Nonprofit group: JC undercounted in 2010 U.S. Census by 19,000 units

JERSEY CITY AND BEYOND – A nonprofit group hired by Jersey City to determine whether its population was undercounted during the 2010 U.S. Census has determined
that 19,000 housing units were missed in the count, according to City Clerk Robert Byrne.
As a result, Byrne plans to ask the county for more time to redraw boundary lines for Jersey City’s six municipal wards. Without an extension the city would be required to redraw the ward boundaries within 30 days of its Sept. 6 public hearing on the matter.
Jersey City, working with the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Social Compact, plans to file a challenge to the 2010 Census results, which found the city has 240,000 residents. Byrne said at Wednesday’s City Council meeting that he wants to postpone redistricting until the U.S. Census Bureau has made a decision on this challenge.
Census numbers are used to determine the level of federal aid municipalities are eligible for and are also used to set electoral boundaries for local, state, and federal political districts.
For the past several months researchers from Social Compact have been doing block-by-block topographic analyses of Jersey City neighborhoods to determine which housing developments were missed during the census count.
According to Carolina Valencia, the organization’s research director, there are areas where census data showed no one living on certain blocks even though photos reveal cars on the street or in nearby parking lots, indicating that people likely live on those blocks.
A spokeswoman for Mayor Jerramiah Healy told the Reporter in July that as many as 20,000 Jersey City residents could have been missed in the count.
Robert Bernstein, a spokesman for the Census Bureau, said some errors are unavoidable. Still, Bernstein said, “We believe in the accuracy of the census and in most of the numbers we released.”
Byrne hopes redistricting can be postponed until this matter is resolved.
“We know we’re going to have to redraw the boundaries of six wards,” Byrne said Wednesday. “I’d rather do it one time and get it right than do it, then find out later that we have to redo it because of results from this challenge.”
The city will hold a public hearing on redistricting on Tuesday, Sept. 6 at 5:30 p.m. in City Hall, 280 Grove St. – E. Assata Wright