Video Transcript
Christine Owen:
Hi there. My name is Christine Owen, and I'm the host of Identiholics. And I am so excited today, because I have Jackie Wright and Reverend Ben Roberts from the Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, DC. They run a remarkable program called the ID Ministry. This initiative has been helping unhoused and low income residents obtain essential documents to prove identity for over two decades, which is kind of amazing. So I am wearing a Christmas shirt. The Grinch Who Stole Christmas is my favorite for Christmastime, so let's not be a Grinch and let's give to this amazing organization. So we're going to talk all about it, and then, we're going to see how we can help. I'm really, really excited about this. So Jackie and Ben, first, thank you so much for being here. Why don't you guys talk a little bit about the mission and the ministry that you guys are running?

Reverend Ben Roberts:
Sure. Thank you for getting us on with you. We're excited to be able to tell about some of the work that we do. I'm one of the associate pastors here at Foundry, and I'm the Executive Director of Programs and Justice. And I started in 2013, so I've been here 11 years. And when I arrived, this ministry was already up and going. They began early 2000s, late '90s with one individual staff member, who happened to be a social worker. And in their capacity, they just started helping one or two people who happened to come through the doors, but they quickly realized what a need it was. And so, from there, it grew into a volunteer operation that met every week. And prior to my arrival, it looked like you could come in, get the check that you needed to help pay for your document, because that was a big portion of what the need happened to be at that time.

And slowly, slowly, it grew until it was literally the place where we would have close to 60 or 70 people lined up around the block waiting to get into the building on a Friday morning. And when you're a voluntary organization, you can't handle that kind of volume. So it continued to have to mature and grow in the way that it operated, so that, by the time I got here, we were in a position of taking appointments to guarantee that we could see somebody. You don't want to turn somebody away when they're coming for help. So we could guarantee that we could see somebody, but everything really shifted for us after my first year. Because it was in 2014 that the REAL IDs Act standards started getting implemented in Washington.

Christine Owen:
So can you talk about how the REAL ID Act was different than what your guests and your clients were used to?

Reverend Ben Roberts:
Absolutely. I'm sure so many listeners are familiar with the REAL ID Act and the standards that were put in place, but what it meant for our guests was the additional need to go and procure the document for citizenship or proof of legal status and then, one additional document. So in most cases, social security card and birth certificate, which doesn't sound that unreasonable honestly. And for me, it didn't feel unreasonable, until I started working with our guests. And what we observed was our success rate, what we counted as our success rate, went from around 80% to down to 39% almost overnight when the REAL ID standards came into place. And what we found was, for a lot of folks, especially people who look like me, white guy with two parents, who are still together, what do you do if you need a birth certificate?

"Hey, mom, where's my birth certificate?" And then, they hand it to you. That's so not reality for our guests, and it's not reality for so many people who are our neighbors in this country. But that is how policies get written. They get written often by folks who look like me and who experience life like me, and that's the type of policy we got. So we found out that, if you are someone who was adopted, if you are someone who comes from a family where the parents are not together, or where one parent experienced domestic violence and the other parent is leveraging documents of your children against you, if you are someone who has been evicted and lost your belongings onto the sidewalk, if you are someone who has experienced homelessness and experienced the weather, the rain, the snow, or just gotten robbed while you were out there, you are losing those documents regularly. And it's hard to keep up, when so much of life is being thrown at you.

So we shifted majorly. We used to call it the Friday mission, and we shifted it to the ministry. That's a small change maybe for the outside, but for us, it was kind of huge. It meant that we were no longer handing over a check, so that you can go and pay for the thing you need to pay for. And that's the end of our relationship. It meant that we have to engage in a little journey with you, because now, you're no longer getting one document. You could be getting up to five documents in your process, and so, you come and see me. And then, you may have five more stops you need to make. A doctor's note to then use that to try and get the medical record, to then prove to vital records to get the birth certificate, to then, get that to apply for Social Security, and then, wait around and then,, finally, finally, maybe, you get to go and apply for your ID.

We knew people would need us on a longer term basis, often a month at the fastest. And so, that's why we shifted with the REAL ID Act. It just made it that much harder. And navigation of the process and encouragement throughout the process is really how our mission shifted to a ministry for us.

Christine Owen:
So I think that... Oh, I'm sorry. Jackie. Go on.

Jackie Wright:
That's okay. I was just going to say one more piece of those REAL ID requirements is then two proofs of residency, which again, if you are unhoused or if you're living in low-income housing and you don't have a utility bill, you don't have a rental agreement, those things became and are continuing to be really cumbersome for folks. In fact, the list of acceptable documents for that residency requirement is getting smaller and smaller. So that's another big hurdle for people.

Reverend Ben Roberts:
I would add to that, those types of requirements also forced, in a good way, forced our volunteers and me, as the staff, and then, Jackie, as the staff, to also get really good at going and doing some policy engagement around how this policy was getting implemented in the city, engaging the different agencies to try and build out the systems that were needed like, what are we going to do for a proof of residency for someone who has no proof of residency? We had to work with the city to try and build out items that were actually going to work for our people.

Christine Owen:
So let's walk through a "typical," I put that in quotes, because I know that there's no typical, but a typical guest that comes in and they need your help in proving their identity. How do you go about this generally? And then, what are your exceptions on doing it too?

Jackie Wright:
It's funny, because what I like to say to the volunteers is the only predictable thing about the ID Ministry is its unpredictability. But I would say your typical guest is, honestly, a minority adult who comes in and has nothing and really, what they need is the DC ID. Because they need it to access housing or they need it to access their benefits or they need to enroll their child in school or they want to apply for a job and they have nothing. So it's a matter of starting at ground zero with them, saying, "Okay, do you have a social security card? If no, then okay, first step is you need to go get a medical record signed by a doctor within the last six months. Here are the free clinics where you can go. Once you have that, go to social security." If they have nothing else, then the other easy thing to do is to have them register to vote, and they can take their social security card and their voter registration to vital records to get their birth certificate if they were born in DC.

If they were born out of state, we have some more options available to us. We can apply for them online. But that is really a 50-50 shot of whether or not that's going to work, because especially through big companies like VitalChek, they give you this knowledge-based quiz that you have to take to prove that you are who you say you are. But the questions are really tricky and sometimes not even comprehensible, for real. And I would say a third to a half of the time, we get a bounce back saying, "You need to upload your ID." Well, if you need an ID to get a birth certificate and a birth certificate to get an ID, what do we do?

So then, it's a matter of scraping together as many secondary other documents that we can to try and please VitalChek. Or maybe we go a different route and we pick up the phone and we call Miss So-and-so at the vital records office in some small county in North Carolina, and we try to do it that way. So then, once they have their birth certificate and their social security card and their proof of residency, which, again, can be a whole other issue, can be another stop to another agency to get proof of homelessness, then we can give them the check and send them on to the DMV. And we hope that they can get their ID.

Christine Owen:
So I have a really naive question, which is about the social security card. So why does the Social Security Administration require a medical record to prove social security?

Reverend Ben Roberts:
I'm going to take that one, because that's a pet peeve of mine. They don't require a medical record. It's an option. We always hesitate to say this, because it's one of the only ways that we found to be able to do this for a lot of our guests. But it's not in the typical list that you find on the Social Security Administration's website. If you haven't engaged in person at the office, you probably wouldn't even hear about the option. And then, we hesitate to say it, because we don't want our one way to actually get this done to go away. But that's why. That's why we use the medical record. It doesn't make sense to us either. It's just we know it works.

Christine Owen:
So my assumption, I actually know who I'm going to call and ask if this is true or not, my assumption is that you're adding a little bit of friction, so you have to go and prove that you are a live human, right, that you're alive, and that you're not dead and you are clearly a somebody. It's just the question of which somebody are you, right?

Jackie Wright:
Right.

Reverend Ben Roberts:
Right.

Christine Owen:
So it's so interesting. I will say, so we're in the identity business and I am very deep into NIST 800-63-4 revisions, and I feel like I have those poor guys on speed dial over at NIST. But I think that the pieces that they are trying to figure out, and also, a lot of government agencies are trying to figure out, is, how do we figure out who this person is, who is one of your guests? Because those are the hardest for anyone to figure out, because of all the things that you've said. I am sure you have some really amazing success stories and some heart-wrenching, "This did not work out," stories, and I think hearing them would be really helpful for us to understand the kind of impact that you guys make.

Jackie Wright:
Yeah.

Reverend Ben Roberts:
We've got stories. I'll start with New York City. God bless New York City. And year to year, which jurisdiction is most difficult, it changes. So New York, if I'm insulting you right now, it was a long time ago when this happened. You are much better now. You're much better now. So we had our individual, this is our person who it took the longest to get his credential done. He came to us. He was born with a mom with a last name that was different from the one that he used his entire life. He didn't really know that.

And he was in his, I want to say, sixties by the time he came to see us to try and get this copy of his birth certificate. But when he went in is when he found out, "Hey, the name that I've been using all of my life, for these many multiple decades, is not the name that they have me on record as. I've had driver's licenses throughout my life. I've had jobs. I've gotten education. I have records with the name that I know myself as, but it doesn't match what the birth certificate has on file for me."

And so, we started doing this battle with the jurisdiction in New York City on his behalf. And what we were told is, "Because it doesn't match, we're not going to be able to give this to you." We tried for three and a half years to get this piece figured out. We had to meet with multiple lawyers, tried tens of applications, had plenty of rejections over that period, until we got to the point where, it was probably lawyer number three at this point, that we finally put him on the track of getting a correct, well, their version of a correct answer, which was, "Go and have a legal name change to the name that you've known yourself as this entire time in Washington, DC, and then, come back and show us the legal name change in New York City and we'll get you your birth certificate." But only at that point. Three and a half years.

Again, maybe somebody would've known that upfront, but if you're just the average person who's out there, you don't know what you don't know, until you start making the application, then you start grabbing every single resource you can get. We luck out here in DC, because we end up with retired consular affairs officers who love this type of work and have been doing it their entire life. And that is who it was, who finally just said, "I'm going to take this case. I'm going to see it through to the finish." And so, she probably wrapped it up for it, but it still took her like 10 months to do her side of it. But that is still, to date, our longest one, just to get the birth certificate. And then, he still had to go and finish off getting his ID for his housing. Again, this is a guy who is approaching 70, needs an ID to get into housing, and is experiencing homelessness. And this is the type of thing that they go to. It takes a long time in his case, but it's not quick in any other case for that matter.

Jackie Wright:
Yeah, the issue with the name being different on one document versus another, we have another case that took us, this one only took us about 18 months, but the lady's name, her first name was Deborah on some documents, Debbie on others, and Deborah' with an apostrophe on others. And it was really unbelievable how many steps it took us to... We had to amend her birth certificate. And again, lawyers involved, all of these things. And the kicker with this one is that, even after we helped her to get her birth certificate amended, when she went to the DMV, they still refused to give her ID, until one of our volunteers who I will mention looks like me, little older, but looks like me, went with her, didn't change any of the documents that she was providing, but just accompanied her. Didn't say a word. She got the ID. This again was for housing. Was so overjoyed. I have a little video on my phone that she sent all of us doing a cartwheel in the parking lot of the DMV after she got her ID. And again, about four months later was matched for housing.

Reverend Ben Roberts:
I don't know the last time you saw an adult not in the Olympics do a cartwheel, but the parking lot of the DMV is a good venue.

Christine Owen:
I can't even imagine it.

Jackie Wright:
We have other heartbreaking stories that we don't know how they end. A lot of our domestic violence cases, where we have women who are coming in, who are running from abusive partners, often they have children with them, and they have a hard time even getting into a shelter, because they can't show the child's birth certificate, but the abusive partner is holding the birth certificate. Really heartbreaking cases like that, where we go to bat for them as much as we can, but we can't do the final step. And so, we don't know how they turn out.

Christine Owen:
That is pretty hard. If they're not of school age, how would you be able to get ahold of anything? Yeah, that's interesting.

Jackie Wright:
Yeah.

Christine Owen:
So since you guys have been doing this for so long and you've seen a lot of laws change, like the REAL ID Act, and you've seen a lot of policy change, what is it that you've seen that you feel like has helped you in your efforts to be able to get someone an identity document?

Reverend Ben Roberts:
I'll start early on with when we were first having the REAL ID implementation here in DC. What was helpful, it wasn't readily helpful, but it ends up being helpful, was when the different agencies who are also trying to implement the policy were willing to talk with us. So I had a really good relationship with the DC Registrar of Deeds, who, at the time, would respond personally to my emails, set up meetings with me, went as far as to bring us in to, when they were implementing the knowledge-based assessment that you do at the DC vital records office now, walked us through that before they launched it. They did kind of a soft roll out with us. We told them, "You're going to want to have a navigator stand here with people, because they're going to get tripped up. They're not going to know what to do. So when an agency is responsive and kind of human about whatever policy is coming into play, that is helpful.
But other than that, some of the roll out of the digital pieces so far, they still really trip people up. Obviously, the one that we interact with most is a knowledge-based assessment through VitalChek, that is pulling publicly available information to then kind of quiz you about yourself. I'm hopeful, as we get further down the line of replacing everybody with their REAL ID, and then, if you go to renew that and you don't have to change your address, you don't then have to reproduce all of those kind of breeder documents and other pieces again. So there is some kind of record that's kept electronically, such that you don't have to then reproduce paper documents again.

That is helpful, because again, it's really hard for people to keep up long-term with all those paper documents. But at the same time, we serve a client base that, when you talk about an ID vault or something like that, that can be held digitally, that you could access without having to produce a piece of paper, we have a lot of people who are very distrustful of anything digital, everything government. And it's either for good reason, because of their history and interaction with authority, or because of just the way that their brain is working and experiencing the world right now, their mental health, that's keeping them from being able to bridge that type of trust gap that really exists in the digital space, in the kind of electronic record keeping space.

Christine Owen:
So you brought it up, and I think it's interesting. Because I do know that within... So that kind of identity vault would be considered a wallet. That's the word that we're using in the US. And I, I feel like we've been talking about this a lot as an industry, as an identity industry lately, the concept of wallets and what to do with them and how to use them and how they're created. And sometimes, when I talk to some people who are in the identity space, they actually say a lot of the same things. They're inherently distrustful with the idea of giving a wallet company or the government a biometric to be able to do that identity resolution and prove that the person who is holding on to the identity document is the same person that's on that document.

So what do you think, I'm putting you on the spot a little bit, but what do you think, do you think that a wallet is going to be helpful for your guests in the future? Do you think that they're just not going to adopt it? How do you think that that might go with the advance of how digital technology is moving more towards a cell phone?

Reverend Ben Roberts:
Well, I would say there'll be plenty of folks who are just outright not going to adopt it. And so then, what becomes helpful, because we know that will be a reality, what becomes helpful is that there is still some form of in-person or person-to-person interaction that can take place, even if you don't have your paper documents, somebody that you can sit with and work through whatever process we need to name to eventually get you to the place. Because those two realities aren't going away. People will lose their paper documents. People will not trust fully a digital wallet. So they do need an in-person option, as somebody who can go kind of slow with them, somebody who can treat them like a human being, like we all are, who just are not the sort of average user experience.

Some of the digital stuff, it's going to speed up the process for a whole bunch of the population. It's going to help a whole bunch of the population. But our work, our work, our ministry is not about a whole bunch of the population. And inside the church, we say the least, the lost, the marginalized. That's who we work with. And so, that's where our eye is, as these different things are getting rolled out. And I know Jackie probably has thoughts as well.

Jackie Wright:
Yeah, just again, there are going to be people missed. There are going to be people who fall through the cracks, for sure. I know that we had talked with some folks about even the idea of them, of the individuals, having a digital identity on a phone that they would have in their possession. Well, I can't tell you how many times a guest will call the church and say, "Hey, I have a new phone number now. I have a different phone. I lost my phone." So many times. So let's just say it's not the silver bullet for our population of folks. It's not an easy answer. It could help in some cases, but yeah, it's not going to solve or make the problem go away.

Christine Owen:
Yeah. So what I hear you saying is you're advocating for, when there are public benefits involved, to still have an in-person option. Is that what you guys are saying, for identity resolution to still have an in-person option? A lot of public benefits are moving online, right? SSA is one of them, but they still have in-person options. And I know I have an uncle, who actually just got his SSA benefits, and he went and he made an appointment with SSA. He's got all of his identity documents and all of the things, and I said, "Why didn't you just do it online?" He goes, "No."

Reverend Ben Roberts:
"No," right.

Christine Owen:
"Doing it in-person." But I asked, because I think that there is a perception for some policy makers that having an online... So online is simple and eas. For those of us who have the identity documents, have good cameras on our phone, have strong biometrics that can easily match, right?

Jackie Wright:
Right.

Christine Owen:
But for those who do not have that, it is very hard for them to try to get a benefit online, because they can't go through all of the steps. And so, in many cases, in those cases, asking them to go online, as opposed to doing it through a remote call, might be, in my opinion, a better solution, because it will, on the security side, I have a security mind, reduce the amount of fraud that could occur. Because when it comes to identity theft and when it comes to privacy enhancing procedures, it's not just when an organization collects the data from the person and has to house that data and make sure that they don't give that data away to others, but they also need to make sure that the person who comes back to recollect the data is the right person. So the reason why I'm asking this, the long story short, is that I feel like there is two ideas on in-person when it comes to identity proofing.

One mind is, well, that's a really good way to, is my mind, that's a good way to eliminate fraud in those really small use cases where it's very hard to get all of the information together. And having that step of getting off the couch and going in and talking to someone is very helpful, I think, for resolution. And then, there's another one that is it should be the same amount of easy for everyone to be able to get their identity proven to be able to get the benefit. So in my opinion, I'm going to give you my opinion, in my opinion, you can't do that. It's unfortunate, but it's true, in my opinion. And what do you guys think about that? Because that's one thing that we're working in the federal government, especially with some EOs that have come out and also some NIST guidance, it's, how do we make sure that everyone is treated as fairly as possible, no matter what? But sometimes, that remote fairness isn't the same as in-person.

Reverend Ben Roberts:
Yeah. So let me do two things for you. One is where part of that question was, how does the digital space sort of made it a little easier? And it is true, it will. It'll make it faster for some folks. Where we saw the big breakdown was one of our Maryland cases, with a young woman who, when she went to get her birth certificate, we pulled up the KBA, every single knowledge-based assessment question that was asked, she had never left Maryland. All her life, Maryland, Maryland, Maryland. Every single question related to the KBA was Florida, properties in Florida, phone numbers in Florida, all of that.

And what we learned, as you can already probably guess, is that the knowledge-based questions were pulling from her father, who she had never met and had not had contact with. And so, if we're building out the system and it's not going to account for something like that, what's her option then? She's got to have an option to go and be able to say, "You got all these questions about me that have nothing to do with me, and we got to figure something out." She's going to need some in-person kind of interaction. And those aren't, I think the term is replicable. It's not going to be big stage replicable to create fraud from a case like that. So it should be a concern. I don't know how big a concern it needs to absolutely be, nor do we need to snuff it out a hundred percent, as I'm worried about that 1%, who's out there trying to navigate.

So that's where I am on that piece. We know it's always going to call for how is the system developed and how much can it actually be nimble in its response to the kind of situations it's getting. And so, that's why the same easy for everybody probably won't work out, because everybody's not coming in with this sort of same ease of difficulty. Some of these cases are just so wildly difficult, with sealed court documents from your adoption prior to becoming an adult. We've mentioned a few times now the domestic violence cases. Still cases for our folks in their sixties, who are African-American siblings born in the south, who never had their births registered, because their parents were just turned away at the county registrar. So we're still fighting those sort of Jim Crow battles even now. And if the only thing is, "Here, do the digital process," and it says, "Well, you don't exist, because you were never registered," it's just not going to be good enough, in terms of equality or equity standpoint.

Jackie Wright:
Right. And what are we basing that... What standard is that equity? It needs to be it's same ease of access for everybody. Well, are we starting from the folks that we're talking about at that level? What level are we talking about? Right?

Reverend Ben Roberts:
Right.

Christine Owen:
Yeah. No, I totally agree with you guys. I think the one interesting thing that you brought up is the concept of identity resolution. So one of the issues, especially if you have similar or the same name as someone else, you can end up having the data in your one identity record cross into another one. And it happens, actually, unfortunately, all the time, especially with very common names. And I actually was at a conference this weekend or this last weekend, and they were talking about how the speaker had such a common name that, when, this is a very embarrassing story for them, but when the Ashley Madison breach occurred, it was basically pinpointed as they were on the website. Because they happened to live in the exact same zip code and had lived actually, weirdly enough, in the exact same apartment building for a month as someone else with their name, who happened to be on that website.
So unfortunately, you're exactly right, credit bureaus, whatever identity collection, they get it wrong sometimes. And in those cases, that's why having a redress program is very important. And I think, at the very final stages, being able to go in person and argue a case is something that you need to do, because you need people like you to be able to come in and say, "Here's all the things that we've done," and really present their case for them. Because sometimes, it's hard when you're trying just to prove who you are and people won't listen to you to, I think, really explain why, "No, no, I am who I am." Right?

Reverend Ben Roberts:
Yeah. And that's the half of this for us. That's the kind of journey with you piece, because it is really defeating, really defeating to be told you're not who you think you are or, "I don't believe you about who you have known yourself to be your entire life." Yeah. That's the part for us where the encouragement half has become really important.

Jackie Wright:
Well, and imagine if you are facing that frustration and you don't know where you're going to sleep that night or your next meal is coming from, it takes resilience from all of us to deal with the DMV and these things. So if you have these other big challenges going on, it becomes nearly impossible without somebody helping you to be persistent and encouraged.

Christine Owen:
Yeah, no, I totally, I can see that. I can see how stressful that is. So one of the things that's really interesting in 800-63-4, so the draftness digital law guidelines is that they added, I think it was there, but they've really added the concept of someone who can attest that a person is who they say they are. There needs to be some sort of linkage. And so, you have to be able to prove the linkage. And then, on top of that, that person has to be vetted to the same level. So usually, you need a couple forms of ID. Have you guys been able to try that out? Because I don't think that that came out of nowhere. I think that that's something that some jurisdictions are likely attempting. Is that something that you've seen? And has it been helpful?

Jackie Wright:
So there's a couple of things. One is, yes, in certain jurisdictions, when you're applying for a birth certificate, a relative can apply on your behalf. Now, whether or not that person has relatives that they're willing to reach out to and whether those relatives can prove their own identity is a whole other issue. And it's the same with proof of residency, at least for DC. If you're staying with a relative or a friend, there is a form you can bring, but again, the person who you're staying with has to meet all of that criteria as well.

And I got an email just this week from somebody who it's a young person who has been living with a neighbor since they were a teenager, and now, they're trying to get their DC ID. And they can't prove residency, because the people who they're living with, they've just been paying somebody month to month. They've not had a lease themselves for years and years and years. So again, I'm not wanting to sound like a broken record here, but there's always going to be these holes, these unusual cases that any system, without that human element, is going to miss, I think.

Reverend Ben Roberts:
We've had a few jurisdictions say to us, me, for example, as the head of the program here at the church, I am able to provide my ID, my name, all of that, to help somebody's application. Other jurisdictions will make it a little more stringent. Say, "You need to be a licensed social worker," or it'll go a step further and it'll be like, "Get yourself an attorney and a notarized statement," and everything else. So we've seen the different kind of tiers of attestation. And it is helpful, because a lot of times, we don't have another good option, certainly not another quick option, that's going to be able to move somebody along in their progress.

Christine Owen:
And I feel like the unfortunate piece is the people who need the benefits the most are the ones that are... There would be a higher percentage of people who have a problem proving their identity, who need the benefits, whereas I don't need these benefits and I can prove my identity, right? But it's a higher percentage. So you've seen a lot of evolution of the policies, of the laws, and if there's anything that you could change about what you're seeing, either what you're seeing moving forward or, "If we could go back to 2015, when they allowed X, that'd be great," but is there something that you think that could be added to the system to help you guys do your work to be able to prove people's identities?

Jackie Wright:
Well, we're always advocating for an expanded list of secondary documents, because often, for birth certificates, for example, it varies with each jurisdiction. Some states, they're like, "Yeah, just show us your pilot license or your gun license." It's very helpful. But we're always advocating for a larger list of secondary documents that would be able to be used to at least get the birth certificate or social security card. So that's one thing.

Reverend Ben Roberts:
Yeah, wholeheartedly agree, a more expansive list of secondary documents that you can piece together is helpful. And we know it's not consistent across the jurisdictions. Some states have really long secondary document lists. Others have extremely short ones. Never fully clear about why the discrepancy with those two. But yeah, a bigger list is usually better for us. I think, as people build out the new policies and especially the new sort of digital systems, it's, again, what is going to be the feedback loop that somebody can work through, if they're not successful the first or the second time, with the kind of standard process that's put in front of them. And really small things, like just try and save somebody some time. If you're going to make a list of documents that somebody can bring, maybe link to where they're supposed to get that done. So as the DMV tells me, "Go and grab yourself a census record."

Well, where on God's green earth am I supposed to get a census record? Tell me which agency I'm supposed to Google or link me straight to it, so I can start that process. Save somebody a couple of seconds, if you can't save them a month, give them a couple of minutes of their life back at least. But do pay attention to these stories. Pay attention to what it is that the non-average user is going through, as they're trying just to get their life on track for housing and jobs and education. That's kind of our bottom line. How are you going to make this responsive for that person who's doing this on probably their worst day?

Jackie Wright:
And one more little pet peeve that Ben and I have, if a very well-meaning forward-thinking unhoused person is like, "I'm going to laminate that social security card, so it doesn't get destroyed by the rain or ripped or whatever," and then it's no longer valid, once you laminate it, then can we please print the things on slightly better paper?

Reverend Ben Roberts:
A little more durable. Just a little more durable.

Christine Owen:
Yeah, you're right. I actually don't even know where mine is, but I know it's not durable. I know, if I ended up in a flood, it would not work out. So I know of your ministry that does this work, and I was wondering if you have, I feel like, and I say this, because I have a good friend who works for a really cool organization in Knoxville, and I can see, and I know that she talks to other organizations outside of Knoxville that are similar to hers, so do you talk to other organizations that do similar things? And where are those organizations?

Jackie Wright:
We do occasionally. There's not a lot of them, to be honest, but there are a few. Another church in DC had a program that was just for birth certificates. They ended up folding after COVID. But some have sprung up in the Baltimore area, and we get calls from other organizations. There was an organization in Texas that reached out to us, but we don't see a lot. There are community partners that do pieces of what we do, but they are often... Different social service agencies, they'll get funding to pay for IDs, but then, they'll run out, at the end of the month, and they'll send their folks over to us. So in terms of our particular 100% volunteer, not funded by the government kind of organization, there's not a ton, wouldn't you say, Ben?

Reverend Ben Roberts:
There aren't a ton. There's more now. Once REAL ID started going into place, that's when we started hearing from another group that was popping up doing the work. I think one's called the Homeless ID Project in Arizona. And I think they even tried to do a little office in Baltimore. I can't remember the connection there. And then, another place where it really did start showing up was the VoteRide or VoteRiders, that's nationwide. But of course, their focus was more about making sure people had the documents they needed so they could vote. But at the same time, if you're proving all of that, you're also proving the sort of documents that we do as well. And those popped up in the 2016 and after, as those sort of voter ID laws came into place. So more and more, I think it's getting recognized as an issue, and slowly, organizations are popping up around in different communities.

Christine Owen:
I completely forgot about the voter ID laws. That makes a lot of sense that they would have to create something to help out with that as well. So if there's one thing that you wish people walked away from this conversation thinking about, what would that thing be?

Reverend Ben Roberts:
I'll go back to my standard, and that's the average user experience is average. And that means that it is not the experience of guests that we see here in our program and plenty of folks who haven't even accessed the assistance that we can provide. And they're just out there kind of spiraling around on it on their own. So think about, "What's the other experience that people are having with my product that I have not thought about?" And then, seek out a partner, like us, if that's what it takes. We're always happy to have people come and sit and shadow for a day, just to hear firsthand what some of the stories are and get a feel for the emotion and at times, turmoil that people go through as they're trying to piece these things together, so that, when you build out your policy or product, you can think to yourself, "Is this too many clicks? Is somebody going to lose it, because this was too many clicks?"
Because the answer is yes, somebody is going to lose it, because that was too many clicks. Because again, they got to find somewhere to eat, they got to find childcare, all of that stuff. So come learn. Come learn from these types of stories, as you're putting your policies and your products together.

Jackie Wright:
And not to be dramatic, but truly, in some cases, these things can be a matter of life or death for people, really. And even if it's not that dramatic, it's a matter of housing or no housing or healthcare or no healthcare or school for their kids or not school or jobs or no jobs. It has a real and significant impact on people's lives.

Christine Owen:
Yeah, God, it's scary, especially the stress. I think the stress is the hardest part for them. So my question, my last question, is, how can we help?

Reverend Ben Roberts:
If you are local to the DC area, again, or you want to make a special trip and come and see this ministry, please do. If you want to come and volunteer with us, let us know. We'll take you. If you live in a place where there's not an organization that does this kind of work, we are happy to help outfit people. The work that we've had to do, as we've grown and matured as a program, means that we've got all 50 states' processes in a book, because we had to learn how to do it for every single or almost every jurisdiction that we could think of and a few of the Caribbean islands.

So if you're in a place that maybe wants to launch something, talk to us if you want to volunteer, volunteer. But definitely, if you're able, send us some funds. We service over 2000 clients a year. Average cost for somebody, if they're having to do all of their documents, ends up being around $60 or so, because when we can, we try to help with transportation. And the documents themselves easily run into the forties, plus another five stop. So if you can help fund us, great. If you can support us in other ways or you want to start something on your own, then let's do it. Let us know.

Christine Owen:
So $60 is the average cost to get a person identity documents?

Reverend Ben Roberts:
What we do is we factor in. So if it's a non-driver's ID, not a driver's license, but a non-driver's ID, and your birth certificate is $43. But in order to prove all of that, the visit to the doctor, the transport back over to the vital records office, the transport to the DMV brings that total up, because you need to pay for those things. Then if you took off work or you had to secure childcare, you have even more costs after that. So we kind of make our average based on we know people have to travel to do these things and then, the documents themselves.

Christine Owen:
But for those of us who listen to this podcast, because I know some of you, I know some of you, who you are, that's easy for us to give. That's awesome. All right. Well, thank you so much today for chatting with us. Hopefully, the viewers don't get upset, because we're going to show this a couple of times. Because I think it's just such important thing for people to know. So thank you so much.

Jackie Wright:
Thank you. And it's such a gift for us to be able to elevate the voices of those who would normally never get a chance to speak in this kind of environment. So thank you.

Christine Owen:
Yeah.