As Census deadline passes, NYC’s $40 million outreach effort comes to a close
/
An NYC Census outreach worker helps three men complete the count in Corona Plaza Thursday. Eagle photo by David Brand
By David Brand
The census wasn’t a big priority for Marta Delgado, a young woman sitting with her 7-month-old daughter in Corona Plaza Thursday morning. She might get around to it, she might not.
Many of her neighbors, on the other hand, had actively declined to fill out the questionnaire online and refused to answer the door when Census workers knocked, she said. “They’re scared. Nobody wants to give out their personal information,” Delgado said in Spanish.
But with just 18 hours left before the U.S. Census deadline, a city census worker approached Delgado with an iPad. He helped her complete the short form, ensuring Delgado’s seven-person household was accurately recorded in the once-a-decade count. A moment later, he handed Delgado a goodie bag stuffed with a t-shirt and a water bottle.
The brief engagement occurred during the census team’s last-gasp effort to count households in Queens’ “hard to count” communities before a Friday morning deadline. A Supreme Court decision Tuesday allowed the Trump Administration to cut the count short by two weeks, the latest twist in an initiative already complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic and earlier partisan threats to out undocumented immigrants.
As the deadline approached Thursday, New York City’s self response rate reached 61.6 percent, about 5 points off the nationwide rate of 66.8 percent. Queens’ self response rate was 62.5 percent.
Corona resident Marta Delgado completed the Census for her household Thursday, with just 18 hours left before the deadline. Eagle photo by David Brand
Ten years ago, New York City recorded a 62 percent response rate, 14 points off the national average of 76 percent.
NYC Census 2020 Director Julie Menin counts that as a major success. Maintaining a static self response rate amid a pandemic while closing the gap with the rest of the country took a big effort by her team, she said.
“We've really cut the differential between the city's rate and the nation significantly. And in a national competition, that's very important,” Menin said Tuesday.
For months, the city focused its $40 million outreach effort in neighborhoods like North Corona and South Richmond Hill, driving up the count among undocumented immigrants with low English proficiency and limited internet access through partnerships with popular community-based organizations and religious leaders.
The census team also began working with emergency food providers as the economic impact of the COVID crisis forced more and more New Yorkers to turn to pantries.
“If these places were 20 to 30 percentage points down, it would have brought down the entire citywide rate,” said NYC Census Deputy Director Amit Singh Bagga.
Assessing outreach in ‘hard to count’ Queens
The Census is one of the federal government’s largest undertakings and determines funding and Congressional apportionment for the next decade. Self response rates are key because the Census Bureau uses imprecise tools for estimating total population when people do not respond on their own.
The Census Bureau says it has accounted for 99.9 percent of households in the country, but that doesn’t mean their count is accurate.
If no one answers the door, a Census enumerator can ask a neighbor how many people live in a home, for example. The neighbor may say two when there are really 10 people crammed inside, as is the case in immigrant neighborhoods like North Corona. That leads to a significant undercount, affecting the entire city and state.
Rates varied across Queens, with the lowest self response rates coming in predominantly immigrant communities.
CUNY Mapping Service Director Steven Romalewski’s “Hard to Count” Census map compares rates in 2020 and 2010 by individual census tract. In parts of North Corona, rates decreased by more than 10 points this year, according to the map. Romalewski praised the city for its outreach efforts, but called some of the rates “worrisome.”
“In North Corona, for example, a 47 percent self-response rate is low and very worrisome, and several tracts in that area are still well below their 2010 rates,” he said.
“I think the city’s census office did an impressive job in the face of massive challenges, unprecedented challenges. But I don’t think the statistics [for North Corona] tell that story.”
Several factors, however, contributed to the low overall totals, said Bagga, the NYC Census deputy director. They also mask an exponential rise in responses since March that far outpaces the rate of increase in neighborhoods with limited intervention, Bagga said.
For one, Corona was devastated by the COVID crisis, which for months made in-person outreach impossible. Corona and surrounding neighborhoods recorded some of the highest illness and death rates in the country during the peak of the pandemic in New York City.
Changing demographics also affected census participation, he said. Recent immigrant residents from South and Central America have fewer experiences with the census and a large proportion of residents lack consistent internet access. As Delgado noted, undocumented immigrant neighbors are particularly reluctant to the share their personal information.
Those challenges were reflected in the initial Census self response rate, Bagga said.
Masks for sale in corona plaza. eagle photo by david brand
On March 22, when the Census Bureau first reported results, just 5.3 percent of North Corona households had responded, according to Census data. In wealthier, whiter, lower density neighborhoods like Hollis Hills, Bayside and Howard Beach, about 25 percent of residents had completed the Census March 22.
By Tuesday, North Corona recorded a 47 percent self-response rate — 800 percent higher than in March.
In Hollis Hills, Bayside and Howard Beach, the rate rose by 200 percent with limited intervention.
Hollis Hills’ self response rate was about 26 percent on March 22 and increased by 200 percent to reach 77.6 percent on Tuesday. Over that same time period, the Bayside rate rose from 23.6 percent to 70.83 percent, and Howard Beach increased from 22.6 percent to 67.38 percent.
The census team maintains that, without consistent intervention, the rate of increase likely would have mirrored the 200 percent rise that occurred in those neighborhoods.
A 200 percent increase in North Corona would have brought the community’s self response rate to 15.7 percent.
“What’s interesting to us is the success of the campaign in increasing the self response rate in places that, as an absolute matter may have lower rates than in other parts of the borough or city, but in the absence of our intervention, would be much much lower than they are currently,” Bagga said.
Encouraging rise in Richmond Hill
In South Richmond Hill, the self response rate was 8.2 percent on March 22 compared to 53 percent on Tuesday — a 545 percent increase. A 200 percent increase would have raised the rate to 24.6 percent.
The neighborhood has a large undocumented immigrant population, particularly people of Punjabi Sikh and Indo-Caribbean origin, along with high rates of illegal housing, like basement conversions.
Those characteristics tend to suppress census participation, prompting the extra effort. Even Mayor Bill de Blasio made a rare visit to the area to knock on doors.
In most census tracts in Richmond Hill, the self response rates met or exceeded the 2010 numbers, according to CUNY’s Hard to Count map.
“Really what we see is the intervention of our campaign,” Bagga said.
But Romalewski, director of the CUNY Mapping Service, said the rate of increase is an arbitrary metric. The only number that matters is the final total, he said.
“Compare that to what the rate was in 2010,” he said.
Still, he acknowledged, it’s not quite that simple.
The pandemic, the Trump Administration’s attempts to suppress participation and a series of shifting deadlines complicated the census in New York City and nationwide.
“This census had unprecedented challenges,” Romalewski said. “All the outreach in the world couldn’t have overcome some of these challenges.”
