STRONG GAINS IN LOCAL CENSUS RESPONSE DESPITE VIRUS
Our way of life shifted dramatically this year — outings, special events, and community gatherings are on pause, work and home lives strive for newfound balance. Together we faced more than we thought we could, not only as a state and country but as a resilient community.
Even after months of shifting and rebalancing, uncertainty continues. Regardless of intentions and newly drafted plans, change continues beyond our control.
This past March, 24 months of census planning came to a sudden halt. The planning — a strong ground game in communities that needed the most outreach — laid a critical foundation to allow our community organizations to be nimble and to pivot quickly during uncertainty. Ready to deploy census information through door-to-door education and in-person support at community centers, we had to stop. Outreach and education fairs became car caravans, face-to-face visits became virtual events, peer-to-peer conversations became interactions over the phone.
We feared the worst: that the COVID-19 pandemic would obliterate our efforts. That resulting economic hard times, sheltering in place, social unrest, fear of government and of sharing personal information would paralyze participation; that the Californians we needed most to respond to the census would once again not be counted. That included our hardest-to-count community members like those who speak one of the 84 languages known to our region, have limited access to broadband due to proximity to the border, are newcomers or refugees, or simply had not participated in past censuses.
Fortunately, the ability to respond online — the first census to not explicitly require the return of paper forms — proved advantageous. We communicated digitally through social media live events and online posts, aligned emergency resources with census information, made phone calls and sent text messages in native languages, and ultimately became experts in COVID-19 to support our most vulnerable community members while sharing the message that in times like these an accurate census count is critical for adequate resources.
The Count Me 2020 San Diego and Imperial Counties Census Coalition, built by and for the community, worked in harderto-count communities to achieve a complete and accurate 2020 census count. In the end, more than 240 civic and community-based organizations effectively lifted barriers and motivated our community to participate.
Nearly 74 percent of households in San Diego County took the census themselves, a jump of nearly 6 percentage points compared to 2010, an outstanding increase. The city of San Diego exceeded the state’s selfresponse rate by nearly 4 percentage points. Neighboring Imperial County also had impressive gains, with 62.5 percent of households self-responding, an increase of 4 percentage points.
This was no easy task — San Diego and Imperial Counties have some of the hardestto-count areas in California. There are more residents that rent, live in dense housing, have multifamily households in a single residence, have second homes or travel across the border, making households harder to reach and find.
Throughout our efforts we used statecompiled data to identify and motivate the harder-to-reach communities. In the final push, we narrowed our focus to the lowest responding communities with messages of urgency to self-respond. That strategy worked. Comparing historically easier-tocount areas, like Del Mar and La Jolla, response rates were markedly higher in our focus areas.
High census participation shows a collective desire to improve our community and family outcomes, therefore ensuring proper funding for health and senior services, nutritional programs, educational resources, affordable housing, reliable public transportation and so much more. Inclusion in the census count not only secures these community programs, resources and political representation, it ref lects the needs of the neighborhoods.
Final U.S. census numbers won’t be released for months, but our self-response rate proves the power of community, and provides the U.S. Census Bureau with the most accurate count to do its remaining work.
As the nation considers next steps to protect the health and safety of our communities, the local census effort offers important lessons for educating, motivating and activating our communities: use the power of digital tools, deliver in-language messages using trusted messengers on the right platforms, and leverage community connections and resources. This framework can be used to engage neighborhoods on health programs, social issues, economic prosperity or rapidly emerging issues.
Ref lecting on the 2020 census experience, the local network accomplished a herculean task and proved that innovation and positive change, even during uncertain and changing times, is possible. Working as a community we can safeguard resources and achieve great successes.
Silverthorn