By Joanne Bailey-Boorsma
joamne@wktv.org
Do you know what federally mandated program falls under the social distance guidelines and is something you can do while securely in your home?
Filling out the 2020 Census.
From between March 12 – 20, 140 million households across the country will receive their first invitation to participate in the census. Residents are to indicate all people living in the home on April 1.
“We are encouraging everyone to respond online as soon as you receive your invitation with the provided instructions to go online,” according to a recent statement from U.S. Census Bureau officials.
The invitation will include the web address for the online questionnaire in English as well as where to respond online in 12 additional languages. It will also include phone numbers for English and the 12 additional languages. Telephone assistance is available seven days a week form 7 a.m. to 2 a.m. Eastern Standard Time for those who prefer to respond by phone. Online and phone respond will be available through July 31.
The currently deadline for response is July 31, however according to the Census Bureau’s website, that date “can and will be adjusted if necessary as the situation evolves in order to achieve a complete and accurate count.”
Some households — in areas less likely to respond online — will receive a paper questionnaire in the first mailing; all households that have not responded online or by phone will receive a paper questionnaire between April 8 and April 16. The paper questionnaire includes a prepaid postage envelope to return it by mail.
To abide by guidelines to help slow the spread of the coronavirus, the 2020 Census find operations will be suspended for two weeks until April 1. This in turn has delayed census takers going out for in-person nonresponse follow-up. That portion of the operation has been delayed to April 23. The mobile questionnaire assistance program also has been delay to April 13.
All census workers will closely follow guidance from public health authorities when conducting the follow-up operations. If there is a need to delay or discontinue follow-up visits in a community, Census Bureau officials said they will adapt the operation to ensure a complete and accurate count.
“We designed our 2020 operations precisely so we could offer multiple ways to respond,” said Charmine Yates, media specialist for the U.S. Census Bureau. For instance, Yates said, the operation which counts people in nursing homes, college dorms, prisons, and other institutional living facilities includes several ways to respond such as via eResponse, paper listing or self-enumeration by the facility.
For college students, per the Census Bureau’s residence criteria, in most cases students living away from home at school should be counted at school, even if they are temporarily elsewhere due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
For service providers, such as those that provide services to the homeless, the Census Bureau is contacting them to determine if the provider will be open March 30 and April 1 and whether the provider would be able to provide a paper listing of census response data for each person served or staying at the facility instead.
“In short, where a community, facility or service organization makes a change that would affect any field operation, we will adapt to make sure we are getting the same population counted another way,” Yates said.
As of Wednesday, the Census Bureau reported that more than 11 million households have responded by filling out the 2020 Census.
