June 23, 2020

Saraid Gonzalez:
You mentioned it before, but what challenges are you facing?

Freda Eisenberg:
Well, obviously with the epidemic, it’s a big challenge because it is cutting off a lot of opportunities for outreach, but, I’ll start with the beginning. Sullivan County started the census, pandemic or no pandemic in a very challenged position. We are what is known as a ‘low self response community’, and that means when people are mailed their census information, their packet, their invitation, whatever they get, only a very small, proportion of our residents say, “okay, I’m going to do this. I’m going to get this done now”. And then the way the census works is, the census sends out the paperwork. They send out the information sheet. They’re asking people to do it online. So you’re sending to you saying, go online and do this survey, and some people are getting full forms. And then if households don’t respond, they get a reminder two weeks later. And then another reminder, and at a certain point, the Census Bureau stops those reminders and instead sends out people to knock on doors. And at that point, the process becomes very labor itensive because, people may not be home, people may be unresponsive or fearful of opening their doors to strangers. And that’s when we lose people. And I think in 2010, Sullivan County’s, self response rate was near the bottom of New York State. Only Queens was worse. This time around Queens is running rings around us. They are doing twice as strong a response rate as we are. And so we’re kind of rock bottom. There’s a reason for that though. We’ve kind of discovered there are a number of other not quite as low but low response communities in the Catskill region. And in speaking with the Census Bureau regional representative, he put his finger on it and noticed that we all have a high percentage of addresses that receive their mail at post office boxes, but don’t receive it at home. And the Census Bureau doesn’t deliver to post office boxes. They want to deliver to an address because it’s, the census is all about addresses and, the number of people residing at a particular address, whether it’s a house or an apartment. And so their strategy is to hand deliver census materials. What was the pandemic that hand delivery hasn’t happened yet. So the Census Open day was April 1st, we’ve now gone two months and abouta third of the people have not received any materials directly from the Census Bureau.

Saraid Gonzalez:
So what would your message be to community members?

Freda Eisenberg:
Obviously, you know, the first one is “Just get it done!” And get it done in whatever way is possible for you. Because the census is asking people to go online. Not everyone can go online, so you can call, or if you get the form, you can mail it out. So there are three options for doing it, whatever way works for you, Get it Done! Then talk to everyone you know: post on your social media, say, “Hey, I did the census, you should do this to!”. Make it a campaign because it’s really important to Sullivan County because the range of programs that allocate money based on census statistics is broad. Whatever category of person you are in , it affects school funding, well, maybe you don’t have kids in schools if you’re older, but it also affects senior funding. It affects transportation. Everyone goes out and uses our roads. It affects the money we receive for paving our roads. The degree to which federal funding that is allocated based on Census Bureau statistics touches really every aspect of our lives. So “Just Get it Done!” Talk to people, everyone you know, about doing it. And because the pandemic is closing off opportunities for us to do in person outreach and all sorts of things. Also, state had funding program that was canceled that had money for promotion. We are relying more on other avenues like social media. So I know, you Saraid run the “Sullivan County Counts” Facebook page and Instagram page and you post fabulous things every day. But the followers for the sites are small, so everyone should go on and follow ‘Sullivan County Counts’, on Facebook or Instagram, whatever you choose to use and then repost what we post, so that you can amplify our message and we really do need our meassge amplified! So yeah, that’s what people should do.

Saraid Gonzalez:
Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for sharing with us today and thank you for all of your efforts and obviously, the County, for all that you do in your efforts.

Freda Eisenberg:
Thank you. Thank you, Saraid!