Census Outreach Gets Creative to Help Seniors
When ONEgeneration senior center in Reseda, Calif. distributes boxes of groceries at a drive-thru food bank or to homebound seniors, they come with Juana Torres’ contact information and directions on how to fill out the census. It’s part of their evolving outreach strategy as the coronavirus canceled many of their previous plans.
“As a result, everybody who takes home a box of food will get the flyer,” said Torres, the census outreach coordinator for ONEgeneration. “And I’ve gotten many phone calls from it. So we’ve just had to get more creative with how we get the message out.”
The 2020 census marks the first time it will be completed online in the United States. While that might be more convenient for many, it is not as convenient for many seniors, who make up more than one-third of California’s population, according to census data. Because of that and the coronavirus, census outreach groups have needed to come up with new plans to make sure as many seniors as possible are counted.
Counting everyone in the census is important because it helps determine how much each community will get of the more than $1.5 trillion per year in federal funds, according to a report from The George Washington University. The census accounts for more than 80% of California’s federal funding and helps pay for public services, such as education, hospitals, public works, and highways, according to Public Policy Institute of California.
Christian Arana, the policy director for the Latino Community Foundation, has been working on census outreach for Latinos, a group that has been historically undercounted and makes up roughly 40% of California’s population. Arana said Latino seniors are at a higher risk to be undercounted than normal because of the digital census and a lack of in-person outreach due to the virus.
“There is an older generation of Latinos that may not necessarily be as tech-savvy, may have lots of questions, may not be able to comprehend things that are going to be asked on the form,” Arana said.
The Latino Community Foundation has been targeting the younger generations to help increase census participation for the older generations by investing $150,000 into 19 Latino-led nonprofits across California that work with youth.
“Why not leverage a millennial or gen Z population that has all those qualities and those skills to be the person that actually informs their family and actually helps them get it done,” Arana said.
A census field supervisor, who asked to be referred to as Parker, called his grandmother through a video chat to help her fill out the 2020 census. Normally he would go visit her, but census operations were happening as the coronavirus was starting to spread in the United States and he didn’t want to get his grandparents sick. His grandma recently bought a computer and didn’t know how to use it well, which combined with some concerns that the census website was a scam.
So Parker had to help her by easing her concerns and walking her through the form based on what he could see from the video chat and from his memory, as he took the census about a week before.
“She ended up refreshing the page or actually going back to the last page at least five times because of how confusing the website is,” Parker said. “It wasn’t confusing for me, but it was not built for people who have no idea how to use technology.”
Even though completing the census online might be challenging for many seniors, not all have the same struggles. John Morris, a 65-year-old retired software architect, said taking the census online was just a way to avoid “having to find a pen and later walking to the mailbox.”
“I admit to being lucky in that my own occupation was one that happened to suit me to the modern online world,” Morris said. “I know others may not be so lucky.”
For people who don’t have access to computers or the internet, Arana said you can fill it out over the phone by calling 1–844–330–2020 or by completing the paper questionnaires that were sent about a month after the census count began.
However, calling to answer the census has also presented some challenges as many jobs are cut due to the coronavirus.
“A few seniors that I’ve talked to have called the Census Bureau to give their responses via phone and nobody’s answered them or there have been super long wait times,” Torres said. “So I know that all of the COVID-19 closures have affected the Census Bureau as well and they’re not able to be as responsive to people.”
The Census Bureau started sending out paper versions on April 8 to households who have not completed the census. People receiving the paper questionnaire can still respond online or by phone, or they can return it by mail in the enclosed envelope.
While the paper ballots will likely increase participation, without census workers knocking on doors and working in the field to increase participation, there are still concerns that people aren’t going to be focused on it and will forget about it. Full census field operations, which includes door-to-door visits, were suspended until at least June 1, and that date could be pushed back, according to Parker.
“I think a lot of seniors who can’t remember, or need someone to help them out, will not participate until field operations pick back up,” Parker said. “Some seniors would have relied on a field worker coming to their house to help them fill out the census, and there’s no telling when that will happen.”
