The Census Bureau and Me

I had problems with Census 2000 and its enumeration.

In early March, I moved into a brand-new neighborhood. At the same time and earlier, my neighbors were also moving in. Unfortunately, our neighborhood was too new for the Census Bureau so we almost fell through the cracks.

On March 6, census questionnaires were delivered to 100 million households in the United States - but not to my neighborhood. After I checked with friends and family living elsewhere and found they'd received their forms, I called my Local Census Office to ask why my neighborhood hadn't received forms. I was told to wait because forms were still being mailed out, despite the fact that the Census Bureau coordinated with the U.S. Postal Service to have the forms delivered precisely on Monday, March 6.

A week later, I called the Local Census Office again to try to get my neighborhood counted. I was told to call a toll-free Census hotline number. I called and told the person on the phone that my neighborhood hadn't received forms and asked that an enumerator or forms be sent out because it was a new neighborhood and obviously not in the Bureau's database. I was told that I could not request a form for my neighbors but that I could only request a form for my own household. I asked about my neighbors and the person said, have them each call individually. Soon, a form arrived for me but not for anyone else.

I later visited City Hall where a Census employee was stationed to help people fill out their forms. I told him that my neighborhood hadn't been counted. He told me he'd tell his supervisors. Nothing happened.

I called the Local Census Office again and they asked for my street address and the streets affected. Nothing happened.

I called the City Manager's office and complained. They said they'd contact their census liaison. Nothing happened.

I wrote a letter to the editor of the local newspaper and it was published. Apparently no one read it because nothing happened.

I visited the Local Census Office while they were having a private party to celebrate the fact that my whole county had been counted. After waiting 30 minutes, I spoke with a supervisor and told him that my neighborhood hadn't been counted. He didn't seem to appreciate the irony of the situation. He wanted to party. He promised to send someone out within the week. No one came.

I read reports in the newspaper that said my city and county was complete, everything was counted, we were 100% A-OK. I was upset.

All of the above took place between March 6 and early July. Finally, an enumerator arrived in our neighborhood late one afternoon with a strict deadline of counting my entire street before 5 p.m. You really wouldn't have known that this enumerator was a professional from the Census Bureau (except for her ID badge). She wore a Donald Duck T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flop sandals. She tried knocking on doors to ask people questions but since she arrived in the middle of the day, almost everyone was at work. Thus, when she found me, I was not only asked to complete a new form (I'd sent mine in right after I received it), I was asked to provide information about my neighbors. She needed name, age, and ethnicity. I didn't want to guess the ethnicity of my neighbors, I didn't know the last names of my neighbors further down the street and could only really guess at the number of people in some houses farther away. Nonetheless, that was enough information for the hurried enumerator, who had to get the information back to the office by 5 p.m.

I found out later that the enumerator made a neighbor of mine pretty mad. My neighbor had to respond to the long form, on the spot, under the deadline of the enumerator. The long form asks a lot of personal questions including income and monthly mortgage payment. When the enumerator was told how much my neighbor's income was, she said, "Wow, how do you pay for this place?" Needless to say, my neighbor wasn't happy with the enumerator's lack of professionalism.

I'm not happy that I had to contact the Census Bureau five times in order to get my neighborhood counted. I'm not even sure whether it was my badgering that did the trick. I was counted twice so I wonder about the validity of the responses and the data collected by the Bureau. Geographers and others rely so much on this data that having seen first-hand how chaotic and unorganized the process is, I'm hurt because I realize I can't rely on the data since the bureaucracy that collects the data is inefficient, unprofessional, and disorganized.

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