Making Sure St. Louis Is Counted

The United States Census Bureau, which recently announced the hiring of 1,000 part-time employees in the St. Louis region, will begin mass mailing census forms in mid-March. It is compiling a mailing list now. If an address is not on the list, there is a good chance that any residents from it will end up uncounted.

For the past two years, the City has been working with the Census Bureau to ensure that the list. In late 2008, we sent the Census Bureau a list of addresses "new'? to the City since the 2000 count. These addresses included new construction and places converted into lofts and condos in formerly non-residential buildings. In October 2009, the Census Bureau sent us back a list deleting more than 18,000 addresses. Most of these deletions were correct ' buildings that had been demolished since 2000. But, quite a few ' 8,000 addresses were incorrectly deleted. These deletions included downtown lofts, some newly built homes, and long-time residences that the Census Bureau's field work inexplicably missed. In December 2009, the City submitted an appeal agreeing with some of the deletions, documenting the reasons for our disagreements with other deletions, and adding an additional 899 addresses we also believe are missing from the Census Bureau's list.

I am working with US Representative Lacy Clay, who has been a stalwart on this issue, and other members of the delegation to ensure that our appeals and challenges are upheld and that 16,000 or so St. Louisans are not overlooked by the Census.