PAINESVILLE, Ohio — A snowstorm slowed the arrival of the U.S. Census Bureau’s “Portrait of America Road Tour” as it plowed into Northeast Ohio this week. But weather is the least of the challenges facing census-takers as they try to count everyone in a region spiced with demographic diversity, easygoing with renters, and newly pockmarked with vacancies.
The big trailer named “Statistics” will today roll into Painesville, a community where Mexican immigrants, many lacking visas, don’t much like talking to the government. It arrives Saturday in Cleveland, a city census-takers broadly label “HTC”– Hard To Count.
The push to market the 2010 Census has begun in earnest, illustrating the many and unique challenges Northeast Ohio presents — numerically speaking.
On March 15, a 10-point questionnaire will be mailed to every known address in the region with a note asking an occupant to mail it back, completed, by April 1. If there is no response, a census-taker will go to the address and knock on the door. Several times.
The traveling census show continues its stops today through next week. Here are upcoming destinations and event times.
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Tuesday
Wednesday
“With the foreclosure rate as high as it is, there’s going to be a lot of extra work,” said Monica Banks-Hines, the census bureau’s Partnership Specialist in Greater Cleveland, charged with reaching out to reclusive communities.
Her outreach workers carry city maps where suspect ed vacant homes are denoted with yellow dots. In some neighborhoods, she said, whole census tracts seem painted yellow.
Still, census-takers are duty-bound to check every address. That’s why they expend effort now to connect with groups that are historically overlooked and undercounted. That includes the homeless, the poor, recent immigrants, non-English speakers, renters, single mothers, Hispanics and broad sections of the black community.
Cleveland co-mingles so many of those groups that the entire city is considered HTC, Banks-Hines said. But the census challenge reaches into many communities and cultural groups.
Prakash Sinha, a census outreach worker, will staff a census table Saturday at the Lunar New Year celebration at Asia Plaza. He expects no problem convincing fellow Indian Americans to fill out a census form. PAINESVILLE, Ohio — A snowstorm slowed the arrival of the U.S. Census Bureau’s “Portrait of America Road Tour” as it plowed into Northeast Ohio this week. But weather is the least of the challenges facing census-takers as they try to count everyone in a region spiced with demographic diversity, easygoing with renters, and newly pockmarked with vacancies.
The big trailer named “Statistics” will today roll into Painesville, a community where Mexican immigrants, many lacking visas, don’t much like talking to the government. It arrives Saturday in Cleveland, a city census-takers broadly label “HTC”– Hard To Count.
The push to market the 2010 Census has begun in earnest, illustrating the many and unique challenges Northeast Ohio presents — numerically speaking.
On March 15, a 10-point questionnaire will be mailed to every known address in the region with a note asking an occupant to mail it back, completed, by April 1. If there is no response, a census-taker will go to the address and knock on the door. Several times.
“With the foreclosure rate as high as it is, there’s going to be a lot of extra work,” said Monica Banks-Hines, the census bureau’s Partnership Specialist in Greater Cleveland, charged with reaching out to reclusive communities.
Her outreach workers carry city maps where suspect ed vacant homes are denoted with yellow dots. In some neighborhoods, she said, whole census tracts seem painted yellow.
Still, census-takers are duty-bound to check every address. That’s why they expend effort now to connect with groups that are historically overlooked and undercounted. That includes the homeless, the poor, recent immigrants, non-English speakers, renters, single mothers, Hispanics and broad sections of the black community.
Cleveland co-mingles so many of those groups that the entire city is considered HTC, Banks-Hines said. But the census challenge reaches into many communities and cultural groups.
Prakash Sinha, a census outreach worker, will staff a census table Saturday at the Lunar New Year celebration at Asia Plaza. He expects no problem convincing fellow Indian Americans to fill out a census form.
