Back in March, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census questionnaire. A citizenship question has not been a part of the census since 1950 and backlash quickly followed the announcement.  Critics worried that the question would create a substantial barrier to an accurate count.

In response, planning in King County for a community-led effort to ensure a complete and accurate census count is already underway. Though the city and state have always used a Complete Count Committee to coordinate census count efforts, the addition of the citizenship question required planning to begin about a year sooner than in years past.

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Matias Valenzuela, Director of the King County Office of Equity and Social Justice, says the citizenship question has forced the county to being planning sooner because the question adds an additional deterrent for immigrant communities to participate.

“There are a lot of communities that have been really been under siege given some of the recent federal policies. Even before the citizenship question was included there were already a lot of concerns in the community about people identifying themselves, or just being counted by an organization or by the federal government when there’s not a lot of trust,” says Valenzuela. “Our communities, especially the immigrant communities, are very much under strain. So, adding the citizenship question on top of that… begins to really raise the concern.”

The goal of the community-led effort is to coordinate efforts between nonprofit organizations, philanthropies, and local governments to provide outreach and assistance for hard-to-count groups. Outside of immigrants, other “hard-to-count” groups include low-income households, rural residents, people of color, older residents, and young children. The organizations will provide outreach and assistance in filling out the questionnaire to people in their communities.

“The county and others, we bring some resources to the table, but also we know that the people that are going to be most effective in getting the word out and encouraging participation and making sure we as complete a count as possible, are those organizations that are from the community,” said Valenzuela. “We need to make sure that we are able to support these organizations so they can actually work with their communities to get that complete count.”

Valenzuela also says that the rising numbers of individuals experiencing homelessness in King County adds an additional layer of difficulty in getting an accurate count.

“We have an increasing number of homeless people. Some of them are on the streets, but then we also have an increasing number of them in transitional housing, or couch surfing, or all of these other situations that have become much more common. So we knew, already going in, that 2020 was going to be a challenging year… But some of these added challenges make the work more difficult.”

The committee is still in the process of meeting with various groups and local governments to develop their outreach strategy. Valenzuela says they will submit their plan to the King Count Council by September.

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