June 18, 2009 | Read Time: 4 minutes
It’s impossible to know exactly how many people live in this city.
But for the almost four years since Hurricane Katrina struck, a small nonprofit organization has tracked New Orleans’s vital statistics — and its population analysis has helped win an additional $45-million in federal aid for the still-recovering city.
Last year, the Census Bureau issued its 2007 estimate of the total number of New Orleans residents: 239,124. The figure was far lower than the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center’s research suggested. The bureau’s estimates, issued annually between censuses, are important because they determine how much money towns and cities receive from the federal government for education, law enforcement, child care, aid for the elderly, and other services.
Officials at the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center had been worried even before the Census Bureau released its numbers.
“Looking at the scientific methodology behind them, we realized that there were real gaps in that method’s ability to track the kind of rapid change that we were experiencing,” says Allison Plyer, a deputy director at the center, which was founded in 1997 to help local charities use publicly available data in advocacy campaigns, grant proposals, and planning for their programs.
The census updates are based largely on information gleaned from tax forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service,
After Katrina, groups of people who tend to be undercounted by the Census Bureau’s standard methodology were coming to New Orleans in large numbers, says Ms. Plyer. Poor residents, who were scattered across the country after the storm, were starting to return to the city. There was an influx of young professionals to help with rebuilding and immigrants, some with legal documentation and others without, who work in construction. And a growing number of homeless people were squatting in abandoned houses.
So the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center analyzed building permits, the number of residential electrical hookups, data from the postal service, and other records to come up with its own estimate, which put the city’s 2007 population as high as 321,000.
The city of New Orleans used the center’s report as the basis for its challenge of the Census Bureau’s estimate, and earlier this year, the agency added nearly 50,000 to its 2007 estimate. While the revision was not as high as the city had hoped, the new estimate translated into an additional $45-million in federal dollars.
Beyond the money, the increased estimate was important for the city’s morale and the public’s perception of the recovery, says Maggie Merrill, director of policy for Mayor Ray Nagin.
“It was really validation that people are coming back,” she says. “There was a sense nationally, Is the population going to come back? And, in fact, we’ve shown that it’s come back a lot quicker than people ever thought it would.”
A ‘Difficult’ Census Ahead
Now, the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center is turning its attention to the 2010 census — the results of which cannot be contested.
“In New Orleans, it’s probably going to be the most important and the most difficult census we’ve ever had,” says Ms. Plyer.
The organization is working closely with the city to respond to the Census Bureau’s proposals on how to count hard-to-reach groups, such as people who are homeless, and on changes the agency has proposed for census tracts.
The Census Bureau’s recommendations are based on data from the 2000 census, says Ms. Merrill, in the mayor’s office. Because the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center has information that is much more up-to-date, she says, the group’s experts can say, “Yes, this makes sense” or “No, this doesn’t make sense.”
“They’re helping us justify those decisions to the Census Bureau, which is really helpful because otherwise we can anecdotally say, ‘Well, this census tract actually has a lot of people living here, it shouldn’t be split,’ but we can’t back it up without the data that they provide,” says Ms. Merrill.
Nationwide, foreclosures and job losses have created living situations that mirror those that residents in New Orleans have turned to as they rebuild, such as moving in with family members and friends. Ms. Plyer fears that without strong public-education campaigns, many of those people will be missed in the 2010 tally.
“If someone’s living in your house and there’s nowhere else for them to be living, you should count them,” she says. “But sometimes people don’t realize. They think, ‘Well, this is my house, these people don’t really live here. It’s temporary.’”
The Greater New Orleans Community Data Center has been working to connect the Census Bureau with the city’s grass-roots organizing groups, charities that serve the homeless, and neighborhood associations.
“What needs to happen is for nonprofits to really get engaged,” says Ms. Plyer. Local nonprofit groups, she says, are well suited to provide the “one-on-one” it takes to help people understand the importance of responding to the census and to convince them that their information will remain confidential.
“The census understands the problems,” says Ms. Plyer. “That’s why they’re really eager to partner with nonprofits who can get the word out and help build the trust in the process.”
