Diana Reyna: Hipsters might not think Census is “cool”
9:25 am • 10 May 2011
City Limits has a better review of how the issue rose up than my snarky post, as well as other Census tidbits:
Another explanation for the oddities in the Census Bureau’s data was illegal subdivisions of housing. For example, if a person is illegally subletting his house to a family and actually lives with eight people, he is not likely to admit this to a Census worker. He would either lie about how many people he lives with, in which case the data is incorrect, or he would not bother answering the door at all, in which case his house gets counted as vacant despite the nine people living there.
Councilwoman Diana Reyna theorized that “hipsters” may be part of the cause for the inconsistency of the census numbers, stating that some of them “only want to be counted in their home state,” and that they might not participate in the Census because it wouldn’t be “cool.”
Another possible reason for the apparent undercount: illegal immigrants who are simply too afraid to talk to the government. (It’s also possible that people did leave New York for economic reasons and that the undercount is actually not that far “under.”)
And yes, Reyna represents part of Williamsburg ;)
