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Census takers
return to finish job

By Rosemarie Bernardo
Star-Bulletin

They're back again. Census workers began revisiting homes that weren't counted in the follow-up taken in May 2000.

The coverage improvement follow-up is to gather data from newly built apartment sites constructed before the census took off in April. About three weeks ago, complaints were made from residents who said they weren't counted in the census when they waited in their homes for census workers to arrive.

"The people we missed, we will take care of them," said Douglas Min, Kailua census office manager.

This procedure gives them one more opportunity to be counted, he said. Min said the follow-up will take about three weeks.

Census workers also will be revisiting housing units they made numerous earlier attempts to count, Min said.

"The purpose of the visit is to improve coverage of persons and housing units that may have been classified as vacant or nonexistent in previous operations," said Bob Asato, manager for the Census Bureau's Honolulu office.

On June 29, 500 census workers from the Kailua office began visiting homes. Census workers from the Kailua census office are scheduled to visit 17,726 housing units on the Windward side and the neighbor islands.

The Honolulu census office started its follow-up Monday.

Data gathered from the census is used to determine the amount of federal funding and congressional and other election districts.