Zoom
Tuesday night’s online community conversation.
Post on social media about the importance of filling out the Census. Host virtual Census-taking parties. Reach out frequently to neighbors who, because of the Covid-19 pandemic, are home ready to be counted.
Those are among the strategies emerging in New Haven to revive the focus on the federal government’s once-a-decade nationwide head count, which is beginning just as public life has shut down due to the coronavirus outbreak.
The ideas emerged at a forum hosted by the New Haven Alumnae of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., a historically African American sorority alumnae chapter that regularly holds community conversations on topics ranging from politics to race to poverty and economic health.
Tuesday night’s community conversation, which took place via the Zoom online video conference app, was focused on the 2020 U.S. Census: the decennial count of every person living in the United States. Click here to watch the full video-recorded conversation.
The Constitution-mandated endeavor plays a pivotal role in determining federal legislative districts and in influencing how much money each state receives from the federal government for such programs as Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps, and Head Start.
The subject of Tuesday’s Census talk was initially going to be about how to make sure that young children are not overlooked by this year’s Census.
Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, who has led the state’s Census preparation efforts for the past year and who called in to Tuesday’s conversation by phone, said that the 2010 U.S. Census missed an estimated one million children.
“For each child that is not counted, you lose $2,900, she said. “When you think about missing an infant or a toddler this year, multiply that by 10 years, that would be a school district that missing $29,000 in federal funding.”
But just as nearly every aspect of public and private life around the world has been affected by the public health and economic crises associated with the Covid-19 pandemic, so too did Tuesday’s conversation shift its focus — to how the federal government could accurately count everyone living in New Haven amdist this outbreak.
“I know it’s challenging,” Bysiewicz said. “But one of the potential silver linings to this Covid crisis is that people are at home.”
This is the first time in the Census’s history that people can fill out the nine-question form online, she said. People can also fill it out by phone, or by paper when print forms start arriving by mail April 1.
Bysiewicz said that she recently filled out her own Census form online … and made a video of that experience, which she subsequently posted online to encourage others to do the same.
Karen DuBois-Walton (pictured), who is the social action chair for the Deltas as well as the executive director of the city’s public housing authority, encouraged Deltas to take to social media to get friends, family, neighbors, and fellow community members to fill out the Census.
“I know that we are physically distant,” she said. “But we are socially connected.” She encouraged them to use the hashtags #CensusChallenge and #ConnecticutCounts. “Go ahead and post it,” she continued. “Don’t let them count us out.”
And Jennifer Quaye-Hudson (pictured), the director external affairs for Connecticut Voices for Children and a co-chair of the Early Childhood Alliance, said that, prior to the Covid-19 outbreak, early childhood care centers were planning on holding Census parties in schools for parents to get together, socialize, and fill out their Census forms together.
“They’re still moving forward with their Census parties,” she said. But now those parties have moved online.
“This is a time when we’ve got to get creative with connecting with people.”
Community Foundation for Greater New Haven Strategic Program Manager Caprice Taylor-Mendez (pictured) stressed that an accurate Census and a fair distribution of government money is as critical now as it ever has been.
“Right now with Covid-19, the infrastructure and resources of support to keep everyone’s health and wellbeing is highly dependent on funds from the government,” she said
“Being counted is standing up for love. Getting counted is saying I’m standing up for love. If there are resources that are needed, they need to know how many human beings are alive in our cities and in our towns.”
Still Happening
“Is there any chance that the Census could be cancelled?” Tuesday’s conversation moderator and former Independent reporter Markeshia Ricks asked Connecticut Voices for Children Executive Director Emily Byrne (pictured).
As of right now, Byrne said, the answer is, “No.”
She said that the Census Bureau has moved several key deadlines, including the self-response deadline, which has been bumped from July 31 to Aug. 14.
Regional Census offices are still planning on hiring and sending out census takers, or enumerators, to knock on doors and encourage people to take the Census, she said. But that work too has been pushed back several weeks from its originally scheduled start time of later this month.
City Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli (pictured) confirmed as much during the mayor’s daily online coronavirus-related press briefing Wednesday.
He said the city’s Complete Count committee is now “completely online.” He said the committee trained 35 people Tuesday night and 80 Latino pasters Wednesday in regards to how best to get the word out about the importance of filling out the Census.
The Census Bureau has adjusted its schedule back about two weeks, he said. Overall count deadline has been moved from July 31 to Aug. 14.
He also said that “all college students will be considered on campus” on April 1. Piscitelli said New Haven has “over 40,000 college students” in “our region.”
On March 14, the Census Bureau issued guidance that recommended that, for the most part, college students should still be counted where they go to school.
“Per the Census Bureau’s residence criteria, in most cases students living away from home at school should be counted at school,” that guidance reads, “even if they are temporarily elsewhere due to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Nationally 26.2 percent of households have already returned forms online or by phone or mail, Piscitelli said.
In Connecticut, that number is 26.9 percent. And in New Haven, that number is 20 percent.
“Which is pretty healthy for a center city” at this point in the Census, Piscitelli said. He added that all Connecticut “center cities” range from 16 to 30 percent in terms of their current Census completion rates.
“We’ll keep working, but obviously online.”