S.F. Seeks to Make Census Accountable
Teng leads hearing on ways to make sure that few are missed

By Joyce Nishioka
Sending a message that minorities count, San Francisco Supervisor and Housing Committee Chairwoman Mabel Teng devoted much of the panel’s meeting last week to making sure that the U.S. Census next year doesn’t miss the millions that it did in 1990.

“It is up to the city to take leadership,” said Teng at the March 2 hearing she called at City Hall to inform the public that efforts are underway to ensure a more accurate count than in 1990.

With statistical sampling largely ruled out by the Supreme Court this year, San Francisco stands to lose an estimated $50 million, given that undercounting leads to fewer federal dollars, said Teng.

Ironically, the people who need such funds the most are the most likely to be overlooked, said John Young, acting director of the Immigrant Rights Commission.

“The communities most likely to be undercounted are national minorities, language minorities, renters, and the homeless,” he said. “These are the people most in need of a voice but unfortunately, are the least likely to be counted.”

Young’s city panel is studying how to best reach populations that might be overlooked, including undocumented immigrants and residents of illegal in-law units. “These people are difficult to reach but need to be counted because so many of them are low income,” he said.

With Congress unlikely to allocate much money for outreach, San Francisco has already undertaken several efforts to ensure that few of its residents are missed. Teng has worked with Mayor Willie Brown to put together a Complete Count Committee, a city panel including community activists and city workers, who together are working to develop and coordinate a census implementation plan for the city. Already, the Department of Community Development and the Department of Public Health each has pledged to beef up efforts to reach underserved groups, and the Department of City Planning is updating addresses and producing maps to better allow Census workers to find people next year. Both the city’s Housing Authority and the nonprofit Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund will launch Census campaigns next month.

To make sure that money for such efforts continues into 2000, Teng has already approached Board President Tom Ammiano about earmarking part of the city’s 1999-2000 budget. Any money the city does shell out will be quickly recaptured, said Chinese for Affirmative Action leader Ted Wang. Pointing out that the city loses approximately $2,000 in additional aid for every uncounted resident, he said at the hearing that if the city invests $500,000, the money could be “made up by reaching just 250 people.”

Undercounting goes far beyond San Francisco, activists said. In California alone, said Teng, the census missed 837,000 people in 1990, costing the state one congressional seat and $100 million in federal dollars. The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund estimates that 2.3 percent of Asian Americans were among the 8 million people—mostly minorities—who were missed in 1990, and that the Census that year double-counted 4 million others, mostly whites.

Supervisor Sue Bierman, also at the hearing, emphasized that an accurate count would benefit all Americans, not just the disenfranchised. The numbers not only determine a state’s number of representatives and its chunk of the federal-aid pie, but also are used by the state in planning for schools and roads and by businesses in calculating long-range forecasts.

“People don’t understand the benefits of an accurate count,” Bierman said. “I didn’t understand 10 years ago what was at stake.”