Tuesday, March 24, 2020

RIRA President Urges Roosevelt Island Residents To Fill Out 2020 US Census - Everybody Counts In Our Community And Everybody Should Be Counted




Roosevelt Island Residents Association (RIRA) Interim President David Lawson reports on the importance of filling out the 2020 US Census for all Roosevelt Island residents.
Every Roosevelt Islander counts… and should be counted

While we are all struggling and directly impacted in the response to the Covid-19 pandemic, I wish to draw your attention to an essential matter that will have even greater importance as we will rebuild the society, the social fabric and local economy of our Roosevelt Island community and New York city when this crisis is over: the 2020 census.

In addition to a presidential election year, 2020 is also a census year in the United States. All Roosevelt islanders should have received an invitation to respond to the 2020 Census online, by the US Census Bureau. If not, you should receive the questionnaire by mail in a few weeks. Otherwise, please visit my2020census.gov or call 1 844-468-2020. The deadline to complete the online census questionnaire online is April 1st, 2020.

The 2020 Census online questionnaire should be completed by the person who owns or rents the living quarters, or any other person who is at least 15 years of age with knowledge of the household. It literally takes 10 minutes to complete the questionnaire. Given the current Covid-19 outbreak, the questionnaire will be mostly completed online or by mail. There is no correlation between the Census Bureau and the US immigration services. It is essential that all Roosevelt Islanders complete this Census questionnaire.

A national population and housing census is among the most complex and massive peacetime exercises a nation can undertake. A census indeed involves the complete enumeration of the population in a country, territory or area, and is conducted every 10 years. It generates a wealth of data, including numbers of people, their spatial distribution, age and sex structure, as well as their living conditions and other key socioeconomic characteristics. This information is critical for good governance, policy formulation, development planning, risk reduction, crisis response, social welfare programmes and business market analyses.

It is therefore essential that the entire population of Roosevelt Island to complete this 2020 census questionnaire as the census results has indeed planning and financial implications for our island. Planning and budget by New York State authorities responsible for Roosevelt Island, relies on the number of its inhabitants.

We were 11,561 Roosevelt island residents, at the time of the last census, in 2010, up from 9,520 in 2000. With the addition of new residential buildings and the Cornell Tech campus over the past ten years, we will see an important increase in our Roosevelt Island resident population. It is therefore, essential that all Roosevelt islanders be counted so that the budget for Roosevelt Island, but also any planning, improvement and enhancement of public transportation, social, health, cultural and postal services, infrastructure, emergency preparedness and environment protection on Roosevelt Island be taken into account at the actual level of its population. Everybody counts in our community on Roosevelt Island, and everyone should be counted.

Please complete the census questionnaire…to make it count for our Roosevelt Island community.

By ROOSEVELT ISLANDER at 1:44:00 PM

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