Make Sure We Count

 
So, if we can negotiate fair rules that protect our people, make it easier to hire our people and pay attention to our people, we set the ground work for a more accurate count. And given all of the resources and decision-making riding on the numbers, for many communities getting involved in the count only makes sense.   There are at least four ways to get involved in the count:

  1. Be a Census Partner. Have your organization become an official member of the Census “team” (see www.census.gov/2010census for more info)
  2. Do your own intervention. Use it as an opportunity to canvass your neighborhoods, build your lists, and deepen relationships with folk you canvassed last cycle by going door to door getting folk to turn in their mail-in forms. This can be targeted to key census tracts or broader. Think about where you need to show power, get counted or get certain kind of folk counted (families with children, people of color, etc.) and develop a plan.
  3. Get paid. Get your people hired to be census staff
  4. Spread your impact. Help train and support volunteers and other organizations, faith institutions, etc., in your network to count where you need it most.

You may want to guide your strategy by reviewing your current organizing area, funding and political priorities and prioritizing Hard To Count (HTC) areas in your community.   HTC scores are derived from 12 variables that are correlated with high non-response rates.  These variables are: 

  1.  Vacant units
  2. Multi-family Housing Units
  3. Renter Occupied Units
  4. Occupied Units with More Than 1.5 Persons Per Room
  5. Households that are Not Husband/Wife Families
  6. Occupied Units with No Telephone Service
  7. Adults that are Not High School Graduates
  8. People Below Poverty Line
  9. Households with Public Assistance Income
  10. People Unemployed
  11. “Linguistically Isolated” Households (Fedspeak for folk who do not speak English surrounded by people who do)
  12. 12.Occupied Units Where Householder Recently Moved Into Unit

 
Looking at the variables, most of the communities where we work have at least 10 of the 12 variables. 
If you go to www.census.gov and Planning Database in the search window, you get the 2000 database file containing HTC scores which summarize the attributes of each tract in terms of counting difficulty. HTC scores can range from 0 to 132. Areas with scores over 70 are likely to be the areas with relatively high non-return and undercount rates.

Walking materials are to be available in several languages from the census – although you may decide to develop your own message.