Quote:
Originally Posted by LMich
I wonder how they lost their challenge, exactly? Obviously, the work they (the city) did translated into a better estimate count, but it seems not to have been enough to correct the official count.
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They lost their challenge because there are only three procedural challenges, and the Census said the NYC challenge didn't fit any of the three.
Again, the Census never claimed that the NYC challenge was wrong, but rather that it wouldn't even be considered because it was outside the scope of challenge.
Basically, NYC claimed that the Census missed a ton of units in immigrant neighborhoods of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, and ended up listing these neighborhoods as heavily vacant. The Census basically said that you could only challenge based on procedural mistakes, and NYC didn't provide sufficient evidence.
So, of course, we see the Census is wrong, because the next year, there's a huge population jump with the 2011 estimates. NYC didn't really grow that fast in one year, but the Census-derived decennial base was clearly far too low (unless you really think some NYC neighborhoods are growing faster than Sunbelt sprawlburbs).
The craziest thing is that the neighborhoods that were listed as having the highest vacancy rates in the 2010 Census (immigrant areas in Outer Boroughs) are listed as having the lowest vacancy rates in NYC in the NYC Housing & Vacancy Survey, which is a survey conducted every three years and mostly funded from the U.S. Census!
So the Census decennial results show these areas with highest vacancy, and the Census Housing & Vacancy results show these areas with lowest vacancy. So why the crazy difference? Decennial Census can only use actual confirmed visits, which are tough in immigrant neighborhooods full of undocumented and non-English speaking. Housing & Vacancy survey uses sampling methodology, so there's some measure of imputation.
The bigger problem is that the Census decennial methodology is plain wrong. In short, you will never get an accurate count of folks who don't want to be accurately counted, which is why immigrant and minority heavy cities will continue to be screwed until the methodology changes.