More than one-third of New Yorkers live in what the federal government calls to "hard-to-count" census tracts — the highest proportion, by far, of any large state in the country. These group includes renters, immigrants, poor people and others with low response rates to the census, which last occurred in 2010.
Under-counting means neighborhoods, towns and cities don't get as much government funding for which they're eligible, for everything from education to law enforcement to local hospital aid. It also means they're not receiving as many representatives as they should in local and state legislatures.
"Redistricting at the Congressional level, the state level, the local, county and city council level is all based on census data," said Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York. "So if the count is wrong, it's like a set of dominos: every decision based on that data is going to be faulty."
Lerner co-authored a new report urging localities to participate in a special US Census Bureau program. It lets them make sure the Bureau's lists of names and addresses is as accurate and comprehensive as possible before they send out questionnaires.
Those don't go out until 2020, but areas only have until the end of the year to apply for this review program.
Geographer Steve Romalewski from the Center for Urban Research at the CUNY Graduate Center said all localities should do it, but especially those with hard-to-reach populations.
"The census bureau is a nationwide undertaking and they're not perfect," Romalewski said. "Local officials know their communities the best. So they really need to participate to make sure they have a chance of getting fully counted."
New York's participation in this longstanding census program has historically been low: around 25 percent of communities review the census rolls, compared to 30 percent nationally. New York City, Rockland and Nassau counties participated in the program in 2010, but Westchester and Suffolk counties didn't — and both have substantial pockets of "hard-to-count" populations.