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:
-
your apartment doesn’t have a legal address
-
you lose home owner’s insurance or your coverage changes and your bank decides it doesn’t like that
-
your building’s owner defaults
-
fire
-
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.
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.
Damn! Yall really are fucked. I really do feel for you. Hope this shit doesn’t catch
Certain addresses get flagged in bank and verification systems over time that are shared addresses among many people. Places where someone can get mail without a permanent legal address is one example. Shelters, general delivery at the post office, etc. So much of the concept of your identity is tied to your legal address. Courts can use this too and claim they can’t find someone then issue default judgements against them. Meanwhile, so many places are heavily monitored because they have turned into police states, it is not usually in question for the goverment who someone is and where they are located. The post office should provide long term PO boxes for unhoused people for free and these should be accepted as legal addresses. But often, you’ll find a PO Box isnt accepted.
Sharing info about de-banking is cool but lets try to keep the FUD out of it. What the so-called “ENDING CRIME AND DISORDER ON AMERICA’S STREETS” order says regarding this seems mostly contained in Sec. 3, which basically threatens to pull housing and urban development funds from states that don’t meet the administrations crazy rules.
. I also see nothing to validate your claim that folks with a mental health diagnosis need three addresses (two back-up addresses implies the existence of a third main address).Why are you carrying water for fascists?
He’s not? The EO is theater, nothing changed but that. Nobody homeless is copping federal charges anyways unless they assault feds. The OP is also sensationalizing things, you can use a valid address and say you receive a bill at it to claim residence aka not homeless (even if you functionally are). I see it all the time. Often people stop paper bills and use electronic stuff as proof of residency.
so fucking tired of all the sanewashing here, I thought I blocked your instance weeks ago…
Name checks out.
Because actual facts matter. You can’t fight a fantasy. You have to fight the actual laws/orders/etc as they are, not what you imagined them to be in your head. Just because one side doesn’t follow logic doesn’t mean you get to disregard it too.
If facts mattered we wouldn’t be in the midst of a fascist government run by a demented pedo with full support from SCOTUS to ignore the Constitution, so I am going to tell you this plainly so maybe even you understand:
NO FACTS DO NOT MATTER COMPARED TO PUBLIC PERCEPTION SO FUCKING GET OUT OF THE WAY
Do you want this nightmare of authoritarian overreach to end quickly?
Then Shut The Fuck Up and stop doing the enemy’s work for them
Unless you enjoy being a traitor, that is. I mean you do you
Cool. So you’re gonna fight made up things with more made up things and no one’s gonna believe you because, well, you’re a liar. Also love the all caps. So scary. Really terrified me over here. Hey, isn’t that how fascists get their way? By yelling and fear and intimidation? Oh wow, it’s like you’re becoming what you hate. Huh. How strange. It’s almost like there are people warning you not to become the monster you fight and here you are putting on fangs and fur…
You’re a tool 😂
Fascists have only stepped down from power twice in all of human history without bloodshed
Where exactly do you think this entire thing is going? They are disappearing citizens with no due process. They have already built the concentration camps and have bragged about the inhumane treatment they will dish out there
Do you really think this is just another ‘rough repugnican cycle that we’ll get back in office and start to clean up’ like the last 4 times because that’s NOT the FUCK what’s happening here and anyone who had family escape from the old USSR knows EXACTLY what is going on right now
We are gearing up for civil war and a ton of innocent people are going to die and here you are spending all of your energy cherry picking arguments for the fascists.
And now that I’ve laid it all out clear as day to you, if you persist in your dangerous ignorance I will have no other option but to consider you an intellectually dishonest forum slider at best, and a legitimate traitor at worst.
I don’t know what that saying means, but I hate the Trump administration I promise. I hate FUD too though. More FUD = less energy to spend on the actual battles that need to be fought. I have my own mental health diagnosis and currently live in my parent’s spare property so what OP said would personally impact me if true. I can’t find where it’s stated though.
/r/notatrumper material right there, plus randonumbername. I am so fucking tired of this game.
I didn’t ask for your life story I asked why you are sanewashing the weaponization of homelessness
this entire thread is filled with drumpf apologists and sanewashers
Congrats lemmy, you lost the war with fascism through inattention and allowed yourself to be co-opted
EVEN THOUGH you had clear evidence from 4chan and reddit how fascism grows on online forums through deliberate discussion manipulation
I have reported over 30 incidents of social media sliding from inauthentic accounts and all it did was get be banned for 2 days for being ‘rude’.
You get what you fucking deserve and I’m going to enjoy watching your collapse
it is pretty wild dude but I think some of the people resorting to sane washing are burned out by all the cable news / huff post / raw story kayfabe
they see somebody pointing at a threat and instead of add that to their mental load, they’d rather shuffle it aside as panic bait or whatever
i kinda get it
my hope is that if their banks actually threaten them with this they remember “oh yeah, i’ve heard of this, it has something to do with my address getting challenged” and then maybe they can figure it out in time? then they don’t have to deal with getting labelled like this and losing services.
I feel like I’m becoming jaded because any time I hear about some new shit that hurts poor people in this country I find myself wondering how many of these people voted for Trump in the first place. I get being desperate and feeling like some kind of change is needed… The first time. But we had a chance to see it was all bluster and bullshit already and still voted for this government. I know it’s a bad mindset but a lot of this stuff is hurting groups of people where the majority voted for Trump and I’m having trouble feeling sorry for them.
Propaganda efforts large than we can imagine operating for decades. How has the rural poor identity morphed from union men and worker solidarity to backing military and police? It got too dangerous and they stomped it out with myths of foreign adversaries. I’m of the mind that we need to reach across political lines to overcome this, we can’t allow them to split the country evenly in half or we’ll be in a deadlock forever that just lets them do what they want. It can seem herculean but there are shades of it when a CEO is killed on the streets or a bunch of politicians work together to protect pedophiles; political identity fades and it becomes more obvious that it’s us against them
Also a lot of the most disenfranchised are kept from voting at all. Either they have to work, polling place is too far away and they don’t have a car, polling place getting changed, don’t have a permanent address
Do you have a source for ANY of this drivel?
I was homeless for years, and have worked with homeless addicts for the last 10 years. Never in my life have I heard of these things happening for the reasons you give. Hell even to this day I don’t update a bank with my new address.
Could you provide a reliable source for more information about this actually happening to real people en masse? I have no doubt it’s happened to someone somewhere, but would be surprised if this was a real problem and I wasn’t aware.
I have to say I agree here, hell I’ve never updated one of my open bank accounts. It still has me under my mother’s old house from when I turned 18, and I’ve moved at least 10 times since then. I’ve also helped/worked with/am friends with plenty of unhoused or at risk folks and never heard of being 'debanked. Now if OP wants to talk about getting accounts or your ID in the first place while being unhoused then that’s a different story. Plenty of times I’ve seen it be next to impossible to get these things w/o an address. Not so much maintaining it w/o an address.
Although im sure anything is possible, so I wont discount it completely.
The term has gained traction after being discussed on a November 2024 The Joe Rogan Experience podcast with investor Marc Andreessen, in particular with respect to cryptocurrency assets.
Yeah im not buying it, but the next line says instances of Muslim people having accounts closed have been covered by media. Although that’s shaky at best. What media? Who specifically? Im not convinced that this even happens often enough for people to clutch their pearls
Edits: that claim to “Muslim money” is cited and links to an ebook about Canadian Islamophobia, but its using this book as a source to say Muslim accounts get closed in the USA and its covered by “media”
Duh your moms not returning your mail to sender is she? Derp a derp
I mean she might have if she still lived there smartypants. She lives in a trailer now. Bold of you to assume any of my family still lives there lmao
BOLDNESS IS ALL!
- use an address you can access for at least a week
- get your initial documents
- go paperless and have the mail all RTS
Job done, nobody will bother you and you can use electronic statements as proof for accounts. Just don’t commit fraud with them and nobody cares.
This is just disguised anti-Trump nonsense under a veil of bits of facts tossed around. This is the equivelant of the right claiming that Joe Biden is wearing a mask. Ppl on the fringe are crazy.
Sorry where did I disguise my anti-regime feelings, here? This is an anti-regime post. I am not crazy. I am your enemy.
You’re not my enemy. You’re batshit crazy, but definitely not my enemy.
The Wikipedia is linked with its references…
The Wikipedia in on the term debanking and what it means. Not some wild anti-Trump conspiracy to come after you.
What part of that is related to this? I just read it.
OOOFFF GOT ME
would be surprised if this was a real problem and I wasn’t aware.
Umm… that’s a terrible argument. Like, really, really terrible.
That said this does feel a bit like a red herring. I don’t think having an open bank account is gonna do shit to help anyone kidnapped by the Y’allqueda Gestapo.
But, seriously, “this can’t be true, cause if it was I’d already know about” comes across as really arrogant.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Sorry you feel that way. While I am very experienced in the field, and as such would be surprised that this snuck by me, I miss things from time to time. That’s why I asked for references.
If experience in a field isn’t an argument for being knowledgeable in the field, you’re likely hard to please.
Wow.
I’m so sorry for doubting your infallible knowledge and wisdom!!
Well…no I’m not.
And don’t even play that “I’m sorry you didn’t react the way you were supposed to” crap.
And, no, your grandiose posturing means nothing at all to me. No one cares. You say you’re an expert? Then you already know what evidence to cite to support your argument.
Your claims of experience are not evidence of anything but your over inflated ego.
I’m genuinely sorry that my words upset you.
Good day sir.
🤣
Yeah, whatever
Yeah, that’s what I told my doctor when he said I didn’t have unicorn pox. He was like, “that’s not a real thing, and if it was I’d have heard of it,” and I told him he was just an arrogant jerk. He doesn’t know all the diseases, just cause he’s a doctor.
Holy shit.
To think I was envious of America when I was young.
Hahaha right? They sold the lie so well. But it’s so easy to do when you control the majority of the world’s media, whether it’s news, radio, television, cinema, or online streaming.
Sorry, you think it’s any one nation that’s controlling all that? Oh, my sweet summer child…
So uh. Are you trying to infer that it is a tiny set of people/corporations, or that there are other Nations in on it?
They italicized nation and not one so I believe they’re pointing to folks like murdoch
This.
Corporations run shit. “Nations” generally tell you/us to do what they’ve been told to tell you/us to do by those that pay them. FWIW, flag’s are team spirit swag; hollow brand loyalty to a non-entity that DGAF about you and never will.
We’re so fucked if this still needs saying, in this day & age. Fuuuck.
I didn’t realize I replied to two of your comments until you replied to me twice.
Hey, I appreciate the attention, fellow human. Thanks!
To be honest, this shift in our politics has been brutally quick and more federally far reaching than anything that happened while I was growing up. People used to be able to just exist. Camp in parks, sleep on benches, etc. This authoritarianism is… Somewhat new.
It started in earnest under Regan. It’s just been difficult to see where all those changes would lead until all at once it smacked us in the face.
It was slow and incremental. You can’t boil a frog by tossing it in a fryer.
True. That would result in frying it.
It’s only been quick if you just started paying attention. This is the end result of decades of work by the GOP.
Legitimately 70 years, their fight started just after FDRs New Deal. The entire modern Republican party exists to work towards this. They want a return to the guided age with themselves as the robber barons and everyone else as a permanently toiling underclass.
I mean tresspass laws designed to prevent newly freed black people from “just existing” go back to 1865.
Yeah, I was going to say something similar. The “it’s now illegal to [x] while black” memes are because the BIPOC community has known this for a long time now. Standing while black, walking while black, jogging while black, eating while black, listening to music while black, sleeping while black, etc… All of these are things that people have been attacked by cops for doing, for literal generations.
It’s not new; it’s just more visible. And it has finally become so overt that non-BIPOC people have started to feel the same pressure that BIPOC people have dealt with since the country was founded.
since the country was founded.
that was the biggest mistake ever.
The second biggest was letting a bunch of traitors go home with their heads held high to establish a mythos about some imagined noble heritage. Officers should’ve been hanged/shot, lands should’ve been confiscated and given to newly freed peoples, “40 acres and a mule.”
Sundown towns aren’t that far behind us, either.
Not really. People are just less ashamed than they used to be.
Those were different times. I remember how people who travelled there talked about how friendly everybody was. And everything was cheap, service was great and life was easy. Obviously those were skewed perceptions by tourists, but still. Nobody says things like that any more.
For all other Europeans out there, avoiding this situation is another thing the EU did for us.
For the Americans, write to your representatives demanding the same rights.
Excluding people from having a bank account in 2025 is basically condemning them to ostracism even without sending them to concentration camps.
I’ve long held the belief that the US postal service should also provide basic banking services too in the US, that way no one can be denied a bank account.
One of the things Bernie Sanders ran on. He wanted to do that and ton more good things for us little people. But the Democrats rather have fascism under Trump then progressive policies.
The dems purposely fucked Bernie in the primary then called his supporters Bernie Bros and accused them of all sorts of awful things. Nobody should have been surprised when these very same young men flocked to trump.
Did you independently reinvent https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Savings_System or did you know about the history?
I didn’t know that existed!
Its decline reads like everything else going on in the US. Government provided a service a lot of people liked, private enterprise lobbies to have it shut down and lock people into nickel and diming them.
In terms of private banks, a basic savings account wouldn’t really be a big risk for them nowadays because it’s a bare bones account. It doesn’t include things like access to credit cards or other forms of credits, or any form of long term investments.
If anything, banks might even like the idea, because it gives them a way to offload their riskier (and let’s be honest less profitable) customers without making society fully collapse.
If the system is implemented properly it’s a win-win for everyone.
I wish that was the case, but there are a lot of people that see government provided services as waste/fraud. I mean look at how the federal government is being eviscerated right now.
It would be nice if everyone could be guaranteed a safe place to manage money though.
Goddammit you are an hour quicker and have found a more readable source for the same comment I wanted to write.
Anyway, this right is granted in paragraph 36 of Directive 2014/92/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 July 2014 on the comparability of fees related to payment accounts, payment account switching and access to payment accounts with basic features Text with EEA relevance:
Consumers who are legally resident in the Union and who do not hold a payment account in a certain Member State should be in a position to open and use a payment account with basic features in that Member State. The concept of ‘legally resident in the Union’ should cover both Union citizens and third country nationals who already benefit from rights conferred upon them by Union acts such as Council Regulation (EEC) No 1408/71 ( 1), Council Directive 2003/109/EC ( 2 ), Council Regulation (EC) No 859/2003 ( 3) and Directive 2004/38/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council ( 4 ). It should also include people seeking asylum under the Geneva Convention of 28 July 1951 Relating to the Status of Refugees, the Protocol thereto of 31 January 1967 and other relevant international treaties. Furthermore, Member States should be able to extend the concept of ‘legally resident in the Union’ to other third country nationals that are present on their territory.
Back when I vandwelled, I was able to set up a “declaration of domicile” so my legal address was at a mail forwarding center. You can have mail forwarded to a local post office box, or to a different address (if you’re crashing at a friend’s house or something.)
It’s a useful option when you have to move around a lot, since if you move you don’t have to change your address - just change where your mail gets forwarded to.
It does require paying for a PO Box, but IMO it’s worth it.
Though I recommend actually knowing something about the town or city of the forwarding center you use. I once had a job interviewer be from the same town as the one on my license, and had to bullshit as if I actually knew the place (and didn’t merely drive through it on a freeway a couple times.)
Unfortunately there are systems that will reject PO boxes - credit applications, mortgage and loan applications. It’s increasing and I think they’re catching wind that nomads do it, so they challenge for a “physical address” which of course must match your credit file. This is a nice way to shit on people who are trying to get out of transitional housing too, since they can easily spot group homes and halfway houses.
UPS stores (and many others) offer mailboxes, similar to PO boxes. Unlike PO boxes, they will accept packages from other shippers as well as USPS. Also, they’ll only put mail in your box if it is addressed to you specifically. No bulk mail or “Current Resident” bullshit.
Sigh, I was worried they’d be getting targeted.
I wish I had more to add. But I’m just tired.
Hey do you know if this works for traveling nurses or if there is a different way that they do it?
Works just fine, just make sure you do your mail forward with the paper form, keep your payments current, and do the verification of the forward in person as is required. Fwiw you can use any address you have access to to start the PO box or other accounts as well, even if you won’t have that access for long. Source: I do mail
The good news is that your post isn’t really something you have to worry about(social media is propagandizing this), it’s only going to impact state funded housing for people and aim to funnel money to private prison contractors for any homeless people who assault ICE or w/e other federal agents. The bad news is that its rooted in hate and going to damage section 8 housing access, generally making people poorer/more worse off in the long run.
If you have to travel for extended periods of time, it’s not a bad idea. It does take a little extra time for your mail to get to you (since it’s being shipped twice.) If that isn’t a problem, I can’t think of any reason it wouldn’t work for travel nurses.
I came into this thread thinking that the term de-banking was something like de-google and I was eager to find some opensource service tô get rid of the dependency of banks all together.
Boy was I wrong. /s
Good advice though!
I was eager to find some opensource service tô get rid of the dependency of banks all together.
Credit unions
Indeed, part of protecting yourself is diversifying where you keep your money (even if you don’t have a lot), and part of that answer is credit unions. Don’t just assume in institution is okay just because they are a CU though, plenty of scum CUs.
I left the USA 25 years ago and still keep a bank account at my parents’ address. Not yet debanked.
You being lucky doesn’t necessarily imply that other people will be equally lucky, though.
Plus, what we may not have thought about is that the triggers for a financial institution to review your account will happen due to a change in circumstance. Address move, insurance change, employment change.
Since you left 25 years ago, there have presumably been essentially zero changes to your personal status as far as the bank is concerned. They aren’t hearing about it because you don’t live or work in the country anymore.
So your account is just sitting there, quietly unnoticed and unbothered.
To make them want to close it, something would need to happen to make them review it in the first place.
This is what privilege looks like
And how did the bank decide I was privileged? I don’t keep much money in the account, I’ve overdrawn it many times, I have no record of employment in the US for decades.
Your parents have a home and have maintained the same address for this entire time?
Yes that’s true.
This is 100% going to be used against trans people, especially the mental illness and danger parts (remember all the cross dressing is pedophilia stuff that republicans were pushing)
I hope for the safety of all LGBTQ people in the US right now, especially the trans people. You all deserve to live unbothered, I wish it were that easy.
Currently shit scared as a gay guy with autism. I studied this, on my own, out of curiosity – how a relatively modern society can commit atrocities upon its own citizens that it deems “lesser”.
In high school, where we had entire chapters of our history books that we focused on for weeks dedicated to things like the civil war and the war of 1812, WWI and WWII were (in my recollection) split between a single chapter titled “The World Wars” or something like that, and anything later was usually glossed over in even briefer fashion (Korea, Vietnam, and the Cold War all shared a single chapter. I’m not even sure the Cuban Missile Crisis was given a sentence. But holy fuck did they want you to recount in great detail all the facts and figures of the revolutionary war and civil war, down to excruciatingly painful detail. – I digress, it just irked me then and it still does now).
My point is, nobody chased me down and beat me over the head with a textbook to research the Holocaust and how it happened, nobody made me learn the finer points of going from an economic crisis to an angry little egomaniac getting elected to gas chambers and piles of bodies. We were taught what happened, in the driest fashion, but they never taught us how it happened. For me, nobody had to. I wanted to learn, so that I’d hopefully recognize the signs if they ever happened again. And now I can’t afford to leave on my own, while watching them slowly follow the exact same playbook in almost the exact same way. You start with the most vulnerable people and expand that over time to “everyone you don’t like”, and I have no illusions about being a friend to republicans.
Also, hey, sidebar: anyone else finding the combination of “gutting NOAA funding”, “open air cages”, and “located in Florida, where devastating hurricanes regularly sweep through”, to be something Eichmann would’ve called genius? “Oops, we didn’t have any warning! Awww, shucks, shame about all those un-people we wanted to be rid of!” And the gators take care of the bodies. It’s brilliant, in a way.
my last hope is Canada opens their borders to unskilled/disabled refugees, but I don’t hold out a lot of hope.
I’m with you, this is bad. I’m not LGBTQ+, but the fact that I have autism combined with ovaries has been terrifying lately. It feels like no one else sees what’s happening and they definitely don’t want to hear about it…
I remember in highschool getting to take an elective history class focused on the details (like how it happened) of the Holocaust, Armenian Genocide, and the importance of learning from history and our past. It was a great opportunity and sparked an “interest” in genocides and I guess social justice for me. I wish more people had this opportunity and interest. It’s really difficult to see what’s happening around the US and honestly many other places I’m around the world so plainly, but having no significance or capability to do anything about it. It feels like no one cares and it feels like the bad guys won and all in slow motion
I’m currently wondering if I should offer to marry an American who wants to move to Canada. Not even sure how that works but I’m kind willing to lol, buy us a house, we both live in it and larp a marriage if we have to. I’m middle aged now, ready for one of those crisis I’ve heard of lol
at this point I think my faith in other people is too damaged to accept such a thing from anyone I don’t know personally – (and alas, I have no friends up north), but I do hope you rescue someone worth saving. Not all of us didn’t see this coming. Nobody deserves that fate, not a migrant, not someone trans or someone poor or who jaywalked while black or anybody who stepped on that orange rapists bone-spurred toes.
Having said that, you should probably get rid of this comment, as I doubt Canada’s immigration authorities are very keen on marriage fraud, no matter how nice a gesture it may be.
This is absolutely a current weapon against trans people. If you know trans people who need an address, get them an address ASAP.
Disappointing but not surprising that the chosen solution to increasing swaths of the population no longer being supported by our economy is concentration camps. I honestly don’t think it’s that far fetched that the endgame here is they literally kill us all while acting like it’s our own fault, and the America of the future is just robots and genetic clones of billionaires.
Not just robots and billionaire clones. I think their endgame is a white ethno-christian state. These people want to make the US the headquarters for the crusades 2.0. At least that seems to be the group most pandered to behind the capitalists extracting all wealth.
I don’t buy it, I think they’re going to betray those people too eventually. Although maybe there will be a pitstop at “white christian ethnostate”
And now I actually want and am rooting for armed homeless to commit acts on violence on government stooges who attempt to carry out this order. Time to start building guns for the homeless.
Now the message on Tom Morello’s guitar makes sense (“Arm the homeless”).
You don’t have to be homeless to fight for them.
