Marin census workers scramble to meet early deadline
Already upended by COVID-19, the effort to count all of Marin’s residents in the 2020 census suffered another blow this week by news the count would be cut short.
U.S. Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham announced on Monday that the bureau will conclude all counting efforts for the 2020 census on Sept. 30, four weeks early.
“Just weeks ago officials at the Census Bureau assured me that they were committed to a complete count and this new decision flies in the face of that commitment,” said Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael in a statement. “This move will cut short perhaps the most critical phase of the census: the non-response follow up.”
On Tuesday, census workers are scheduled to begin knocking on the doors to track down people who have not responded to via the internet, by phone or mail. Initially, the 2020 census was scheduled to wrap up by the end of July. The coronavirus prompted the bureau to extend the deadline to Oct. 31.
Huffman said he has yet to hear solid justification to conclude the count early. He said it is during the non-response follow up that typically hard-to-count individuals who may lack internet access or are undocumented get counted.
In July, President Donald Trump directed the Census Bureau to gather a count of undocumented immigrants so they could be removed from census totals used in reapportioning the House of Representatives.
Stephanie McNally, a senior manager at Canal Alliance who directed Marin’s census outreach efforts, said it was known then that the White House was contemplating cutting off the response collection period before the end of October.
“Trump is trying to remove undocumented residents from the process of redistricting, which takes place after every decennial census,” Omar Carrera, Canal Alliance’s CEO, wrote in a July statement. “His administration’s goal is to redefine which people count as ‘persons’ and scare all immigrants from participating in the census.”
Carrera said that in addition to determining apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives, census data influences allotments of $1.5 trillion in federal funding for education, food assistance and health care that act as lifelines in historically under-counted communities.
As of Monday, 71.9% of Marin’s residents had submitted census information, just under the 72.1% who responded to the 2010 census. Nine of Marin’s census tracts, however, are lagging further behind the 2010 response rate. In three West Marin tracts that include Point Reyes Station, Bolinas, Stinson Beach, and Inverness the response rate is below 40%.
Supervisor Dennis Rodoni, whose district includes West Marin, said, “If we are serious about counting everyone then the changing of the date to complete that count, given that we are in the middle of a pandemic, seems unreasonable.”
The response rate in the two census tracts located in San Rafael’s densely populated Canal neighborhood are lagging the 2010 response rate by between 7.4% and 13.8%.
“The hardest to count tract in all of Marin County is in the Canal,” McNally said.
Response rates are also lower than in 2010 in tracts located in the Hamilton area of Novato and downtown San Rafael.
One reason for the poor response rates in West Marin is that initial notices that were supposed to be hand-delivered in March to homes with post office boxes weren’t delivered until Memorial Day due to the stay-at-home order.
McNally said the census bureau initially tried delivering materials during the early days of the health order but gave up after receiving reports that people were throwing the notices away without looking at them due to concerns about COVID-19 contamination.
McNally said the coronavirus shutdown came after months of planning just as the local census outreach effort was scheduled to kick off.
“We were primed,” McNally said. “We had everything in place and then we had to stop and redesign the whole outreach effort.”
The state supplied $200,000 to fund the local census outreach effort. Marin County also allocated $50,000 of its own cash and the Marin Community Foundation chipped in $50,000 as well. Canal Alliance was paid $120,000 to coordinate the county’s outreach efforts.
“The plans that we had in place were based on a lot of direct, in-person outreach,” McNally said.
This was the first census where people were asked to submit their data, at least initially, via the internet. This was foreseen as a problem for households that lacked broadband access.
McNally said the plan called for having staffed questionnaire assistance centers with computers or unstaffed kiosks with computers in public libraries throughout the county. That became impossible, however, when all of the libraries were closed due to COVID-19.
“That was hugely impactful,” she said, “because a lot of people do better when they get some help. These hard-to-count communities are not ones that you can pull onto a Zoom session.”
Joshua Green, a U.S. Census Bureau representative, said 600 people are being hired to do door-to-door canvassing in Marin beginning Tuesday.
“The current operational plan calls for census takers to make at least six attempts to contact people at their doors,” Green wrote in an email.
Green said all census takers are being trained on social distancing protocols and have been issued masks and hand sanitizer for use in the field.
By: Richard Halstead
Source: Marin Independent Journal
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