With billions of dollars in federal funding for San Francisco on the line, local census organizers expect that the Supreme Court\u2019s decision to effectively end the Census count late Thursday night will shortchange communities who need the city\u2019s resources most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lower courts had previously extended the count through Oct. 31, but on Tuesday, the higher court made its decision in response to an emergency request by the Justice Department last week. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Census participants each bring about $2,000 to San Francisco in federal funds, according to Adrienne Pon, executive director of San Francisco\u2019s Office of Civic Engagement for Immigrant Affairs. These funds impact every aspect of urban life, from affordable housing to health care\u2014made all the more vital during the novel coronavirus pandemic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Undercounting could result in a loss of potentially $8 billion for San Francisco, Pon said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Concerned about the ramifications, community organizers and advocates are continuing to table with one final push to promote the Census. It can be completed at my2020census.gov until 2:59 a.m. on Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAt this point we\u2019re all sort of scrambling,\u201d said Rob Chua, a member of the local Asian and Pacific Islander Council. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of work being done still \u2026 We\u2019re going to keep going until they shut the website down on us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The city, which had a self-response rate of 68.5 percent in 2010, recorded a rate of 66.7 percent as of Thursday morning, Pon said. While San Francisco has experienced a historic undercount that goes back many Census efforts, promoting the Census\u2014especially to communities who are harder to reach\u2014has become riddled with obstacles related to COVID-19. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of households that haven\u2019t participated, the lowest counts are occurring in districts with hard-to-count populations; that means Districts 3, 6, 9 and 10\u2014namely Chinatown, the Tenderloin, SoMA, Mission and Bayview, Pon said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe have a lot of students, a lot of people who are just hanging on as renters, people that don\u2019t have a big support system,\u201d Pon said. \u201cIf you disrupt their ability to work or their places to live, they\u2019ll have to move somewhere. That has a big impact on the low response to the Census, and in the middle of a pandemic, honestly the Census wasn\u2019t to begin with at the top of everyone\u2019s mind.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s more difficult to reach communities who are especially vulnerable to the virus and stay indoors; restrictions on gatherings have also brought promotional events to a halt. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe have a large population of communities of color, of immigrants, of people who might have physical, language or digital barriers,\u201d Pon said. \u201cSo they don\u2019t have internet access, they don\u2019t have bandwidth, like we see with many of our students.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pon and other advocates also said that the Trump administration\u2019s anti-immigrant rhetoric instilled fear in many, dissuading them from filing out the Census.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot at risk for our city, especially for immigrants in the Mission,\u201d Pon said. \u201cThere\u2019s still time to participate, but if people don\u2019t, this will affect everything about our daily lives because we need those federal dollars for health care access, hospitals, clinics, child care services, COVID-19 treatment and recovery \u2014 and we know in the Mission the community has been hardest hit \u2026 It affects everything \u2014 housing, jobs, everything that people need to survive, and not only that but our political representation and our voice, and really for many immigrant communities our democracy. So that\u2019s what\u2019s at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mario Paz, executive director of the Good Samaritan Family Resource Center, has seen firsthand the need for local resources better than most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His resource center serves some 900 families, around three-fourths low-income Latino families, as an essential services agency, providing basic needs to families such as cash assistance, food diapers and hygiene bags. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTrying to convince people when they are hungry and just trying to figure out how to survive to fill out the Census has been hard,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Centers like his have become a lifeline for community members during the pandemic, he said. It\u2019s also community-based organizations and nonprofit organizations like his that receive a portion of the federal funding at stake with the Census.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe need is great. We\u2019ve never experienced anything like this ever\u2014ever,\u201d he said. \u201cIf we lose any funding, I don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen: How are these families going to survive? And that\u2019s just us \u2014 there\u2019s many agencies that are serving many many more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He pointed to several of the crises already afflicting San Francisco\u2014families being displaced, struggling to stay afloat amid affordable housing issues, crowding often multiple families into small spaces to stay in the city to be able to find work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMoving out of the region just puts them in a precarious position where either they have to commute to San Francisco or figure out they\u2019ve decided they\u2019re going to live in substandard housing just to survive,\u201d Paz said. \u201cSo that’s what was happening before COVID. Then COVID hits, and then it just gets 10 times worse, and then it\u2019s about survival. So that\u2019s the need.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After helping people meet their basic needs through wellness checks, people working at the Good Samaritan Resource Center encourage those they serve to complete the Census. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s one area where (San Francisco\u2019s) not impacted,\u201d Paz said. \u201cIf San Francisco stands to lose tens of millions of dollars over the next 10 years, it puts more pressure on local general fund, which is already under tremendous pressure, and it\u2019s just going to mean cuts for many of the nonprofits and CBOs that serve low-income communities like ours.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The local API Council, which represents some 56 nonprofits in San Francisco, is another organization that has been pushing for the Census and was shocked at the count being cut short.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like the Good Samaritan Family Resource Center, organizations working with the API Council have been tabling with PPE to get people to fill out the Census. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Asian-Pacific Islander community represents 32 percent of San Franciscans, but 43 percent of the community lives in poverty, Chua said. That\u2019s why, he said, he was especially concerned about the city\u2019s potential loss in funding toward any service that touches poverty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first that came to his mind was food insecurity. He said some of their members\u2019 food banks are 300 to 400 people-deep every week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhen it comes to apportionment, redistricting and our share of the $1.5 trillion in federal funding that goes to things like health care, to SNAP, school lunch and so many other social services that are the safety net that many people enjoy now and in the age of COVID, there\u2019s a potential that we\u2019re going to lose so much of that with not having a more accurate count,\u201d Chua said. \u201cSo we\u2019re extremely disappointed with the ruling, but we\u2019re absolutely going to push all the way until the very end.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With billions of dollars in federal funding for San Francisco on the line, local census organizers expect that the Supreme Court\u2019s decision to effectively end the Census count late Thursday night will shortchange communities who need the city\u2019s resources most. Lower courts had previously extended the count through Oct. 31, but on Tuesday, the higher […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":45730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":false,"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"coauthors":[18445],"class_list":["post-45729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","post_format-post-format-gallery","entry"],"yoast_head":"\n