New York state joins NYC in push for census participation

With the 2020 Census count only two weeks away from its second phase of response – and with New York’s response lagging – government officials in New York are taking a last-minute push to boost self-response from residents.

New York City is engaging in a “Census Week of Action” this week, aiming to get the count up through social media blasts, text banking and in-person outreach at parks, playgrounds, food distribution sites and other locations in areas with lower response rates. With the help of nonprofits and volunteers, the city is aiming to underscore the importance of the census to New Yorkers, emphasizing the billions of dollars in federal funding and congressional representation at stake in the case of an undercount. 

Gov. Andrew Cuomo also announced on Tuesday a similar statewide week-long census initiative. Various state agencies, including the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, will share information about the census and a phone-banking event will be over the course of two days next week. 

New York is behind on the census compared to most other states and lags behind its 2010 response as well, with an approximately 58% response rate. The COVID-19 pandemic, which has hit New York particularly hard, played a major role in setting the response back, especially by disrupting planned outreach efforts.

Getting people to respond to the census themselves before workers with the U.S. Census Bureau begin the door-knocking phase of the count to reach out to nonrespondents is important for census officials. People can be hard to reach via door-knocking, and the process is more likely to result in an undercount.

Community-based organizations have played a major role in outreach, particularly in New York City, which invested $19 million in nonprofits engaging in census work. But as the census count has stretched months longer than it was supposed to because of the coronavirus, it’s unclear how much longer financially strapped nonprofits can keep up outreach. 

“I don’t think people who were funding the census thought we’d be doing it this long and at some point, organizations are not going to be able to do the work anymore,” Meeta Anand, a 2020 Census senior fellow at the New York Immigration Coalition, said last week. “I think that’s another reason we all need to really think about how much can we do right now.”