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PrintBefore more than 200 congregants of McKeesport's Bethlehem Baptist Church hear a sermon this morning on leadership in serving God, they'll hear a message on how they can help their own community.
The Rev. Earlene Coleman plans to urge every attendee to fill out the census form that's supposed to arrive in mailboxes this week. It may not be a commandment, but there's a lot at stake -- especially for relatively disadvantaged areas dependent on federal funding.
"I'm going to encourage them that it's something very beneficial for the community, if not you personally, because of the good it can do for McKeesport to work to bring the community back," the pastor said last week.
PG MapA similar message will be broadcast across the region and nation from not just pulpits but municipal offices, community organizations, school classrooms and many other sources -- most notably the U.S. Census Bureau itself -- in the weeks ahead.
While April 1 is the official national census day for more than 130 million households to update a U.S. population estimated at nearly 309 million, government officials would be happy if people fill out and return their forms as soon as they come.
Wide-ranging efforts -- from national television ads on down to block watch word-of-mouth campaigns -- are aimed at raising America's voluntary mail response rate above the 72 percent reported in 2000. Reducing the number of visits required of census-takers to nonresponsive homes will save money and help assure a complete count, officials say.
"The Census Bureau will spend about $25 per person if we have to go out and knock on the doors of households that don't mail them back," explained bureau director Robert Groves.
Municipal and neighborhood officials want counts to be as high as possible because of the $400 billion in federal funds distributed annually that is tied to results of the decennial census. Grants that cover Medicaid allocations, foster care, substance abuse treatment and vocational education are just some of those affected.
Given every community's reach for the biggest share possible of the federal pie, recent or upcoming efforts locally include fliers being distributed to 10,000 households by the Oakland Planning and Development Corp., articles published in the Northside Leadership Conference's community newspaper, e-mail blasts generated by the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Area Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and posters plastering the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh.
Some initiatives come from the groups themselves. Others are encouraged by either Census Bureau partnership specialists reaching out to communities or the Pittsburgh-Allegheny County Complete Count Committee, established last year by the two local governments.
The Pittsburgh region actually has an advantage over many metropolitan areas in that it has a proportionally small number of immigrants, minorities and young adults -- all of whom are considered more difficult to count than other parts of the population.
That doesn't mean local officials believe they can rely on the population's participation without substantial prodding.
"All I know is that in this [region], we have had areas that have been undercounted, and we need to take care of that," said Cynthia Baldwin, a former judge who is co-chairperson of the city-county count committee.
While nearly 90 percent of residents of Rosslyn Farms, Franklin Park, Pleasant Hills and Bethel Park mailed their forms back to the government in 2000 before enumerators started visiting homes, that rate was under 60 percent in Braddock and West Elizabeth.
The Census Bureau calculated a "hard-to-count" score for every census tract in the country assessing how challenging it would be to survey this year, based on past voluntary participation and demographic factors such as age, race, income and extent of renters instead of homeowners.
While much of the region has scores suggesting high confidence in an accurate count, parts of McKeesport, Wilkinsburg and Duquesne and city neighborhoods including Oakland, Homewood, East Liberty, the North Side and various public housing communities rate among the most troublesome.
Evans Moore Jr., assistant director of Homewood's Operation Better Block organization, observed, "I think there is some typical fear about the federal government being 'in our business' and people not wanting to participate, not wanting to talk about how many people are really in the household.
"There's just a reticence to participating in anything driven by the government and a lack of understanding of what the Census Bureau is, what they do and why it's important to us."
Thus, when the neighborhood group's first-ever monthly newsletter goes out Monday, it will include a census-promoting item written by Mr. Moore.
"If we don't stand up for ourselves to be counted, then we don't need to complain about the lack of services and attention our community receives," it states.
Census officials emphasize repeatedly, in print and in person, that they are barred by law from sharing information people provide with any other government agency. Thus, they say people should not worry about filling out the forms even if their households are larger than they've told a public housing authority or the Department of Public Welfare.
Even illegal immigrants are supposed to fill out the forms, though that doesn't mean a high percentage do. Legal immigrants are themselves a challenging population to count, said Alicia Perez, a volunteer coordinating efforts of the Hispanic chamber.
"A lot of them still have memories of what they left behind, and governments in many of those countries might use information like this not for good reasons," she said. "It only takes one person in the house to say, 'I don't know about this blah blah blah,' and the rest go along."
Philip Lutz, the Census Bureau's assistant regional manager overseeing most of Pennsylvania, said growth in antigovernment sentiment in some parts of the country appears to be an additional hardship this year. Among the areas with such pockets, he said, is Fayette County, which had a mail response rate of 67 percent in 2000, well below Allegheny County's 79 percent.
Even for those willing to be counted, confusion can be a handicap -- such as with this year's additional wrinkle of high home-foreclosure rates. People on the move, living temporarily with relatives, may never see a form and may not be listed by their hosts (though they should be).
On the other hand, complete count efforts are bolstered this year by not only wider publicity campaigns but the lack of a census long form, which always had lower response rates because of the time, complexity and privacy issues involved in completing it.
The Census Bureau has moved to an annual process called the American Community Survey to tackle those former long-form issues of income, employment, housing values and other details. Because the ACS will still be conducted this year, about 3 million households nationally will receive that questionnaire in addition to the 10-question decennial census form, undoubtedly confusing many recipients.
While the census results will be released for congressional reapportionment according to state population counts in December, local data won't be available until a year from now. And no matter how good the count, it doesn't mean the numbers will reflect any change from Southwestern Pennsylvania's long-term population slide.
Planning Department officials for the city of Pittsburgh -- which by one study's assessment actually had a census overcount in 2000 -- said they have no reason to expect a decennial population increase for the first time since 1950.
In McKeesport, where Census Bureau estimates suggest a population decline of about 2,000 since 2000, Rev. Coleman is not alone in trying to drum up participation.
City Administrator Dennis K. E. Pittman said McKeesport's city hall will be one of the thousands of sites across the country offering free space starting March 19 to a census employee to help residents fill out forms if they have questions. Space in the restaurant at the publicly owned marina is also being given to local census officials to train temporary workers.
At stake, Mr. Pittman said, is about $1.2 million of McKeesport's overall $20 million budget that falls under the Community Development Block Grant funding affected by the census information.
That's why he said McKeesport residents -- like those in many communities -- will be hearing about the census in the next few weeks through community fliers, public announcements, the urging of neighborhood block captains and more. And yes, even in their churches, mosques and synagogues.
After that, of course, it's up to them.
Washington correspondent Daniel Malloy writes the "Pittsburgh On The Potomac" blog exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.
