Good afternoon.
Like one does when moving to a new area, I had to adjust my health and dental insurance after moving from San Francisco to Carmel-by-the-Sea. But a puzzle quickly arose—insurance companies do not accept a P.O. Box as an address. In other words, I was out of luck unless I could borrow someone’s address.
Katie Rodriguez here who, like the other 3,000 people that live in this tiny town, has had to navigate the surprises that come without having an official address. This topic, I quickly learned, has been up for debate for quite some time. (City Council signaled its intent to put the matter before voters in 2025.)
Yes—I did read the ‘How-To’ guide put together by the Carmel Residents Association, although to my dismay, it says nothing about health insurance.
When my partner and I went to set up our internet at Xfinity, we had to show the rep where we lived by pointing on a map (it took us a few trips to get this right). We’re actively trying to figure out if we can get a couch delivered to where we live, versus the P.O. Box down the street. But the real test will be with health insurance.
With health insurance, my address determines which providers are in network. Currently, I’m using my parents address in Southern California, paying extra for a more flexible health insurance plan that allows me to see providers here, where I actually live.
I can understand how not having addresses can be kind of a cool thing. In the guide mentioned above, there is a recommendation to “transact local,” as local vendors understand the old-school way of life for Carmel-by-the-Sea folk. While in some ways I love this forced focus on local businesses, obviously in this day-and-age, not everything can be found this way.
Not having an address reminds me of the analogue days, when you didn’t have a cell phone and had to make a plan to meet people at a specific time and place. Or maybe it evokes the same feeling as why we love playing records, or shooting film photography: nostalgia. Romance.
Perhaps it just doesn’t really affect you, because you might not live in Carmel-by-the-Sea full-time.
But add up all the hours on the phone to try and accomplish something simple, like figuring out how to vote without an address, and that romance, for me, is quickly squashed and, quite frankly, doesn’t seem worth it.
To all of those who have lived with no home address for a while, what do you do about health insurance? What do you do if you’re forced to vote in person, but have challenges doing so, such as a disability?
Some charming, old-school ways of life are worth holding on to. For me that’s more small businesses, less chains. More vinyl and homemade crafts, less mass-produced cheap goods.
Is not having official addresses one of them?
(2) comments
Thank you for covering Carmel-by-the-Sea. The address tradition can be vexing and I have friends and neighbors on both sides of the issue. I didn't have any trouble getting a Real ID, but was almost denied a mortgage when couldn't demonstrate to a big non-local bank where my house is. Ultimately I prevailed in that struggle. The Xfiniti store in Sand City was really helpful in establishing my internet service. (AT&T was far less so and I eventually dropped them after they insisted I switch to fiber and I couldn't make them understand that they hadn't run fiber on my street.) There's one thing I'll try the next time I have an address struggle which is to submit a screenshot of this City of Carmel-by-the-Sea website which states that there are no street address in our town: https://ci.carmel.ca.us/post/addresses Hopefully, that will demonstrate that I'm not some crank when I say I don't have a street number and will inspire a more earnest effort to help establish my address with the company in question.
I'm curious to know if that would help in your struggle with your health insurance company. Ultimately, I hope that we can keep our traditional directional addresses and be spared the headaches that have gone along with them. The USPS has a manual dealing with non-standard address systems, Salt Lake City, for example. It's my understanding that if USPS officially recognized our system, then a lot of these address issues would go away as companies depend on the USPS address database to conduct business. Apparently, no one has yet asked USPS if our directional addresses could be adopted. As for ambulance response times, California law mandates that addresses be posted on buildings. There is nothing in that law that precludes the use of directional addresses, however, despite what some have represented. Every directional address has the cross street built into it, so theoretically, it could help people find a given house even faster than simply providing a number. I hope you'll keep Weekly readers up to date on your efforts.
And, Katie, we all need to het a Real ID by May 7. It seems like the people with multiples homes really don’t care about the rest of us who may not be able to get a Real ID because we have no address. I tried to get a pair of shoes sent to me but the company that makes them declined to sell them to me because they could not verify my UPS address, as it’s not linked to a residence. I pay for both a PO box and a UPS box and it’s still not sufficient. I asked one of the mayoral candidates, “What are the benefits of not having an address?” Do you think he had an answer? Of course not.
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