source: https://unsplash.com/photos/i__uqGnARyI
According to the USAJOBS, the Federal Government's official employment site, job applicants who do not have a permanent mailing address are advised to use the address of a “family member, friend, social and religious organization, or [U.S. Postal Service]” (USAJOBS, n.d.). Since this is the government’s official answer, it can be said that these are the full list of practical and legal existing solutions for dealing with insufficient mail assistance from accommodation services. The evaluation for solutions is divided into three categories: price(is it affordable to homeless people?), accessibility(can anyone have access?), and availability (is it available at any time?).
Asking for close acquaintance is free and can be available at any time. However, this does not satisfy accessibility condition since not all homeless people who need a permanent address for a job has close acquaintances with a permanent mailing address.
Religious or social organizations provide free mail service to homeless people. Still, when it comes to accessibility and availability, not everyone can access it if they don’t have a connection and their mailboxes are often not available when too many people are using them (Robbins, 2019).
Last is the delivery service of the U.S Postal Service(USPS). There are free mail services called General Delivery and paid services called Post Office(PO) Box. General Delivery satisfies price and accessibility criteria, but it can be only used for 30 days (USPS, 2019). PO box is accessible and available to everyone, but it is paid service (USPS, 2022).
In conclusion, the existing solutions do not meet at least one criterion. However, rather than devising a new system, some modifications can make the existing solution fulfill all three criteria since the infrastructure is well established.
Ideation and Execution
An analogy for this problem that can contribute to ideation is women-targeted crimes in Korea. Criminals often identified the permanent address of a woman who is living alone with addresses written on packages. There is a clear difference between this paper’s problem and women-targeted crime in Korea, but they share a similar problem to be addressed: there should be a way to receive a letter or package without using a real permanent address. They also share other similarities, such as the solution is specialized to underprivileged groups(women/homeless) and they have to ensure that the users are part of the targeted underprivileged group.
The solution for the crime was Safe Delivery Service for Women. By collaborating with a postal service company, the government created a public mailbox for women to get their packages (Park, 2019). This solution can be translated to this paper’s problem by considering their differences. The first difference is infrastructure, in which Korea has no public mailbox prior to this service and the US has PO Box. Another difference is the duration of use since the solution for the source problem is for one-time use and the target problem’s solution should be able to provide a “permanent” address before and after getting employed.
Considering these differences, instead of creating a new post box, affiliating with PO Box is a great way to provide an address to job-seeking homeless people. To be specific, the NGO can make a contract with USPS to use a certain amount of PO Boxes and provide its address to job-seeking homeless people. With this solution, the obstacle can be addressed by simply requesting to use more PO Box. Also, this solution will cost much less than creating a new postbox, which works within the budget constraint.
References
Applied Survey Research. (2022). San Francisco Homeless Count and Survey. https://hsh.sfgov.org/get-involved/2022-pit-count/
Keiling, H. (2021). Should you put your address on your resume? | indeed.com. Should You Put Your Address on Your Resume? Retrieved October 23, 2022, from https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/resumes-cover-letters/should-you-put-your-address-on-your-resume
Park, D. M. (2019, August 27). New ‘Safe Delivery Service for Women’ Options Launched in Seoul. The Korea Bizwire. Retrieved October 22, 2022, from http://koreabizwire.com/new-safe-delivery-service-for-women-options-launched-in-seoul/142929#:~:text=%27Safe%20Delivery%20Service%20for%20Women%27%20was%20launched%20as%20a%20service,recently%20surpassed%20two%20million%20people
Robbins, K. (2022, October 15). How do people who are homeless get their mail? Invisible People. Retrieved October 22, 2022, from https://invisiblepeople.tv/how-do-people-who-are-homeless-get-their-mail/
United States Postal Service. (2019, October 25). What is General Delivery? United States Postal Service. Retrieved October 22, 2022, from https://faq.usps.com/s/article/What-is-General-Delivery#:~:text=Each%20piece%20of%20General%20Delivery,sender%20requests%20a%20shorter%20period
United States Postal Service. (2022). PO Boxes. United States Postal Service. Retrieved October 22, 2022, from https://www.usps.com/manage/po-boxes.htm
USAJOBS. (n.d.). What can I do if I do not have a current address? Retrieved October 22, 2022, from https://www.usajobs.gov/Help/faq/application/contact-information/no-current-address/
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. (2011). HUD: New Homeless Definitition. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. https://www.acgov.org/cda/hcd/documents/HUD-Homeless-Rule.pdf
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