Census takers worry that apartment renters were undercounted
Census taker Linda Rothfield's government-issued iPhone kept directing her back to apartments in San Francisco that she already knew were vacant. When she did find apartments that were occupied, she was sometimes turned away because of the pandemic.
“I had a few landlords who said, ‘It’s COVID. You can’t come in,’” Rothfield said.
In a national headcount turned upside down by natural disasters, political turmoil and a deadly virus, apartment renters proved particularly hard to count last year. That has former census takers and experts worried that the tally failed to account for all of them.
Overlooking people in the nation’s 44 million rental homes carries a potentially high price. Because the census helps determine how $1.5 trillion in federal money is spent each year, the lower numbers would mean less government help to pay for schools, roads and medical services in those communities.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/census-takers-worry-that-apartment-renters-were-undercounted/ar-AALNvcz