Gotham Gazette

The Place for New York Policy and politics

CITY

City

Engaging Black Media, City Looks to Boost Government Trust, Census Responsiveness in Black Communities


rally census partners

(photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


Black communities in New York have historically been more likely to be undercounted by the U.S. Census Bureau, meaning fewer federal resources and political underrepresentation for those who are often the most vulnerable members of the population and those who have often been disenfranchised and discriminated against. It’s a trend that city officials are hoping to counter in this year’s Census, with the help of nonprofit community-based organizations, and grassroots organizers. On Monday, at a roundtable at City Hall, officials made entreaties to members of the black media, to open lines of communication, stress the importance of the Census, and enlist their aid in spreading the message that responding to the Census is in the best interests of their communities.

Deputy Mayor for Strategic Policy Initiatives Phillip Thompson, who is heading up the city’s census efforts with NYC Census Director Julie Menin, noted the many reasons black communities and immigrants tend not to respond to the Census. Historically, they have had a distrust of the government, and fear that the information collected could be used against them, including by immigration enforcement authorities.

“When we talk about New York City, when we talk about government, black people's presence, history, experience, is marginalized and always has been, and I think that also affects people's willingness to participate in the census,” Thompson said to reporters from about a dozen outlets including Amsterdam News, Bronx Free Press, Hot 97, Bronxnet, WBLS, Black Star News, Brooklyn Reader, and more.

Along with Menin, he was joined by a panel that included Kathleen Daniel, field director of NYC Census 2020; Lurie Daniel Favors, interim director of the Center for Law and Social Justice at Medgar Evers College; Sheena Wright, president and CEO of United Way of New York City; Jennifer Jones Austin, CEO and executive director of Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies; and L. Joy Williams, President of the Brooklyn NAACP.

A low self-response rate cuts across black communities – low-income communities, public housing residents, and middle- to upper-middle income black residents and homeowners all have a tendency to avoid filling out the Census questionnaire. For instance, Brooklyn is the hardest to count county in the state, and large parts of the borough – neighborhoods such as Bedford Stuyvesant, Crown Heights, East Flatbush and Brownsville, to name a few – where black residents made up more than 40% of the population had a relatively low self-response rate in 2010. Similar response rates were recorded in neighborhoods across the city such as Eastchester in the Bronx, Central Harlem in Manhattan and large swathes of Southeast Queens. That then leaves the task of finding and counting them up to the Census Bureau, and the methods it uses can lead to inaccuracies in the data and detrimental undercounts. 

An undercount has several adverse impacts. It can lead to a loss of federal funds for many programs, including SNAP, WIC, and Section 8 housing vouchers, or lead to a reduction in funds for education and infrastructure. The greatest risk, however, is for the drawing of electoral districts at the local, state, and federal level, Thomson said. New York is all but guaranteed to lose one seat in the House of Representatives because of a loss of population, and could lose as many as two because of an undercount in 2020. And Census data will be used for redrawing legislative lines of all types, from Congress to the state Legislature to the City Council.

“The risk isn't distributed evenly across all communities,” Thompson noted. “The communities that are most vulnerable to losing representation are precisely black and immigrant communities, and sometimes they're one and the same…And that translates into loss of funding and support for programs that our communities need and also a loss of voice and presence in these decision-making bodies.”

New York’s black residents are not a monolith but have often been viewed that way by prior census efforts, noted Lurie Daniel Favors, interim director of the Center for Law and Social Justice at Medgar Evers College. But this year, individuals will be able to identify themselves on the census questionnaire by race, ethnicity, and nationality, an important measure that will more accurately portray the diversity of the black population in New York.  

Favors noted the importance of recognizing the racial impact of the Census. “The first time we show up on the Census is 1790, and that was only as three-fifths of a person,” Favors said, referring to the Three-Fifths Compromise under which slaves were counted as three-fifths of a person to determine the electoral representation of states. “And we understand that historically, there has been a persistent commitment to the racial manipulation of data so that the distribution of resources and political power are also manipulated in ways that benefit institutionalization of white supremacy and the structures that rely on white supremacy and that disfavor communities of African descent.” 

The roundtable was equally about the importance of counting black residents as it was about the importance of black media in bolstering that effort. “We need black media to raise their voices and participate in this conversation in a way that is going to allow our community to be properly educated and informed when there are fears that arise…The voice of black media has never been more important in my lifetime,” Favors said. 

Other panelists similarly urged members of the black media to tell their audiences what they stand to gain, or lose, from the Census. Jennifer Jones Austin, CEO and Executive Director of Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, noted that the Census is a race among states over the distribution of roughly $630 billion in federal funds. “It doesn’t matter what your income is, if you are undercounted, then your community is going to suffer,” she said. Her organization has been working with faith-based groups and leaders, who are seen as trusted voices in black communities, to ensure a robust response to the Census. 

L. Joy Williams, president of the Brooklyn NAACP, noted the need to break the myth of who is undercounted. African-American men, children under the age of 5 and seniors, for instance, are all at risk, she said. 

Sheena Wright, President and CEO of United Way of New York City, framed the Census as akin to the civil rights movement. “When I think about that people fought, bled, and died for our basic civil rights, that it's incumbent upon us to stand up and be counted. It's almost like an act of resistance. It's an act of what we're doing as black people really fighting for what we deserve,” she said, adding that sustained and vigorous mobilization of black communities would act as a “springboard” for greater civic engagement in the future.  

City officials have already laid the groundwork and are pursuing a massive Census outreach campaign this year, having put $40 million into a multi-pronged approach, which includes $19 million in direct funding for more than 150 community-based organizations. About $3 million will go to ads in ethnic and community media, comprising 65% of the total ad budget for the campaign. 

“We need New Yorkers to DIY the Census,” said Kathleen Daniel, field director for NYC Census 2020, at Monday’s roundtable, using shorthand for “do it yourself” and laying out the city’s tactics, which include a multimedia campaign across all forms of media, partnerships with city agencies, and a field campaign that has recruited thousands of volunteers to work in the hardest to count census tracts. 

“It’s an all-hands-on-deck approach,” said Menin. 

***
by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.

Note - this article has been updated.

Why Boosting Self-Response Rate is City's Census Holy Grail


census app

(photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


Every ten years, the U.S. Census Bureau undertakes the herculean task of counting the residents of the entire country. The process, which will occur this year, largely relies on people telling the federal government about themselves – who they are, who they live with, their age, their race, for instance -- in a count that has immense influence over how federal funding is allocated and congressional representation, among other things.

When people don’t respond to the Census questionnaire on their own, the Census Bureau (and its partners in states, cities, and other localities across the country) has to rely on other less accurate methods to complete the count, either in-person surveys or administrative measures.

Ahead of the launch of the 2020 Census in New York and across the country, leaders in New York City, which had a particularly low self-response rate in the 2010 Census, are emphasizing how important it is to get New Yorkers to participate in the initial round of questionnaires. Nearly all of the many tens of millions of city and state dollars allocated toward Census outreach is aimed at getting New Yorkers to fill out the Census as counting begins.

“Self-response is the gold standard in decennial census data collection and is the most accurate and efficient source of data,” say experts from the New York City Department of City Planning’s population division, in a new article in Significance magazine, which is published for the Royal Statistical Society and American Statistical Association.

The authors – division director Arun Peter Lobo, chief demographer Joseph Salvo, and senior demographic scientist Annette Jacoby – seek to raise a red flag about the potential for a low self-response rate, which can have disastrous consequences, and outlined the ways the city and other jurisdictions can tackle the problem.

New York residents had a self-response rate of 62% in the 2010 Census, far below the national average of 76%, which subsequently led to a significant undercount of the state’s population. Black residents in particular had the lowest rates of returning the questionnaire and were more likely to be undercounted, the authors noted.

The city, and the state overall, is also home to several categories of hard-to-count populations – immigrants, people with limited English proficiency, seniors, children under the age of five, public housing residents, to name a few. In addition, this year’s Census will employ a largely digital methodology, risking undercounting of rural populations and other areas with limited internet access, and it comes amid a tense atmosphere where many immigrants fear the motivations of the Trump administration, which unsuccessfully tried to place a citizenship question on the Census but appears to be considering other ways to target citizenship information.

All of those factors add up to a challenging undertaking, and it's why the city has already put about $40 million towards Census outreach, much of it geared to ensuring a robust self-response rate.

“The census is a national competition for billions of dollars in federal funds for education, housing, healthcare, transportation — programs New Yorkers rely on every day. The fair distribution of these funds is only possible if all New Yorkers are counted," said Julie Menin, Director of NYC Census 2020, in a statement. “In 2010, only 62% of New Yorkers self-responded to the Census; far below the national average of 76%. This year, with our unprecedented $40 million NYC Complete Count Campaign, we’re going to achieve a complete and accurate count of all New Yorkers and ensure that we all get our fair share of the resources and representation that are rightfully ours.”

Lobo, Salvo, and Jacoby note that those who tend to self-respond at a lower rate are also less likely to respond to door-knockers from the Census. In areas where there is a low-response, the Census Bureau and localities have to rely on alternate tactics – enumerators who go door to door; administrative records to fill gaps in data; or statistical imputation as a last resort.

These methods have their faults. For instance, if an enumerator cannot reach the resident of a housing unit, they may ask a landlord or neighbor about their information. Information from these “proxies” is “often highly speculative and prone to error,” the authors wrote.

Administrative records can be replete with inaccuracies and incomplete data, particularly for more socially vulnerable populations, they noted. “People who interact with government agencies, have bank accounts, and deal with public institutions are more likely to be represented in administrative records, while more vulnerable populations – including immigrants, the formerly incarcerated, and homeless persons – might be underrepresented because of the absence of such ties,” they wrote. “Even administrative data on benefits for underrepresented and marginalised populations fall short of capturing everyone, as those eligible to receive these benefits often do not apply for them.”

Statistical imputation involves using the information from “donor households,” the neighbors of non-responding households, to make certain assumptions about the household in question. According to the article, this process, called “substitution,” accounted for 1.9% of the total enumerated U.S. population in 2010. “Substitution in New York City was at 3%, with the highest rates of substitution clustered in just a few black neighbourhoods, where as much as 20% of the population was “enumerated” through a substitution algorithm,” the authors noted. 

The flaws of that approach are obvious in a city like New York, where there is a broad diversity of households across the five boroughs.

The authors noted that there are two sides to an erroneous Census count – wealthier white residents tend to be overcounted while low-income residents of color tend to be undercounted. From a city planning perspective, the impact can be harmful to certain communities. “These lower-level geographic effects have real-life consequences in terms of conducting needs assessments, calculating rates of disease incidence, determining the distribution of resources and services, as well as the drawing of local political districts,” the city planners wrote.

The solutions the authors suggest – mobilizing “trusted voices” in immigrant communities and communities of color – are already being employed by city officials, who have doled out $19 million to community-based organizations to accomplish this goal. The authors also urge municipalities to hire non-citizen residents to conduct outreach, which would build confidence among immigrant communities and also provide interpreters.

“The finest operational plans and the best technology will not result in a good count,” they wrote, “unless the public heeds the call to answer the census.”

***
by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.

City Council Pursues Comprehensive Planning Legislation


city planning

(rendering via the Mayor's Office)


The New York City Council is crafting legislation to mandate the creation of a comprehensive plan for the city that would guide long-term decisions on land use, zoning, and investments in infrastructure. The effort is being led by Council Speaker Corey Johnson and Council Members Brad Lander and Antonio Reynoso.

Last year, the City Council urged the 2019 Charter Revision Commission to propose to voters an amendment to the city’s governing document to require a comprehensive plan every ten years. A comprehensive plan would serve as “a citywide strategic framework and vision for growth and development,” the Council wrote in its recommendations to the charter commission, which included representatives from various top city elected officials, including Johnson, who appointed its chair.

“The lack of a citywide plan contributes to the overall housing shortage and exacerbates conflicts for space between different uses,” the Council report reads. “The ad hoc selection of particular neighborhoods for growth-oriented rezoning plans has proved to be an inefficient and acrimonious process and is not delivering enough opportunities for development as the city needs.”

Even the charter commission’s staff agreed with the need for a comprehensive plan, recommending to the commissioners that it consider taking up the issue. The commission’s preliminary staff report issued in April noted that there are currently 12 different charter-required documents that determine city planning. “But the Charter does not always make clear how (and whether) these plans are intended to fit together, what they must address, how they relate to one another, how progress (or lack thereof) toward their goals is measured and assessed, and how the public can affect the content of these plans (if at all),” the staff report reads.

But the commission demurred, and among nearly 20 changes proposed to voters, all of which passed in November, only put forward tweaks to the city’s current land use processes. Commission Chair Gail Benjamin, appointed by Johnson, and Commissioner Carl Weisbrod, the former head of City Planning who was appointed to the commission by Mayor Bill de Blasio, both seemed opposed to the proposal, as did members of the de Blasio administration.

But where the charter commission passed, the City Council appears ready to move ahead. “Comprehensive Planning was a Council and personal priority in our testimony to the Charter Revision Commission and we continue to explore options to achieve those goals legislatively,” Johnson said in a statement to Gotham Gazette. A spokesperson for the speaker did not provide any additional detail about what the legislation would contain or the timeline for its introduction.

At the end of last year, Johnson passed and de Blasio signed a "streets master plan" law that includes mandates around bike and bus lanes and pedestrian space across the city. This past week, Johnson unveiled a "holistic, long-term" approach to combating homelessness in the city and said that a corresponding affordable housing plan is in the works. In a brief interview at City Hall after he released the homelessness plan, Johnson told Gotham Gazette that the larger planning legislation will incorporate those pieces and more.

Lander and Reynoso, who helped lead the push for comprehensive planning during the charter commission’s work and quickly rued the fact that the commission passed on the idea, indicated that there will be a package of several bills to accomplish comprehensive planning and related goals.

“Let's be perfectly honest, the only way we would have done it in a real comprehensive way, would have been through the charter,” Reynoso said in a brief interview outside City Hall. “So what we're doing now is taking the most aggressive legislative action we could take to try to mimic what should have been done through the charter.”

Lander stressed that the need to take “a more collaborative, more comprehensive, more proactive, more values-attuned approach, it just gets more and more urgent.”

“If we want to have a city that matches our values and carries them into planning for our future, the processes we currently have are broken and we have to have new ones,” he said during a phone interview.

Lander echoed Reynoso in pointing out that any bill passed by the Council will be more limited than what the charter commission could have accomplished. “By Council legislation, you can require a comprehensive planning process every so often, but you can’t change the [Uniform Land Use Review Procedure] process to favor projects that would be aligned with that plan or make it more difficult to have projects that don't,” he said.

The push for comprehensive planning also has the support of the Thriving Communities coalition, made up of advocates, nonprofits, and grassroots organizers who sought to convince the charter commission to pursue their goals. The coalition criticized the commission’s refusal to take up the issue. “While the status quo might work for developers and the powerful few, it does not work for most New Yorkers, and without meaningful changes, the processes we have now will only exacerbate inequality, segregation, and displacement,” it wrote in a statement after the commission issued its final ballot proposals. Spokespeople for the coalition -- which included organizations like Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development, Community Action for Safe Apartments, New York Appleseed, Regional Plan Association, and Pratt Center for Community Development, among others -- did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

Any comprehensive planning legislation is likely to face push back from the de Blasio administration.

Vicki Been was formerly commissioner of the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development and testified before the charter commission as an outside expert at a March 21 hearing. She later rejoined the de Blasio administration when the mayor appointed her Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development in April.

In her testimony, Been raised the issue of the city’s Fair Share criteria, which determine how the city sites municipal facilities according to neighborhoods bearing their fair share of the burden. Over the years, the fair share policy has been criticized for largely failing to accomplish its intended objective as facilities such as homeless shelters and waste management plants began to be concentrated in certain communities, often low-income communities of color.

“Much of the criticism of the fair share criteria is that they are like an environmental impact review, all you have to do is show that you considered the fairness of the distribution. You don't have to meet any numerical or other target because one wasn't set because it's too difficult of a question,” Been said at the hearing. “And so there's no reason to believe that moving the question into what we call a comprehensive planning system would accomplish anything other than what is accomplished in the conversation about fair share.”

Anita Larement, executive director of the Department of City Planning, similarly raised red flags about comprehensive planning at that hearing. “On the one hand, people are looking for more community control over decision-making, which actually we know will lead to more problems in regards to siting things that people don't want in their neighborhoods. And this notion that somehow on the other hand if we can do comprehensive planning that we will solve these problems? What I would really submit is that, that is not correct,” she said.

After the 2019 Charter Revision Commission declined to move comprehensive planning forward toward a ballot proposal, Lander and Reynoso wrote a joint op-ed lamenting the missed opportunity but stressing the importance of moving ahead with better city planning, especially regarding infrastructure, climate resiliency, housing affordability, transit, school seats and more, with a holistic vision for development, services, and community benefits and burdens.

"Comprehensive planning is not a panacea, but evidence from other cities suggests that it is an essential component of fair and rational progress," they wrote. Concluding that if New York City is "going to meet the collective challenges of rising temperatures and sea levels, growing population, aging infrastructure, keeping people in their homes, and addressing deeply-rooted inequality, we’re going to have to start doing it."

***
by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.

Ben Max contributed to this story.



Print Friendly and PDF

Editor's Choice


Gotham Gazette: New York Voters Approve $4.2 Billion Environmental Bond Act
New York Voters Approve $4.2 Billion Environmental Bond Act
Gotham Gazette: 
New York City Voters Approve Racial Justice Ballot Measures
New York City Voters Approve Racial Justice Ballot Measures
Gotham Gazette: 
Housing Development in New York City Slows to a Crawl as Officials Debate Tax Incentives
Housing Development in New York City Slows to a Crawl as Officials Debate Tax Incentives
Gotham Gazette: 
City Council Examines Low Voter Turnout, Moving Local Elections to Even Years City Council Examines Low Voter Turnout, Moving Local Elections to Even Years