How COVID-19 may cause Fresno’s Latino community to lose out on big money, resources
With the coronavirus pandemic upending efforts to count hard-to-reach populations across California, census advocates say the stakes are high for the mostly poor and Latino residents tucked away in the central San Joaquin Valley.
The national census count performed every 10 years determines how much from $1.5 trillion in federal dollars will be allocated to local governments and how many congressional representatives each state will receive.
With less than four months to go, advocates say Latino communities in the state’s agricultural heartland might be underrepresented in this year’s Census, jeopardizing millions in federal dollars to access critical resources for schools, hospitals and transportation.
“We all have a shared understanding about how critical the census is and how vulnerable this region and some communities in particular are to an undercount,” said Phoebe Seaton, co-executive director and co-founder of the Leadership Counsel of Justice and Accountability.
Low response rates among Latinos in rural areas are putting the Valley’s residents at risk of losing out on federal funding at a time when the coronavirus pandemic has blown holes through local, state and federal budgets.
What’s at stake for 2020 Census?
Lulu Oliva, a community organizer with the Dolores Huerta Foundation, knows how critical those resources are to a child’s success. Before Oliva moved to Parlier, a small town on the outskirts of Fresno County, she lived in Calabasas. She said while her family was never wealthy, they had “all the benefits.”
But when the family relocated to Parlier when she was 14, Oliva said the town lacked many essential city services. At her new school, she said, books and other learning materials were scarce in classrooms packed with too many students.
“We didn’t have enough seats,” she said. “I was in seventh grade, and when I got to the class, there were 40 seats, but they were all taken.”
Those inequities inspired her to work with migrant communities on census outreach efforts, she said.
In Fresno County, where one in four residents lives in poverty, insufficient funding could jeopardize food assistance programs, state health insurance for children, educational resources, and congressional representation, said Christian Arana, policy director at the Latino Community Foundation.
“It could mean one less nurse, one less teacher, one less school, or even one less member of Congress,” he said. “When you multiply that over the course of a decade, that has a significant impact on a child’s education and their health.”
A potential undercount of the Valley’s migrant workers would also further disadvantage an already underserved demographic, Seaton added, as the pandemic continues to affect Latino communities at disproportionate rates.
“The impact that an undercount will have will only make us more vulnerable to the next crisis,” she said.
Arana said renewed attention to police reform in light of the George Floyd protests has stimulated conversations about “defunding” the police by shifting public safety dollars to social services. But that money is dependent on an accurate count, he added.
“The census fits in perfectly because even before we go into (a) conversation about defunding the police, we need that money first,” he said. “We need to count in the census so then afterwards we can fight about where that money actually belongs.”
Rural Fresno areas not responding to Census
As one of the state’s hardest-to-reach demographics, Latinos and other minorities are often underrepresented in the census count, Arana added, trailing behind national response rates.
As of Tuesday, the nation’s response rate was 61.9%, consistent with previous years, according to federal statistics. California’s aggressive $187 million campaign to count each resident has resulted in a slightly higher rate, with 63.1%. But at the local level, participation has varied vastly within cities and counties.
Fresno County’s overall response rate reflects national and state levels at 60%. However, in some rural areas where migrant farmworkers live, less than half of all residents have self-reported for the Census, according to recent census data. In Huron, where 96% of residents are Latino, the self-response rate for the Census hovers around 30%. In the small town of San Joaquin, where nearly 92% of its residents are Latino, the response rate slumps to 27.4%.
In Fresno, the response rate this week was 61.7%, but in Black and brown neighborhoods in the west, southwest and southeast, that number drops, averaging between 40% and 50%.
Several obstacles contribute to low response rates among minorities, including distrust in government, fear due to immigration status, lack of Internet or broadband access, and inadequate funding for census materials, according to a report from the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.
2020 Census outreach efforts
As in-person outreach efforts have stalled due to the coronavirus pandemic, census workers and community leaders pivoted their strategy. They launched an aggressive social media campaign that includes advertising on platforms such as Spotify, Facebook, and Instagram and partnered with local radio and television stations.
Marna Davis, a spokesperson for Fresno’s U.S. Census Bureau, said census workers were partnering with farm labor contractors to distribute information that addresses privacy concerns and provides a how-to guide on responding to the Census. Davis said that by law, the Census Bureau must keep all information confidential, and it’s “never shared” with another government agency or law enforcement.
Census workers also partnered with the Misioneras Eucarísticas de María Inmaculada to count dairy farmworkers and their families in Madera and Fresno counties and local grassroots organizations like the Dolores Huerta Foundation on census caravans and counting people at food banks.
U.S. residents now have until Oct. 31, as opposed to July 31 to respond to the 2020 Census. Residents can respond online, by phone or through the mail. Census takers will begin going door to door starting August 11 to count remaining households, she added.
“It’s important to respond to the census,” she said, “and that’s why we’re partnering with community-based organizations, trusted voices and service providers who rely on funding to get the word out that it’s easy to do, that it’s safe to do and that it’s important to do.”
This story was originally published July 9, 2020 at 9:55 AM with the headline "How COVID-19 may cause Fresno’s Latino community to lose out on big money, resources."