Census Shortcomings Stir Rising Tide of Complaints

Confronted with a rising chorus of complaints about flaws in the 1990 census, officials of the U.S. Census Bureau said Wednesday that about 1.9 million American households may not have received census forms.

In a meeting with Rep. Tom Sawyer (D-Ohio), chairman of a House subcommittee on the census, bureau officials said that many forms were addressed to the homes of people who actually receive their mail at post office boxes.

The officials said, however, that these and other mistakes could be corrected, and they sought to cast the early flaws in a positive light. They said the bureau had anticipated missing as many as 3.8 million homes in a mass-mailing of forms that began in late March.

“The number we used for planning purposes was 3% to 4% of households, so you can see we are doing better than projected,” said Paulette Lichtman-Panzer, a census spokeswoman. “We knew up front we would have problems and we have budgeted the resources to take care of them.”

In Orange County, census officials estimate that more than 6,000 questionnaires--less than 1% of the 900,000 that went out--were not delivered to residents because of a variety of glitches, such as envelopes that were improperly stuffed with the form or changes in address since the last survey.

Los Angeles City Atty. James K. Hahn, echoing concerns of a growing contingent of city officials across the country, said Wednesday that more than 44,000 city households or 110,000 Los Angeles residents may not have received census forms.

Describing the census in Los Angeles as “a hit-and-miss approach,” Hahn said that houses, apartment buildings and, in some cases, entire blocks failed to receive questionnaires. Hahn said that the households missed by the census were scattered across the city.

As with other metropolitan areas, a complete count of residents is important for Los Angeles and Orange counties because much of the financial aid they receive is based on population. In addition, the number of elected officials representing the region in Sacramento and Washington is directly related to population. Traditionally, most of the people missed in the decennial census are urban dwellers.

This year, the vast majority of household census forms--intended for about 95 million households--were mailed by the week of March 23.

Ray Bancroft, a spokesman for the Census Bureau who also worked on the 1980 census, said the delivery problem was worse this time around. He attributed it, in part, to a keener awareness of the census and a desire by more people to be counted.

“I think the problem is greater this time, but the awareness is much greater. We’re actually pleased by all the demand,” Bancroft said. “It shows a lot of interest in the 1990 census.”

Census Bureau officials blame the missed deliveries on a variety of problems. For instance, they said that the addresses of some newly built homes and apartment buildings were not known by the Census Bureau, and that a number of addresses were not matched with the right ZIP codes.

Census offices this week began redelivering forms, some by mail, others by hand, and will continue to do so through the end of next week. Between April 26 and June 1, said Lichtman-Panzer, census takers will attempt to visit every household that did not return a census form.

Joe Montes, a Census Bureau district director in Orange County, said his staff on Wednesday was counting the forms that the U.S. Postal Service said could not be delivered, and was preparing to send employees out to deliver the questionnaires in person starting today.

“They’re going to be mail detectives,” Montes said. “Since the post office has deemed these to be undeliverables, we’re going to make actual visits. We should be done with the backlog by the middle of next week.”

Census officials in Orange County recommend that residents who have not received a form call (800) 999-1990 to notify the bureau of the oversight. Although new forms will not be sent out, a census enumerator will be scheduled for a visit to complete the questionnaire.

Problems with the 1990 census began cropping up last week when Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and city officials elsewhere asserted that the Census Bureau’s March 20 canvassing of the nation’s homeless was seriously flawed. Bradley asked census officials to conduct a partial recount. City officials said Thursday that they have not yet received a response from the bureau.

By late last week, the Census Bureau had received more than 760,000 calls from people, complaining that they had not received their forms or asking for foreign language assistance, Bancroft said.

In addition, civil rights groups, including the Urban League in Los Angeles, have expressed concern that people who note their race as African-American, instead of filling in the circle marked “black or Negro,” will not be counted as part of the nation’s black population.

The census has chronically undercounted black people, missing them at a rate almost four times as great as the rest of the population. After the 1980 count, the Census Bureau estimated that it had missed about 1.4% of the nation’s population.

Nampeo McKenney, the Census Bureau division chief in charge of ethnic studies, said Wednesday that the bureau may have to devote additional resources to ensure that all people who identify themselves as African-American are classified as black, but she said the work will be finished by a Dec. 31 deadline.

“We will get it done,” McKenney said.

So far, distributing questionnaires has posed the biggest problem, according to officials in Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Houston, Chicago and other large cities.

“We have been encountering wholesale lapses, including three 20-story buildings, that didn’t get any questionnaires,” said Hulbert James, census coordinator for the New York mayor’s office.

Fabian Sanchez, an official of the Census Bureau’s Philadelphia office, said that “a couple hundred thousand” forms with faulty addresses could not be delivered to parts of Philadelphia, Maryland and New Jersey. Sanchez said that the Census Bureau experienced similar difficulties in Washington and Boston.

Carlos Ortiz, a census specialist with the mayor’s office in Houston, said this week that his office had been receiving about 100 calls a day from people who had not received their census forms.

“We’ve had complete apartment complexes that didn’t get their forms,” Ortiz said.

Times staff writer Eric Bailey in Orange County contributed to this report.