As Judge Extends Census Deadline, Bay Area Communities Hustle to Get All Residents Counted

The U.S. Census Bureau completed an intensive three-day operation to count people experiencing homelessness this week, but county leaders and homeless service providers around the Bay Area — not convinced that everyone has been reached — are sending out their own teams looking for folks who’ve been missed.

In Berkeley, Robbi Montoya and Annette Moretti, of the Dorothy Day House shelter, visited homeless encampments in freeway underpasses and walked the downtown streets all week, with the census website bookmarked on their computer tablets, and sacks filled with new socks and granola bars to give away.

Beside a tent on Howard Way, Montoya interviewed a man named Michael, and Moretti struck up a conversation with Anthony Welch, 30, a familiar face from the Dorothy Day breakfast program. Welch said he had heard of the census, but hadn’t participated.

Had he been homeless back on April 1, the official “census day”? “Yes, I was… am,” he said.

Was he living in Berkeley then? Yes.

He spelled his name and gave his date of birth.

“Okay, and you can — but you don’t have to — give your phone number,” Moretti went on.

“I don’t have a phone number,” Welch said. But yes, he added, he could surely use a pair of clean socks.

In a few minutes, Montoya and Moretti continued on, toward a pair of men sitting outside the library. A similar effort was underway in Fremont, San Jose, San Francisco and Oakland, among other cities, according to county officials in charge of census outreach.

State and local governments are anxious to ensure that all their residents are counted, as the 2020 Census will be the basis of political representation and federal funding formulas for the next decade.

The extra push by community advocates to reach unhoused people, comes as a federal judge in San Jose ruled Thursday evening that the census bureau cannot stop its counting operation at the end of September, as planned, but must continue until October 31 — which was the original pandemic-adjusted plan.

Relying on internal census documents, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh found that shortening the time frame, which the Trump administration did abruptly this summer, was likely to yield fatally flawed data that would not pass Constitutional muster for apportioning Congressional seats among the states and drawing legislative district lines. The federal government is expected to appeal Koh’s ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

On Friday, the census bureau issued a statement saying it will comply with the court’s order and continue its so-called Nonresponse Followup operation.

“Our office of general counsel is evaluating the ultimate impact of the order on the 2020 Census,” the press release said. “Field staff have been instructed to continue with current operations until updates can be provided.”

That comes as welcome news to one field supervisor working for the census bureau in a North Bay county hard hit by the recent wildfires. The person, who was not authorized to speak to the media and did not want to be identified, said the operation has been a “disaster,” in part because so many homes have burned up, and more time is needed.

“We’re not going to get it done by the 30th,” the supervisor said. “But we’re definitely close enough to get it done by October 30. We’re probably two weeks out.”

Counting those displaced by the wildfires is especially tricky, and many of the door to door “enumerators” in the fire zone have been going above and beyond their assigned duties to try to track down phone numbers to locate evacuated families, the supervisor said.

Ditas Katague, director of California Complete Count, the state’s outreach effort — which has invested almost $190 million into promoting census participation, hailed the judge’s ruling, and noted that Californians who haven’t yet been counted can also go online to my2020census.gov to fill out the census form themselves.

“For the time being, the ruling by Judge Koh helps alleviate the pressures of the current enumeration timeline to better achieve a complete count,” said Katague. “However, as the legal battle continues, Californians should not wait — the time is now... to ensure you, your family and your community get your fair share of resources and representation for the next 10 years.”

Census Bureau officials emphasized that the count is close to complete, as 97% of all households nationally — and close to 98% in California — have been enumerated.

But as documents disclosed in the lawsuit show, census officials insist that “in order to achieve an acceptable level of accuracy, 99% of Housing Units in every state must be resolved.” That was achieved in 2010, according to the census bureau, but would be in jeopardy if the count were ended on Wednesday.

The Berkeley Public Library was shuttered because of the coronavirus pandemic, but a big banner promoting the 2020 Census hung over the door. In the shade, Moretti interviewed a talkative, older man with deep roots in the Bay Area, who agreed to accept her help to fill out the census questionnaire.

“My name is Douglas Allen Freitag,” he told her, as she tapped at the screen on her tablet. “Allen with two Ls. My father was born here in Berkeley. His parents met during the earthquake in San Francisco.”

Sitting nearby, Abraham Santo said he had already been counted. He said he thought more people would participate in the census if they knew what’s at stake.

Montoya, the program director from Dorothy Day House, agreed. People who lack a home of their own may feel distrust about participating in a government count, she said, but the census is something most would get behind if they understood it was for the long-term benefit of the whole community.

“If nothing else, the folks on the streets, in encampments, they have a sense of community, because sometimes that’s all they have,” Montoya said. “That’s a key word out here: community.”