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City Council adopts expanded census outreach plan to count hard‑to‑reach residents
Summary
Council approved a city plan to focus Census 2000 outreach on hardest-to-count populations, using questionnaire assistance centers, mobile assistance vehicles and trained outreach workers; state funds and county allocations will support the effort.
The Los Angeles City Council adopted a committee report backing an expanded outreach plan to improve the city’s Census 2000 count for hard‑to‑reach populations, including the homeless, immigrant communities and others who typically are undercounted.
Jan Perry, executive director of the Census 2000 outreach program for the City of Los Angeles, presented a plan that would use state funds routed through the county to support targeted efforts, including establishing questionnaire assistance centers (QACs) in housing developments, deploying up to 10 mobile questionnaire assistance vehicles for several weeks, hiring and training outreach workers and conducting intensified street counts of people living in encampments.
Council members emphasized that an undercount would reduce federal and state resources flowing to the city. Councilman Hernandez said state action has provided “additional funding to the tune of about 700,000 for an outreach plan” and described earlier city action that dedicated block grant money to the effort.
Perry said the plan was developed with elected-official representatives, community‑based organizations, homeless outreach providers and state and county officials. The Community Development Department (CDD) would serve as the fiduciary agent for funds distributed through the county. The plan includes hiring up to 300 homeless outreach workers for street enumeration, use of incentives in street counts and coordination with the Census Bureau to improve methodology for counting people living on the street.
City attorney and CAO staff told council members the plan meets state requirements for receiving the funds and is subject to state and county audit. Councilmembers discussed logistics, including fingerprinting and FBI background checks for outreach workers and the need to trust staff to implement the plan with community partners.
The council approved the committee report and directed staff to proceed; the roll call recorded 15 ayes.
