CDTFA
Dolores Huerta speaks at an April 2019 kickoff event for the 2020 Census Call to Action, a California initiative to make sure that everyone is counted.
Lety Valencia, a community organizer with Faith in the Valley, a nonprofit organization of 120 congregations in five counties in Northern California—all part of what is known as the Central Valley—sees the situation as critical.
“Although the Central Valley is the leading agricultural region and contributes billions to the U.S. economy, many people don’t earn enough to support their families,” she says in an interview. “In addition to inadequate schools, housing, and health care, residents endure some of the worst air pollution in the country.”
That’s why Faith in the Valley has made participation in the upcoming 2020 Census a top priority. Census data is used to determine how some $880 billion a year in federal funding is distributed to the states for safety-net programs and infrastructure projects.
If the people of the Central Valley are not fully counted, she explains, it could lose out on millions of dollars in funding for Head Start, Medicaid, and other safety-net programs. “The Valley’s political influence would also decrease because population data gathered by the Census is used to define the boundaries of Congressional and state legislative districts.”
In the Central Valley, as in many places throughout the United States, the risk of an undercount is great. There are many non-English speakers, low-income households, and immigrants—as well as renters and rural residents who did not receive or return forms in the past.
While the U.S. Supreme Court has just rejected the Trump Administration’s attempt to add a citizenship question, there will doubtless still be fear among immigrants that filling out the Census poses a risk to their ability to remain in the United States, given all else that has happened under Trump. The Census Bureau has estimated that including the question could lead to 6.5 million people declining to participate. As Valencia said prior to the ruling, which Trump could still seek to bypass, “Even if the Supreme Court decides to omit the citizenship question, it is going to be an uphill battle to get people to return the forms.” [Editor’s note: This paragraph was updated from the magazine’s print version to reflect new developments.]
Federal law prohibits the Census Bureau from publishing or otherwise disclosing private information, including immigration status, regarding any individual. Violators face federal prison sentences of up to five years and/or fines up to $250,000. But many immigrants still see it as a risk they would rather not take.
Many fear that identifying themselves [in the Census] as undocumented will affect their ability to remain in the United States.
“Just as our predecessors showed up in the streets and the halls of power to change laws and institute policies to ensure racial and economic justice,” Valencia says, “current residents of the Central Valley must come out of the shadows and be counted.”
Like other groups all over the country, Faith in the Valley is taking steps to address the fears of immigrants over completing the Census. For instance, these groups may accompany clients to appointments at community health centers, to reassure them that their right to receive care will not be jeopardized. Similarly, lawyers who work with immigrants hope to meet with schools, day-care providers, and employers in the community to point out the legal protections that immigrants who complete the Census are afforded.
Faith in the Valley has produced materials showing how Census data impacts residents directly, including decisions on building new schools and providing transportation for the elderly. These efforts are based on its prior experience in the 2016 presidential election as well as campaigns for safer, more affordable housing, more parks, well-paying clean energy jobs, and other objectives.
This involves recruiting people in positions of trust in their congregations and community groups to have one-on-one discussions with residents at meetings of faith communities, work sites, and such informal gathering places as playgrounds.
“We are leaving no stone unturned to reach more than 100,000 people by April 1, 2020, when the Census begins,” says Valencia. “Then we will contact residents again to remind them to complete and return the forms.”
Grassroots organizations like Faith in the Valley are playing a crucial role in the 2020 Census, which is shaping up to be the largest, most expensive, and most controversial census in U.S. history, says Andrew Reamer, research professor at the George Washington Institute of Public Policy at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. (The first U.S. Census took place in 1790, when federal marshals set out on horseback to count every resident of the thirteen states and the Southwest Territory.)
“States are worried because undercounts have increased every census since 1980 as the population has become increasingly diverse and geographically scattered,” Reamer says in an interview.
In 2010, 74 percent of households in the United States filled out and mailed back the questionnaires, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The remaining 47 million households were visited in person. The total cost for the count reached $13 billion, or $42.11 per person, an all-time high.
The U.S. Census Bureau plans to spend $15.6 billion in 2020, which may be insufficient to count the nation’s estimated 330 million residents. In April 2018, the U.S. Government Accountability Office warned that the 2020 Census was at risk because the Census Bureau had not fully implemented 30 of 84 recommendations for improvement.
Participation may also lag because the Census Bureau hopes to have 55 percent of responses completed electronically, to save money on paper forms and personal visits. Initial letters will contain a secure code to allow people to submit responses electronically.
“This is the first time returns will be collected electronically,” Reamer says. “In addition to people who lack home computers, individuals who are concerned about identity theft or how the government will use their personal information may skip the Census.”
For the 2020 Census, many states have established “complete count committees” by passing legislation or executive orders to boost results, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, a nonprofit, bipartisan research organization in Denver. Large states like New York and California as well as small states like Rhode Island and Delaware have formed these committees to organize and conduct outreach efforts.
Cities like Seattle, Baltimore, and Salt Lake City, which have experienced serious population shifts in the past decade, have also established complete count committees. Diana Crofts-Pelayo, communications chief for the California Complete Count—Census 2020 Office, says her state leads the nation in these efforts.
“In 2010, during the height of the economic instability in California, the state didn’t have much funding to allocate for outreach and media,” she says. “But this year, California has invested $100 million; and the 2019-20 proposed budget by Governor Gavin Newsom calls for an additional $54 million.”
The Public Policy Institute of California found that California is vulnerable to an undercount of 1.6 million people in 2020, more than any other state, which could cost it one of its fifty-three seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. California state officials fear this loss because Texas and other Sun Belt states are seen as likely to gain Representatives.
The nonprofit think tank also noted that 75 percent of Californians belong to one or more groups that historically have been hard to reach. The institute urged state leaders to conduct a vigorous outreach because California is also home to 10 million immigrants—about one-fourth of the U.S. foreign-born population—more than any other state.
To reach residents at risk of being overlooked again, California identified partners that helped reach hard-to-count groups in 2010. “Based on these partnerships and lessons learned,” says Crofts-Pelayo, “we are again working through partners such as local governments and community-based organizations to reach the hard-to-find.”
In March, the state awarded a total of $23 million to ten statewide community-based groups that target African Americans, LGBTQ people, and other hard-to-count groups.
Like California, the state of North Dakota has an ambitious plan to ensure a complete count. In late 2018, the Census Bureau estimated that North Dakota had a population of more than 760,000 residents, an increase of almost 13 percent from 2010.
“Thanks to the oil boom, many people moved to North Dakota from other states,” says Kevin Iverson of the North Dakota Department of Commerce. “Although the growth is insufficient to gain a second seat in the House of Representatives, it is crucial in determining the amount of federal funds the state will receive over the next ten years.”
The state’s challenge is to convince others of their need to take part in the Census.
Finding people who may be overlooked in the 2020 Census, Iverson says, involves looking at who was missed last time.
Finding people who may be overlooked in the 2020 Census, Iverson says, involves looking at who was missed last time. Nationally, about 4.9 percent of Native Americans were not counted in 2010, according to the Census Bureau in a 2012 report. “This was a significant finding because it meant that 900 Native Americans in North Dakota were overlooked,” Iverson says. “Over ten years, this undercount cost North Dakota $17.5 million, a considerable amount for a small state like [ours].”
The Census Bureau’s 2012 report also found that about 1.1 percent of renters were undercounted in 2010. Again, Iverson sees implications for North Dakota: “Many of the renters in our state live in rural areas where there may be less than six people per square mile, so we are taking steps to make sure that address records are up to date.” He adds that many immigrants also live in rural areas, “so trusted leaders of these communities will stress privacy measures.”
Finally, the Census Bureau found that in 2010 about one million children under age five—4.6 percent of all U.S. children—were missed. This had an impact on schools and other community facilities for children over the following decade. Iverson says leaders of grassroots groups will remind residents to include everyone in their household: infants, children who live with grandparents or other relatives, and friends who may be residing there temporarily on April 1, 2020.
“It is also important not to count people twice, which we are stressing in our outreach plan,” Iverson says. “Many young people from Minnesota attend our universities and will be considered residents of North Dakota if they are here at the time of the Census. On the other hand, snowbirds who will be in Arizona, Florida, and other states will be included in the population totals of those states.”
And North Dakota may get creative in finding ways to make sure that everyone is counted. “We are a small state where communities have great rivalries in sports,” Iverson says. “Competitions for participation between two rivals might include having the loser wear the other town’s sports hat.”
Other states are also ramping up their efforts to retain their political clout in Congress and their fair share of federal aid for safety-net and infrastructure programs by making sure that all of their citizens are counted—despite the obstacles that Trump and others might put it their way.
In Massachusetts, the population “has been growing twice as fast this decade compared to last,” according to the UMass Donahue Institute, which studies population trends, and now stands at about 6.9 million. The state’s residents have been traditionally difficult to count, especially in the Boston area where there are large numbers of renters, college students, and immigrants.
Officials fear that an undercount may cost the state $16 billion per year in federal aid. This would especially hurt some of the state’s most vulnerable residents. “We are mostly concerned with the federal programs serving low-income children and families, for which Census data is explicitly mentioned as an allocation factor either in statute or regulation,” says Sharon Scott-Chandler, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Action for Boston Community Development, a nonprofit organization that serves more than 100,000 low-income people in the Greater Boston area.
Scott-Chandler warns that three key educational programs could be affected: the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act; Title I grants to Local Education Agencies to improve the academic achievement of the disadvantaged; and expansion funds for Head Start and Early Head Start. There might also be a decline in community development block grants and funds for the state’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).
In response, a group of nonprofits formed the Massachusetts Census Equity Fund to assist with Census outreach and canvassing. In April, the fund awarded $500,000 to forty-five organizations across the state, many of them serving people deemed at risk of being undercounted: immigrants, Southeast Asians, home health-care agencies for the elderly, a tenants’ organization, a community health center, and faith communities.
Besides seeking the support of philanthropic organizations, states are also tapping libraries to encourage participation. A public library is located within five miles of 99 percent of hard-to-count Census tracts, reports the nonprofit American Library Association, which is based in Chicago. Local libraries will also provide computer access for those who lack home computers; some will even take the Census to the streets by making assistance and technology available by van.
Volunteers in communities including Gary, Indiana, are also helping acquire Census data needed to attract new industries. As a result of the decline in the steel industry, Gary has shrunk to less than half its size since its peak of 178,320 in 1960. Volunteers have been going door-to-door to help gather home addresses of residents, 80 percent of whom are African American. This is part of national efforts to obtain an accurate count of African Americans who have been missed in prior Censuses.
Another challenge will be counting the nation’s homeless residents, especially in places like New York City, where homelessness has reached the highest levels since the Great Depression. In February 2019, there were 63,615 homeless people, about a third of them children, who slept each night in New York City shelters. That same month, representatives of the group New York Counts 2020 visited a men’s shelter on hard-to-access Randall’s Island, to remind shelter officials to make plans to include the 300 people living there when the Census gets underway.