CAR License plates with no permanent address?

[SoulRaven]

Hi, 

I'm new to the forum ... One of my very first questions is how to maintain permanent residency if you don't have a permanent residence. 
I live in Colorado, and had a homeless year in 2006.  One of the toughest things was trying to maintain my residency status without 
a permanent address.   DMV , if I remember correctly , would not consider a PO Box or a UPS-store postal box type of address as valid. 

I think driving around without a current license plate might turn into kind of an unpleasant experience. 

Does anyone else have to deal with this kind of issue?  If so, would you share how you deal with this?

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[rvpopeye]

Welcome to the forums pnolans!
Not sure about Colorado but many states allow a mail forwarding service as a valid address. You will have to become a resident of whatever state you chose if Colorado won't.

 

[minimotos95]

Colorado wouldn't take my private mail box address but took the address of an RV Park and mailed my title to my private mailbox address(hopefully, haven't been back to check).

Interestingly the DL office had no problem with my mailbox address. I want to say they are both run by the state Department of Revenue.

 

[TMG51]

I met a guy from Colorado who was living in a vehicle with his girlfriend. He said Colorado is very accommodating to homeless. He told them he didn't have an ID, and they gave him one with the address of the homeless shelter on it (so it was a real street address, not a PO box or etc). Basically they wanted to help him get out of town.

Not sure if that helps you or not.

 

[akrvbob]

Many state will NOT accept your mail forwarding address any longer. It has to do with the Real ID Act. Drive around town and find a home for sale. That is your new address. First, all your mail is going to your mail forwarder any way so no mail should ever go to that address. If the new owners do get mail for you, they will have no idea if you ever lived there and will just give it back to the Post office. No big deal.

No government agency has the resources to routinely check to see if every person lives where they say they live. They'd have to actually knock on the door and visually verify it. Ain't gonna happen!!

However. Very soon every state will require proof of residency and that will usually means getting someone to sign an affidavit or bringing in a months rent receipt. So you will have to rent an RV space for a month and take that in. That becomes your physical residence. Try the home for sale address first.
Bob

 

[SoulRaven]

Brilliant!  I thank you very much.

 

[FuManchu]

Is the mail forwarding service being spoken of the one from the US Post Office, or a private one?

 

[WheelEstate USA]

Every once in a while you can find someone running a small mailing service out of their home, so it's a non-commercial address.
Otherwise, some shelters will let you use their address for just license and food stamps.

It isn't getting any easier out here, so we have to be pretty damn creative.

 

[Corvus]

Check out http://www.yourbestaddress.com/ .  They are a mail forwarding address that will also register your vehicle in South Dakota.  Apparently, South Dakota does not require proof of residency in-state to register a vehicle, nor does it require vehicle inspections.  So you could register your vehicle in SD without ever having to go to SD.  There should also be no problem keeping your license from Colorado, or any other state for that matter.

Best of luck!

 

[FuManchu]

Can someone explain this mail forwarding concept in more detail? The only mail forwarding I know of is the post office, when you change to a new address. If you put the address of a house for sale as your residence, then who is forwarding the mail and where is it going to that you can receive it??

 

[WheelEstate USA]

There are services that rent you a box. When you want your mail just call and they will forward it to you at an address, such as General Delivery.
Usually they offer a wide range of services.

 

[deadwood]

There is a difference between mail forwarding and legal addresses. I have one from a place in South Dakota. They are very friendly to full time RV people. It's very easy to get a license and change your residency to South Dakota if you don't need to claim another state. Although you do need to visit the state to get a license which might not be easy for everyone. But I imagine other states have the same kind of thing. SD is nice because they don't have emissions on cars and insurance rates are some of the best in the country. The place I use isn't a P.O Box but a legal address which makes a difference. I used it for my tax returns and any other legal things and it works no problem. They have a forwarding service so I can have mail sent anywhere pretty quickly. But that is just a service. The main thing is that they can give you a legal address. A quick google search should come up with plenty of places. I pay $18 a month for mine. Also SD has no state taxes so if you are still working you save a little extra money as well. When doing a google search look up full time RV and mail services. Just make sure that they offer a legal address. Thats the key.

 

[Wanderer]

Hi, 

I'm new to the forum ... One of my very first questions is how to maintain permanent residency if you don't have a permanent residence. 
I live in Colorado, and had a homeless year in 2006.  One of the toughest things was trying to maintain my residency status without 
a permanent address.   DMV , if I remember correctly , would not consider a PO Box or a UPS-store postal box type of address as valid. 

I think driving around without a current license plate might turn into kind of an unpleasant experience. 

Does anyone else have to deal with this kind of issue?  If so, would you share how you deal with this?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Yep, find a homeless shelter who let's you use the address as your residence. Have a PO box (I have a PMB Private mailbox) and so they will have a paper which "Shows" your address as the shelter (You give it to DMV) they'll ship everything  to your PMB.....

I had the very problem you describe and that was the way it was done....

 

[masterplumber]

One thing to be careful of is having your drivers license in a different state than your vehicle registration. When I moved to Colorado 25 years ago many people were moving here. Most would go down right away and change their drivers license, so they could establish residency for voting, hunting and other privileges. But many would hold off transferring their vehicle titles until their current registration was about to expire, to save money. Turns out in Colorado at least that is a ticket-able offense - they want as much of our money as they can get and they want it now. I'm sure it's different in different states, as I know at least one person on here has a Nevada DL and his van is licensed in AZ. But it's good to check it out ahead of time and not have to pay a fine.

 

[SoulRaven]

At least here in Co Springs, with so many military living locally, there are many people who keep their out-of-state registrations. It's not that noticeable.

On a plus side, A friend has offered to allow me to use a piece of his land as a permanent address. I'll have to check what legalities exist around that, but I feel like my questions have all bean answered here.

Thanks for all the help.

 

[FuManchu]

Man, I must be really dense because I'm still having a hard time grasping this.  I won't be traveling around the country.  I sublet a building for my business.  I will be moving out of an apartment and sleeping in my van and keeping a fridge and hot plate in the business for cooking and will get a gym membership for showering.  So do I get a local mail forwarding service and that becomes my "residence" address for purposes of drivers license, etc. and they can forward that mail to my business?  I

 

[donaldelectrician]

Man, I must be really dense because I'm still having a hard time grasping this.  I won't be traveling around the country.  I sublet a building for my business.  I will be moving out of an apartment and sleeping in my van and keeping a fridge and hot plate in the business for cooking and will get a gym membership for showering.  So do I get a local mail forwarding service and that becomes my "residence" address for purposes of drivers license, etc. and they can forward that mail to my business?  I

 Having a solid mail drop is needed . People who handle your Mail some times mess up ...

 Choose a good one . Also they will not save junk Mail for you if you ask ...


 D

 

[rvpopeye]

Can you just use the business address for your home ???

 

[akrvbob]

Since you won't be traveling it's easy:

1) Go to the closest UPS Store and get a box. All your mail will go their and they receive UPS FedEx. You go and pick it up yourself unless you are traveling.
2) Drive around town and find a house for sale--write it down, that is your new address. No mail should ever go there and if it does they won't know who used to live there, they'll just return it.

No, you can't use a business as a residential address because the mail database lists it as business, it will automatically be rejected by the computers.
Bob
Bob

 

[FuManchu]

Bob, are those two separate options, or do they go in tandem?  If I get a UPS box, that becomes my address for driver license?   I still don't understand the thing about the house for sale.  Where is the mail going, if not to that house, and how does it get re-routed somewhere else?

I'm in a situation where I just moved into an apartment on May 1 and for reasons I won't get into now I can't live there and have been sleeping in my van outside my business shop since May 2.  I'm just showering and cooking meals in the apartment.  I will probably move out by the end of the month and that means an address change one month after just changing it.