Alethea Charles has been chased by dogs, kicked off people’s property—even videotaped by angry residents. One person threatened to call the police on her.
Charles, 47, is an enumerator for the U.S. Census Bureau in Newark, New Jersey’s largest city.
That means for the last few weeks, Charles has knocked on people’s doors, trying to convince them to fill out the Census -- and not slam the door in her face.
“They trained us to not take it personal. But how could you not take it personally when you live in the city of Newark? And you know what this means to us,” she said last month as she got ready to start her 10-hour shift and visit as many of the 187 units on her list as possible that day.
“If I come home with five interviews, it's a milestone,” she said. “You’ve got to celebrate the small victories.”
Getting people to respond to the Census in denser, low-income communities is always a challenge. With a pandemic and a shortened counting window forced by the Trump administration, it’s become even harder.
Listen to Karen Yi's report on WNYC:
The Trump administration slashed the Census counting deadline by four weeks; counting efforts will now end September 30th. But cities like Newark and Jersey City still lag behind New Jersey’s statewide Census response rate of 66 percent.
“It's like this double whammy,” said Peter Chen, who helps lead New Jersey Counts, a statewide coalition focused on Census outreach. “Your low count in the Census might mean fewer resources for you, which are part of the factors that make people harder to count in the first place.”
Newark and Jersey City, which have high populations of immigrants and people of color, also rely the most on an accurate tally. Both cities had the highest percentage of undercounted African-Americans in the U.S. who live in “hard to count” areas in 2010.
“It's a serious concern that the areas that need accurate representation and funding the most are often the most undercounted,” Chen, who also works for the Advocates for Children of New Jersey, said. Children under five years old are also severely undercounted.
The U.S Constitution mandates a count of all people living in the country every 10 years. The Census helps determine Congressional seats, state legislative districts and federal funding for more than 100 programs.
But as Census enumerators like Charles have hit the streets, states are fighting the Trump administration in court over its efforts to remove undocumented immigratns from totals states use to apportion seats in Congress.
States like New Jersey and New York challenged the measure in court. It’s the second time they’ve sued the Trump administration over how it surveys immigrants.
Trump tried to add a citizenship question in 2018, but immigrant advocacy groups and a coalition of states sued. New Jersey leaders called it an attempt to intimidate immigrant communities and reduce funding and political representation from more diverse states. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately blocked the question last year.
“If not enough people are counted or if they're not counted accurately, we could very well lose a seat,” said New Jersey Counts Project Director Patricia Williamson. She said New Jersey lost a Congressional seat 10 years ago.
Census organizers say the back-and-forth with the Trump administration and the sped up timeline has left local governments to pick up the slack. New Jersey provided $9 million in funding to county governments, who distributed the money to municipalities to help encourage Census participation.
Jersey City has spent $15,000 on outreach efforts. City officials estimate that every 1% of residents not counted leads to $2,000 in lost revenue per person from the top five federally funded programs.
“If we get an accurate count we will surpass Newark, I mean we’ve built more than any community in the state of New Jersey by far,” Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop said during Census PUSH week in July, before knocking on resident doors in a neighborhood right next to the Holland Tunnel.
Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop outside Holland Gardens during Census PUSH week in July.
While Newark has carried the crown of the state’s largest city since at least the 1850s, Jersey City has been right at its heels, Census records show. A 2019 Census estimate puts Jersey City’s population at 262,075 and Newark at 282,011.
But Newark Mayor Ras Baraka isn’t giving up the title so fast. He’s paired free COVID testing with Census forms and enticed residents with ice cream and $50 ShopRite gift cards.
“We’re always going to be the biggest city, regardless if we’re counted or not, people know we are the largest city in the state,” Baraka told Gothamist/WNYC. “But we’re going to do our job to make sure we’re counted, though.”
Census response rates show Newark at 47.5 percent and Jersey City at 52.6 percent. But that only measures how many households filled out the Census on their own, it doesn’t take into account the work of the enumerators or calculate how many residents are undercounted.
The Census Bureau will release undercount statistics after the formal count based on other records—but that won’t change a state’s eligibility for federal funding or its apportioned seats in Congress. According to its website, “The Census Bureau will deliver apportionment counts to the President and Congress as required by law,” while redistricting counts will be sent to states by March 31, 2021.
“They don't change the money. So whatever that final number is, that sticks for 10 years,” Williamson, who also works for the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, said.
Belinda Council, a community leader in Jersey City, knows how an inaccurate count can impact a neighborhood. She lives in Holland Gardens, in the city’s worst performing Census tract, where only 3 in 10 residents have completed the survey.
“This area is beat down. We have nothing here. It’s imperative that we get what we deserve,” she said in July. “We have no transportation, anything down here.”
Charles, the federal Census worker, says some people don’t make the connection between the torn up road on their block or their overcrowded school—to filling out their Census form. And getting everyone to understand why it’s important, is time consuming. Charles will visit homes as many as six or seven times. She said the bureau is also short-staffed because workers don’t like the job and quit after a few days.
“There are some people that cannot put up with what I put up with,” said Charles, who left her job as a nurse when her patient died of COVID-19. She has an underlying condition and didn’t want to risk her health.
“I'm worried that we're not going to get our funding because we're not going to get the count. I'm worried because I live in subsidized housing too. I depend on subsidized housing,” she said.
Williamson said groups are trying to get creative since the pandemic scrapped a lot of their outreach plans connected to back-to-school nights and other mass events. She suggested everyone text or call 10 of their family members or friends to check if they’ve filled out the Census.
Williamson said they’ve also been reaching out to local organizers of Black Lives Matter protests to encourage Census response.
“That's when you're actually saying you matter, I matter,” she said. “For you to protest, if you can do that, then you should also be able to take the Census and let people know that you exist.”
