PO Box is an apparently insufficient address

One of the big problems I'm facing now is that I don't have a physical address. I've been staying with friends, and moving myself from week to week to minimize the burden I place on any one person. For a few weeks I was overseas traveling, and for the last few weeks I've been in a temporary sublet with a nice couple in the Castro. But there's no constant physical address through all of that... certainly nothing that would make sense to update every other week with the literally 50+ businesses that want to send me mail.

So I got a PO Box. Seems like a good solution, right? The PO Box will be constant regardless of where I'm actually sleeping at night. And most businesses are fine with the PO Box; they just want to reach me through mail, and they don't care how they do it.

But it turns out that there are some folks that are too good for a PO Box. For example, Customs and Immigration (more on that in another post). And banks. My main bank (E*Trade) refused to let me update my address to the PO Box without adding a physical address, as well. I was like, dude, I don't have one! So I called their customer service to talk to them about it. The woman I talked to was very helpful, but basically ended up gaming the system. She forced in my PO Box and marked the system to send all mail there, but then left my old address in as my physical address.

So she got it to work... but it's a total lie. I don't live at 255 King St anymore. Which makes me wonder what the point of requiring a physical address is to start with. Initially I suspected it was a way to fight against money laundering or other illicit financial activities. Or to establish residency in a state so that they know whose banking laws I'm governed by?

But clearly the system is super easy to beat... To get the PO Box, I needed a valid credit card and a physical address. So I used a friend's address for my CC, and gave that same address to the Post Office. Once I had the PO Box, I updated my CC's address with the PO Box. I then updated my address to a PO Box everywhere else, including through my convo with E*trade. The end result being that everyone now has my PO Box, except the post office, which effectively has a fake address.

So if they were trying to force me to establish residency in a state, or track me for purposes of fighting crime, they've totally failed. And I say, fuck 'em. I don't have a home, so I don't have a physical address. I'm not going to make one up or ask my friends or family to pretend I'm living with them. A PO Box should be sufficient.

Though this has made me realize what a bitch true homelessness must be... how do you get bank accounts and cellphones and driver's licenses and everything else if you don't have an actual address?!?!