As the U.S. Census Bureau moves to cut its collection timeline by a month, Detroit is in a hasty final push to get people counted.
The city's 2020 Census Campaign, led by Victoria Kovari, had originally planned to end most of its door-knocking efforts in mid-August.
"But now that they've cut it short, we're concerned it's not going to be as robust an operation as it has been in previous years. So we're going to continue," Kovari said.
Community groups hired by Detroit to canvass areas of low response will now continue through the end of September, after news came Monday that the national count will end, including door-knocking and online, phone and mail submissions. Legislation that would have extended it stalled in Congress. Experts say the move means less reliable data for research, and that harder-to-count communities like people of color and immigrants will be skimmed over.
It will also have "a large downstream impact" on other Census Bureau surveys that are used to make a wide number of private-sector decisions, David Van Riper, director of spatial analysis at the University of Minnesota's Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation, told the Associated Press.
While the U.S. Census Bureau does the counting, Detroit is there to boost outreach, Kovari said. After all, the population count is momentous for the city — it impacts state and national political representation, as well as $1.5 trillion in federal funding levels for states and localities including Medicare, Medicaid, infrastructure, housing and other social services programs. An often-cited rule of thumb is that each person counted in the census is worth $1,800 per year.
"We're really concerned, the people who have not responded ... in Detroit, they're people of color, people in poor communities, lots of renters, the people that benefit most by the federal money that the Census Bureau helps to count," Kovari said.
Detroit's census team has raised nearly $3 million to fund its staff, outreach and materials such as lawn signs, buttons, shirts, information cards and billboards. It mostly comes from corporations and foundations, but the city put in $700,000 from its general fund to pay staff starting in January 2019.
The national self-response rate for the census was 63 percent as of Wednesday, with Michigan beating it by 5.8 percent. Detroit's, by comparison, is 48.6 percent. 2010's rate, which Mayor Mike Duggan has said the city vehemently wants to eclipse, was 53.6 percent. This year, Detroit has the fifth lowest census response rate out of cities with more than 200,000 residents, per Census Bureau data.
"We probably have few issues more urgent than filling out the census, and right now our status is really concerning," Duggan said in a late June news conference.
Anika Goss, executive director of think-tank Detroit Future City, said much of the demographic data the organization uses to study how to grow Detroit, how many kids live there, who's working and who is living in poverty stem from the census count.
"For a city like Detroit, especially with our level of high poverty, we need to be able to watch that number … and if we don't have accurate data to do that, I'm not sure how we can consistently make the policy changes necessary to alleviate it," Goss said.
She mentioned one study Detroit Future City is hoping to fund in the future, on how to move African Americans and Latinos and Latinas into high-growth job sectors, that would need up-to-date census figures to be most effective.
On top of the timeline being shortened, the deadly coronavirus pandemic has crippled efforts.
As Detroit confirmed its first COVID-19 cases in March, the city's census campaign had more than 90 events scheduled between March and May.
"That was our focus," Kovari said. "We knew responding online or by phone would only capture so many Detroiters. So we had all this in-person stuff planned, and that obviously all went away."
In April, Kovari's team pivoted to a virtual phone bank staffed with 100 volunteers that have made approximately 60,000 calls. They also sent volunteers armed with smart tablets to Detroit food distribution sites. Those census-takers approached cars, asking them if they would fill out the form on the spot.
They've signed up nearly 500 Detroiters going to grocery stores on Saturdays. Kovari also plans to staff upcoming outdoor movie nights in Campus Martius Park and the plaza next to Little Caesars Arena twice a week.
Detroit's census operation plans to target Midtown and downtown over the next six weeks, because response rates there have been low. Kovari says that's due partly to apartment residents waiting out the pandemic in the suburbs and Wayne State University cutting classes due to the health crisis.
There's also a neighborhood-by-neighborhood challenge, where the top 20 community groups to get the highest increase in census response over 2010 will get $1,000. Kovari said she expects to announce winners next week.
The COVID-19 crisis took old-fashioned canvassing out of the equation. But starting June 29, 11 community groups the city hired with more than 100 canvassers started combing streets in neighborhoods with low response rates.
Door-knockers visited 150,000 homes in the fall and 200,000 so far in this second phase. Kovari expects that to rise to 300,000 by the end of September.
"They've probably signed up close to 2,000 people on the doors," Kovari said. "People are a little reluctant to open the door, with all the stuff going around. They worry about whether it's (legitimate). But we've had good response."
—The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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