Grumet: Need a Texas ID? Plan to wait months or line up before dawn
Yaisel Castillo could not afford to leave empty-handed. So she arrived at the South Austin driver’s license office at 3:30 a.m. Friday, clutching a blanket and her envelope of documents, waiting for the doors to open at 8.
“Today is my deadline,” said Castillo, 19, who just landed a job but didn’t have the state-issued ID an employer requires. “I had to miss work today just to get an ID. I couldn’t risk missing this.”
The line grew to dozens of tired-eyed people by dawn, all desperate to get their IDs and unable to wait months — yes, months — for a scheduled appointment at the Texas Department of Public Safety office on William Cannon Drive.
Their last hope was to snatch one of the few same-day appointments, offered weekdays on a first-come, first-served basis. Even if it meant losing a day's wages or showing up exhausted for their next shift.
“It’s crazy,” said Delfi Gutierrez, 47, who runs a cleaning service and had to renew her license in person after becoming a naturalized citizen. Gutierrez didn’t arrive early enough Monday to get a same-day appointment, so she returned Friday at 4:30 a.m.
“It’s sad when you have to wait that long,” she told me.
DPS’ online appointment scheduling system, launched in May 2020, “means customers should no longer be waiting in line for services,” spokeswoman Ericka Miller told me via email.
In theory.
In reality, the appointments can be months away for an ID you might need now. The South Austin location had a two-month wait for an appointment to renew or update a license and a four-month wait for an appointment to get a new ID.
Appointments at the North Austin location were available in about half that time. Wait times vary from weeks to months at other DPS offices around the state.
People who need their IDs sooner — for a whole range of practical and urgent reasons — line up in the dark morning hours, hoping that day they can get the government card they can't function without.
Prosperity starts with ID
In his inaugural address last week, Gov. Greg Abbott touted Texas as “America’s undisputed economic leader, providing pathways to prosperity for all Texans.”
Yet it’s impossible to get on that pathway — to get a job, lease an apartment, open a bank account, board a plane, cast a ballot — without a state-issued ID.
And it’s absurd to crow about Texas’ $33 billion surplus and promise historic tax cuts, as Abbott has, when some Texans face so many difficulties getting this must-have document. People routinely lining up at 4 or 5 in the morning tells you this system isn’t working.
These extensive waits became our new normal after DPS offices closed in the early months of the pandemic, then reopened in late May 2020 with more than a million Texans behind on renewing their licenses and countless others needing first-time services.
DPS tried to clear the backlog by offering Saturday hours in 2020 and extended weekday hours through August 2021, Miller said.
But the demand hasn’t let up. Legions of people keep moving to Texas. And Miller acknowledged “current resources are not adequate” for DPS to serve all customers and keep up with population growth.
DPS is trying to reduce the need for in-person appointments by offering more services online. But the agency has also asked the Legislature for more funding, for more offices and staffing.
The risk of going without
Young adults waiting to get their first ID, which must be done in person, are particularly burdened by the long wait time for appointments and the challenges of navigating the system. They're stuck, unable to work, rent a place or drive legally.
Lauren Rose has asked a bunch of youths coming out of foster care or trying to exit homelessness: With everything going on in your life, what’s the most important thing the state could do to help you?
“Their response is, literally, it needs to be faster and easier to get a license,” said Rose, the director of public policy for the Texas Network of Youth Services.
The delays and difficulties mean some young adults drive for a while without a license. They take on the risk of costly fines. Other drivers face the risk of colliding with an uninsured motorist.
“It causes people to break the law,” Rose said. “There’s no insurance. The car’s probably not going to be properly registered. So at some point, it's probably going to really bite them.”
Drivers who have a license can face the same problem if they fail to renew it on time.
Alex Cass, 35, was in line early Friday at the South Austin DPS office, eager to renew his license after discovering it had expired about a year ago. He hasn’t stopped driving. He still needs to get to his health care job.
“Every day it’s Russian roulette, like how far do I want to push it,” Cass told me.
Needing a happy medium
Texas' ID system works when people's lives go according to plan — when people see their renewal notices, or qualify for online services, or have the foresight to plan months in advance for an appointment. But people face a scramble when things go wrong.
Kristina Kennedy tried to do the right thing. She went online months ago to schedule her license renewal appointment in San Marcos, hearing the wait was shorter there. Unfortunately, she forgot one of the required documents when she drove a half-hour to her appointment Thursday.
Back to square one, with her license expiring in a week.
“It’s really frustrating,” Kennedy, 52, said when I met her outside the South Austin DPS office Friday morning, lining up for her second attempt. “There should be some happy medium between making an appointment several months in advance and standing in this line.”
She was too late for a same-day appointment. But a DPS worker urged people to go to the online scheduling portal at 9 a.m. and look for newly posted appointments from last-minute cancellations.
Kennedy snagged one of those, returned Friday afternoon and — success! — left with her license renewed.
It only took two days, three visits and a jolt of luck.
Grumet is the Statesman’s Metro columnist. Her column, ATX in Context, contains her opinions. Share yours via email at bgrumet@statesman.com or via Twitter at @bgrumet. Find her previous work at statesman.com/news/columns.
Tips for getting (or renewing) your ID
See if your license or ID card can be renewed online. Many Texans with current IDs qualify for this easy process. Visit tinyurl.com/bdhuya7t for information.
Make an appointment if you need in-person service. DPS has an online scheduling portal at public.txdpsscheduler.com.
Consider hitting the road. The scheduling portal can show you appointments in nearby cities, such as Pflugerville, Georgetown and San Marcos. They might have openings sooner.
Keep checking back. People cancel and change appointments all the time, which means new dates open up.
Cancel if you can’t go. About 30% of the scheduled appointments at DPS offices end up being no-shows. DPS urges people in that situation to cancel their appointment through the scheduling portal so another person can grab that time slot.
And if all else fails: Many DPS offices offer a limited number of same-day appointments on a first-come, first-served basis. It’s not unusual for people to get in line before 5 a.m. You can also check the scheduling portal around 9 each morning for new openings created by cancellations.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Need a Texas ID? Plan to wait months or line up before dawn
