ALBANY – A planned Census 2020 Popup event in the city’s South End Sunday is an in-person attempt to turn up the effort to get residents in a hard-to-count neighborhood tallied as the Sept. 30 end of the decennial count looms.
Nearly all of the city’s census tracts have failed to match their 2010 Census self-response rates as the coronavirus pandemic erased every community’s carefully drafted complete count campaigns.
The event from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday at the Ezra Prentice Homes at 625 S. Pearl St. is an effort to stoke interest and rally residents to complete their census questionnaires.
“Dan O’Connell would be proud of us getting back into the streets using old-fashioned shoe leather,” said Assemblyman John T. McDonald III, D-Cohoes, one of the sponsors of the Census 2020 Popup, referring to the legendary Albany County Democratic Party leader who insisted on in-person contact with voters.
This event comes as federal enumerators have been going door-to-door for nearly three weeks to get counts at households that didn’t self-respond by answering the census questions through the mail, via a computer, using a smartphone or on the telephone.
McDonald pointed out that plans in the Capital Region’s cities relied on using their libraries banks of computers to make it easy for residents to answer the census questions. The pandemic shut the libraries, making it impossible for people without computers to access the public ones.
Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan, Cohoes Mayor Bill Keeler, Troy Mayor Patrick Madden and Watervliet Mayor Charles Patricelli have all worked to overcome the obstacles, but it’s been hard, McDonald said.
The self-response rates for all of the Capital Region's cities in 2020 lag behind the 2010 rates. In Albany 52.3 percent of households have responded compared to 61.6 percent in 2010. In Cohoes it is 53.8 percent compared to 68.9; in Mechanicville, 58.5 percent compared to 71.9 percent; in Rensselaer 56.9 percent compared to 67.2 percent; Saratoga Springs, 61.9percent compared to 68.6 percent; Schenectady, 50.2 percent compared to 60.6 percent; Troy, 50.7 percent compared to 61.8 percent; and Watervliet, 56.6 percent compared to 68.3 percent.
The Ezra Prentice homes are in a census tract encompassing Historic Cherry Hill and the Mount Hope neighborhood. As of Friday, just 49.7 percent of the local households had completed their forms through the mail, via a computer, using a smartphone or on the telephone. This compares to a 60.2 final self-response rate in 2010.
The numbers are according to the "Hard to Count" map at www.censushardtocountmaps2020.us. The mapping tool was developed by a team led by Steven Romalewski, director of the CUNY Mapping Service at the Center for Urban Research at The Graduate Center/CUNY.
The Buckingham Lake neighborhood is the only census tract in Albany to exceed its 2010 self-response rate, hitting 82 percent of households in 2020 compared to 81 percent in 2010. The Whitehall neighborhood at 84.3 percent this year matched its numbers form 2010.
The census bureau is issuing updates on the counts from the enumerators and self-response at just the state and national level. The numbers from enumerators knocking on doors hasn’t been provided for municipalities and census tracts.
So far as of Friday, New York state has seen 76.8 percent of its households counted with a self-response rate of 60.8 percent and a 16 percent count by enumerators, according to the census bureau. The national household count is 80.1 percent with 64.7 percent from self-response and 15.4 percent counted by enumerators.
“Our census takers will be knocking on doors until Sept. 30. This is the last stretch to collect data before we begin our tabulation process,” Steven Dillingham, the census bureau director, said Thursday in a statement.
The census had originally been extended to the end of October reflecting the impact of the pandemic. It was then switched to Sept. 30 raising criticism that an undercount will occur that may result in the loss of federal and state aid to communities.
"complete" - Google News
August 28, 2020 at 02:00PM
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Capital Region seeks to get complete count as 2020 Census end looms - Times Union
"complete" - Google News
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