When Dee Curry recently stopped by Pathways to Housing’s Brookland office a few weeks ago to pick up her Social Security check, a staff member standing outside asked her if she wanted to register to vote. Curry, 65, has been registered for years, but she remembered that she had recently moved, so she asked for help updating her address.

The bureaucratic task may seem insignificant to some, but to Curry it’s a mark of the stability she holds dear. Having spent years of her life “in and out of jail, in and out of substance abuse and mental health treatment facilities, and basically spinning out of control,” Curry says registering to vote and casting ballots has been a critical link to a more settled life.

“It was a wonderful day,” she says.

And that’s why she was happy to see other people with similar experiences — some still experiencing homelessness, some transitioning out of it, some bouncing between places to live — stopping by the table that day to register to vote.

The outreach was part of a larger voter registration drive from Pathways to Housing, a D.C.-based homeless services and housing provider. Over the course of the two-month campaign, the team registered 115 people who currently or previously experienced homelessness to vote.

Pathways staff and volunteers addressed an almost foundational question: how can you register to vote if you don’t have an address to call your own, even more so during an election D.C. is hoping to conduct largely by mail?

They worked to identify mailing addresses for people who might have access to them, and when one wasn’t readily available, used the address of either the Pathways office or the Downtown Day Services Center. That way, people without homes of their own could still get their ballots in the mail. (The voter registration deadline was Oct. 13, though D.C. does offer same-day registration during both early voting, which starts on Oct. 27, and on Election Day.)

“I’ve learned through my own experiences that people who are not mobilized are the persons that in many cases do not get represented,” says Curry.

And that was central to Pathways’ mission when they decided to launch the registration drive.

“The staff was really inspired due to some recent things that’s happened, including the murder of George Floyd and other tragedies and unjust actions. And so they were looking for things to do,” says Christy Respress, Pathways’ executive director. “And one of them was to launch this voter registration campaign because so many people we work with are very disconnected from the voting process.”

Pathways staff not only spoke to clients coming to the Brookland office, but they also visited encampments across the city and approached people at the Downtown Day Services Center, which the organization helps run. They carried pens, voter information and plenty of registration forms, explaining that a past felony or lack of ID wouldn’t stop someone from registering to vote.

According to the 2020 Point-in-Time count, there were 6,380 people experiencing homelessness in D.C. on the January night when the annual census was conducted. (That includes people who were unsheltered, in shelter, or in transitional housing.) Of that number, 3,937 were adults of legal voting age. But many advocates say these numbers undersell the severity of the problem, because it doesn’t include people who may be jumping from home to home — or sleeping in their car. And experts have predicted the pandemic will only worsen things. 

The Pathways team helped people in other ways too, finding glasses if they needed help reading the voter registration form, translating it if necessary, and addressing a question on the form regarding mental competency to vote.

It’s one that throws a lot of people off, according to Respress. “They’re worried, what does that mean? Does that mean if I’ve spoken with a therapist or psychiatrist, that I’m not eligible to vote? So we’ve had to do a lot of education about that actual question, which might seem so simple, but actually is quite overwhelming for some people,” she says.

Similar efforts were undertaken in recent weeks by Bread for the City, the D.C.-based services provider, which set up a voter registration table alongside it’s twice-weekly COVID-19 testing at its Shaw headquarters as well as another table at its center in Southeast D.C.

A related push has been shaping up in Northern Virginia since 2017, where staff and volunteers with the voter mobilization group Spread the Vote have worked to get IDs for people experiencing homelessness. Over the last three years, they’ve helped 600 people.

“We want to get them ID so they can vote,” says local project leader Carol Geargeoura. “But then we realized also that we’re not going to get them just voter ID. We’re going to get them actual ID. And this way, they can get jobs and they can get into the shelters and stuff like that.”

Still, both Respress and Geargeoura say one of the biggest barriers was one that affects even Americans who aren’t experiencing homelessness: a sense of futility.

“We’ve had quite a few people who have passed by our table and said, ‘Why would I bother? It’s not going to make a difference,’” she says. But they stayed and continued to have conversations with people, some of whom were ultimately convinced that their vote does matter.

“This is not about politics. It’s about you and your community,” Geargeoura says she would tell people she was working with. “You know that all the funding that goes towards housing that you’re looking for or your healthcare or food, your food stamps and how your community is taken care of has to do with who you vote for. And there’s always other people, they’re gonna either take care of you or not.”

Curry understands the reluctance some people experiencing homelessness may feel when they’re asked about voting. It’s a feeling she had before she was able to find her own footing. “They often give up and they have a low confidence that anybody else can make a difference,” she says.

Research has shown that voting patterns generally correlate with income, with lower-income Americans less likely to cast ballots. But Curry says that for her, voting has been important, and she’s “elated” that Pathways to Housing launched the campaign during this particular election cycle.

For Respress, the most satisfying part was when her staff was able to help clients meet two goals at once — housing and voting.

“I remember one conversation I had with someone who we registered to vote last month,” she says. “He said to me, ‘Christy, finally I have an address at home to get my ballot at. I’m so excited to vote for the first time because I get to get this at home.’”

This article is part of our 2020 contribution to the DC Homeless Crisis Reporting Project, in collaboration with other local newsrooms. The collective works will be published throughout the day at DCHomelessCrisis.press. You can also join the public Facebook group or follow #DCHomelessCrisis on Twitter to discuss further.