20 OCTOBER 29, 2020 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
City sees boost in response
rate for 2020 Census: Menin
Photo courtesy of NYC Census 2020
BY EMILY DAVENPORT
EDAVENPORT@QNS.COM
@QNS
New York City outperformed a
number of major United States cities
in terms of self-response rate to the
2020 Census.
Initially, the United States Census
Bureau predicted that New York
City would have a 58% response
rate, which the city beat by four
points. According to Julie Menin,
Director of NYC Census 2020, New
York City had a 61.8% self-response
rate for the 2020 Census, which is
a higher response rate than many
other major U.S. cities, including
Chicago (60.9%), Orlando (59.9%),
Dallas (59.7%), Atlanta (59.7%), Boston
(59.2%), Houston (58.9%), Los Angeles
(58.6%), New Orleans (58.4%), Baltimore
(57.0%), Philadelphia (56.9%),
Miami (53.8%), Cleveland (51.4%),
Detroit (51.0%), and Newark (50.9%).
“We’re fighting for our fair share
of funding and political representation,”
said Menin. “To be that prediction
is really meaningful. With
all of these different metrics, we
outperformed where U.S. Census
Bureau thought we would be and
outperformed other cities.”
Menin says that this self-response
rate is even more significant considering
that New York City was shut
down when counting began.
“Before COVID, we were going to
open 300 centers to help New Yorkers
complete the census — one-third
of New Yorkers have less access to
broadband,” said Menin. “Because of
COVID, we couldn’t open the centers
and had to pivot to virtual. New York
was literally shut down for the whole
beginning of the census because it
was the epicenter. We were grappling
with the biggest crisis our city
has faced.”
NYC Census 2020 was able to back
out of their contract with the MTA
— they had originally planned on a
subway ad campaign — and redirected
those funds into digital and
television ads, running 34 different
media campaigns in 27 languages.
Menin says that NYC Census 2020
phone banked over 4,000,000 calls
and peer to peer texted 7 million New
Yorkers to complete the census. They
were able to do in-person canvassing
by mid to late summer this year, and
held 1,000 events — 100 of which in
the last week of counting alone — to
help hard-to-reach communities
complete the census.
According to Menin, NYC Census
also used apps like WhatsApp and
WeChat to help reach New York
City’s immigrant communities.
“We began utilizing these apps to
reach these immigrant communities,
using 15 different languages,” said
Menin. “For all the misinformation
that the Trump administration
wrought around the census, from
trying to add a question about
citizenship and cutting the deadline
short, all that served to create fear
and intimidation. It was important
that we were able to spread information
that the census is confidential
and safe to fill out.”
The efforts of NYC Census 2020
reached 472,000 households, which
accounts for 1.2 million New Yorkers,
without including who filled out
the census as a result of their media
campaigns. Menin says that every
the number of responses results
in $7,000 in funding per household
and $2,700 per person. The digital
ads they ran resulted in nearly 1
million clickthroughs to the Census
Bureau’s website.
For New York City, the 61.8% selfresponse
rate is the most accurate
count the city will have because it
is the result of people filling out the
census online, calling the response
hotline or filling out the census that
was mailed to them. Though the
Census Bureau says that 99.9% of
New Yorkers were counted with the
addition of door-knocking, Menin
says door-knocking has proven
to not be as reliable due to actions
taken during the 2010 Census.
HIGHER ED TODAY
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One of the most crucial ways that CUNY
has committed to its mission in recent years
has been to respond to the evolving needs of
our students after graduation. And the central
strategy of that focus has been to vigorously
pursue partnerships with employers
who share our vision of creating professional
opportunities for students from underserved
communities. It’s an approach
with payoffs for both our students and the
local economy.
Now, of course, there is a new urgency to
this priority: The pandemic confronts New
York with economic challenges we couldn’t
have imagined a year ago, and CUNY is determined
to support its students when they
need it most and to take a leading role in the
city and state’s recovery.
Prior to the coronavirus, we had put together
a team in our workforce programs
office to help CUNY and its colleges forge
connections with private-industry partners
in the city’s largest and most thriving economic
sectors with the goal of creating career
pathways for our students. The result
has been remarkable: Tens of thousands
of professional opportunities in the health
care, finance, tech, real estate, architecture
and cultural sectors. Now we are doubling
down on these efforts, making good on our
mission to propel students up the socioeconomic
ladder at a time when the pandemic
has eliminated thousands of internship and
job opportunities.
One of our newest and most exciting
partnerships is with the New York Jobs
CEO Council, a coalition led by 27 chief executives
of some of the largest employers
in New York including JPMorgan Chase,
Amazon and Microsoft. It’s a collaboration
that will create job opportunities for 25,000
CUNY students with a focus on low-income
and Black, Latinx and Asian communities.
The Jobs CEO Council has a direct impact
on the economy and our partnership will
create a robust pipeline of skilled CUNY
workers into the growing workforce.
This fall we’re also launching our Federal
Work-Study Experimental Site, a program
that will allow both companies and
non-profit organizations to hire some 9,000
CUNY students for paid internships. This
unique opportunity will allow students to
work off campus with private companies at
a time when the pandemic has halted many
on-campus activities, including work-study
employment that so many students depend
on. And with many businesses struggling
and in need of financial support to hire and
retain staff, this initiative allows employers
to hire CUNY workers because costs are
shared with the federal government.
And then there is the CUNY 90-day Upskilling
Challenge, which is providing free
virtual skills training and includes partnerships
with Google and IBM to connect
students to employers that are hiring during
COVID-19.
Meanwhile, the continuing pandemic
keeps us focused on the need to engage
our students with the career opportunities
available to them in the healthcare field —
and to provide them with the training and
experience that will give them the skills and
credentials they’ll need to walk into wellpaying
jobs.
Our ongoing relationship with Montefiore
Health System is a prime example.
All three of our colleges in the Bronx have
partnerships with Montefiore that help prepare
their students for jobs in health care.
At Lehman College, Montefiore is a partneremployer
of the Braven Accelerator Course,
a professional readiness program that was
launched in the spring and helps students
build skills in the health service field.
Montefiore and Hostos Community College
have worked closely to develop and deliver
health care training for students. H.E.R.O.
High School, which opened in 2013 in the
Bronx as a collaboration between CUNY,
Montefiore and the city Department of Education,
provides an integrated six-year program
in which students gain healthcare
workplace experience while they earn a Regents
diploma and an associate’s degree in
nursing or community health from Hostos.
Montefiore also serves as an industry adviser
in the development of a new associate
degree in health sciences at Bronx Community
College.
The list goes on: CUNY partnerships
with financial firms like Centerbridge Partners
and Deerfield Management, trade associations
like the Real Estate Board of New
York, economic development companies
like the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development
Corporation and nonprofits like the Urban
Land Institute are helping us weather the
pandemic and keep our students on track to
be part of the recovery. With support from
the Mellon Foundation, we are expanding
the CUNY Cultural Corps, our provensuccessful
program to expose students to
sustainable career paths in the city’s arts
and cultural sectors. Break Through Tech,
which grew out of the successful Women in
Tech (WiTNY) program and was launched in
partnership with Cornell Tech and industry
allies, promises to move many more young
women into tech-focused fields in which
they have been long underrepresented.
Two recent economic impact studies
noted that CUNY and its colleges pump
billions of dollars a year into the regional
economy and our growing list of private
sector partnerships is no small part of that.
CUNY’s first priority is always to our students—
to graduate them into good jobs and
careers and to put them on paths to fulfilling
lives. This year more than any other we
expect New York City to be the beneficiary
of their success.
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