The pandemic has changed our lives and increased the inequality in our neighborhoods, and Communities for a new California (CNC) is responding to our needs by ramping up life-saving vaccine outreach. This week, our teams continued our COVID-19 education program and also coordinated a virtual COVID-19 housing forum, giving residents an opportunity to voice their housing needs to our local elected officials tasked with our wellbeing. 

Canvassing teams have been making exponentially more contacts every day, focusing on educating about COVID-19 and the vaccination process and registering residents for their vaccination appointments. To date, our Merced, Fresno, and Sacramento have collectively made over 5,000 contacts and knocked on over 15,000 doors.

Organizers in Coachella are engaging their residents through phone banking and literature drops. To date, our phone bankers have made over 21,000 contacts and are exceeding their own goals in record time. 

Additionally, all of our teams from Coachella through Fresno, Merced, and Sacramento have reached close to 37,000 households with vaccine information. This work is critical to protecting lives and moving California into pandemic recovery.

CNC’s COVID-19 virtual housing forum was composed of residents who have been significantly impacted by the pandemic. Their stories ranged from residents who struggled to pay rent because they lost work after contracting the virus, to migrant farmworkers unable to make rent payments after losing their annual stream of income due to the pandemic halting travel and fieldwork. María Eraña, Director of Broadcasting of the Radio Bilingüe Network, was the moderator and Gabriel Nicholas González, Policy Analyst from the UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Initiative, provided updated research on our California housing landscape. Read some of our stories here.