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.
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!
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.