Tri-City housing advocates are asking the country's largest credit union to bank on helping the homeless.
The Tri-Cities Homelessness Task Group has met with a representative of Vancity credit union to discuss options for opening bank accounts for Tri-City residents with little to no income or no fixed address.
Coquitlam Vancity branch manager Tony Ciulla said the discussions are only preliminary and he didn't want to give anyone the impression that the idea was approved until all of the legalities of the initiative had been examined.
At this point it's just an exploratory project, he said.
In a July 8 meeting of the homelessness task group, Vancity mobile accounts manager Geoff Luciw told the panel that Vancity is "looking at the logistics of providing banking services for the homeless," according to minutes from the meeting, but "federal requirements may preclude them from providing services to those with no identity documents."
But Rob Thiessen, director of the Hope for Freedom Society, a Tri-City homeless outreach and advocacy agency, said the proof-of-identity barrier is one his organization overcomes every day.
"We vouch for all kinds of people for services who don't have appropriate personal identification. And the banks are always satisfied that they've got someone to fall back on," he said. "We're not talking about huge risks here."
The idea of setting up bank accounts for the homeless isn't without precedent. In fact, it isn't without precedent within Vancity, which operates Pigeon Park Savings, a bank in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside catering to the street-entrenched population with basic and affordable banking services.
Without affordable banking services, people with little income and those without a home address are forced to cash cheques at pawnshops or pay-day loan providers, which command a percentage of the cheque for the service.
"If you look at what they have to pay to cash a cheque, I wouldn't be able to justify that kind of expenditure every pay period," Thiessen said. "And to have a bank account also opens up other doors, like making it easier to get social assistance."
Not having a bank account can also be a major barrier to getting off the street as many employers only pay employees with direct bank deposits and many landlords want rent cheques from a personal chequing account.
"We encourage our clients that as soon as they get to that point in their recovery, to get their banking stuff sorted because it makes things a lot easier for a person," Thiessen said. "I don't see any reason why this shouldn't work and our organization will do whatever we can to help out."
Joyce Lissimore, organizer of the Share Society food bank at Port Coquitlam's Trinity United Church, said that without the ability to have rent payments withdrawn directly from some low-income clients' bank accounts, some inevitably end up missing payments and are evicted.
According to the minutes of the July 8 task group meeting, Vancity might host an information table at the Oct. 18 Homeless Connect Day in Port Coquitlam, advertising the affordable banking services, if they are able to provide them.
"Vancity has proven to be on the forefront of a number of issues for marginalized people so it's not surprising to me that they would be thinking about stepping up on something like this," Thiessen said.
