Gulf Coast Census Imperatives

Katrina and the failure of the federal levee system in New Orleans created unprecedented levels of upheaval and destruction in a frightening number of people’s lives. This upheaval has still not subsided, even as we approach the four-year anniversary of the storm.

Our collective refusal to account for and deal with the effects of the large-scale, forced displacement of Gulf Coast residents in 2005 has yielded problematic outcomes for survivors and host communities. Assistance programs did not accurately consider the needs of the displaced, and many “receiving” cities were not equipped to handle the needs of internally displaced people.

The conversation and planning leading up to the 2010 Census as it relates to New Orleans is another disheartening reminder that as a country, we still do not recognize the full impact that Katrina had (and continues to have, and will continue to have) on an entire region and its population. With the stakes as high as those associated with the Census population count, it is absolutely imperative that we get it right for the Gulf Coast. Federal funding and political representation are both determined using Census population counts.

Below are three recommendations for the Census Bureau to accurately gather data about the post-Katrina Gulf Coast.

1. The 2010 Census will collect information primarily by sending surveys to established addresses at habitable housing units. In the Gulf Coast post-Katrina, the question arises, what is a housing unit? Many of our residents are still living in travel trailers and hotel rooms, not to mention gutted houses, that are not captured in Census address canvassing. Many of the most precariously housed residents of New Orleans also likely fall into other categories of those at risk of being undercounted: people of color, low income populations, renters, highly mobile people, immigrants and people with limited English proficiency, people living in complex households, the unemployed, and adults without a high school diploma. The Census should hire extra workers to accompany homeless outreach teams entering blighted structures, using a recent increase in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The impacts of the foreclosure crisis and recession would also make this a prudent move across the country.

2. The Census Bureau should add another round of address canvassing in the Gulf Coast beyond the one that occurred in spring 2009. Address canvassing refers to the process whereby Census workers go out into communities a year in advance and develop a master list of habitable housing units to send Census forms to, looking for things like functional windows and doors. In a region operating in the context of reconstruction, this timetable will yield a grossly inaccurate master list of addresses as houses are re-inhabited through 2010. The Bureau should conduct another address canvassing around February 2010 to ensure that newly rehabbed addresses are adequately included in the Census.

3. Finally, the Census needs to account for popular sentiments in the Gulf Coast that people are both mistrustful of the federal government and have been “surveyed to death” (without seeing many results, I would add). It was, after all, the failure of the federal levee system that caused the City of New Orleans to flood, and people have been subjected to a myriad of frustrating, overly bureaucratic, and inhumane recovery programs associated with the federal government.* Undocumented immigrants who have recently moved to the region are likely to be wary of official government forms and Census workers. These are common sentiments among many of the groups traditionally undercounted by the Census to which the Bureau must respond.

The funding and political representation levels that the Census 2010 will determine are widely recognized as important to the Gulf Coast’s continued recovery. The issue unfortunately seems to have become political fodder in New Orleans for these reasons. Because the destruction of New Orleans resulted from the documented failure of the federal levee system, the federal government should continue to provide funding for reconstruction, regardless of population counts derived from the Census. But more than four years out from the storm, there is also an opportunity for the federal government to acknowledge and act upon an understanding that Katrina was a totally unique event in our history that must be treated as such. Doing so would yield much needed encouraging results for Gulf Coast residents exhausted from the wear and tear of reconstruction.

*In the Fall of 2007, I watched social scientists literally bribe residents of a FEMA trailer park to complete surveys with Walmart gift cards after the residents expressed ambivalence about sharing their opinions with another batch of researchers.

Special thanks to Allison Plyer of the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center for providing me with informational resources and for answering my many questions on this topic.

(June 2009 photo of Lower 9th Ward FEMA Trailer by Infrogmation)