Posted on 05/08/2009 8:06:03 PM PDT by Libloather
Census workers going door to door
By TOM MOOR, Tribune Staff Writer
Story Updated: May 8, 2009 at 6:43 PM EDT
Sharon Sheely said she received quite the scare earlier this week.
When Sheely answered a knock on her door and asked who was there, an unknown man replied only by saying, “Census.”
Believing the man appeared “questionable,” Sheely told him to leave and closed the door.
Aside from the bad manners Sheely said the man had, what she experienced is happening everywhere.
Every residence in this region will receive a visit from the U.S. Census Bureau in the next two months as census workers prepare to verify more than 145 million addresses nationwide.
While some people may already know this, it certainly came as a surprise for Sheely.
“I wasn’t aware anything like this was going on,” said Sheely, of Lakeville.
Sheely contacted The Tribune because she’s worried many people don’t know that census workers are already canvassing neighborhoods.
The effort is part of a nationwide operation to verify, update and inquire about additional living quarters on the premises of residences nationwide — the first step in assuring every housing unit receives a questionnaire in March 2010.
“In our region, they have been instructed to knock on every door,” said Muriel Jackson, spokesman for the Chicago Regional Census Center. “There may have been some instances they didn’t, but as far as I know it’s a procedure.”
South Bend has a census office, but all media inquiries were directed to the Chicago office.
Sheely was concerned because her home had recently been burglarized and she didn’t feel she could trust a stranger at her door. Sheely also mentioned the potential dangers of elderly people being targeted by people posing as census workers.
Workers can be identified by the official Census Bureau badge they carry, Jackson said. The employees will ask only to verify a housing unit’s address and whether there are additional living quarters on the property. Workers will never ask for any bank or Social Security information.
For more information about the 2010 Census, call the Census Bureau’s Partnership and Data Services Division at (312) 454-2770.
The Census Bureau is currently recruiting managers for its new offices to open this fall in each congressional district. For more information, go to www.census.gov.
Yeah, not sure why they were doing my neighborhood—it is an established neighborhood of single family homes—no or limited rentals in what is called a “Collar County” city i.e, suburban area of Chicago.
You will have to keep us posted as to what they do. As the reporting criteria seems to vary, I wonder if the worker pool and hiring procedures vary say between rural, suburban and urban areas. For example, ACORN is not historically active in the Collar Counties, but they sure are in some areas of Chicago.
Yeah, I was in some Guatemalan’s guy’s apartment once and there was a .357 Magnum sitting on the kitchen table (in a DC suburb where it probably was illegal) Family was extremely cooperative, brought me drinks, etc. though.
Interesting because in some other threads, posters said they were queried as to whether they had apartments in the dwelling, other occupants, etc. Again, may vary among areas of the country.
Just tell em “taste’s like chicken” and where is my mail !! ........:o)
Any number of things may happen to the data AFTER it’s collected, of course. I’ve always been baffled by the claims that impoverished minorities are undercounted and that you have to statistically adjust the results for this; by FAR the easiest people to find and talk to, in my experience, were people in impoverished minority areas. They like the Government, since it gives them things, and, well, to be honest, someone is at home a lot, to do lack of employement. And I actually have found likely “illegal” immigrants suprisingly cooperative.
The most difficult areas to work were in wealthy white suburbs in Republican areas. Often difficult to find people at home, people would often have vacation homes they’d be at, and people were much more openly hostile to census workers and unwilling to answer questions.
But people have a wildly inaccurate idea of what it’s possible for an administration to accomplish in terms of changing things in four months - the Census is a vast, slow moving bureacracy; as I mentioned, the purchasing of the GPS PDS was a process lasting 7+ years (and it still got botched.) It’s hilarious that there are people that seriously believe the GPS thing is some Obama initiative.
And all the procedures, forms, and hiring practices going on now were all developed and tested years back in the Bush Adminstration. There are limits to how much even the most micromanaging President can change in that period of time.
Since workers are paid by the hour, i can only assume they may have been trying to pad their hours. However, there may have been some issues with the addresses from last year.
I will keep everyone posted on what is going on, if i thought it was hinky at all, i’d be sounding the alarm. I believe that each state has their own rules about hiring though.
Census workers are legally allowed on your property to knock on your front door. If they have to be they’ll be escorted by local LEOs, but that’s extremely rare.
Probably because she never heard of ACORN and was baffled by the question.
The hardest thing to get across to people is the absence of a giant sophisticaed centralized government database that everyone in government can access. It really ain’t there, people.
The government actually isn’t competent enough to develop one; until VERY recently the FBI computer system, for example, was some 1970s rickety disaster that would have been outmatched technologically by the computer system of some random county in North Dakota.
We are supposed to just be marking down the address and whether it is a single family house, multi-unit structure, other living quarters (such as a dorm or prison), uninhabitable or does not exist.
All I can say is this is all we are supposed to be doing.
"The employees will ask only to verify a housing unit’s address and whether there are additional living quarters on the property."
Are they looking for future homes for the soon to be legal aliens, or people who do not share my religion?
Yeah, I'm becoming paranoidical.
There really isn’t a problem with padding hours (because people that have very few addresses checked per hour will eventually stand out; the REAL problem is “Curbstoning” - people that just sit in their house or car and make up data rather than actually going out and getting. They eventually get found out through the followup interviews done by supervisors to a few of their addresses. That’s why Census workers always want your phone number if they’ve talked to you - so their supervisors can confirm they actually talked to you isntead of just making up a bunch of data.
They basically want to know if you have any separate apartments in your house that aren’t obvious, or someone living in a trailer in the woods in your property. I’ve always hated the “Additional living quarters” question because it was Census-ese that average people didn’t understand.
The only purpose behind it is to make sure that additional separate forms get sent to those people in the apartments, trailers, etc.
Well I think you hit on it—everyone here is very concerned with what happens to the data after it is collected. I know some say there are no centralized computers—maybe, maybe not; but with this group, I believe they will use the data to ensure their continued power. I don’t know the percentage, but there are a huge number of top administration posts that were filled with Chicago political insiders—Many can link to threads about the rise in Chicago politics of the occupant and his crew. Need I say more?
Well, thanks for the first-hand account from the other side.
Really? The HHC that we are currently using doesn’t have any spot for a phone number. I am doing Quality Control for the Address Canvassers. We do sport checking on about 30% of the address area. When the address area clears QC, then we just verify the deletes. If the area doesn’t pass the QC, then we have to re-canvass, which is a big pain. I have not had to re-canvass yet, my AC’s have been excellent.
LOL! I loves shicken. The tougher times get for us geezers the more fun I have with these youngsters who take themselves oh so seriously.
“Where’s my mail?” My mailman is a woman who’s a total hottie who’s very friendly. Can’t go there. I am still a pig by castigating the lesbian crew at the local library. “Hey do you have Ann Coulter’s latest book or did you sacrifice it at your last scissor-fest?”
They don’t like me. I’m trying to cut my hair shorter than the head butch but it’s a challenge.
It looks like coupons to me!
You have coupons draped like that near your doorbell?
I've been living in the big city far too long.
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