In Sun Valley, the low-income Denver neighborhood rated by the Census Bureau as the hardest to count in Colorado, 56 percent of households have returned their forms, way up from 10 years ago.
In central Highlands Ranch 30 miles to the south, the response rate plummeted to 58 percent from more than 90 percent in 2000 for an area the government rated as one of the easiest in the state to count.
The Census Bureau may feel like Alice staring at the Looking Glass these days.
More than two-thirds of the state’s hardest-to-count neighborhoods finished ahead of last decade’s pace in returning census forms, while most of the state’s easy-to-count areas lagged behind, a Denver Post analysis of response rates found.
Overall, Colorado failed to equal the mail-in response rate from 2000. About 70 percent of households returned their forms, compared with 73 percent in 2000. That ranked 30th in the nation.
But in many low-income neighborhoods along the Front Range, response rates rose as much as 10 percentage points or more from a decade ago as officials targeted the areas with everything from door-to-door canvassing to dressing up lunch trucks as census message boards.
“That’s great news,” said Martha Rodriguez, Denver’s census outreach specialist.
At stake is an estimated $880 a year per person in federal funding for roads, schools and social services.
The Census Bureau ranked neighborhoods or census tracts based on 2000 census demographic factors that would likely make them hard to count in 2010. The factors included poverty, education levels, number of apartment dwellers versus homeowners and language spoken at home, among others.
In Colorado, 59 census tracts, almost half in Denver, had enough risk factors to rank as hard-to-count areas. More than two-thirds of them improved their response rates from 2000, the analysis found.
“Unconventional methods”
Rodriguez said the Denver Complete Count Committee started its census campaign more than a year ago and developed its own census materials that officials thought would resonate well in low-income neighborhoods.
“We had to rely on unconventional marketing methods,” she said.
Like wrapping census messages around 20 lunch trucks that frequented the neighborhoods. Census workers rode in the trucks and talked to customers about the importance of filling out the forms, she said.
Parts of Five Points, which were canvassed twice by the local Rotary Club and once by students, saw response rates rise from 55 percent to 71 percent.
Many of the hard-to-count success stories were in Denver City Councilman Paul Lopez’s southwest district, where response rates in low-income areas with lots of Spanish speakers exceeded the state average. Lopez, co-chair of the Denver Complete Count Committee, said he made the rounds of elementary schools, preaching the virtues of filling out the forms.
“It’s amazing to see such interest and participation,” Lopez said.
The Valverde area in southwest Denver improved from 67 percent to 74 percent, while Villa Park, with a high percentage of Spanish-speaking households, jumped from 68 percent to 76 percent. Parts of Westwood rose from 63 percent to 69 percent.
Greeley’s response rate rises
The Greeley area posted similar increases. The analysis showed that six of the seven hard-to-count tracts in Weld County saw response rates rise, while the city’s overall rate jumped from 61 percent in 2000 to 74 percent this year.
Census Bureau partnership specialist Sonny Subia said using neighborhood residents to get out the message was a key to higher response rates in difficult areas.
“We noticed the response rates in north Greeley were coming in slow, and we did blitzes up here,” Subia said.
The neighborhood’s rate rose from 43 percent in 2000 to 71 percent this year, he said.
The residents even came up with a mascot, a bee named Honey, that roamed the streets urging residents to send in their forms, Subia said.
At the same time, response rates slumped in most suburban Denver neighborhoods that were expected to be easy targets for census counts. The response rates generally remained high, but below 2000 levels.
Douglas County falls behind
All six tracts in Douglas County ranked the easiest to count fell from 2000 levels. They included the Highlands Ranch neighborhood near South University Boulevard and Highlands Ranch Parkway, where the mail-in response rate fell from 91 percent to 58 percent.
That’s just slightly higher than the 56 percent response rate in Sun Valley, home to a low-income housing project and transitional housing for single parents. It rose from 47 percent in 2000.
State demographer Elizabeth Garner said the lagging responses in some areas may be the result of a distrust of giving information to the government and problems with mail delivery.
“As soon as the government asks for information, I think some people use that as an excuse not to,” Garner said.
The other areas that lagged were Western Slope communities with high numbers of second homes.
Garner said the second homes hurt the state’s mail-in response rate. The rate should improve this fall when the Census Bureau finishes identifying and eliminating those homes from the count, Garner said.
Cathy Lacy, Denver regional director for the census, said the bureau has hired about 1,500 people to go door-to-door on the Western Slope. The office there had management problems during the mail-in process.
The door-to-door effort for households that have not mailed forms starts next week throughout Colorado.
Burt Hubbard: 303-954-5107 or bhubbard@denverpost.com
Denver Post staff writer Nancy Lofholm contributed to this report.
