam people into replacing their bank accounts with crypto currency.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/debanking-what-is-meaning-crypto-musk-rogan-andreessen-rcna182597
I’m completely anti-crypto but that’s not the topic.
This is a warning about an angle of attack against people. I’m not advocating a product. My suggestions are to make sure you have trustworthy, legal access to multiple addresses should your housing become unstable, and to have diversified access to real banking services through both traditional banks and credit unions.
I’m in the United States so I read the sections relevant to the United States. I’m just trying to find where this claim of people with a mental health diagnosis needing multiple addresses due to the new EO comes in. That would impact me personally.
It isn’t a “claim that you need multiple addresses.” Think critically about the problem. A person who has MH diagnosis or addiction diagnosis, and is also at risk of de-banking due to address instability needs to have a legal address they can prove access to. Proving you reside at an address is how you stop the process of de-banking. For people who are housing unstable, it is wise to have backup plans including two addresses.
Oh I see, I was panicking a bit because I thought you were stating that it was a part of the EO and I couldn’t find any references to support it. I don’t really have a backup address since I live with my parents at the moment (dealing with said MH diagnosis). Thank you for taking the time to respond OP.
Seems like a good time to start planning out that backup address, since you’re housed and safe right now (I assume.) Hope your luck is better than mine, but much of this information I gained from the experience of resorting to backup-backup-backup plans. Good place to start is figuring out the cheapest place you could get a monthly lease in the areas you are familiar with. One of my friends just happened to have that info handy when I almost became homeless a few years ago, and being able to very quickly act on that info ended up saving me a few rough weeks.
Sounds like a rough spot, I’m glad things worked out for you.