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Boston planning staff say 2020 census left about 25,000 residents uncounted, urge early outreach and race/ethnicity fixes
Summary
The City of Boston told the legislature it estimates roughly 25,000 residents were not captured in the 2020 census (about 6–7,000 of whom were group-quarters residents later documented) and urged state and local leaders to fund outreach, LUCA participation and improved race/ethnicity reporting to avoid repeated undercounts.
Alvaro Lima of the City of Boston’s planning/research staff told a Massachusetts legislative hearing that the city estimates an undercount of roughly 25,000 residents in the 2020 census, and urged sustained local and state work to prevent similar gaps in 2030.
“We had, our calculations is that we had an undercount of around 25,000,” Lima said. “7,000 of those people were in group quarters.” He said the city worked with the Census Bureau to correct the group-quarters component using university and institutional lists, but that the residential undercount persisted and was carried forward into survey baselines such as the American Community Survey.
Lima described Boston’s LUCA workflow: the Census Bureau provides a master address list under Title 13; city planners and assessors compare that list with local records (inspectional services, building permits, assessor files), map addresses to parcels and document additions or deletions before sending corrected lists back to the bureau. “We map every unit of house in every parcel,” Lima said, describing a multi-month internal review by the city’s planning demographers and GIS staff.
City witnesses also told the committee that current race and ethnicity categories complicate outreach and service planning. Lima and Senator Miranda noted that groups such as Brazilians and Cape Verdeans do not always find an obvious category in the existing race/ethnicity fields and can be reclassified in ways that obscure community needs. Lima said multilingual, culturally tailored outreach and clearer disaggregation of origin groups would help local public-health and education planning.
Boston staff said the city coordinates a local complete-count committee, hires local enumerators who speak community languages, and uses targeted outreach at institutions (colleges, group quarters) and public events to improve self-response. Lima offered to share the city’s calculations and research with the committee.
The hearing included senators’ follow-up on the city’s methodology and a request that the city provide the committee with its undercount calculations and the research behind race/ethnicity classification concerns. City staff said they would provide the documents and continue coordinating with state and federal partners; no formal action was taken at the hearing.
