Despite COVID-19 outbreak, the Census count in San Joaquin Valley was a success

The San Joaquin Valley has faced and overcome a great deal in 2020. Perhaps more than we thought was possible. Regardless of best-laid plans, there are always forces beyond our control.

In March, our Census outreach operations came to a sudden halt a week before the Census went live online. We spent two years outlining a ground game placing emphasis on early Census education in neighborhoods that data showed us needed to support the most.

We had dozens of team members with months of phoning and door-to-door canvassing experience doing early Census education work. We were ready to deploy in-person help through door-to-door education and at community hubs. But COVID-19 changed everything.

We feared COVID-19 pandemic would obliterate our best efforts. That Californians who needed to respond to the Census the most would be left out, again.

Our outreach efforts related to the 2020 Census were about increasing engagement in our too-often forgotten regions of rural California. Rural areas who pay 100% of our taxes, but inconsistently get needed resources in return.

In the best of times this is a daunting task. In the times of COVID-19, it was herculean.

Engaging our neighbors to prioritize something beyond the immediate pandemic-enhanced crises was no small task. The dynamics that stymied participation ranged from economic hard times and families sheltering in place to wanting to understand the process of completing the Census.

The ability to respond to the Census by phone worked to our advantage since we used three-way “patch thru” calls connecting Californians to the Census Bureau hotline. We also texted people and engaged in social media live events, online videos, providing digital how-tos.

By combining data on the hardest-to-count areas and self-response rate information from our surveys, we fine-tuned our response.

We worked with community-based groups, city and county agencies, philanthropy, and the business sector to address Californians in the spaces they most frequented virtually.

Specifically, in our region, nearly 66 percent of households completed the Census, which is better than 10 years ago by about 5 percentage points.

Communities throughout the region, such as Patterson and Newman, set records with the highest self-response ever. This wasn’t easy — our rural communities are diverse and have historically been underrepresented.

Downtown Stockton is home to the hardest-to-count tract in the entire state — an estimated 70 percent have an income 150 percent the poverty level.

But we reached them — nearly 42 percent of these households took the Census themselves, which is 6 percentage points higher than in 2010.

The final U.S. Census count for California won’t be released for weeks or months, but the high number of Census self-responses help ensure the most accurate foundation upon which the U.S. Census Bureau will do its remaining work.

The results speak for themselves. This year we let ourselves and our families shine as we participated in droves. Our inclusion in the Census helps ensure more community programs and political representation that reflect the needs of our neighborhoods, particularly our rural communities.

As the nation considers how we must spur innovation to help bring us out of these dark times, the Census effort can offer lessons for engaging and activating rural California families.

There’s power in working with local businesses to disseminate Census information on consumer products like tortillas, cheese and other groceries. Meeting families or individuals “where they are” became the model to share Census information — from senior meal delivery to farmworker “crew of the week” lunches.

This framework should be a tool to continue engaging neighborhoods on 2021 redistricting, health programs, social issues, economic prosperity or rapidly emerging issues, such as COVID-19 vaccine education.

We are living in urgent times. We must continue the momentum from the 2020 Census and work to ensure all families have the foundation to not only survive, but in fact, to thrive.

This story was originally published December 1, 2020 at 10:42 AM.