The National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) is teaming up with affordable housing providers nationwide to assist the country’s lowest-income and most disenfranchised people participate in the 2020 election.
The Our Homes, Our Votes 2020 campaign is a nonpartisan voter engagement effort focused on increasing voter registration and turnout among low-income residents through a combination of voter education, registration, and mobilization.
“With the additional challenges presented this year due to the pandemic, ensuring low-income renters can vote is more important than ever,” said NLIHC President and CEO Diane Yentel.
“Housing providers are in a unique position to overcome these and other long-standing challenges by making sure their tenants can register and by helping to coordinate access to absentee ballots or polling locations.”
Our Homes, Our Votes 2020 has engaged more than 45 housing providers representing over 500,000 units of affordable housing in 46 states and DC with a goal of bringing together owners and property managers representing over one million eligible voters before election day.
Leading participants include Jonathan Rose Companies, National Housing Trust, WinnCompanies, NRP Group and Enterprise Residential.
“Our residents and their communities are enhanced when they actively participate in their local, state and national elections,” said Jonathan F.P. Rose, president of Jonathan Rose Companies. “As building owners and managers, we are committed to supporting our residents in registering to vote, becoming informed about the issues that affect them, and safely voting.”
Census data confirm that low income voters are registered and vote at lower rates than higher income citizens. Their challenges include less-flexible work schedules, difficulty obtaining legal identification, transportation impediments and misinformation about their rights as voters.
NLIHC’s Our Homes, Our Votes 2020 campaign will provide nonpartisan training and assistance to resident service coordinators and property management staff working to increase voter registration and getting out the vote.
Participants will be provided nonpartisan materials such as posters, flyers, newsletter articles, mailings and voter guides that can be co-branded by each participant.
Affordable housing owners and property managers interested in participating can sign up here. Participation is free, and the only requirement is that participants commit to engage with residents in a non-partisan manner and follow all election laws.
