A downtown church that runs a shower-and-mail program for homeless people is listed as home to more registered voters than any other address in the Holland area.
HOLLAND — There are 157 voters registered at 57 W. 10th St., the address of First United Methodist Church of Holland. That's more than at any other single address in the Holland area, according to a voter-file analysis reviewed by The Hollander. It's unusual for that many voters to be registered at one address.
The likely reason is a program inside the church. Three days a week, it hosts Refresh: Hygiene and Hope, a program it runs with Community Action House for homeless people. Refresh offers hot showers, meals and help finding housing. It also offers a mailing address.
The records reviewed by The Hollander don't show how each registration was created. But the numbers fit that pattern. The 157 voters are spread across 148 separate households, and none of them list an apartment or unit number.
The analysis covers 74,568 registered voters with a Holland mailing address in the 49423 and 49424 ZIP codes. That area includes the city and parts of the surrounding townships. The data is from Oct. 26–27.
Most addresses have one or two voters. Of 36,277 distinct addresses in the file, only one has more than 50 registered voters: the church. No other single address comes close.
The next-highest single addresses are much smaller:
Bigger numbers show up only when whole complexes are counted together, such as manufactured-home parks and the Freedom Village senior living community. Those have hundreds of residents spread across many units.
The church describes Refresh on its website as a program for homeless people and others dealing with housing or food insecurity and social isolation. It offers "the gifts of a hot shower, mail service (within our guidelines), a meal, and connection to services in our church building at 57 W. 10th St."
Refresh is open 8 to 11 a.m. Tuesdays and Fridays and on Wednesday evenings. The City of Holland lists it on its page of resources for homeless residents. The city describes it as offering "mail collection."
The program has been busy. Community Action House said in February 2025 that Refresh had logged more than 31,999 visits and 10,510 showers since it opened in 2019. It also said more than 370 people its team worked with had moved into stable housing.
An address matters for more than mail. "To get an ID, you need an address," Community Action House wrote. It called that "a huge barrier when you don't have a permanent place to live."
Voters have also been signed up at the church directly. The League of Women Voters of the Holland Area held a voter registration event at Refresh on Oct. 11, 2024. Its event listing said "someone from the Clerk's office will be there as well."
The city's resource page also lists 57 W. 10th St. as the address of Family Promise of the Lakeshore, a family shelter program.
Michigan doesn't require a home to vote. The Secretary of State's guidance for homeless voters says they can register using a shelter address, a street corner or park, or "an address where you receive mail."
State law defines residence for voting as the place where a person "habitually sleeps, keeps his or her personal effects, and has a regular place of lodging."
The Bureau of Elections manual for local clerks says only residential addresses should be used. A business address is allowed only if the person also lives there. The manual adds that a homeless person "may provide cross streets or a landmark in the address field describing their location."
Registration forms are self-certifying. When people sign one, they are swearing the address is where they live for voting purposes.
Michigan ties voter registration to driver's licenses and state ID cards. Anyone eligible who gets a license or state ID from the Secretary of State is automatically registered to vote unless they opt out.
"All Michigan drivers are required to use the same address for voter registration and driver's license purposes," the state's clerk manual says. Changing one changes the other.
So if a homeless person gets a state ID using a mailing address like the church's, that address can also become their voter registration address. The records reviewed by The Hollander don't show whether that's how these registrations were made.
Not all 157 people still get their mail at the church. People move into housing, leave town or stop coming to Refresh. Their registrations don't disappear when that happens.
Under federal law and state rules, a clerk can't simply drop a voter who seems to have moved. The clerk mails a notice first. If the voter doesn't respond and doesn't vote, the registration is canceled after the second federal November general election following the notice.
That process can take years, and it can leave inactive registrations at a busy address. The 24 voters still listed at Gateway Mission's former River Avenue shelter address show the same thing on a smaller scale.
A voter whose registration is out of date can update it online at Michigan.gov/Vote or at the Holland City Clerk's office, 270 S. River Ave. Michigan voters can register in person with proof of residency through Election Day, Nov. 3.
Photo courtesy of rossograph via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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