7,000 people experiencing homelessness get Arizona IDs through 'tele-MVD' office

Last year, Arizona DOT’s Motor Vehicle Division partnered with the Homeless ID Project to establish a virtual, "tele-MVD" office near downtown Phoenix.

MVD Director Eric Jorgensen said it took years to get their tele-MVD office up and running on Key Campus, where thousands of people experiencing homelessness access nonprofit assistance daily.

They’ve collaborated before, he added, to make things like payment easier in that time.

“And then the biggest step that a year ago we were able to kind of solve was this issue of, how do we get you to an office?” Jorgensen said. “Because it was a 45-minute bus ride. From where their offices were to where our offices were. And now, we have a presence there at their office, and we use technology to make that happen.”

Over the last year, he said close to 7,000 people have received state-issued IDs through that setup.

“It becomes a barrier not to have that identification, to be able to move forward beyond experiencing homelessness into being able to improve your situation,” said Jorgensen.

He compared the setup to telemedicine.

“So all the things that you would expect in a regular MVD office are sitting there on a desk for the customer to interact with,” Jorgensen said. “It's just that the staff member from our side is remote.”

Along with the launch on Key Campus, Jorgensen says they’ve brought tele-MVD services to other parts of the state and plan to continue expanding them.

According to Jorgensen, they’ve been rolling out tele-MVD offerings across the state and plan to keep expanding.

"It was simultaneous with the work that we were doing on Homeless ID,” he said, “but that was always one of the things that was in our mind of, ‘Oh, this can definitely help serve communities.’"

The plan is to continue that growth in communities that need it most.

"This is about good government, and I think this is about wisely using our resources across the board,” said Jorgensen. "Using technology like this is probably our best chance of doing that, of getting our services as close to the people who need them, whether they're unhoused or just in a rural community."