Lagging census response rates could cost N.C

In less than two hours, Carol Gardner earned her community $160,000.

A retired educator, Gardner lives in Balsam Grove, an unincorporated town in the hollers of Pisgah National Forest. Even by Western North Carolina standards, Balsam Grove is remote: a cluster of homes, churches, and a diner in Transylvania County, 30 minutes removed from the nearest full-service grocery store.

To help her small community enjoy its maximum share of federal funding and political voice, Gardner resolved to nudge neighbors to fill out the census, the once-a-decade count of every resident in the United States.

She proposed a $50 wager to surrounding communities to see which could get the most censuses completed. Her bet was met mostly with silence.

“I've seem to have become obsessed with the census,” Gardner said. “I keep thinking, ‘Why aren’t we all doing this?’”

But across North Carolina, especially in rural areas and among minority communities, officials are struggling to get residents to respond. And that delay could cost more than just civic pride.

Why it counts

According to a George Washington University study, the federal government allocates roughly $1,600 per-person, per-year, based on census population data. These dollars support a litany of programs like Medicare, school lunch programs, hurricane relief, and highway planning for the next decade. This year, the U.S. Treasury Department used 2010 census data to divvy out $150 billion in CARES Act coronavirus relief.

"Basically, every important allocation that occurs at the federal level is influenced in some way by census data," said Tim Love, Buncombe County's intergovernmental affairs director.

Under count and counties lose out.

On the political side, census data determines how states will redraw state legislator and congressional districts in 2021, how many representatives they’ll send to Washington D.C., and how many electoral votes North Carolina will possess in the 2024 and 2028 presidential elections.

Despite these stakes, most households around Balsam Grove haven’t answered the census, with the local census tract household response rate sitting at 38%.

“I know this community,” Gardner said. “They're not going to do it short of being reached out and touched. It seems to take that personal touch, which is certainly missing this year."

Lowest rates out west 

Operating amid the coronavirus pandemic, networks of North Carolina officials, advocates, and volunteers like Gardner, strive to overcome census obstacles, both systematic and new.

Balsam Grove is not alone. In many rural areas of North Carolina, household response rates dwell below 50%.

Graham County holds the dubious distinction of the second-lowest response rate in the state at 24.1% since the process opened in March. Nearby, Swain and Jackson counties follow as the 98th and 97th ranked counties, respectively. Transylvania’s response rate sits at 46.8% -- more than 10 points lower than the statewide average.

The response rate for North Carolina as a whole, 57.2%, lags behind the national average of 60.9%.

Hitting the pavement

In mid-August, official census counters called enumerators, will begin pounding the pavement to visit every household who didn’t self-respond. The final deadline to count residents, extended due to the pandemic, is the end of October.

Historically, many factors dip census tallies. Areas with high percentages of renters, child under 5, P.O. boxes, seasonal residents like college students and summer vacationers, or hard-to-count minority groups tend to record lower results. Others suggest government mistrust or general apathy and confusion about the census hamper final counts.

“You're fighting for attention span with everything in the world going on, said Mike Poston, director of the Jackson County Planning Department. Poston mentioned coronavirus and the protests over the death of George Floyd.

COVID-19 also highlights a new disparity. Census 2020 initiatives, usually conducted in-person at churches, schools, and nonprofit centers, have shifted online. This year is also the first census that people can complete online, in addition to by mail or phone.

Thousands of Western North Carolina households have spotty cellular connections, and not all cable providers extend services to the state’s most rural areas. Fat tree leaves, fully grown by late spring, can also block aerial Wi-Fi signals. The Land of Sky Regional Council determined 13% of households in Buncombe, Henderson, Transylvania and Madison counties had no access to the internet. There are similar pockets of internet deserts throughout the Tar Heel State, especially in Eastern North Carolina.

Census Bureau data shows counties that complete the census online the most are also the counties that have the highest overall completion rates.

To overcome these obstacles, North Carolina counties formed Complete Count Committees composed of diverse community stakeholders. With no direct funding to promote the census from the state or federal government, these committees work within existing county budgets to market the decennial event.

“If Buncombe County increased its response rate by 1%, we would increase our potential federal funding by $40 million per year over a 10-year period,” Love said. “That's only if we get an additional 2,500 people counted.”

Question of trust

A number of Love’s micro-marketing actions gear towards local Latinos. “Hard-to-count” is official census lingo, encompassing several minority groups, including the Latino community. Yet convincing more Latinos to complete the census can be daunting when some say they fear being counted.

Rosario Villarreal works as a community health coordinator for the YMCA of Western North Carolina in Asheville. Like much of the state, the Asheville-area has substantial populations of Latino immigrants — some documented, some undocumented. Officially, Latinos make up 6.7% of the Buncombe County population, but Villarreal said actual numbers may be much greater.

“Many people don't even report where they live because of the immigration issues,” she said.

Some misinformation stems from past efforts by President Donald Trump to include a citizenship question on the 2020 Census. The Supreme Court blocked the addition last June. 

Still, Villarreal said residents worry their neighborhoods could become targeted for immigration sweeps if the census accurately reflects their presence.

“I let them know that this is money that we're losing and that it's OK to do the census,” she said.

Officials also are working hard to make sure the state’s African-American community isn’t overlooked.

“It’s been a real challenge because as we began to plan, along came COVID-19,” said Deborah Dicks Maxwell, president of the New Hanover County chapter of the NAACP and a member of a Wilmington-area group to promote census participation. “We were planning on the churches to help really get us going, but the virus forced us to change all that.”

That’s prompted officials to move a lot of the outreach efforts online, especially to social media. But rural and minority communities in general aren’t as active online as white suburban residents.

Maxwell said that while New Hanover County’s response rate is near the state average of 57%, the more rural Brunswick, Bladen and Columbus counties in Southeastern N.C. all have response rates hovering in the 40s.

In some areas, census promoters also are battling built-in mistrust of the government, although Maxwell said it’s too early to tell if the George Floyd protests have added to the skepticism.

“You have to trust this,” she said. “This has been going on for hundreds of years. It’s not being used to track people for immigration services, just to get an accurate count of your county.

“And we need it. There’s no doubt we qualify for it, so we just need to fill out that form.”

‘Going to keep going’

Around Balsam Grove, Gardner taped informational flyers and joined fellow civic-minded residents at local community centers and yard sales to promote the census. 

Over a morning in late May, Gardner sat with her computer at a church food pantry and guided five people through the census, who accounted for 10 people in total. One woman, who recorded five members in her household, filled out the census for the first time.

“We're going to keep going until they quit taking data,” Gardner said. “People keep asking me if I’m working for the census. I’m not. I just want Balsam Grove to have a better count.”

Gareth McGrath from the Wilmington StarNews contributed to this story. 

Reporter Brian Gordon can be reached at bgordon@citizentimes.com or on Twitter @briansamuel92. 

Who is responding in N.C.?

Top Counties

1) Union County (68.9%)

2) Orange County (67.2%)

3) Wake County (66.5%)

4) Davie County (65.6%)

5) Chatham County (57.2%)

Bottom counties

100) Avery County (23.5%)

99) Graham County (24.1%)

98) Swain County (27.3%)

97) Jackson County (27.6%)

96) Dare County (29.1%)

North Carolina’s statewide response rate was 63% in the 1990 census, 64% in the 2000 census, and 64.8% in the 2010 census. The current 2020 response rate is 57.2%.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau