Coronavirus pandemic is impacting Fresno’s census count. What could it mean for the region?
Even before the global coronavirus pandemic reached the central San Joaquin Valley, there were concerns the region was in danger of being seriously undercounted in the 2020 Census.
Every 10 years, the nation tries to count every one of its people. But Valley counties typically have a larger share of what Census officials call “hard-to-count” populations – people for whom English is not their primary language, immigrant communities who may be more distant or distrustful of the government, and those who simply don’t consider the nationwide count a priority in their lives.
Add to the equation that this year’s decennial Census was geared primarily to have households log onto the Internet. Plus, political anti-immigrant rhetoric and controversy over a proposed citizenship question fueled fear among some immigrant communities that the Census could be used against them (that question ended up being left off the forms).
Now, just over a month beyond the official Census date of April 1, 2020, response rates so far are lagging behind the 2010 Census. And COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus, is complicating the process of making sure everyone gets counted.
And without an accurate census count, communities in Fresno and surrounding counties could miss out on a variety of funds and resources. That’s because the census count plays a significant role in determining the allocation of legislative representation and drawing of district boundaries. Plus, it’s a key component of funding formulas for federal money that is awarded based on an area’s population.
To date, about 55% of Fresno County households have responded to the Census. That’s about 3 percentage points below the statewide response rate for California, and more than 11 points lower than the county’s final self-response rate of about 67% for the 2010 Census 10 years ago.
“COVID-19 is affecting everything,” said Katherine Martindale, a program manager in the Fresno County Department of Social Services, who heads the county’s census efforts. “At this point, we’re happy to be over 50%,” she said.
“The nice thing is that this is the first census that’s being taken electronically. … We think digital will work out well in terms of promoting completion and people being able to access the Census electronically while sitting at home.”
“We thought we’d have been done by now” with self-response in which people complete the Census questionnaire online, by phone or by mail, Martindale added. The county’s original plans called for establishing neighborhood centers in rural and low-income areas where families may not own computers or have internet access.
Those centers were to be equipped with computers and internet to help residents complete the census. “For all of those plans, that’s on hold right now” because of state and local stay-at-home measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
Challenges of reaching some communities
Once those restrictions are lifted, the county and its partners, including community organizations, expect to roll out the neighborhood centers and do additional outreach to what are considered “hard-to-count” populations.
Figures for some cities in Fresno County reflect the challenges of a census for which the emphasis was to have most households respond via the internet. In Fresno, the city’s overall response rate to the Census was 55.7% as of Tuesday, but the online response rate was just shy of 42%.
But communities such as San Joaquin and Huron have far lower response rates so far – just 6% online and a total of 6.2% in San Joaquin, and 10.1% online and 10.3% overall in Huron, both in the bottom 15 among 482 cities and towns in the state.
Elsewhere in the Valley, response rates as of Tuesday were: 36.9% in Mariposa County, 49.9% in Madera County, 51.9% in Tulare County, 53.5% in Kings County, and 53.8% in Merced County.
Prior to clampdown in response to the coronavirus, the U.S. Census Bureau had expected that the process of following up with households that had not yet done the census on their own would be in full gear nationwide by mid-May.
“They’re not able to do that now,” Martindale said. Now, the deadline for self-response, and the ramp-up of non-response follow-up, won’t be until Aug. 11. “People can still do self-response after that, but there will be more efforts by the Census Bureau for door-to-door efforts, where census takers go out to the household in person and ask people if they’ve filled out the census.”
The Census Bureau sent out invitations to about 140 million U.S. households in mid-March with instructions on how to do the census online or by phone. In some areas with historically low response rates, households received paper questionnaires. Other households who had not responded were to receive paper forms by mid-April.
Households who only get mail through post office boxes, however, received nothing at all in the mail. “They can’t complete it electronically, so they’re getting a paper form left at their home,” Martindale said. “If you look at certain census tracts, you’re going to see low numbers because those are where people have P.O. boxes.”
There are other challenges, too. While Hmong people are a sizable part of the southeast Asian community in Fresno County and the Valley, “Hmong is not a language that the forms are provided in,” Martindale said.
Issues not restricted to Fresno County
California as a whole is responding to the census at a rate that is about 1 full percentage point higher than the U.S., but there are some sparsely populated parts of the state that are lagging well behind.
They include three counties along the Nevada state line: Mono County, on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada range, where the response rate is estimated at just over 12%; Sierra County at 13%; and Alpine County at 13.9%. One other county registering less than 13% completion is Trinity County, in the state’s northwestern reaches, at 12.8%.
At the other end of the spectrum are counties where the response rates are already above 66%, including San Francisco Bay Area counties like Contra Costa County at 66.3%, San Mateo County at 67.5%, and Santa Clara County at 66.7%
This story was originally published May 7, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
